------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Cold War-museum exhibit jogs memories of nuclear holocaust
France's Chirac Meets Putin for Talks
Al-Hayat: Israel successfully tested 1500km Jericho missile
FEDERAL CONTRACTS
Making (radar) waves
Legalize Assassination!
Earthling Vindicated Rumsfeld Proves Dangerous
Russia moves closer to spent nuclear fuel imports
Russia Willing to Cut Arsenal
Just say 'no' to renewing nuclear tests
Putting the DOE to the test
A Diplomatic Addition to Scientific Equation
Uranium plant closing hurts struggling region
Chao Opens Resource Center for Energy Workers
Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste repository
Cuts In Cleanup Budget Concern WIPP Supporters
Researchers assessing fallout of pre-'56 X-rays at K-25
Elliott Abrams: It's Back!
Nuclear Reprocessing Sets Off Alarms Again

MILITARY
Firearm checks reject 150,000
Milosevic plans to expose secret deals
Rebels Seize Four Villages in Macedonia
Milosevic's Lawyers Map Strategy
Jailed Milosevic Wants to Face Court Alone
Thousands march in support of Milosevic
Djindjic's Sale of Milosevic
Plan Colombia - British Chemical Company ICI Pulls Out of Cocaine War
US Concerned About Iran Investment
Britain Changes Tactics on Iraq
U.S. and U.K. Yield on New Iraq Sanctions
Israel prepared to fight war on two fronts as tension escalates
Syria denies firing Scud missile,
Car Bombs Explode in Israeli City
Palestinians Condemn Israeli Killing of Militants
New Violence Threatens Fragile Mideast Truce
U.S. Blames Both Israel And Palestinians for Violence
The Military Spending Crunch

OTHER
Personal power: solar utility in a backpack
New Mexico music fest tunes into solar power
O'Connor Questions Death Penalty
Koizumi, Blair Agree to Seek U.S. Return to Kyoto
Scientists Manufacture Human Eggs
U.S., Vietnam Talk About Research
Belgian Judge Opens Probe Against Israel's Sharon
Russia's Entry to WTO Delayed Indefinitely
Prisons Service decides to ease conditions for security inmates
The name's Bond, Gerbil Bond, MI5 agent with licence to smell a rat
U.S. Navy Spy Plane Begins Return
Five Cuban Spies Put in Isolation
Saudis Say They, Not U.S., Will Try 11 in '96 Bombing

ACTIVISTS
BERN HOLDS ANNUAL INDEPENDENCE DAY PROTEST AT NSA
London vigil to stop torture of Kalahari Bushmen
China Tries Tiananmen Protester


-------- NUCLEAR

Cold War-museum exhibit jogs memories of nuclear holocaust
Diefenbunker displays some stark images of the atomic bomb

Melanie Brooks
The Ottawa Citizen
01/07/02
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/national/010702/5039794.html

At 0.006 seconds, a nuclear explosion looks like a cold white sun coming up over the horizon. At 0.034 seconds, it starts to look like the typical mushroom cloud we all know from the movies: the top a perfect half circle, a cloud of radioactive dust starting to billow out at the bottom. At 0.1 seconds, the cloud is half a kilometre wide. At eight seconds, it's all over, except for the radioactive ash and debris that will plague survivors for generations.

At the Diefenbunker, Canada's Cold War Museum, the gruesome history of the atomic bomb is displayed in a series of stark black and white photos, colour images of its aftermath and a series of pictures detailing the construction and sale of the weapons of mass destruction.

Visibility and Invisibility in the Nuclear Era is a display by the Atomic Photographers Guild, an international organization of documentary photographers established in 1986 by Montreal photographer Robert Del Tredici.

"The atomic power seemed very important, but no one was keeping track of the materials end of it or the documentation of the aftermath. We started to," he said. "It was the height of the Cold War. Everyone was terrified of a holocaust."

The first atomic explosion in New Mexico, on July 16, 1945, is detailed in second-by-second images.

After the bombing of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, photographer Yoshito Matsushige was the only photographer to get pictures of the horrific aftermath. His five pictures, in grainy black and white, show buildings collapsed like decks of cards, bandaged Japanese huddled together in an artificial twilight and demolished homes.

In another display, photographer David McMillan illustrates the deserted and deadly land left behind after the Chernobyl nuclear plant accident in 1986 that left the area saturated with radiation. Taking pictures of these sites can be dangerous for the photographers because of the lingering radiation.

"You try not to think about it," said Blake Fitzpatrick, an atomic photographer from Peterborough. "You monitor the radiation, but you have to go in it to get the pictures."

The exhibit, featuring work from 13 photographers, will be at the Diefenbunker until Sept. 15.

"The Cold War isn't over," said Mr. Del Tredici, looking at the image of a mushroom cloud. "The weapons are still there. This display is to jog people's memories of that."

-------- europe

France's Chirac Meets Putin for Talks

The Associated Press
Monday, July 2, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010702/aponline055515_000.htm

MOSCOW -- European security in the face of U.S. missile defense plans and ending sanctions on Iraq were key issues on the agenda for talks Monday in the Kremlin between French President Jacques Chirac and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The two presidents are seeking common ground to boost relations that have been troubled by France's criticism of Russia's war in Chechnya and financial disputes in French courts involving Russians.

"We are glad that relations are on the rise," Putin said before the two started talks in the Kremlin.

Chirac praised the "sound partnership" between the countries.

After Chirac's arrival Sunday, he and Putin met informally in St. Petersburg, visiting the renowned Hermitage Museum and briefly going fishing off a pier.

Security issues were expected to dominate the agenda at Monday's talks, including U.S. proposals for an anti-missile shield, which would require scrapping or changing the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

Chirac and several other European leaders have expressed concern about the plans and what they would mean for Europe's security. Russia strongly opposes the U.S. proposals, warning they could prompt a new arms race.

The two were also expected to discuss boosting French investment in Russia, the fighting in Macedonia and both nations' efforts toward ending U.N. sanctions on Iraq.

Russia, which is owed billions of dollars in Soviet-era debt by Baghdad and has several oil projects in Iraq, has strongly protested a U.S.-backed British proposal in the U.N. Security Council for overhauling the sanctions and extending them indefinitely.

The Russian and French foreign ministers, Igor Ivanov and Hubert Vedrine, also held talks in Moscow focusing on global security.

It was Chirac's first visit to Russia under Putin, who was elected in March 2000. Chirac, who speaks some Russian, hosted Putin in Paris last October in a visit meant to thaw relations and improve Russia's relations with European allies.

On Sunday, Chirac focused on the fate of native peoples of Siberia and the Russian Arctic. The French oil giant Total Fina Elf on Sunday pledged about $100,000 to the study of environmental problems in the Russian north, where decades of drilling have polluted thousands of acres of land.

Chirac was scheduled to meet Tuesday with French and Russian business leaders and students at Moscow University. He was also expected to meet with former President Boris Yeltsin. Later, he was to visit an aerospace firm in the city of Samara on the Volga River.

-------- israel

Al-Hayat: Israel successfully tested 1500km Jericho missile

By Amnon Barzilai and Daniel Sobelman
Ha'aretz Correspondents,
Monday, July 2, 2001
http://www3.haaretz.co.il/eng/scripts/article.asp?mador=14&datee=7/2/01&id=123272

Israel successfully test-fired a third-generation model of the Jericho surface-to-surface ballistic missile last Wednesday, according to the Arab language daily Al-Hayat.

According to the report, which appeared in yesterday's edition, Israel tested a Jericho 2B, at the Palmachim test range, whose reported range is estimated to be 1500 kilometers and which is believed to be capable of carrying a non-conventional warhead.

Israel has never acknowledged the existence of a locally produced surface-to-surface missile. Reports regarding the existence of the Jericho family of ballistic missiles have appeared over time in the foreign press.

It is believed that the Israel Aircraft Industries missile was originally developed in cooperation with the French firm Dassault.

According to the 2000-2001 Middle East Military Balance published by Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, foreign sources report that Israel is already in possession of a more advanced Jericho 3.

The development of the Jericho line of missiles was carried over several decades, in which roughly every 10 years an upgraded and improved version was tested.

Jericho 1 was developed during the 1960s. The Jericho 2, according to foreign reports, was developed during the 1970s in cooperation with Iran, a relationship which collapsed following the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini to power in 1978.

The Jericho 2 is according to foreign reports powered by a two-stage, solid fuel rocket.

The Jericho reportedly weighs 6.5 tonnes, is 12 meters in length and has a diameter of one meter. It is believed to be capable of carrying a 1000 kg warhead.

According to published reports, the Jericho 2 range is estimated to be 1500 km.

The Jericho boosted Israel's aerospace industry, which served as the model for the Shavit satellite launchers and the development of the Ofek family of spy-satellites.

Information about the Israeli development of surface-to-surface missiles was first leaked by the Pentagon to the U.S. press.

In 1987, the Pentagon published a report that Israel had test-fired a Jericho missile whose range exceeded 800 km. In May, 2000, the Washington Post wrote about the "near-miss" which occurred on April 6, 2000, when Israel test fired a missile from Palmachim, and which landed 60 km away from an Aegis-class destroyer.

-------- missile defense

FEDERAL CONTRACTS

States News Service
Monday, July 2, 2001; Page E09
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6708-2001Jul1?language=printer

Survive Engineering Co. of Aberdeen, Md., won a $198,490 contract with the Army to assess the B-2 bomber's vulnerability to ballistic missiles.

--------

Making (radar) waves

By Ross Kerber,
Globe Staff,
7/2/2001
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/183/business/Making_radar_waves+.shtml

Sagamore is ground zero for US missile defense on the Eastern Seaboard. That's where an Air Force radar array keeps an eye on the Atlantic. It's also the center of a controversy concerning health threats residents say the aging technology might impose on the community.

SAGAMORE - Beneath a giant radar tower on a Cape Cod hilltop, Lieutenant Colonel Cal Hutto defends the free world with clunky computers from the 1970s, each about as powerful as a Palm Pilot.

In the control room, cooling-water pipes drip and air conditioners roar so the file cabinet-size mainframes don't overheat and leave the East Coast blind to incoming ballistic missiles. When Hutto orders his crew to demonstrate an attack, they point out squiggly green lines on a monitor that would seem

obsolete on an automated-teller machine. The effect is less Tom Clancy whiz-bang than disco-era video arcade.

''It's like Pong,'' says Air Force Captain Brad Swezey, guiding a visitor around a dot-matrix printer the size of a minivan.

The Pentagon is considering upgrading the radar from a Cold War relic into a link with its controversial National Missile Defense program. Some day the site could also house a powerful new radar, known as the X-Band, for missile defense. As a first step, the Air Force had budgeted $28 million for better hardware to process signals from the 105-foot tower known as PAVE PAWS, for phased-array warning system.

Instead of bringing new computers, however, the upgrade request has renewed a simmering technical debate with implications for everything from missile defense plans to the safety of cellphones and other advanced communications gear.

The debate centers on the characteristics of the radar beam generated by the thousands of antennas on the PAVE PAWS structure. While beams generated by more common radars are simple waves of energy, the one generated by PAVE PAWS contains many overlapping pulses.

Some critics worry these pulses could be the cause of the Cape's high cancer rates, which are 13 percent above what might be expected given state averages. Nobody has ever studied the unusual traits of the energy in the PAVE PAWS beam. Simpler measurements have been taken of its signal strength, which is well within government standards. (Other possible explanations for the Cape's high incidences of cancer include ground water pollution and emissions from nearby power plants.)

Based on the signal strength measurements and thousands of other studies on radio-frequency radiation, the Air Force says PAVE PAWS doesn't pose a health risk. ''Science has shown phased array systems produce electromagnetic fields that are fundamentally indistinguishable from those generated by single antenna systems,'' Charles B. Green, an Air Force Space Command colonel, wrote in a letter to the Sandwich Enterprise newspaper last December.

In April, however, the Air Force agreed to conduct ''time-domain measurements'' to define the shapes and amplitudes of the overlapping waves. The military had previously resisted such tests. Its turnaround followed pressure from Massachusetts politicians and a group of local activists. Their concerns were bolstered by Richard Albanese, a dissident Air Force scientist in Texas who questions whether the previous studies apply to PAVE PAWS.

Albanese and others worry that the radar's phased wave fronts affect human tissue in ways that aren't yet understood. Barring some pressing military need, Albanese thinks the radar station ought be shut down or moved.

''I have to go with the concepts of the medical profession, which say that humans shouldn't be exposed to physical or chemical environments that have not been tested,'' Albanese said.

All this has put on hold any upgrades for Hutto's control room and perhaps the ambitions of the Pentagon Star Wars agency known as the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, or BMDO, as well.

The irony is that Cape Cod would seem an ideal showplace for BMDO's X-Band radars, which are built by Lexington-based Raytheon Co. and are one piece of the National Missile Defense program already proven to work. Raytheon, which also built the PAVE PAWS system, said it has been told by BMDO not to discuss its operations.

Lieutenant Colonel Bruce Ruscio, an Air Force epidemiologist and a top health adviser for the PAVE PAWS site, disagrees with Albanese's concerns and cites a stack of peer-reviewed papers in favor of the Air Force's arguments.

But Ruscio agrees that Albanese has broadened the debate, partly by forcing the Air Force to submit to more public scrutiny. When the station was built in the 1970s, he said, the military was even more publicity-shy. ''Until recently, the Air Force was less open. There was a lot more secrecy,'' Ruscio said.

He added the upcoming measurements could help influence debates over the safety of other technologies, like mobile phones, that may soon use phased signals as well. ''We're embroiled in all those issues now,'' Ruscio said.

Nobody can recall what the entire PAVE PAWS acronym stands for, but the term is widely used on Cape Cod to refer to the structure that is visible from the top of the Sagamore Bridge, a few miles away.

Up close to the three-sided structure it becomes clear how two of its walls, facing northeast and southeast, are covered by a giant grid of several thousand smaller radar antennas, each a pronged metal rod about a foot long.

The station is one of three in the United States still carrying out a Cold War mission. Operators joke that a map of their search area resembles the Pac-Man character, a notched circular territory that extends as far north as Greenland, as far east as Spain, and across the top of Latin America. At its maximum range of about 3,500 miles, the station can pick out a flying object as small as a Volkswagen at altitudes of 1,200 miles or higher.

Despite the age of the base's computers, base commander Hutto maintains they are up to his tasks, which also include tracking satellites and space junk.

''I don't want anyone to get the impression that what we have now isn't sufficient to manage the nation's defense,'' Hutto said. The mainframes, originally built by Control Data, process thousands of bits of data streaming in every second.

Hutto's biggest problem is finding replacement wires and circuits when the mainframes and their big disk drives break down. Already, his support staff must resort to surfing the Web or contacting obscure parts dealers to keep the machines on-line. ''If they still made the spare parts, we wouldn't be looking at replacing these things,'' Hutto said.

Hutto and other Air Force personnel who live near the base say they aren't worried by the health risks because the main beam of PAVE PAWS never strikes the ground. It is limited to scanning at least 3 degrees above horizontal, and sits on the second-highest point on the Cape.

Several offshoot streams of energy known as ''side lobes'' do touch down, however. Officers say the one causing most concern contains just a thousandth as much power as the main beam. Measurements taken on the Cape in 1978 and again in 1986 showed average and peak energy levels well within the limit set by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers of 0.28 milliwatts per square centimeter of tissue for exposure around the radar's frequency range, between 420 and 450 Megahertz.

In 1978, at the Mashpee Middle School, for instance, instruments recorded both an average and peak-power exposure of just 0.000001 milliwatts. At the Hoxie Elementary School in Bourne, the average was the same, and the peak was 0.000209 milliwatts.

These measurements reassured some, since all sides agree the radar signals aren't cooking Cape residents with what are termed ''thermal effects.'' Also, a panel appointed by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health reviewed available epidemiological studies in 1999 and concluded they ''do not suport the idea that RFR [radio-frequency radiation] exposure increases the occurrence of cancer in general or any specific type of cancer.''

The panel did acknowledge some scientific uncertainty, however, and wrote that it would be prudent for the state to ''take interim action to limit the public exposure to PAVE PAWS RFR'' pending further evidence.

The panel didn't spell out what these steps might be. That concerned Albanese when he came across the document last year and also noticed it didn't discuss the phased signal differences. In a private letter to Massachusetts officials, he urged that a controlled experiment should be done ''on an urgent basis to support the claim that the PAVE PAWS radiation is safe for humans.'' Currently, he wrote, ''No data exist that are unambiguously relevant to the PAVE PAWS system.''

The Air Force agreed to help Barnstable County leaders conduct a broad review of health concerns, but rejected time-domain measurements as unnecessary and expensive. There the matter stood until April, when politicians including Senators Edward M. Kennedy and John F. Kerry, and Representative William D. Delahunt got Air Force Acting Secretary Larry Delaney to agree to conduct the measurements after all.

Some local activists feel they shouldn't have had to make such a fuss to get the work done, considering all the community meetings the Air Force holds seeking local input. ''They're saying they want to be responsible and to listen to our concerns, but what they're doing is different,'' said Dick Judge, a Sandwich selectman. Since moving to town in 1997, Judge and his wife Sharon have become the station's most vocal opponents.

Albanese is no stranger to controversy. He helped design an Air Force study on the health effects of Agent Orange, then was taken off the project after objecting to the way the military described certain findings. Albanese said he's also been admonished for his outspokenness on PAVE PAWS; the Air Force says he was only told to stress he was speaking as a private citizen.

Still, Albanese has no plans to leave the Air Force, and spent last week at meetings at Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, with Ruscio and other Air Force scientists hashing out details for collecting time-domain measurements.

It hasn't been decided exactly how the new data will be used, said Ruscio. He said the amounts of energy to be studied will be so slight that the testing equipment hasn't yet been designed. Signals from ships in the Cape Cod Canal and from FM radio stations in Hyannis could also interfere.

Nonetheless the exercise should help restore public confidence, Ruscio said. The 1978 and 1986 studies had ''no connectivity to adverse health impacts,'' he said. At the time, he said, ''The Air Force should have done a better job.''

Albanese called last week's meetings productive. Meanwhile, he has brought similar questions before the Pentagon's BMDO, which operates separately from the Air Force and has issued its own report that concludes its upgrade plans for PAVE PAWS won't cause health problems. The report didn't note the lack of data on phased-array signals, an omission Albanese called ''gravely in error.''

Further, Albanese wrote, in the worst case the PAVE PAWS station could be causing a 21 percent increase in ''malignant disease'' rates, a risk that warrants more study. ''In my experience working with military personnel ... misconceptions and errors tend to become entrenched in the organizational setting and do damage to medical practice,'' he wrote.

A BMDO spokesman, Rick Lehner, said the agency will consider Albanese's concerns. But, Lehner said, they don't merit a public response.

Ross Kerber can be reached by e-mail at kerber@globe.com.

----

Legalize Assassination!

By Robert Wright Posted
Monday, July 2, 2001,
Microsoft News
http://slate.msn.com/Earthling/01-07-02/Earthling.asp

Are Americans too squeamish to vaporize Baghdad, should the need arise? This prospect has been on the mind of National Review editor Rich Lowry lately. It's one reason he thinks old-fashioned deterrence-mutually assured destruction-can't be counted on to keep us safe from any nuke-tipped missiles wielded by "rogue states."

Lowry raised the issue in a column advocating national missile defense and critiquing my own critique of missile defense. He wrote: "It is not necessarily a certainty that the U.S. would be willing to make such a [retaliatory] strike, and as long as there is the barest hint of uncertainty about this, an attack on the U.S. might not be an act of suicidal madness."

Before proceeding to the main issue-whether America would indeed pull the trigger-note the bizarre analysis in which Lowry embeds it. He says that a nuclear attack on the United States wouldn't necessarily be crazy so long as there were "the barest hint of uncertainty" about American retaliation. So, if Saddam Hussein decides that the chances of an attack on America leading to his death have dropped from 100 percent to 98 percent, then it wouldn't be crazy for him to attack? I hold even the most roguish dictators to a higher standard of rationality than that.

Certainly during the Cold War, when deterrence was a consensus doctrine, nobody considered a 100-percent chance of retaliation a prerequisite for continued peace. The idea was that, given the intense human fear of death, any large chance of its ensuing-90 percent, 80 percent-has a reliably inhibiting effect.

Still, during the Cold War we tried to keep the chances of successful retaliation pretty high. (That was the idea behind the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty's ban on missile defense.) And I agree that we wouldn't want them to drop too low. Is there really a danger of that?

Not much of one. Lowry has presumably never lived in a nation with a true war mentality. Neither have I, but I guarantee you that if an Iraqi missile took out mid-town Manhattan, you would see a recalibration of America's bourgeois moral sensibilities. Overnight, the nation would move toward a World-War-II mindset, which countenanced the wholesale slaughter of civilians in various cities, not just Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Besides, even if America balked at nuclear retaliation, does Lowry think there's any chance that America's military would rest before Saddam Hussein were either dead or in prison awaiting trial? Does Lowry think Hussein could possibly think that?

If anyone does suffer from that illusion, there's an easy fix. The assassination of foreign leaders is now banned by executive order. Maybe that law needs a loophole: National political and military leaders whose nations launch a nuclear strike against any other nation can legally be assassinated via covert American action. And America is free to use any tools, ranging from Oswald-type marksmanship to cruise missiles to special-forces helicopters descending on country villas to bunker-busting bombs. And if circumstances don't permit a clean kill, and dozens or hundreds or even thousands of innocent people must die-well, nobody ever said the deterrence business isn't messy.

Such a law may strike some people as extreme. But compared to what? Compared to spending a jillion dollars on a missile shield that not only may not work, but in various ways may actually increase the chances of nuclear war? (Click here to read a "Foreigners" column in favor of legalizing assassination - http://slate.msn.com/foreigners/entries/01-02-19_101062.asp.)

Of the several pro-missile-defense points raised in Lowry's column, there's only one that I haven't addressed either above or in my previous reply: He worries that a rogue state could use nuclear missiles without actually launching them. Thus, Saddam Hussein's mere possession of nukes could have intimidated the United States into not intervening in Kuwait. This scenario first got prominent airplay months ago, when Donald Rumsfeld trotted it out after missile-defense critics started asking why old-fashioned deterrence wouldn't work against the Saddam Husseins of the world.

First, let's spell out the logic of Rumsfeld's repositioning for the benefit of the American taxpayer. When the Bush administration took office, it was asking you for tons of money to build a missile shield that could supposedly save your life. Now, as doubts grow about whether it is really needed for that purpose, the Bush administration is asking you for tons of money to save some future Kuwait from foreign occupation. (And this is the administration that doesn't think Americans will tolerate paying enough taxes to ensure Social Security's solvency.)

Second, whether all that money really would help the Kuwaits of the world-by freeing America to intervene when and where it chooses, regardless of whose nukes were pointing at it-is doubtful. Let's grant Lowry's premise-that for some reason Hussein's threat to nuke us would carry great credibility, so Americans would fear becoming toast if U.S. troops aided Kuwait. Would missile defense really change that calculus much?

Remember, no one is claiming that a missile shield would work with anything like 100 percent reliability. So, even if you throw a shield into the Kuwait scenario, Americans would be pondering an appreciable, even if much-reduced, risk of losing a city or two. If the political premise of American military strategy in both Kuwait and Kosovo is sound-that Americans wouldn't tolerate several thousand military deaths in a non-essential intervention-then I doubt they'd tolerate, say, a five percent chance of losing a million civilians; not to save a country whose name most Americans probably couldn't spell before Iraq invaded it.

It may be possible to imagine an intervention so vital to American interests that we'd take that risk, yet not so vital that we'd have taken the risk in the absence of missile defense. But I'd at least like to hear Lowry list some examples. And I'm skeptical that there are many.

I don't deny that the possession of nukes would probably give a dictator more leeway in world affairs, or that, specifically, great powers might be less inclined to confront such a dictator. I'm just doubting that missile defense would do much, if anything, to change that. So, Lowry is deploying one of his patented non sequiturs when he writes, "If nuclear-armed ICBMs are as useless to rogue states as Wright portrays them-because their only possible use can be to prompt the U.S. to annihilate the country in question-why are rogue nations pursuing them in the first place?" Maybe they're pursuing them because the mere possession of nukes does give a second-tier nation more stature and elbow room-whether or not the United States builds a missile shield.

That nukes in the hands of rapacious dictators are in this sense bad news is one reason we should work hard to slow nuclear proliferation-for example, by getting a verifiable nonproliferation deal with North Korea. The Bush administration, under political pressure, has finally started at least going through the motions of seeking such a deal. Still, the administration's obvious lack of heartfelt interest hints at one of the dangers of missile defense: Its supporters often think of it as an alternative to nonproliferation, when in fact it isn't nearly an adequate substitute. There is a difference between A) a world of rapid nuclear proliferation and rapid missile-shield construction; and B) a world that doesn't have either. And B) features longer life expectancy.

This may be the scariest single thing about missile defense (and there's a lot of competition for that title): It could give some American political leaders the illusion of insulation from world problems. And the next few decades, which will bring a spate of threats that can be addressed only through concerted international action, is no time for the world's leading nation to feel comfortably numb.

---

[Earlier editorials referred to in above: ]

Earthling Vindicated Rumsfeld Proves Dangerous

By Robert Wright Posted
Friday, Jan. 12, 2001, at 9:30 a.m. PT
http://slate.msn.com/Earthling/01-01-12/Earthling.asp

Evidence of my prescience surfaces with alarming infrequency, so when it does crop up I make the most of it. Here goes.

In a column posted two days ago, I warned that incoming Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld might try to impede the rapprochement with North Korea started by the Clinton administration. Why? Because, being hell-bent on convincing us of the merits of a missile defense system, he needs to be able to point to isolated, belligerent regimes that are developing long-range missiles.

Lo and behold, I turn to my New York Times this morning and find the following lead paragraph in a front-page story by Steven Lee Myers:

"Donald Rumsfeld, the prospective secretary of defense, called today for a sweeping revision of the nation's deterrence strategy and weaponry, advocating increases in military spending, the deployment of a national missile defense and a tougher stand toward China and North Korea."

But enough about me. In arguing for missile defense at his confirmation hearing yesterday, Rumsfeld made a point that is worth exploring.

He was responding to Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., who had just efficiently debunked the standard rationale for missile defense-to ward off nuclear missiles from "rogue states." Levin noted that a) the threat of nuclear retaliation would seem to be enough to deter even a "terrorist state" from launching a strike against the United States; and b) in any event, there are easier ways for a terrorist state to mess with the United States. (Much better to sneak a nuke across the Mexican border in a van-"hide it in a bale of marijuana," as John Pike of the Federation of American Scientists has put it-than to use a ballistic missile and hence put a return address on the nuke.)

Here is Rumsfeld's basic rejoinder to Levin: OK, but even if you're right, remember that a nuclear-tipped ballistic missile can "work without being fired." For example: suppose Saddam Hussein had possessed such a missile during the Persian Gulf War. Then, says Rumsfeld, we couldn't have mustered the anti-Iraq coalition, because our allies would have feared putting "themselves at risk to a nuclear weapon."

Now, first of all, in that very war Saddam showed that even "rogue states" are amenable to the logic of deterrence. Secretary of State James Baker, using code language, warned that if Iraq pulled out its chemical weapons, the United States might pull out its nukes. The threat seems to have worked.

Rumsfeld might reply that, notwithstanding the manifestly powerful logic of deterrence, allies could still get cold feet, since even the perception of a quite small threat of nuclear attack is a very scary thing. And he might be right. But if so, then how much is a missile defense system going to help? After all, not even supporters of such a system-which by definition cannot be tested under real-world conditions, and which can be fooled via well-known techniques-claim that it would have anywhere near a 100 percent chance of working. So the perception of a quite small threat of a successful nuclear attack would still exist.

That Rumsfeld is already trying to change the rationale for missile defense is a good sign. He seems to be conceding that the standard rationale-that "rogue states" might actually lob a nuclear missile toward the United States-has some holes in it. (Hey-that's another all-too-rare example of Earthling vindication!)

But if Rumsfeld is going to shift the argument in mid-debate, he'd better be prepared to follow his new train of logic. A 60-percent-effective missile defense might make sense if the purpose were to actually fend off incoming missiles. But when you're talking about our allies-or for that matter us-being deterred from action by the mere threat of a nuclear attack, then 60 percent won't do. In the psychology of paralyzing fear, a small but appreciable threat of massive destruction is a small but appreciable threat of massive destruction. If our allies are worried that there's a 5 percent chance of London or Paris going up in flames, it won't help to say, "Actually the threat is only 2 percent."

In his testimony yesterday, Rumsfeld said, "You know, this isn't the old Star Wars idea of a shield that would keep everything off of everyone in the world." But, actually, if the purpose of missile defense is to keep a large alliance from crumbling under the fear of nuclear attack, anything that falls much short of that "old Star Wars idea" just isn't going to work.

So far, the arguments in favor of missile defense have demonstrated a fairly consistent sloppiness. Rumsfeld-and fellow missile defense booster Dick Cheney-are obviously men who pride themselves on their tough analytical skills (and they obviously don't credit their opponents with same). OK, fine-let's see some evidence of hard, clear thinking. It's time for a serious debate on national missile defense to begin. The ball is in their court.

-------- russia

Russia moves closer to spent nuclear fuel imports

July 2, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11392

MOSCOW - Plans to open Russia to imports of spent nuclear fuel got the go-ahead from the upper house of parliament on Friday, paving the way for President Vladimir Putin to enact the bill criticised by environmentalists.

The Federation Council was not required by law to vote on any of three bills forming the package, but the chamber's head Yegor Stroyev said Putin wanted to know its opinion on one bill dealing with the clean-up of contaminated areas.

If the Council declines to debate a bill already passed by the State Duma lower house, Putin has the right to sign it into law anyway. But RIA news agency quoted Stroyev as saying Putin had told him he would only sign the bills once the upper house expressed its opinion on that particular document.

The bills, championed by the Atomic Energy Ministry which says Russia could earn $20 billion over 10 years, have sparked angry protests from ecologists and liberal politicians who fear the imports could turn the country into a nuclear dump.

Environmentalists demonstrated on Red Square this week accusing the Federation Council of shirking its responsibility by declining to debate the bills.

The chamber voted 92 to 17 in favour of the one bill it did debate, Interfax news agency said.

Under the law, cash-strapped Russia would be able to accept money to store other countries' spent nuclear reactor fuel until 2021, when proceeds from the trade would be sufficient to allow Russia to build new plants to reprocess the spent fuel.

Critics say the ministry may never win contracts to give it enough cash for the task and suspect it might leave the spent fuel in the ground indefinitely, or start importing nuclear waste that cannot be reprocessed or reused.

Atomic Energy Minister Alexander Rumyantsev argues the project will help his underfunded industry avoid decline and will boost hi-tech research in Russia.

The State Duma passed the bills earlier this month despite fierce opposition from liberal politicians such as head of Yabloko party Grigory Yavlinsky who suggested postponing the vote and holding a referendum.

Opinion polls suggest most Russians oppose the laws.

----

Russia Willing to Cut Arsenal

By Deborah Seward
Associated Press Writer
Monday, July 2, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010702/aponline093655_000.htm

MOSCOW -- President Vladimir Putin said Monday that Russia was willing to cut its nuclear arsenal to under 1,500 warheads as long as the process was "controlled" and the 1972 ABM treaty was preserved.

Speaking at a news conference alongside visiting French President Jacques Chirac, Putin also criticized the decision to deliver former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to the U.N. war crimes tribunal, saying he had doubts the move would bring stability to the Balkans.

Missile defense, nuclear proliferation and the tense situation in the Balkans have emerged as key topics so far during Chirac's three-day visit to Russia that began Sunday.

The two leaders issued a statement on international strategic issues on Monday in which both France and Russia affirmed support for maintaining the ABM treaty, which the United States has argued is outdated and stands in the way of President George W. Bush's proposals for a missile defense system.

"Russia welcomes the readiness of the United States to reduce strategic offensive weapons," Putin said. "Our concrete proposal is that we are ready for a further controlled reduction to 1,500 warheads and even less, but I want to stress controlled."

Putin also said any Russian reductions would be "closely linked to maintaining the ABM treaty." Russia believes abandoning the treaty would destroy the international security balance, a position supported by France.

"We attach great importance to our statement of strategic stability," Putin said.

A three-page joint statement said Russia and France see it as their task to ensure the strategic balance in the post-Cold War world. "The mechanism for that exist at the present time," the statement said, in a reference to the ABM treaty.

Although modifications to the ABM treaty concern specifically the United States and Russia, the statement says an international conference on nuclear proliferation would be useful. Russia and France believe destruction of the ABM treaty could lead to a new arms race.

Turning to Yugoslavia, Chirac said he and Putin had not yet discussed Milosevic's handover, but that he welcomed the move as a "victory of law over violence, of democracy over tyranny."

Speaking directly after Chirac, Putin sharply disagreed, saying he doubted the move would contribute to a more stable, peaceful society in Yugoslavia, that it had weakened Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica and could cause further disintegration of the Yugoslav Federation.

On Chechnya, the French leader repeated his country's position that only a negotiated settlement could lead to a lasting peace. France had been one of the fiercest critics of Russia's war against Chechen separatists, which led to a certain cooling in relations. However, the French authorities in recent months have considerably eased their stance.

"We are glad that relations are on the rise," Putin said before the two started talks in the Kremlin on Monday.

Chirac praised the "sound partnership" between the countries.

After Chirac's arrival Sunday, he and Putin met informally in St. Petersburg, visiting the renowned Hermitage Museum and briefly going fishing off a pier.

It was Chirac's first visit to Russia under Putin, who was elected in March 2000. Chirac, who speaks some Russian, hosted Putin in Paris last October in a visit meant to thaw relations and improve Russia's relations with European allies.

Chirac was scheduled to meet Tuesday with French and Russian business leaders and students at Moscow University. He was also expected to meet with former President Boris Yeltsin visit an aerospace firm in the city of Samara on the Volga River.

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

Just say 'no' to renewing nuclear tests

By Steve Erickson and Preston J. Truman,
Monday, July 02, 2001
Deseret News
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0%2C1249%2C295007761%2C00.html

Is the Bush administration preparing to break out of the nuclear weapons testing moratorium?

Recent statements and actions by top players within the administration and its shadow cabinet of unreconstructed Cold Warriors may just be trial balloons to test the waters to see if anyone will object to a resumption of testing and abrogation of treaties subscribed to by the United States.

If these are only trial balloons, they must be pierced now before they take flight, and the Utah congressional delegation has a moral responsibility to wield the pins.

In the last week of June, the Bush team ordered nuclear weapons scientists to study a range of options to "reduce lead times" to resume nuclear bomb explosions at the Nevada Test Site. The weapons laboratories argue that testing is needed to assure that the stockpile is reliable, and some fear that the long lead times to prepare tests give political opponents opportunities to prevent renewed testing.

Frank Gaffney, a former defense official and prominent conservative analyst and adviser, stated in May that "we're going to have to resume on a limited basis underground testing of our nuclear arms."

In a March 12 letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms called on the administration to repudiate the signed but unratified Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The New York Times reported May 9 that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld seems more inclined to deploy missile defenses and develop nuclear forces than to negotiate with Russia or China.

In April and May, the U.S. accused the Chinese of preparing for a nuclear weapons test, according to Washington Times reports in April and May, and similar accusations have been leveled at the Russians, as reported in the New York Times.

In the meantime, the Bush administration is putting on the diplomatic pressure to dismantle the ABM Treaty to pave the way for ballistic missile defense. Rumsfeld has stated that there may be a dozen different components to BMD, including the stationing of weapons in space. Not only would this constitute a unilateral abrogation of the Outer Space Treaty, it would likely involve a resumption of nuclear testing to complete development of Nuclear Directed Energy Weapons projects the national weapons labs have experimented with for two decades.

Taken together, these developments lead to an inescapable suspicion - that the U.S. is preparing to unilaterally jettison a less than perfect arms control regime fostered by every president since Eisenhower that has kept Armageddon at bay.

These policy maneuverings threaten a costly and dangerous new arms race and are alarming to our allies as well as our adversaries. Most alarming to the constituents of Utah's congressional delegation is the prospect of more nuclear tests upwind, especially those who have suffered painful losses and grievous wrongs from being unwitting "active participants in the nation's nuclear weapons program." Despite the commendable efforts of Utah's congressmen to achieve a greater measure of justice for the downwinders, uranium miners, atomic veterans, and defense workers exposed to radiation in the name of national security, allowing testing to begin again promises new generations of victims even as the those sick and dying from the last round hold their government- issued IOUs.

The people will not tolerate being bombed again! No political spin, no tortured logic, no fear mongering that the Russians or the Chinese or the North Koreans will be here in the morning, no assurance that "there is no danger" will suffice this time.

The assurances we need are that our elected representatives will do everything in their power to prevent a resumption of nuclear testing. Utahns must demand this now!

Steve Erickson of Salt Lake City is director of the Citizens Education Project. Preston J. Truman is director of Downwinders.

----

Putting the DOE to the test

July 2, 2001
Washington Times,
by James H. McNally
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20010702-3554.htm

Letters to Editor: letters@washingtontimes.com

The Bush administration's call for reassessment of national security needs, including nuclear weapons policy that deals with targeting and nuclear weapons stockpile levels, gives the Department of Energy (DOE) a rare opportunity. In conjunction with the reassessment, DOE has the opportunity to restructure the stockpile stewardship program, straightening out some of the severe convolutions that have grown into the program since the United States stopped nuclear testing.

Initially the stockpile stewardship program embarked on a technology based program directed to an increased understanding of nuclear weapon performance that would enable high confidence in stockpile safety, security and reliability to be retained. But as the political constraint of a permanent but unratified Comprehensive Test Ban was imposed, the goal of the program changed to maintaining high confidence without nuclear explosive testing. The technicians' response was basically "we will try, we like the money, but no guarantees."

In recent years, the "no guarantees" clause has been increasingly overlooked by test-ban enthusiasts. The result is an open-ended program. There is no definition of milestones, which if successfully completed, would assure the necessary stockpile confidence. The dilemma is straightforward: It is not logically possible to develop the levels of information, calculational sophistication, supporting theory, and laboratory experiments and then to integrate the results into high-confidence predictions of weapon safety, security, and reliability without the proof of testing. Credible well-engineered products require testing of predicted performance. And stockpile stewardship is a pillar of the nation's national security.

One option for a restructured program is based on a political decision that there will be no nuclear explosive testing. In that case a research program directed to nuclear weapon phenomenology could be undertaken with the explicit recognition that confidence in the current weapon stockpile will be increasingly uncertain as mistakes in judgment creep into maintenance decisions. Today's warheads will eventually have to be phased out. A more realistic option is to carry forth a pragmatically directed program with occasional testing up to, say, ten kilotons. This testing would be directed toward establishing the integrated calculational, archival, theoretical and lab experimental understanding of weapon phenomenology. Appropriate confidence should be maintainable and recruitment and morale problems alleviated.

It is important to recognize that we are not suggesting a return to World War II or Cold-War days. There have been distinct phases to the United States' nuclear weapon program in the past and further evolution to a new streamlined phase can be envisioned.

The time-urgent Manhattan Project took several years to complete and is not a model for the future. The megaton atmospheric tests in the Marshall Islands are also from another time and way of thinking. We learned a lot along the Cold-War way; among the lessons was that we did not need to depend on millions of tons of high explosive yield for a deterrent.

Now we are at a stage where reliance on large numbers of missiles may give way to smaller forces that nevertheless continue to rely on fewer of today's sophisticated warheads. Today, there is wide recognition that nuclear weapons cannot be uninvented and may spread to several new nations. At some point high-confidence lower-yield weapons based on current designs may also be appropriate. It is undoubtedly prudent to retain a viable nuclear weapon capability. Few embrace unilateral disarmament in today's uncertain world. Our nuclear testing needs may be less, but they are still there.

The present situation can be bluntly stated: We taxpayers are asked to spend an undetermined amount of money and DOE and the labs will tell us when enough is enough. The dangling carrot is that perhaps a test ban might be technically supportable at some time with assurance that our weapons will perform appropriately. In the meantime, for political reasons, we are not to conduct nuclear tests to check the progress of the stewardship program (although it is arguable whether the nuclear weapons capability of any other nation is substantively influenced by whether we test or not). Of course, there is a catch. A president can undercut technical reality and ignore the lack of technical unanimity by simply asserting the political judgment that the stockpile is safe, secure, and reliable.

From the technical point of view, we eventually must test for stockpile assurance; we cannot wish testing away. We should be strong enough as a nation to realize that testing, as in every other engineering field, is necessary for product confidence. Perhaps the most significant outcome of stockpile stewardship reassessment is the possibility of doing away with the logical impossibility, but implied ability, of maintaining the current stockpile with confidence in perpetuity without testing. In its place there could be a focused, efficient and credible program relying on occasional, relatively small nuclear tests. America should seize the opportunity.

James McNally retired after working more than two decades in the Los Alamos National Laboratory's nuclear weapon program.

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

A Diplomatic Addition to Scientific Equation
Brookhaven's Marburger Tapped as Adviser

By Guy Gugliotta
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 2, 2001; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6755-2001Jul1?language=printer

For Brookhaven National Laboratory Director John H. Marburger III, it was, perhaps, the sort of tabloid question that might prompt some scientists to consider setting their hair on fire.

Was it true, he was asked after publication of a 1999 British newspaper story, that Brookhaven's new atom smasher -- the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider -- was going to produce a black hole that would devour the entire planet?

"Generally speaking," Marburger replied, "these things just don't happen."

Marburger's diplomacy and economy of phrase may not have been the primary reasons that President Bush last week picked him to be assistant to the president for science and technology and head of the Office of Science and Technology Policy.

But those who know the physicist and former college president say he will need these virtues, because the White House's chief science adviser, even in the best of times, has to be able to tell the president unvarnished truths, even as he referees among agency chiefs clamoring for research and development dollars.

"Patience for him is a virtue, and I think it will be that way for him in the White House," said James Tripp, Environmental Defense Fund general counsel who became a Marburger admirer in long sessions of give-and-take over environmental cleanup policy at Brookhaven. "He's kind of a natural for his new position."

But some Washington veterans suggest that might not matter. In a Bush administration that has already staked out positions on energy, missile defense and global warming, a science adviser risks being an afterthought or, perhaps, a punching bag.

"I don't believe the Senate will deny the president's nominee, but it is conceivable that Democrats will use his confirmation hearing to highlight White House policies that they disagree with," said physicist Mike Lubell, public affairs director for the American Physical Society.

He said Marburger was apparently not the administration's first choice, and that earlier candidates demurred when told their access to Bush would be filtered through White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr.

"We can't tell whether he [Marburger] has negotiated something different or whether he can live with that," Lubell said.

Aside from a short statement in which he said he would be "delighted" to serve, Marburger refused to comment on his nomination pending his confirmation hearing -- probably not until September.

Marburger's views on stem cell research and missile defense are not publicly known. He is a nuclear power advocate, a virtual prerequisite for anyone who runs a national lab, but he has taken no public position on Bush's supply-side energy plan.

Yet for an administration that is taking a public relations beating on environmental policy, Marburger is a fortuitous choice. In three years at Brookhaven, he emerged as a public-spirited leader eager to involve an alarmed local community in efforts to solve the Long Island lab's lingering problems with pollutants and radioactive contamination.

"Before he came, [Brookhaven] behaved as if it was a foreign nation," said Adrienne Esposito, associate executive director of New York's Citizens Campaign for the Environment. "He's worked hard to open up channels of dialogue."

Marburger, 60, a native of Staten Island, was raised in Woodlawn, Md., near Landover Hills. He received his doctorate in applied physics from Stanford University in 1967.

During the 1970s, he taught at the University of Southern California and became a leading authority on nonlinear optics, the study of optical phenomena that occur at very high intensities of light.

"He had a way of really distilling the essence of the subject matter, and the beauty and elegance of his mathematical descriptions are things I've always remembered," said University of Michigan physicist Herbert Winful, a Marburger disciple as a USC graduate student.

In 1980, Marburger left USC to become president of State University of New York at Stony Brook, a post he held for 14 years, helping to transform the school into one of the Northeast's leading scientific research institutions.

He had returned to teaching at Stony Brook, when Brookhaven, in nearby Upton, announced in January 1997 that radioactive tritium had been leaking into the groundwater for years. The Energy Department fired the management team that was running the lab and hired a new group with Marburger as director.

Marburger's role was threefold: organize the cleanup, restore morale at the lab and reach out to the community. In a December 1997 interview with the Long Island newspaper Newsday, three months before he formally took over the lab, Marburger said he wasn't "afraid" of Brookhaven.

"But I do think many neighbors are resentful of the laboratory for what they see as its too-casual attitude toward the environment," he continued. "It is not acceptable to let a leak of radioactive material go on for 10 years."

-------- illinois

Uranium plant closing hurts struggling region
Ohio facility built to supply military

By John Nolan
Associated Press
July 1, 2001
From: magnu96196@aol.com

PIKETON, Ohio -- In the coming months, Marybeth Hamel and hundreds of her co-workers at one of the nation's last two uranium enrichment plants will lose some of the best-paying jobs in a region long plagued by high unemployment.

U.S. Enrichment Corp. says it can no longer afford to operate the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, a massive facility the government built in the 1950s to produce enriched uranium for nuclear weapons and military reactors, because of low prices caused by a market glut for nuclear plant fuel.

Production stopped in May, and last month layoffs of nearly a quarter of the plant's 1,700 workers began. The rest will remain to handle contract work and maintain equipment. The plant employed more than 3,000 people in the 1980s.

The company will keep a sister plant in Paducah, Ky., open, and it will buy highly enriched Russian uranium from that country's decommissioned nuclear warheads.

Some members of Congress, which voted to make the company private in 1998 to give it more flexibility to respond to market conditions, are now angry that it is laying off former federal workers who helped get the country through the Cold War.

The company agreed to keep the southern Ohio plant in a "cold standby status" so that it can be restarted if needed.

For Hamel, it will be her second layoff from the plant in a decade. But unlike last time, she isn't going to wait around for another job--she already has been accepted into a nurse training program in Nashville.

U.S. Enrichment has earmarked $20 million for community development, severance pay and extended benefits for laid-off workers, who on average earned $40,000 a year with another $20,000 in benefits. But that does little to cushion the shock for workers who have spent decades at the plant, union officials say.

"We have people who have never worked anywhere else," said Garry Sexton, a safety representative for the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy International Union Local 5-689. "They came out of high school here."

"We've been on a roller-coaster ride for a long time, ever since privatization," said Sexton, a 17-year employee. "It's been a ride, with people not knowing what their destiny is going to be."

Union President Dan Minter said meeting with plant veterans who are losing jobs is an emotional drain. He has traveled to Washington repeatedly to lobby for government attention for the workers.

The region, with rolling green hills and sweeping views of the Ohio River, historically has the state's highest unemployment. Pike County, home to the plant, had a 6.9 percent unemployment rate in April, nearly double the statewide rate.

Hamel, 35, of Lucasville, said she doesn't know when exactly her layoff date will be. She just knows it is coming.

Her father worked at the plant and has retired. Her brother, sister-in-law and brother-in-law also work there.

Her current job is working as a safety representative for plant subcontractor Bechtel Jacobs. She is hoping to parlay her experience into a new career as an occupational nurse.

Her daughter, Bethany, an 8th-grader, cries at the prospect of leaving her 300-student school for a 1,700-student building full of strangers in Nashville.

"She's been a cheerleader since 3rd grade," Hamel said. "She didn't go out for cheerleading this year because she didn't want to take another girl's spot. It broke her heart."

=========================================================

The Magnum-Opus Project---The Mission: To do a greater good. Righting the wrongs of the Manhattan Project's deceit and treachery national security methods using openness and accountability. DOE Watch List--Where toxic health damage is not a mystery. A news list combined with scientific studies to expose the problems. Subscribe: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/doewatch DOE Watch OR Web page: http://members.aol.com/doewatch Rocky Flats EIN page: http://members.aol.com/magnu96196/EINHome.html

Toxic metals and fluorides concentrate in lymph nodes and cause damage to macrophage mitochondrial DNA, leading to illnesses. See the analysis at http://members.aol.com/magnu96196/cfs.html

In the 1980's, Oak Ridge managers established a national alliance of DOE friendly supplanted activists and old DOE scientists to mislead gullible fluoride affected sick workers and communities in order to fabricate a health mystery and avoid the extreme liabilities of the fluorides health damage to uranium gas diffusion chemical plant workers and communities.

-------- kentucky

Chao Opens Resource Center for Energy Workers
Center is First of 10 to be Opened Across the U.S.

U.S. Newswire
2 Jul 16:36
Contact: Stuart Roy of the U.S. Department of Labor, 202-693-4650
http://www.usnewswire.com/topnews/Current_Releases/0702-125.html

PADUCAH, KY, July 2 /U.S. Newswire/ -- At a ribbon-cutting ceremony in Paducah, Ky. today Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao opened the first of 10 Resource Centers designed to help injured energy workers receive compensation from the federal government.

"Today is a major step forward in America's commitment to the well-being of our nuclear industry workers and their families," Chao said. "It is a tragedy that more was not done to care for these injured workers sooner. But I'm proud to be here today to open this Resource Center so we can start processing these claims as quickly as possible. These injured workers are American heroes, and they deserve to be treated as such."

The Resource Centers will offer personal assistance in filing claim forms for the Energy Employees Occupational Injury Compensation Program Act (EEOICPA), passed by Congress in October 2000.

EEOICPA pays $150,000 lump-sum compensation and related medical expenses to workers who became seriously ill from exposure to radiation, beryllium or silica while working in the nuclear weapons industry for the Department of Energy, including its contractors and subcontractors. Compensation will also be available to some survivors and to uranium employees who are eligible for benefits under Section Five of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act.

The Departments of Labor and Energy, which jointly operate the centers, will also open Resource Centers in Las Vegas, Nev.; Richland, Wash.; Rocky Flats, Colo.; Espanola, N.M.; Idaho Falls, Idaho; North Augusta, S.C.; Oak Ridge, Tenn.; Anchorage, Alaska; and Portsmouth, Ohio. Claimants can also receive assistance at the Labor Department District Offices in Seattle, Wash.; Denver, Colo.; Cleveland, Ohio; and Jacksonville, Fla.

The Department of Labor is also conducting town hall meetings in 25 locations across the country through the end of July 2001 to explain EEOICPA to nuclear weapons industry employees.

-------- nevada

Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste repository
DOE to rule on Yucca in fall
Feds determined to meet deadline, despite unanswered questions, lawsuits

By Mary Manning <manning@lasvegassun.com>
LAS VEGAS SUN
July 2, 2001

Scientific studies are incomplete and several lawsuits are pending, but the Energy Department is committed to making a recommendation this fall on whether Yucca Mountain is suitable as a high-level nuclear waste repository.

Officials said they expect Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham to deliver a recommendation to President Bush between October and December on whether Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is suitable as a repository site.

Three pending lawsuits are not expected to delay a recommendation on Yucca, the only site under study as the nation's dump for commercial reactor fuel and military waste, DOE spokesman Joe Davis said.

Nor will the lack of information for a final design of a repository to contain 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste, DOE senior policy analyst Abraham Van Luik said.

The DOE will decide on how closely to pack waste into 12,000 containers inside the mountain after the site recommendation, but before DOE asks for a building permit, Van Luik said. The DOE is approaching the project with a flexible design, he said.

"This fall the decision is whether it passes or fails," Van Luik said.

The DOE originally planned to open a repository in 1998 at Yucca Mountain. The agency has spent almost $7 billion studying the site over the past 20 years.

Scientists serving on the independent Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and an international scientific review panel are pushing the DOE for more information concerning contaminated ground water movement, seismic activity and volcanic eruptions.

The DOE's latest deadline may slip again, the scientists and analysts have said.

"If they proceed without enough information to satisfy the NRC, they may be at risk for another delay," Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects Executive Director Bob Loux said, echoing comments of the others. "The DOE is being hit from all sides by everybody who is reviewing its Yucca Mountain work."

This is not the first time progress has been delayed.

The site recommendation was expected in December, but a DOE inspector general's investigation into possible bias by DOE officials put the project on hold. In April investigators said there was no evidence that the department was biased toward the site, but they warned department officials to avoid even an appearance of favoring the mountain.

Congress also has trimmed up to $100 million from the department's budget each year since 1995. The cuts caused project managers to delay completing onsite studies and analyses that could be used in the licensing process, DOE officials said.

Another potential delay came after the Environmental Protection Agency issued new radiation exposure limits last month.

The nuclear industry sued the EPA on the same day the standards were released, and last week the state of Nevada and a coalition of environmental organizations also sued the agency.

The DOE has to recalculate all of the computer models for its proposed environmental impacts based on the EPA standards, which limit total radiation exposure to 15 millirems a year for an average person 12 miles outside the repository boundary, with 4 millirems of that allowed in ground water. An average chest X-ray is about 5 millirems.

The nuclear industry wanted a 25-millirem exposure limit with no ground water standard, and the NRC agreed with the industry. Those are the figures used in the DOE's current computer models.

"With the types of changes in the final EPA standard versus the proposed one, we see no obstacle to doing the requisite recalculations in time for a later fall submittal to the secretary," Van Luik said.

Earlier this year the DOE asked the NRC for review in June of its plan on how a repository would perform. DOE asked for a delay in the review until July, then postponed it until August.

The NRC has to license the construction and operation of a high-level nuclear waste repository. Before the commission begins formal hearings, NRC staffers are meeting with DOE scientists to review research collected over the past 20 years.

But that review is not expected to affect the site recommendation.

The DOE does not have to answer any questions from the NRC at this point, because the agency has not requested a license to build a repository, David Brooks, NRC section chief, said.

The early review gives the DOE an opportunity to fill gaps of missing scientific information the NRC might find, Brooks said.

NRC scientists already have asked for the DOE to calculate the consequences of a volcanic eruption through the repository during the first 1,000 years, when radiation doses would be high. The NRC has ordered DOE to calculate radiation doses in air, water and people -- even residents sealed inside their homes -- in case of such a catastrophic event.

Van Luik said the DOE expects NRC to request more information.

So far, the DOE does not have answers to questions concerning the speed and direction of ground water running through the mountain. If contaminated ground water escapes Yucca Mountain sooner than 10,000 years, the DOE would have to prove that people and the environment will still be safe within that period.

Geohydrologist Martin Mifflin, a former NRC scientist, said the DOE has no idea about how ground water flows from the repository to the nearby farming community of Amargosa Valley. Faults and fractures could allow water to flow quickly from the repository to the valley, 12 miles away, he said.

State consultants believe that water flowing through Yucca's fractures could corrode waste packages in less than 200 years, allowing radiation into the environment.

-------- new mexico

Cuts In Cleanup Budget Concern WIPP Supporters

The Associated Press
07-02-01
http://www.abqjournal.com/news/1wipp07-02-01.htm

CARLSBAD, N.M. - Supporters of the federal government's nuclear waste dump near here are fighting to restore $26 million to the repository's budget.

The Bush administration has proposed cutting that amount from the 2002 budget for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. The state's congressional delegation and the Carlsbad mayor's WIPP Task Force have been fighting to keep the budget intact since Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced the cut in April.

More recently, the efforts have been joined by a newly formed waste caucus created by members from states with Department of Energy sites or nuclear reactors, who believe cuts in the department's budget would make it impossible to meet legal mandates to clean up sites.

The proposed WIPP budget is $164.6 million, compared with $190.9 million this year.

Mayor Gary Perkowski, who recently traveled to Washington with other WIPP backers to protest the budget cut, said it's easier to have discussions in person.

"You get to answer more questions and talk more," Perkowski said. "It's easier to get your voice heard."

The $2 billion dump, which accepted its first shipment in March 1999 after two decades of contentious efforts to open it, will take shipments of plutonium-contaminated waste from more than 20 DOE sites nationwide. It will be open for about 35 years, storing waste is stored 2,150 feet underground in rooms excavated from ancient salt beds.

-------- tennessee

Researchers assessing fallout of pre-'56 X-rays at K-25

July 2, 2001
By Frank Munger,
Knoxville News-Sentinel senior writer
http://www.knoxnews.com/science/munger/fm07022001.shtml

While conducting a study of deaths from multiple myeloma among workers at the K-25 plant in Oak Ridge, researchers identified a source of radiation not considered in earlier projects that looked at occupational illness -- medical X-rays.

In particular, the research team from NIOSH (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health) became interested in K-25's use of photofluorography for chest X-rays of workers until 1956, when an equipment switch was made to the conventional technique still in use.

The photofluorographic technique, which produced an image of the chest on a fluorescent screen, reportedly delivered a radiation dose to the bone marrow that was about 100 times greater than today's X-ray method (800 millirads vs. 8 millirads).

Dr. John Cardarelli, the principal investigator for NIOSH, said researchers raised questions when they came across X-ray films at Oak Ridge that were a different size (4-by-10 inches) than the conventional film size (14-by-17). The smaller images are associated with photofluorography.

The health implications of the discovery are not clear, but the NIOSH team felt the information was potentially significant enough to alter risk estimates for K-25 employees whose work records showed relatively low-dose radiation histories. Indeed, based on a limited study of 45 workers, the exposures from the work-related chest X-rays dwarfed the amount of radiation received from occupational activities at the uranium-enrichment plant.

"This is a very small study," Cardarelli cautioned.

Nonetheless, NIOSH determined that if this information were excluded from an epidemiological study, many of those nuclear workers at K-25 would have been placed in "inappropriate" dose categories.

That's why the team went ahead and reported this issue in a separate paper, even though the major study of mortality rates from multiple myeloma at K-25 won't be completed for at least another year.

Cardarelli said NIOSH researchers planned to use the medical X-ray information in current epidemiological studies and address questions about the historical use of photofluorography in upcoming projects.

All the government's World War II-era nuclear facilities, including Y-12 and X-10 in Oak Ridge, used the photofluorographic technique because it was an economical way to get chest images in large quantity, Cardarelli said. He said he didn't know when the other facilities abandoned the use of photofluorography.

"It all depends on when they purchased new X-ray equipment, which is not something that is purchased very often," he said.

The NIOSH researcher said the photofluorographic technique was widely used in the general population for tuberculosis screening.

Cardarelli said the dose information from medical X-ray records would probably have more impact on studies of workers at relatively low-level radiation facilities, such as K-25, than at facilities in Hanford, Wash., where workers historically received higher radiation exposures.

Of course, this new information also raises questions about previous studies done at K-25 and the other Oak Ridge facilities. How much would this have changed the radiation-dose profiles of Oak Ridge workers? Would it alter risk estimates?

According to the NIOSH report, previous studies of nuclear workers have not included radiation exposures from work-related X-rays for several reasons. For instance, there was a "perception" that the contribution from chest X-rays would be low compared to other sources of radiation at the plant, and "epidemiologists have traditionally assumed that exposures from work-related X-rays would be randomly distributed throughout the working population, so that effects associated with this exposure would not influence the analysis."

The research team discounted both of those assumptions.

The chest X-rays actually turned out to be the biggest radiation source for some workers, and documents indicated that radiation workers typically received more chest X-rays than other, nonexposed workers, NIOSH said.

Senior writer Frank Munger can be reached at 482-9213 or by e-mail at twig1@knoxnews.infi.net. This weekly column on science and technology also is available on our Web site at http://www.knoxnews.com/science/munger/.

-------- us nuc politics

Elliott Abrams: It's Back!

by DAVID CORN,
July 2, 2001
The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010702&s=corn

"How would you feel if your wife and children were brutally raped before being hacked to death by soldiers during a military massacre of 800 civilians, and then two governments tried to cover up the killings?" It's a question that won't be asked of Elliott Abrams at a Senate confirmation hearing--because George W. Bush, according to press reports, may appoint Abrams to a National Security Council staff position that (conveniently!) does not require Senate approval. Moreover, this query is one of a host of rude, but warranted, questions that could be lobbed at Abrams, the Iran/contra player who was an assistant secretary of state during the Reagan years and a shaper of that Administration's controversial--and deadly--policies on Latin America and human rights. His designated spot in the new regime: NSC's senior director for democracy, human rights and international operations. (At press time, the White House and Abrams were neither confirming nor denying his return to government.)

Bush the Second has tapped a number of Reagan/Bush alums who were involved in Iran/contra business for plum jobs: Colin Powell, Richard Armitage, Otto Reich and John Negroponte. But Abrams's appointment--should it come to pass--would mark the most generous of rehabilitations. Not only did Abrams plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of lying to Congress about the Reagan Administration's contra program, he was also one of the fiercest ideological pugilists of the 1980s, a bad-boy diplomat wildly out of sync with Bush's gonna-change-the-tone rhetoric. Abrams, a Democrat turned Republican who married into the cranky Podhoretz neocon clan, billed himself as a "gladiator" for the Reagan Doctrine in Central America--which entailed assisting thuggish regimes and militaries in order to thwart leftist movements and dismissing the human rights violations of Washington's cold war partners.

One Abrams specialty was massacre denial. During a Nightline appearance in 1985, he was asked about reports that the US-funded Salvadoran military had slaughtered civilians at two sites the previous summer. Abrams maintained that no such events had occurred. And had the US Embassy and the State Department conducted an investigation? "My memory," he said, "is that we did, but I don't want to swear to it, because I'd have to go back and look at the cables." But there had been no State Department inquiry; Abrams, in his lawyerly fashion, was being disingenuous. Three years earlier, when two American journalists reported that an elite, US-trained military unit had massacred hundreds of villagers in El Mozote, Abrams told Congress that the story was commie propaganda, as he fought for more US aid to El Salvador's military. The massacre, as has since been confirmed, was real. And in 1993 after a UN truth commission, which examined 22,000 atrocities that occurred during the twelve-year civil war in El Salvador, attributed 85 percent of the abuses to the Reagan-assisted right-wing military and its death-squad allies, Abrams declared, "The Administration's record on El Salvador is one of fabulous achievement." Tell that to the survivors of El Mozote.

But it wasn't his lies about mass murder that got Abrams into trouble. After a contra resupply plane was shot down in 1986, Abrams, one of the coordinators of Reagan's pro-contra policy (along with the NSC's Oliver North and the CIA's Alan Fiers), appeared several times before Congressional committees and withheld information on the Administration's connection to the secret and private contra-support network. He also hid from Congress the fact that he had flown to London (using the name "Mr. Kenilworth") to solicit a $10 million contribution for the contras from the Sultan of Brunei. At a subsequent closed-door hearing, Democratic Senator Thomas Eagleton blasted Abrams for having misled legislators, noting that Abrams's misrepresentations could lead to "slammer time." Abrams disagreed, saying, "You've heard my testimony." Eagleton cut in: "I've heard it, and I want to puke." On another occasion, Republican Senator Dave Durenberger complained, "I wouldn't trust Elliott any further than I could throw Ollie North." Even after Abrams copped a plea with Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh, he refused to concede that he'd done anything untoward. Abrams's Foggy Bottom services were not retained by the First Bush, but he did include Abrams in his lame-duck pardons of several Iran/contra wrongdoers.

Abrams was as nasty a policy warrior as Washington had seen in decades. He called foes "vipers." He said that lawmakers who blocked contra aid would have "blood on their hands"--while he defended US support for a human-rights-abusing government in Guatemala. When Oliver North was campaigning for the Senate in 1994 and was accused of having ignored contra ties to drug dealers, Abrams backed North and claimed "all of us who ran that program...were absolutely dedicated to keeping it completely clean and free of any involvement by drug traffickers." Yet in 1998 the CIA's own inspector general issued a thick report noting that the Reagan Administration had collaborated with suspected drug traffickers while managing the secret contra war.

So Bush the Compassionate may hand the White House portfolio on human rights to the guy who lied and wheedled to aid and protect human-rights abusers. As Adm. William Crowe Jr. said of Abrams in 1989, "This snake's hard to kill."

-------- us nuc waste

Nuclear Reprocessing Sets Off Alarms Again
Comment in Bush Plan Re-Energizes Old Debate

By Guy Gugliotta
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 2, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6513-2001Jul1?language=printer

Deep in the Bush administration's energy plan is a reference to an alternative approach to disposing of radioactive waste from nuclear power plants. "Reprocessing," the plan asserts, could help alleviate one of the major drawbacks to nuclear energy.

This statement has set off alarm bells among those concerned about nuclear proliferation. That's because reprocessing reactor waste can create plutonium, the raw material for nuclear weapons.

"We're not sure what mischief the new administration is up to here, and who's pushing it," said Paul Levanthal, president of the anti-reprocessing Nuclear Control Institute. "Whatever the U.S. does on something like this really resonates throughout the rest of the world."

If the United States embraces the reprocessing of nuclear waste -- something it has refused to do for the last 24 years -- it could lead to the proliferation of technologies that produce plutonium, and boost the amount of plutonium available around the world. That, critics say, could make it much more likely that weapons-grade plutonium could fall into the hands of terrorists or rogue nations.

Administration officials argue that they are sensitive to concerns about nuclear weapons proliferation, and have no immediate plans to change long-standing U.S. policies. Their intentions, they say, are merely to solve the problem of nuclear waste, which is accumulating across the country.

The energy plan said that the administration "will continue to discourage the accumulation of separated plutonium worldwide," and administration sources said that meant the United States would maintain a national moratorium on traditional reprocessing, which extracts plutonium from spent fuel.

But at the same time, the plan encouraged research into another kind of reprocessing, which makes fuel that must be burned in "fast reactors" potentially capable of creating, or "breeding," more plutonium than they use. That's what has critics most concerned.

"It sets off a lot of alarm bells," said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington think tank specializing in strategies to halt the spread of nuclear weapons.

"The very strange thing is that the question seems to have been opened very casually by the Cheney plan," added Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, another reprocessing opponent. "The true consequences of this have to be debated, even if you like nuclear power."

An administration source, who asked not to be quoted by name, said, "Not too much should be drawn from this," because the Cheney report "in and of itself is not a change in policy.

"We did not say we wanted to proceed with construction of this [fast] reactor," the source continued. "We want this research to go forward, but that's a far cry from saying it will reach fruition. It would be a long way away."

No government agency or business has ever recycled nuclear waste for commercial use on U.S. soil, a policy begun when President Jimmy Carter renounced reprocessing and plutonium breeder research in a secret 1977 executive order.

The order, Presidential Directive 8, was declassified in 1994 and survives today as President Bill Clinton's Presidential Decision Directive 13. For reprocessing research to resume, the directive would have to be either rescinded or reinterpreted. The Bush administration has not yet decided how to proceed.

Currently only France, the United Kingdom and Russia reprocess spent fuel, and only France, Belgium, Switzerland and Germany burn the resulting finished plutonium oxide in nuclear plants.

The limited market is due in part to proliferation concerns. Germany, whose coalition government includes the Greens party, formally agreed early this month to phase out nuclear power altogether, and reprocessing has only limited public support in several other nations.

But the main reason is expense.

Makhijani estimated that France, the world leader in recycling, could produce a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of recycled fuel for about $6,000, while a kilo of enriched uranium fuel like that used in U.S. reactors costs about $1,200.

The chief consequence of reprocessing's poor economics is that over the years the world has accumulated about 210 tons of commercial -- and weapons-usable -- plutonium that does not have a market.

"You can't give it away," said Thomas Cochran, who heads the nuclear program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, a reprocessing opponent. "And if that's the case, how economic is it to reprocess?"

In traditional reprocessing, spent fuel is dissolved in acid, separating the uranium, plutonium and other fission products. The uranium can be re-enriched and recycled. The fission products are encased in glass and stored. The plutonium is recombined with uranium 238, made into rods and put into reactors. The fuel is called "mixed oxide," or "mox," and essentially substitutes plutonium 239 for the fissile uranium 235 in first-generation fuel.

Clinton's Presidential Decision Directive 13 continues the 24-year moratorium on a domestic mox reprocessing cycle because of the proliferation risks associated with isolating plutonium 239. Administration sources said the Cheney plan endorses this view.

Independently of the energy plan, however, the Bush administration intends to move forward on a Clinton initiative to enlist Russia in a joint program to each convert 34 tons of surplus plutonium from nuclear weapons into mox.

If the deal is closed, the United States would make its mox at an Energy Department facility in South Carolina, and Duke Power, a commercial utility, would burn it in two reactors in the Charlotte, N.C., area. The Energy Department will reimburse Duke for plant modifications and sell them mox at a subsidized price below what Duke would have to pay for enriched uranium fuel.

Although "this program is not intended to create a plutonium economy," an Energy Department official said, it remains somewhat controversial because it requires the United States and its allies to build Russia its first mox plant, and puts Russia in the plutonium recycling business.

"The mox plant is the very first piece of infrastructure that both U.S. and Russia are missing for a plutonium economy," Makhijani said. "It is a pretty big camel's nose issue."

Still, burning weapons-grade plutonium is a policy with many advocates: "What is the philosophical question here?" asked James Lake, immediate past president of the American Nuclear Society, which supports reprocessing research. "My feeling is that burning up weapons is a good thing to do for world peace."

The search for a proliferation-resistant alternative to mox has led several nations to consider a recycling technique called "pyroprocessing," mentioned favorably in the Cheney plan as a way to "reduce waste streams and enhance proliferation resistance."

In pyroprocessing, spent fuel is recovered as a metal, dissolved in a metallic salt and passed through an electric current. Lightweight fission products remain in solution, while the uranium goes to one electrode and plutonium and heavy metal byproducts go to another, where they are formed subsequently into fuel rods.

Because the plutonium is never isolated, it is always radioactive, dangerous and "less and less attractive" to thieves, Lake said. "In theory, you can recycle tens of times, so that the technology becomes almost renewable."

But for pyroprocessing to work even once, utilities would have to abandon today's nuclear plants in favor of "fast" reactors that allow neutrons to move about freely in the core. Fast neutrons are the best way to maintain a chain reaction among impure plutonium fuel rods.

The trouble with fast reactors, however, is that when the core is surrounded with a blanket of uranium 238, the neutrons will combine with it to create more plutonium 239 than the reactor is using. For a rogue state, a fast breeder of this type can become a virtual plutonium factory.

Advocates point out, however, that even if the Bush administration embraces the technology, it will take decades to mature, allowing plenty of time to work out the kinks. "What we do is store [spent] fuel for 20 to 30 years while we develop an entirely different infrastructure to use the technology," Lake said.

-------- MILITARY

-------- arms sales

Firearm checks reject 150,000

July 2, 2001
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010702-23412848.htm

Attorney General John Ashcroft yesterday said that more than 150,000 of the nearly 7.7 million firearms or permits sought nationwide last year were rejected under the provisions of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act.

The survey, conducted by the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), found that about 689,000 of almost 30 million applications for firearms were rejected by the FBI since the implementation of the act in 1994.

"Today's report shows that while the Brady law has helped us stop convicted felons and other dangerous individuals from buying guns easily, violations of the law are not being prosecuted adequately," Mr. Ashcroft said. "We have now initiated a plan to improve the process of background checks, a plan which will increase prosecutions of those who attempt to purchase guns illegally and improve the accuracy, efficiency and reliability of the National Instant Criminal Background Check System."

"We want to send the message that 'gun crime means hard time.' The Justice Department and each United States Attorney is committed to reducing gun crime by vigorously enforcing our laws," he said.

Justice Department spokeswoman Katie Biber said the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act mandates criminal history checks for applicants for long guns and handgun transfers or permits.

Background checks at the time of a firearms purchase are handled by agencies in 16 states.

For the remaining states, firearms dealers contact the FBI directly to conduct the background check.

Since the inception of the act on March 1, 1994, through Dec. 31, 2000, she said, about 689,000 of almost 30 million applications were rejected by the FBI or state and local agencies.

State and local agencies conducted 3.5 million checks last year and rejected 2.5 percent of the applications.

The FBI processed 4.3 million applications and rejected 1.6 percent.

The additional requirement that background checks be conducted for long gun purchases beginning on Nov. 30, 1998, had the effect of nearly tripling the number of checks conducted.

In 1997, just over 2.5 million checks were performed. In 1999, 8.6 million checks were conducted and in 2000, nearly 7.7 million checks were carried out, 11 percent fewerthan in 1999.

Almost all of the 19 states listed in the survey as giving complete statewide data for applications and rejections in 2000 had declines last year. The largest were in California and Indiana, by about 25 percent.

Ms. Biber said that 58 percent of the 86,000 applicants rejected by state and local authorities in 2000 had felony convictions or indictments, down from 73 percent in 1999.

Among the other reasons state and local authorities turned down applications during 2000 were: 9 percent for domestic violence misdemeanor convictions; 3 percent for domestic violence restraining orders; state law prohibitions, 5 percent; fugitive status, 4 percent; and mental illness or mental disability, 1 percent.

The Federal Gun Control Act prohibits the transfer of a firearm to a person who is under indictment for or has been convicted of a crime punishable by imprisonment for more than one year; is a fugitive from justice; is an unlawful user or is addicted to any controlled substance; or has been adjudicated as a mental defective or committed to a mental institution.

It also bans the transfer of a firearm to an illegal alien or someone admitted to the United States under a nonimmigrant visa; to anyone who was discharged from the U.S. military under dishonorable conditions or has renounced his or her U.S. citizenship; is subject to a court order restraining him or her from harassing, stalking or threatening an intimate partner or child; or has been convicted in any court of felony or misdemeanor domestic violence.

In addition, Ms. Biber said, the statute makes it unlawful for any licensed importer, manufacturer, dealer or collector to transfer a long gun to a person younger than 18 years old or any other type of firearm to a person younger than 21 years old.

-------- balkans

Milosevic plans to expose secret deals

July 2, 2001
By Julius Strauss
LONDON SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010702-380046.htm

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- Slobodan Milosevic plans to embarrass Western governments by revealing at his war-crimes trial the secret deals that he claims propped up his regime during a decade of bloodshed in the Balkans.

Attorneys for the deposed Serbian president will call for testimony from former U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke and three former British foreign secretaries -- Douglas Hurd, Peter Carrington and David Owen -- in a strategy designed to implicate the United States and Britain in the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia.

Prosecutors at The Hague, meanwhile, have described as "scandalous" the failure of NATO forces, and in particular those of France, to arrest former Bosnian leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, the most notorious names remaining on the war-crimes tribunal's "wanted" list.

Attorneys for Mr. Milosevic, who makes his first appearance before the tribunal tomorrow, will claim Western governments gave him a "green light" for many of his most criticized actions, including the use of force.

Mr. Milosevic "feels that NATO are the real criminals and that will be part of his defense," said Branimir Gugl, one of Mr. Milosevic's attorneys.

He said his client will argue that the Western diplomats were involved in negotiating peace deals designed to maintain him in power despite his record.

The attorneys plan to call for testimony from Mr. Holbrooke, the former peace envoy who brokered the Dayton accord on Bosnia-Herzegovina and went on to become the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. They also will call Mr. Carrington, the chief negotiator for the European Union in 1991 and 1992, and Mr. Owen, who co-brokered the 1993 Vance-Owen peace deal.

Mr. Hurd may be asked to explain his later role as a director of a British bank that struck a lucrative deal with Mr. Milosevic to refinance the Serbian economy.

The Western diplomats are likely to explain that, whatever their misgivings about Mr. Milosevic, his position as "strongman" in the region meant they could not ignore him.

A senior British Foreign Office official said: "We will not be surprised if [our] dealings with Mr. Milosevic are raised during the trial, but in fact our hands are clean. We have nothing to hide.

"The French government may well be nervous about its own friendly relationship with Milosevic right up to 1999 being brought up."

The French are believed to have maintained communications with the Serbs during the NATO bombing campaign over Kosovo, which was beset by leaks of targets.

Serbs also claim that Gen. Bernard Janvier, a French former U.N. commander, secretly promised to veto air strikes in 1995 provided that the Serbs released 300 U.N. hostages. A month later, the Bosnian Serb army attacked Srebrenica, killing 7,000 Muslims in Europe's biggest war crime in 50 years.

That massacre provides the grounds for genocide charges against Mr. Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb president who has been hiding in Bosnia's French-controlled sector for a year, and Gen. Mladic, who was his military commander. The general is believed to have moved from Belgrade to hide in the "safety" of the French sector.

NATO officials say Mr. Karadzic could be apprehended with only "limited risk." The French reportedly have resisted attempts in the past by the British Special Air Service -- which has "snatched" the majority of tribunal suspects now in The Hague -- to intervene in the sector.

An American newspaper reported that in 1998, a planned swoop on Mr. Karadzic was foiled when a French officer serving with U.N. peacekeepers tipped him off before the raid.

The rumors fueled speculation that a secret deal had been made to protect the reputations of French military officials who negotiated the safe passage of French peacekeepers before the Srebrenica atrocity.

Carla Del Ponte, the chief prosecutor of the International War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague, said after Mr. Milosevic's extradition last week that the continuing freedom of Mr. Karadzic and Mr. Mladic six years after their indictment was "scandalous."

Mrs. Del Ponte pledged to devote "renewed energy to the task of arresting those fugitives still at liberty."

Wesley Clark, NATO supreme commander during the Kosovo war, echoed the call for greater commitment to bringing Mr. Karadzic to justice.

"I think Milosevic's arrest does put greater pressure on France," he said. "Karadzic has been living in their area. The influence of potential war criminals is an open secret among international officials."

----

Rebels Seize Four Villages in Macedonia

New York Times
July 2, 2001
By CARLOTTA GALL
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/02/world/02MACE.html

BELGRADE, Serbia, July 1 - Albanian rebels in Macedonia have taken control of four villages in the western part of the country, not far from the border with Kosovo, an army spokesman said today, and are apparently preparing for a new fight with government forces.

The rebel advance came as new international peace negotiators arrived in the Macedonian capital, Skopje, warning that Macedonia's Albanian and Slav leaders must take charge and prevent the rebellion from exploding into a full-blown civil war.

Only minor clashes have occurred during the last two days, but rebels and government forces appear poised to resume the heavy fighting that raged last week.

"It is important to recognize that finding a solution here is really the responsibility of the leaders of Macedonia, and so we look to them to take that responsibility," said James W. Pardew, Washington's special adviser to Europe. Mr. Pardew arrived to work with the new envoy for the European Union, François Léotard, to try to forge a political deal between leading parties.

"There are some who believe the use of force is appropriate in this circumstance, but that's not true," Mr. Pardew said. "Those who favor the use of force are undermining the peace process."

Political leaders in Macedonia failed last week to agree on a package of political reforms that diplomats had hoped would lay the groundwork for a disarmament of the rebels and disengagement of the government forces. The conflict flared immediately after talks broke down.

Angry Macedonian Slavs stormed the Parliament building last Monday when NATO representatives negotiated a withdrawal of the rebels from the suburbs of Skopje to end a particularly fierce battle.

Albanian rebels have been steadily expanding their control across the western and northern areas of Macedonia since they began their insurgency in February. And Macedonian Slav leaders have swung between making heavy-handed attacks on rebel-held villages and calling for cease-fires to allow for negotiations with the Albanian political parties still in the government.

Since withdrawing from Aracinovo, a suburb of Skopje, last week, the rebels have occupied four villages populated by Macedonian Slavs over the last two days. Families, mostly women and children, have had to flee the villages, journalists in the area said.

Some 100,000 people, mostly ethnic Albanian villagers, have been displaced since the conflict erupted. Albanians have gone abroad, while Macedonians have moved to the capital and eastern villages where they feel safer. More than 70,000 Albanians have gone to live with relatives and friends in neighboring Kosovo.

NATO gave final approval on Friday to a plan to send up to 3,000 peacekeeping troops to Macedonia to assist in disarming the ethnic Albanian rebels. The plan depends on a political settlement between the main parties in the government, Albanian and Slav, but talks have been suspended for over a week and the chance of a peace deal remains remote.

President Boris Trajkovski of Macedonia on Friday rejected an initiative to demobilize armed police reservists who have taken part in battling the rebels. The reservists were initially to be withdrawn from their positions around the capital as a sign of good will, amid fresh international efforts at peace.

Rudolf Scharping, the German defense minister, said over the weekend that his country was prepared to send several hundred troops to Macedonia as part of the possible NATO peacekeeping force.

"If a planned force contains around 3,000 men, then our contribution would be two or three companies," Mr. Scharping said in an article to be published in the Berliner Zeitung newspaper on Monday, Reuters reported.

"No country in Europe is in a position to send the same-size force as went into Kosovo," Mr. Scharping said. "But based on NATO plans up to now, Germany can make an appropriate contribution."

--------

Milosevic's Lawyers Map Strategy

New York Times
July 2, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-War-Crimes-Milosevic.html

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) -- Slobodan Milosevic conferred with a lawyer for more than two hours Monday on the eve of a scheduled court appearance to answer charges that he was responsible for murders and expulsions of Kosovo Albanians.

However, it was unclear whether the former Yugoslav president would enter a plea or even show up at Tuesday's arraignment, which would be the first by an ex-head of state before a U.N. court.

Milosevic has refused to accept the validity of the court, established by the U.N. Security Council in 1993 to try offenses allegedly committed during Balkan wars. The United States and its allies claim he instigated and supported those conflicts -- Europe's bloodiest since World War II.

Tribunal spokesman Jim Landale said that as of Monday afternoon, Milosevic had not submitted the name of any lawyer as his defense counsel.

Landale said later of Milosevic, ``He has advised us he does not wish to have defense counsel present tomorrow. We have advised him against this, but it's his right.''

Tribunal rules also allow a defendant to refuse to appear at arraignment, in which case the chief trial judge, Richard May of Britain, can decide whether to force him to attend.

If a defendant refuses to enter a plea, the court will wait 30 days before entering one for him -- ``not guilty,'' Landale said.

The uncertainty over Milosevic's next moves reflected a style that the wily tactician employed repeatedly during his 13 years in power -- keeping his opponents off guard with moves they often didn't expect.

On Monday afternoon, two Belgrade lawyers -- Zdenko Tomanovic and Dragan Krgovic -- drove to the U.N. wing of a Dutch prison, where Milosevic and 38 other Balkan war crimes suspects are held.

It appeared that only Tomanovic met with the 59-year-old former autocrat, who has been held in a single-occupant cell under 24-hour surveillance.

After entering the prison with his colleague, Krgovic came outside a few moments later and told reporters that the meeting would be ``the first contact Mr. Tomanovic will have with Mr. Milosevic,'' whom he said had spoken only with his wife by telephone since he was brought there before dawn Friday from Belgrade.

In Belgrade, about 15,000 flag-waving supporters of Milosevic's Socialist and allied ultra-nationalist Radical party gathered in front of the downtown federal parliament Monday in the biggest protest since the former ruler was extradited.

Protesters demanded new elections, hoping they would unseat the pro-democracy government of Serbia, the main Yugoslav republic, whose leaders handed Milosevic to the tribunal.

Milosevic's allies in Belgrade claim the former president, who was forced from power in October, believed he was being persecuted because he stood up to NATO, refusing to sign a power-sharing deal with Kosovo Albanians in 1999.

That triggered a 78-day NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, which ended with the withdrawal of Yugoslav forces from Kosovo and the handing over of the Serbian province to the United Nations and NATO.

Citing NATO's role, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark offered to aid in Milosevic's defense. Clark told reporters in Belgrade he was considering joining Milosevic's defense team but that he would insist that Yugoslav lawyers take the lead.

Clark, who had been an outspoken opponent of NATO's bombing campaign of Yugoslavia, said he was holding talks with Milosevic's lawyers. He said the United Nations, ``coerced by the USA,'' was behind the charges against Milosevic. He said he had not spoken with the former president.

Clark said he would do ``anything I could to address the issues of legality of that court and its jurisdiction and its conduct and to defend Yugoslavia.''

The extradition, spearheaded by Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, triggered a crisis in the Yugoslav government. Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica and other Serb pro-democracy leaders held talks Monday about the composition of a reshuffled Yugoslav Cabinet, following the resignation last week of the Yugoslav prime minister, Zoran Zizic, over the extradition.

Milosevic and four close aides were indicted by the tribunal in May 1999 on four charges in connection with a crackdown on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. The crackdown began in early 1998 and ended in June 1999 after a 78-day NATO bombing campaign forced the withdrawal of Yugoslav forces.

Tribunal officials expect to file new charges against Milosevic by October in connection with wars in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, which he purportedly encouraged and supported.

Plans call for Milosevic to appear Tuesday in a compact courtroom in the gray tribunal building in an outlying district of this coastal city.

At the arraignment, he will be asked to respond individually to each of the four charges: deportation, a crime against humanity; murder, a crime against humanity; murder, a violation of the laws or customs of war; and persecutions on political, racial and religious grounds, a crime against humanity.

Milosevic faces life imprisonment if convicted of any of the four charges. The trial is not expected to begin until next year.

--------

Jailed Milosevic Wants to Face Court Alone

New York Times
July 2, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-yugosla.html

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Slobodan Milosevic consulted a lawyer in his prison at The Hague on Monday but seemed ready to face the UN war crimes court alone, tribunal officials said.

It would be a mark of contempt for his accusers and raised the question of whether he would appear in court at all.

Five days after being spirited out of Belgrade, the ousted president whose 13-year rule was marked by the break-up of Yugoslavia and vicious blood-letting across the Balkans, was due in court for the first time on Tuesday at 10 a.m.

The first head of state ever indicted for war crimes while in office, he was expected to reject all the charges of crimes against humanity over Serb ethnic cleansing in Kosovo in 1999.

The chief spokesman for the International Criminal Tribunal, Jim Landale, told Reuters late on Monday Milosevic had said he did not want to be represented by counsel. Should he simply refuse to appear in court, it would be up to the judge, Britain's Richard May, to decide whether to force him.

``He has indicated to us that he does not want legal representation when he appears in court tomorrow,'' Landale said, adding that the tribunal did not recommend that course of action and that there was still time for him to change his mind.

Belgrade attorney Zdenko Tomanovic spent more than two hours talking to Milosevic at the UN's Scheveningen remand center. He made little comment afterwards beyond saying his client was in a ''very good'' state and promising a statement late in the evening.

Tomanovic and a second lawyer flew in from Belgrade early in the morning but spent much of the day waiting after an initial delay caused by the loss at the airport of baggage he had brought for Milosevic.

The deposed leader, who is being held in isolation from 38 other war crimes suspects, had had no previous visitors since being surrendered to the United Nations last Thursday in a stealthy maneuver by the reformists who toppled him in October.

A Western diplomatic source told Reuters his strong-willed wife, Mira Markovic, who has reportedly been playing a leading role in organizing his defense, could also receive a Dutch visa to visit him, despite being on a blacklist imposed by the EU.

Milosevic was to be taken to the court two miles away for a brief arraignment on Tuesday. He would be read the four charges and Judge May would ask him how he pleads.

Even if Milosevic, who has said he does not recognize the tribunal, were to stay silent or refuse to appear, the case could still go ahead, tribunal officials said.

His trial is not expected to start until next year.

DEFIANT DEFENSE

The lawyers were carrying packages from Milosevic's family, believed to be books, clothes and money he had requested.

Tomanovic is one of the lawyers who have been defending him in Belgrade since his arrest on local corruption charges in April.

Milosevic sees the tribunal, set up in 1993 to prosecute the architects of ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, as a tool of the NATO forces that bombed Yugoslavia during the 1999 Kosovo war.

``In his telephone conversation with Mrs. Markovic, he said he wanted his defense to be political as he considers all the accusations against him to be political,'' one legal source privy to the discussions with the family in Belgrade told Reuters.

``He said the real war criminals were the leaders of NATO and that they should be tried and not him.''

Such defiance is unlikely to cut much ice with The Hague but is typical of a man who, insiders say, has lost touch with reality after 13 years at the pinnacle of power in the Balkans.

Yet lawyers familiar with the case said chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte would have her work cut out making the charges stick and proving Milosevic was personally responsible.

``I think we cannot underestimate the case,'' a former member of the Hague prosecutor's office told the New York Times.

``There are pieces missing,'' said Nancy Paterson, who helped draft the indictment in 1999. ``You need to establish what the real chain of command was.''

It remains to be seen whether further evidence against the fallen leader will be delivered by the new authorities in Belgrade, who are struggling to defuse a crisis sparked by nationalist opposition to Milosevic's dispatch to The Hague.

There is also speculation that his testimony could embarrass enemies at home and in the West. Critics of NATO's war on Yugoslavia note the bulk of crimes for which Milosevic is indicted were committed only after Western bombing raids began.

HISTORIC TRIAL

Belgrade newspapers said on Monday that Milosevic and his wife were considering hiring foreign attorneys.

Former U.S. attorney-general Ramsey Clark, a supporter of unfashionable causes, said in Belgrade he was willing to help the defense but thought it would be more proper for a fellow Yugoslav to act for Milosevic.

Despite the attractions of a high-profile case, Milosevic may not be an easy client. ``It will be difficult to defend a person who sees himself in a special way and as a historic figure and who himself, together with his wife, interferes in defense deciding on the best strategy,'' a Belgrade lawyer said.

Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, who sent Milosevic to The Hague despite strong local opposition, said he hoped other suspected war criminals would go on trial in Belgrade soon.

Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica, who strongly opposed Milosevic's handover to The Hague, began the search for a new federal government to replace the outgoing coalition that collapsed as a result of protest resignations over the transfer.

Several thousand Milosevic supporters protested in Belgrade on Monday. But their number was a far cry from the hundreds of thousands who feted him in his heyday.

--------

Thousands march in support of Milosevic

USA Today
07/02/2001
The Associated Press
http://usatoday.com/news/world/july01/2001-07-02-milo-rally.htm

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) - Chanting "Treason!" and "Let's rise up!" about 15,000 supporters of Slobodan Milosevic rallied Monday to protest his extradition to the U.N. war crimes tribunal. The rally, held in front of the federal Parliament by supporters of Milosevic's Socialist and allied ultra-nationalist Radical party, was the biggest of three pro-Milosevic protests organized since his extradition on Thursday.

"Our ancestors are ashamed of you, you'll all go to hell," said one of the banners directed at Serbian government. The protesters demanded new elections and chanted "Slobo, we'll get you back!"

Zoran Djindjic, the Serbian prime minister behind Thursday's sudden extradition, has said that all other Serb suspects living in Yugoslavia - believed to number about a dozen - will soon join Milosevic in The Hague, Netherlands where the tribunal is located.

Serbia is by far the larger of the two remaining republics in Yugoslavia and effectively determines Yugoslav policies, despite the existence of a separate, federal Yugoslav government.

Serbian officials, speaking privately, say their republic is ready to provide evidence on demand from the tribunal.

But such cooperation would have to be low-key. A federal decree on working with the war crimes court was ruled unconstitutional by a high court, and Milosevic's handover was made possible by a one-time Serbian government order that does not address the broader issue of cooperation with the tribunal past his extradition.

The Yugoslav Left party, led by Milosevic's wife Mirjana Markovic, denounced his extradition.

"Because of the kidnapping by the Serbian government, the government ministers and those who gave orders will one day certainly face the judgment of a real court - the one of the people and the history," her neo-communist party said in a statement.

As Milosevic's supporters rallied in Belgrade, his lawyers arrived in the Netherlands to prepare him for his first appearance before the war crimes tribunal Tuesday, and former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark offered to help defend him.

Milosevic was handed over to the tribunal last week to face war crimes charges for atrocities committed by Serb troops in Kosovo during the 1998-99 war in the Serb province.

About 10,000 Kosovo ethnic Albanians are believed to have been killed during Milosevic's crackdown against their pro-independence rebellion.

On Monday, Kostunica held talks with other Serb pro-democracy leaders about appointing a new Yugoslav Cabinet following the resignation of the Yugoslav prime minister, Zoran Zizic, over the extradition.

--------

Djindjic's Sale of Milosevic Makes Clinton's National Asset Sales Look Amateurish
Serbian Prime Minister Sold Milosevic for 1.8 Billion US Dollars

Mary Mostert, Analyst,
Banner of Liberty (http://www.bannerofliberty.com)
July 2, 2001
http://www.bannerofliberty.com/OS7-01MQC/7-2-2001.1.html

Many of us were amazed at the ability of President Bill Clinton to get away with selling national assets to improve his personal fortunes and campaign coffers. His tawdry list of national assets sold or sold out is impressive: the Lincoln bedroom, pardons to drug dealers and other crooks, the seizure of huge stores of environmentally friendly coal in Utah, which was supposed to help fund education in the state, the sale of Elk Hills Naval Petroleum reserves to Al Gores friends and financial supporters at Occidental Petroleum, trying to wreck Microsoft to benefit his supporters in the Silicon Valley who are Microsoft competitors..

However, on Friday Serbian Prime Minister, Zoran Djindjic in Belgrade made Clinton look like an amateur by selling the former president of Yugoslavia to the same folks who bombed Yugoslavia for 79 days for something like $1.8 billion.

The London Independent over the week-end said of the event:

"Serbia's gold rush began this weekend. With the ink barely dry on a £1.28bn aid package for Serbia's reconstruction from the wars of the 1990s, the sharp-suited businessmen who stand to make fortunes out of the bombed-out country have already rolled into town.

"In the marble lobby of the glittering Hyatt hotel in Belgrade, men in expensive grey suits clutch leather briefcases and huddle in small groups among the ornate pillars. They are the first wave of carpetbaggers descending on the country, representing the international banks, consultancy firms and organisations hoping to capitalise on the investment to come.

"The handover of former president Slobodan Milosevic to the international war crimes tribunal has immediately opened the purses of foreign governments attending a donors' conference in Brussels. Now the men in suits are coming to tell the Serbs how to spend it.

"The facilitator of this bonanza is another man in a sharp suit: the Serbian Prime Minister, Zoran Djindjic, who organised the extradition of Mr Milosevic to the Hague on Thursday. A new kind of Serbian strongman, Mr Djindjic rode roughshod over legal niceties and issued a decree when he could not get an extradition law passed by parliament. In the process he defied the pro-Milosevic constitutional court which had ordered that the handover be delayed."

This is a bit like a governor of a state, say Florida, selling Bill Clinton to a future International Criminal Court for his actions in ordering the 1998 bombing of a pharmaceutical factory in the Sudan that manufactured 60% of the nation's medicines or the 79 days of bombing everything in sight inYugoslavia in 1999 contrary to International Law

The new Yugoslavian president, who took Milosevic's place, Vojislav Kostunica, a former law professor opposed the action. In fact, in October of last year Kostunica called the ITCY court a "monstrosity."

What has occurred in Belgrade is a Constitutional crisis. Kostunica is president of the country of Yugoslavia. The Prime Minister of Yugoslavia was Zoran Zizic. Djindjic ignored the Yugoslav Constitution and its sovereignty as a state and orchestrated what really was a kidnapping of Milosevic to sell him to the nation's enemies for money. Zizic promptly resigned, which now requires the government to be reorganized, and thousands of citizens in Belgrade were out in the streets accusing Djindjic of treason.

This turn of events can be traced back to the FY01 Foreign Operation Appropriations Act last year passed by the United States Congress. According to Rep. Gary Condit, D-CA, it made "U.S. assistance to Serbia contingent on certification the Yugoslav government is cooperating with the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia including access for investigators, the provision of documents and the surrender and transfer of indictees or assistance in their apprehension." Since it was signed by President Clinton, the new Bush administration is bound by it.

In other words, if the Serbs want the power plants, factories, bridges, homes and railroads rebuilt that we destroyed when we were told that a genocide was going on, they have to ignore their Constitution and hand over Slobadon Milosevic, even though it is now known there WAS no genocide. When Milosevic was indicted, Jamie Shea, NATO spokesman in Brussels, was telling the world that "up to 100,000 Albanians have been killed." After almost two years of digging in Kosovo, only a few hundred unidentified bodies have been found, and many of them appear to be Serbs that disappeared in the fighting, not Albanians.

In a genocide, the victim population decreases. In the case of the Albanians and the Serbs, it has been the Albanians who INCREASED dramatically in Kosovo between 1981 and 1991, while the Serbs DECREASED. Even the indictment of Milosevic (http://www.un.org/icty/indictment/english/mil-ii990524e.htm) in 1999 noted:

"In 1981, the last census with near universal participation, the total population of Kosovo was approximately 1,585,000 of which 1,227,000 (77%) were Albanians, and 210,000 (13%) were Serbs. Only estimates for the population of Kosovo in 1991 are available because Kosovo Albanians boycotted the census administered that year. General estimates are that the current population of Kosovo (1999) is between 1,800,000 and 2,100,000 of which approximately 85-90% are Kosovo Albanians and 5-10% are Serbs."

The United Nations and NATO consistently used the 90% figure with 1,800,00 as the number of Albanians in a population of 2 million in Kosovo during the bombing. That would leave the number of Serbs in 1991 at 100,000 to 200,000. In other words, in 10 years the Albanian population increased by at least 215,000 people while the Serb population decreasedsomewhere between 15,000 and 115,000 people.

After the occupation of Kosovo, according to official reports of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Gnjilane/Gjilan area "had a large concentration of Kosovo Serb communities and no strong (now former) UCK presence and these factors contributed to the low level of damage and activity during the conflict which was occupied by NATO troops on June 14 and 15 1999, ". In about 3 weeks, by 3rd July, the OSCE report said:

"the entire Kosovo Serb population had left Prilepnica/Prilepnica. On 4th July, the first of the houses in the Roma quarter of Gnjilane/Gjilan were set alight. On 7th July, it was reported that nine Krajina Serbs had been evicted from Novo Brdo/Novo Berde by the UCK and had moved to Bostane/Bostan." The "Krajina Serbs" refer to Serbs in the Krajina area of Croatia that David Binder wrote about in the New York Times on December 8, 1993:(

"Since 1991, the Croatian authorities have blown up or razed 10,000 houses, mostly of Serbs. ...In some cases they dynamited homes with the families inside. Whole families were killed and many were wounded."

An estimated 280,000 Serbs were driven out of their homes in Krajina, Croatia in 1993 and many were resettled in the Kosovo province. Elderly and handicapped Serbs who could not flee were killed.

These are the figures of the ICTY, the OSCE and the United Nations. How do you get a genocide of the Albanians out of them, when it's the Serbs who are disappearing? And, where did all those new Albanians in Kosovo come from? They came, of course, from Albania. When the Communist Albanian government collapsed in 1992, there was 70% unemployment in Albania. Albanians were fleeing to nearby countries, Yugoslavia, Italy, Greece. In spite of the highest birthrate in Europe, the population of Albania between 1991 and 1998 DROPPED, according to world almanacs, from 3,335,000 in 1991 to 3,330,754 in 1998.

A huge number of those fleeing Albanians simply crossed a mountain path into Kosovo - without papers. Later, during their exodus in 1999 after NATO started dropping bombs on Kosovo, they went back home, and announced that the Serbs forced them out of their homes and had "taken" their papers.

In the midst of all that, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), indicted Milosevic in 1999 while Yugoslavia was being bombed daily by mostly American planes. The ICTY was given the authority to:

"prosecute persons responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in the territory of the former Yugoslavia since 1991 in accordance with the provisions of the present Statute (of the International Tribunal.) - http://www.un.org/icty/basic/statut/stat2000.htm#1)

The "serious violations" are listed as:

(a) willful killing; (b) torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments; (c) willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health; (d) extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly; (e) compelling a prisoner of war or a civilian to serve in the forces of a hostile power; (f) willfully depriving a prisoner of war or a civilian of the rights of fair and regular trial; (g) unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement of a civilian; (h) taking civilians as hostages.

That sort of makes me wonder. If there was no genocide against Albanians, and the Statute lists

(f) willfully depriving a prisoner of war or a civilian of the rights of fair and regular trial; and (g) unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement of a civilian

as human rights violations, it seems to me that someone needs to also arrest Djindjic. Djindjic admits that the Constitutional Court ruled that Milosevic could not, under the Yugoslavian Constitution, be extradited. Therefore, the deportation of Milosevic from his native land is a violation of Paragraph (g). And, if Milosevic conveniently dies before his trial or is denied a public trial during which he gets to show the proof of what really happened in Kosovo before, during and after the NATO bombing, the United Nations will be in further violation of his human rights.

As for us Americans, we need to remember that what goes around, comes around. If the United Nations can so summarily ignore the Constitution of Yugoslavia, it can ignore the Constitution of the United States. We cannot expect to have one rule for everyone else in the world, and another for Americans.

To Comment: mmostert@bannerofliberty.com

-------- drug war

Plan Colombia - British Chemical Company ICI Pulls Out of Cocaine War

by Antony Barnett and Solomon Hughes
Sunday, July 1, 2001
the Observer of London
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0701-02.htm

ICI has pulled out of the controversial US project to spray vast areas of Colombia with herbicides in an attempt to eradicate its cocaine and heroin trade.

The British chemicals company's decision, which came after an Observer investigation revealed its involvement, will be a major embarrassment to the US government and will dent the credibility of the plan.

ICI does not want its name dragged into such a program, particularly as there have been reports of children in Colombia who have inhaled the chemicals falling ill.

The $1 billion program, instigated by former President Bill Clinton, will also be hit by revelations that an individual working for the US company fumigating the coca and opium plants has been suspected of smuggling heroin back into the US.

According to an official document from the US Drug Enforcement Administration obtained by The Observer, on 12 May last year Colombian police intercepted a parcel sent from Dyncorp's Colombia offices to its base in Florida. The police found two small bottles of a thick liquid which, when tested, was found to be laced with heroin worth more than $100,000.

A Dyncorp spokeswoman said the company had investigated the issue and found no evidence of wrongdoing.

ICI's decision to refuse to allow its products to be used is likely to worry the US government. Hospitals in sprayed areas have reported increases in skin rashes, diarrhea, stomach aches and respiratory problems. Food crops have also been destroyed and livestock poisoned.

In January, the US State Department claimed the only chemical used in the aerial eradication is glyphosate. This pesticide, commonly known as 'Round Up', is made by the biotech corporation Monsanto.

However, the department was forced to admit it was mixing the glyphosate in an untested brew with another chemical called Cosmo Flux, a sticky soap-like substance which helps the pesticides stick to the leaves of plants. One of its key ingredients is made by ICI.

ICI was forced to admit its products were being used when presented with documents from The Observer obtained by Colombian scientist Dr Elsa Nivía of the Pesticides Action Network.

Ed Hammond of the US campaigning group Sunshine Project said: 'Massive spraying in Colombia has been a hostile act against the environment and people that live there. The decision by ICI not to have anything to do with this program is sensible and will be a wake-up call to Washington.'

-------- iran

US Concerned About Iran Investment

New York Times
July 2, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Italy-Iran.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The State Department said Monday it has raised concerns with the Italian government and with the Italian oil and gas group ENI about a $1 billion deal the company has signed with Iran.

Spokesman Richard Boucher said the United States continues to oppose investments in Iran's petroleum sector. He noted that a 1996 law provides penalties against companies which make significant energy investments in Iran's energy sector as well as in Libya.

The deal, signed Saturday, involves development of the Darkhovin oil field in southwestern Iran.

``We continue to be, first and foremost, concerned about Iranian policies, about Iran's pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and missile delivery systems, and with Iran's support for terrorism,'' Boucher said.

He said that if sanctionable activity is found to have occurred, the United States will take appropriate action.

At the U.S.-European Union summit in 1998, Boucher noted, the United States committed itself to an ``expectation'' that the sanctions would not be applied so long as there was a ``heightened level of EU cooperation on nonproliferation and counterterrorism.''

``We have made clear that the expectation is not a guarantee, and therefore we would go through carefully the procedures in each case,'' Boucher said.

Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said Saturday the international community ``has simply ignored American unilateral sanctions. This deal clearly shows opposition of an international energy company to U.S. sanctions.''

ENI took a 60 percent stake in the project, with the remaining 40 percent going to the National Iranian Oil Company. The contract is for six years, and is expected to eventually produce 160,000 barrels of oil per day.

-------- iraq

Britain Changes Tactics on Iraq

New York Times
July 2, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-UN-Iraq.html

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Britain indefinitely postponed a Security Council vote on a U.S.-backed plan to overhaul sanctions against Iraq on Monday to avoid a Russian veto and try to persuade Moscow to support the proposal.

Instead, the British were planning to introduce a new resolution later Monday to simply extend the U.N. humanitarian program for Iraq. The program expires at midnight Tuesday, and diplomats said the extension would likely be for five months.

``I think extension is agreeable to every member,'' said China's U.N. Ambassador Wang Yingfan, the current council president.

Iraq, which had halted its U.N.-monitored oil exports to protest the British resolution, announced Monday it would resume shipments if the humanitarian program is extended without any mention of the proposed sanctions overhaul.

Britain's U.N. Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock indicated that his country will not insist on language referring to its proposal to overhaul sanctions.

Greenstock stressed that the British intend to keep working for consensus on their plan, citing an agreement last week with France and China on a list of goods with potential military use that would need to be reviewed by the committee monitoring sanctions against Iraq.

``I'm saying that our draft resolution remains broadly supported in the council and very much alive,'' he said, calling Russia's opposition ``unjustifiable and negative and national.''

The British plan to overhaul sanctions was incorporated in a resolution to extend the oil-for-food humanitarian program. When agreement wasn't reached on a sanctions overhaul in early June, the program was extended until July 3.

Britain and the United States spent several months this year crafting a new policy toward Iraq aimed at restoring flagging international support for sanctions imposed on Saddam Hussein's government after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

The draft resolution, introduced by the British on May 22, would lift most restrictions on civilian goods entering Iraq while plugging up lucrative Iraqi smuggling routes and tightening enforcement of the 11-year-old arms embargo.

The Iraqi government launched a vigorous campaign against the plan and won support from Russia, its closest council ally, which threatened to veto the resolution if it was put to a vote.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, the key U.S. architect of the sanctions overhaul, lobbied Moscow to try to win its support, but said last week that Russia was protecting its commercial interests and was not convinced all sanctions on Iraq would ultimately be removed.

In an indication of that pressure, Iraq's acting foreign minister, Tariq Aziz, urged Russian parliamentarians in Baghdad on Monday to ignore sanctions, a move that would allow Moscow to receive $9 billion in debt owed by Baghdad and win billions of dollars in new trade, Russia's ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

Last week, Russia introduced a rival resolution aimed at speeding an end to Iraqi sanctions. It would suspend sanctions on civilian goods once U.N. weapons inspectors certify that a long-term program to monitor Iraq's weapons programs is fully deployed.

Russia's Lavrov said Moscow still wants ``a comprehensive solution of the Iraqi issue'' and the Russian draft remains on the table, too.

Under Security Council resolutions, sanctions cannot be lifted until U.N. inspectors certify that Iraq has dismantled its weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles to deliver them. Weapons inspectors left Iraq ahead of U.S.-British airstrikes in December 1998, and Baghdad has since barred them from returning.

--------

U.S. and U.K. Yield on New Iraq Sanctions

New York Times
July 2, 2001
By BARBARA CROSSETTE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/02/world/02CND-NATION.html

UNITED NATIONS, July 2 - The United States and Britain, unwilling to force a showdown with Russia in the Security Council, decided today to give up trying to win approval now for a plan that would expand civilian trade with Iraq while narrowing its ability to smuggle out oil or bring in prohibited weapons.

A vote on the proposal will be delayed for months, diplomats said. The council, facing a midnight deadline tomorrow for action, is expected to continue the current "oil for food" program instead, for a period still to be determined.

The decision to abandon the fight for now, after winning agreement for the plan from China and France and thereby isolating Russia among the five permanent council members with vetoes, is a setback for the Bush administration, which had made a new policy on Iraq a high priority. If the postponement of voting on the proposal is as long as five or six months, as China's ambassador Wang Yingfan, suggested it might be, Iraq would emerge with what it wants in the short term the status quo. That could bolster hardliners in Washington who have always believed that diplomatic efforts were wasted on President Saddam Hussein, and more direct methods were needed.

Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain's ambassador, said after a brief council meeting this morning that it was important that the resolution creating the new oil-sales plan, which the British introduced and have been fighting for almost single-handedly in the absence of an American ambassador from the Bush administration, remain on the table. He described it as "broadly supported and very much alive." Forcing Russia's hand would have killed the plan with a veto.

Calling Russian opposition to the proposal "unjustifiable and negative" Sir Jeremy said that "preserving the validity of that resolution means, in the view of the United Kingdom and most members of the council - perhaps all members of the council - avoiding a crash over the next couple of days because that does damage to the draft resolution."

In Washington, the State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, said that more time was necessary "to get Russia on board."

Russia, with strong commercial interests in Iraq, has introduced its own resolution that reopens the issue of lifting sanctions imposed in 1990 after Iraq(tm)s invasion of Kuwait. An end to sanctions is Iraq's basic goal, since sanctions have introduced United Nations supervision of Iraqi trade and, under the oil for food program, Iraqi profits, which go to an escrow account under United Nations control. Iraqi smuggling, and technically illegal oils sales to neighbors that the United States tolerated to keep allies like Turkey and Jordan happy, are now giving the Iraqis a billion or more dollars in money outside the system.

Contrary to Iraqi wishes, however, Russia does not argue for an immediate lifting of sanctions, but demands that the embargo be suspended after Iraq allows arms inspectors to return and resume monitoring. The United States and Britain have insisted that this is not an issue to be raised within the context of a new oil for food plan. In December 1999, a Security Council resolution laid out the steps Iraq must take not only to allow inspectors to work but also to meet certain still-to-be determined key disarmament jobs. Inspectors have not been permitted to work in Iraq since late 1998.

Ambassador Sergey Lavrov of Russia turned that argument around today, saying that it was the American-British proposal that had strayed from the essential purpose of selling oil to buy civilian goods and materials to rebuild infrastructure. "We consider that this proposal is not just extending or improving the humanitarian program; it's about giving the program some new functions, and this requires a very thorough study. He said that the Western proposal was "linked to the sanctions policy and the disarmament policy."

"Our government position has always been consistent, and we're in favor of renewing the program and improving the humanitarian operation," he said.

Iraq stopped exporting oil several weeks ago to protest the possible passage of the British-American plan, denying itself, and presumably the Iraqi civilian population millions of dollars in come.

-------- israel

Israel prepared to fight war on two fronts as tension escalates

July 2, 2001
AFP
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010702/1/1839n.html

JERUSALEM, Israel is facing a war on two fronts, following the weekend flare-up on the Lebanese border and the refusal of the Palestinian uprising to die down in line with US-brokered ceasefires.

A US-brokered ceasefire in effect since June 13 is now more honoured in the breach than in the observance, with four more deaths added to the toll which now stands at well over 600 since late September.

An Israeli helicopter gunship killed three Palestinian militants allegedly preparing an attack on Israelis, blasting their car with eight missiles, two small car bombs claimed by a hardline Palestinian group rocked a suburb of Tel Aviv, and an Israeli was shot dead in the West Bank Monday.

The situation was just as tense in the north, following Israel's attack Sunday on a Syrian radar station in eastern Lebanon, in response to Friday's bombardment by guerrillas of the Syrian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah of Israeli troops in the disputed Shebaa Farms border area.

The Israeli raid was followed within the hour by a Hezbollah counter-strike with mortars and rockets which damaged an Israeli radar facility.

"Israel is not prepared to let these attacks go without reacting," Israeli government spokesman Avi Pazner told AFP.

Israel says it pulled out of the whole of southern Lebanon in May last year in line with UN resolutions, refusing to recognise Lebanon's claim, backed by Hezbollah, to the Shebaa Farms which the Jewish state captured from Syria in

As it chooses to blame Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for all the violence in the Palestinian territories, so Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government says Syria is to blame for Hezbollah's actions and must take the consequences.

"Nothing happens in Lebanon, and certainly not in southern Lebanon, without Syria's approval," Pazner said.

Israel is now braced for the next move from Damascus, while discounting a conventional military response, given Syria's inferiority in terms of armed forces.

One theory is that it will come via the Palestinians, among whom Hezbollah enjoys great prestige because of Israel's retreat from southern Lebanon and has been assisting radical movements, according to Israeli authorities.

Monday's car bombs, in a town nor far from Israel's international airport, were claimed by the Damascus-based Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

"It is more than likely that the Syrian response will come against Israel's 'soft underbelly:' terror attacks in the territories, inside (Israel) or against Israeli targets abroad," the daily Yediot Aharonot said Monday.

"That's definitely a possibility. They have attacked Israeli embassies and Jewish communities in the past," Efraim Inbar, director of the BESA Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University told AFP.

The Ma'ariv daily for its part said that "Syria and Hezbollah are liable to respond to the attack on Syrian targets in Lebanon by attempting to bring down an Israeli passenger plane or by harming an Israeli embassy abroad."

Pavzner agreed that Hezbollah's response could come against Israelis in the occupied territories.

"If we have to, we will reply on two fronts," he said.

----

Syria denies firing Scud missile,
accuses Israel of pushing Middle East toward war

The Associated Press,
07/02/2001
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ap20010702_1207.html

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) Syria on Monday denied Israeli reports it had fired a Scud missile toward the Israeli border, while accusing Israel of wanting war after destroying a Syrian military installation in Lebanon over the weekend.

"We have no missiles," Defense Minister Mustafa Tlass told The Associated Press. "No missile has been fired from Syria, not even as a test."

According to an Israeli military spokesman, speaking on the condition of anonymity, Syria fired the Scud on Sunday from outside the northern city of Aleppo toward the Israeli border. Israeli radar tracked the missile from launch to its impact short of Israel's border, he said.

Israel maintains Syria has missiles that can reach all of its cities.

Other Israeli military sources, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said the missile might have been a warning to Israel, whose warplanes destroyed a Syrian radar post in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley on Sunday.

Two Syrian soldiers and a Lebanese soldier were wounded in the airstrike, according to Syrian and Lebanese reports.

The editor of Syria's government-sanctioned Tishrin newspaper, Khalaf al-Jarrad, wrote in an editorial Monday that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon "shoulders alone the dire consequences for dragging the region to the brink of an explosion."

In a three-day state visit to France last week, Syrian President Bashar Assad repeatedly said Sharon was leading the region to war.

Israel said it attacked the radar because it considered Syria responsible for Friday's Hezbollah guerrilla raid that wounded two Israeli soldiers in the Chebaa Farms part of the Israeli-Lebanese border.

It was the second attack by Israel on Syrian positions in Lebanon since Sharon has been in office. Hezbollah responded Sunday by firing rockets and mortars at Israeli military positions in disputed territory along the Israeli-Lebanese border. Israeli artillery fired back, wounding a farmer, Lebanese officials said.

On April 16, Israeli warplanes destroyed another Syrian radar station in Lebanon, killing three Syrian soldiers. That raid, which came after Hezbollah fire killed an Israeli soldier around Chebaa Farms, was the first Israeli attack on such a significant Syrian target in years. Syria threatened to retaliate but never did, and Hezbollah operations eased.

But Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said Sunday that his Islamic militant guerrilla group would no longer restrain itself. Israel was "playing with fire," he said at a Hezbollah rally not far from the radar site Israel destroyed hours earlier.

Nasrallah's deputy, Sheik Naim Kassem, said later that Hezbollah would continue to attack Israeli troops "as will become evident in the coming days."

Leaders from at least a half-dozen Middle Eastern nations condemned the most recent Israeli airstrike, saying it could lead to dangerous escalation in the region.

Lebanese Foreign Minister Mahmoud Hammoud asked for the United Nations to put a stop to Israeli airstrikes.

In Washington, White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said Sunday that the State Department was in contact with all sides and was "urging the parties to exercise maximum restraint."

----

Car Bombs Explode in Israeli City

By Jack Katzenell
Associated Press Writer
Monday, July 2, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010702/aponline050731_000.htm

JERUSALEM -- Two car bombs blew up Monday in a city in central Israel, just hours after three Palestinian militants were killed by missiles fired by an Israeli helicopter in a pinpointed attack.

No one was injured in the car bombings in the central Israeli town of Yehud. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a radical PLO faction, claimed responsibility, saying the blasts came in revenge for the helicopter attack.

An Israeli Cabinet minister, Matan Vilnai, said the explosions would delay the start of the weeklong test period of an Israeli-Palestinian truce. But police said criminal motives could not be ruled out.

Also Monday, the military announced that armed forces chief Lt. Gen. Shaul Mofaz cut short his visit to the United States. The army said Mofaz has completed his meetings with U.S. defense officials and gave no reason for his early return.

However, tension flared over the weekend on the Israeli-Lebanese border, with Israeli warplanes striking a Syrian military radar station in Lebanon in retaliation for Hezbollah guerrilla action. And five Palestinians, in all, were killed Sunday by Israeli fire, raising expectations of revenge attacks.

The three Palestinians killed in the missile attack late Sunday were members of the militant Islamic Jihad group. They were driving in the northern West Bank, near the town of Jenin, in a car packed with explosives.

Palestinian security officials said the car blew up in a huge explosion and one of the victims was burned beyond recognition.

Israeli officials said the three were apparently preparing an attack in Israel. "Why are three terrorists driving around in a car filled with explosives, if not to blow it up somewhere?" said Israeli Transport Minister Ephraim Sneh.

Palestinian officials accused Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of trying to disrupt a shaky cease-fire with the missile attack, in hopes of avoiding future obligations, such as a freeze of Jewish settlement construction. According to the international Mitchell Commission, a successful truce is to be followed by confidence-building measures, including a settlement freeze.

"Sharon is very afraid of implementing the Mitchell recommendations, especially freezing the settlements, since this would mean a new start for the region," said Ahmed Abdel Rahman, the secretary general of the Palestinian Cabinet.

One of the three, Mohammed Bsharat, was a senior figure in Islamic Jihad and was on Israel's wanted list, Palestinian and Israeli officials said.

About 5,000 mourners attended the funeral of the three on Monday. Abdel Halim Izzedine, an Islamic Jihad leader in Jenin, said his group would no longer observe the truce. "It shows that the Israelis don't want peace. They don't want negotiations," Izzedine told the crowd chanting "We will destroy the Zionists."

Nafez Azzam, an Islamic Jihad spokesman in Gaza, condemned the attack as "an ugly crime," adding that the group "will not forget the blood of its martyrs."

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's media adviser, Nabil Abourdeneh, said the Palestinian Authority condemned the attack. The Israeli policy of assassination "will lead to the collapse" of the cease-fire, he said.

Palestinian officials said Israel already tried to kill Bsharat a month ago, using a roadside bomb, but that he escaped unhurt.

Israeli security officials said Bsharat had been responsible for a long list of attacks, including sending suicide bombers into Israeli cities and planting car-bombs.

--------

Palestinians Condemn Israeli Killing of Militants

New York Times
July 2, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/world/mideast-killing.html?searchpv=reuters

GAZA, July 2 - The Palestinian Authority accused Israel on Monday of violating a U.S.-brokered truce by assassinating three Islamic militants in a helicopter attack and urged the United States and Europe to condemn the killings.

One of the men killed by the missile-firing helicopter late on Sunday in the West Bank was identified by Israel and the Palestinians as Mohammed Besharat, who was high on Israel's most-wanted list.

Israeli security sources said he belonged to the Hamas movement and was planning an attack inside Israel. Palestinian officials said he was a member of the Islamic Jihad group, which vowed revenge. Both groups have carried out bombings in Israel.

Hours after the assassination, two car bombs exploded in the Israeli town of Yehud, near Tel Aviv airport. Four people were treated for shock after what police called a terrorist attack.

Repeating a call for an international observer force, Ahmed Abdel-Rahman, general-secretary of the Palestinian cabinet, said Sunday's helicopter attack was a blow to world efforts to restore calm and end nine months of bloodshed.

``The United States and Europe who played a key role in reaching a ceasefire plan are asked today to condemn Israel's crime, its assassination of Palestinian citizens, and to hold the Israeli government responsible for the serious violation,'' he told Reuters.

He said Israel wanted to break down a ceasefire plan because it was not willing to move to the next step of peacemaking as charted in proposals by a U.S.-led committee headed by former U.S. Senator George Mitchell.

U.S. CIA Director George Tenet brokered an Israeli-Palestinian truce on June 13, a first stage of the Mitchell plan, which calls for a ceasefire to be followed by a cooling-off period and confidence-building measures.

Israel then sought a 10-day test period of calm before moving ahead with the Mitchell plan. During a Middle East visit last week, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell set a seven-day timeframe, but it is unclear when the countdown starts.

PALESTINIANS SAY ISRAEL DOESN'T WANT PEACE

``Israel is insisting to foil every international effort. Israel has practically rejected the Tenet plan and the Powell efforts by resorting to state-sponsored terrorism and the usage of U.S. helicopter gunships to kill Palestinian civilians,'' Abdel-Rahman.

Palestinian security officials said an Israeli helicopter fired at least six missiles at the militants' Mazda car, turning it into a blackened pile of metal, near the West Bank city of Jenin.

``The new crime gives us a stronger motive to pursue resistance and Jihad operations against the Zionists where ever they are,'' said Abdallah al-Shami, a senior Islamic Jihad leader.

``Ceasefire, Tenet, Powell -- all are useless. Israel understands only the language of force, which will eventually shake the ground beneath their feet,'' Shami told Reuters.

Fourteen Palestinians and seven Israelis have been killed since the Tenet truce took effect.

At least 469 Palestinians, 119 Israelis and 13 Israeli Arabs have been killed since the Palestinian uprising began.

--------

New Violence Threatens Fragile Mideast Truce

New York Times
July 2, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/world/mideast.html

JERUSALEM, July 2 (Reuters) - A U.S.-brokered truce seemed close to collapse on Monday after a Palestinian and an Israeli were killed in separate incidents, two car bombs exploded near Tel Aviv and Israel assassinated three Islamic militants.

``The situation is very difficult. The last events of the last couple of days show how fragile the ceasefire is. All indications are now it will not hold,'' Terje Roed-Larsen, the U.N.'s Middle East envoy, told reporters in Gaza.

The United States blamed both sides for the upsurge in violence, calling on the warring parties to do their utmost to end more than nine months of bloodshed.

``We think the Palestinians have not done enough to fight terror and to end the violence. We also want to make clear that we remain opposed to Israel's policy of targeted killings,'' said U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.

``Both sides need to exert maximum efforts to halt the violence and we will continue to urge them to do so,'' he told a daily briefing in Washington.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, defending Israeli military action, compared Palestinian President Yasser Arafat with exiled Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden, wanted by the United States for bombings of two embassies in Africa in 1998.

Arafat lashed out at Israel, accusing it of having committed a flagrant violation of the truce and an ``ugly crime'' by killing three Palestinian militants late on Sunday in a helicopter gunship attack on a car in the West Bank.

But Israeli army chief Shaul Mofaz, on a trip to the United States, told Israel Channel One television that no country would allow ``terrorism'' to rage unanswered within its borders.

``Every country in the world exposed to such a large amount of terrorist activity since September, more than 5,600 terrorist attacks, would...retaliate,'' Mofaz said before cutting short his U.S. trip due to the violence.

The European Union also condemned the violence and called for restraint, stopping short of blaming either side for the recent fighting.

PALESTINIAN MILITANTS SAY PLANTED CAR BOMBS

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestineclaimed responsibility for the car bombs in the town of Yehud, near Tel Aviv's airport. Four people were treated for shock.

The PFLP said in a statement it was avenging the ``assassination'' of five militants -- three killed in the helicopter attack and two by Israeli soldiers in a clash earlier on Sunday.

Hours later, Palestinian gunmen killed Aharon Abidya, 41, inside Israel not far from the Palestinian-ruled West Bank city of Tulkarm, police said. Earlier the army had said the shooting occurred in the West Bank.

Later, Israeli soldiers shot dead Radwan Eshtaya, a 37-year-old Palestinian who was trying to enter the West Bank village of Salem, Palestinian security officials said. The army was checking the report.

The violence pushed further back the beginning of a seven-day test period of calm brokered during a Middle East visit last week by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell as a starting point for a U.S. truce-to-peacemaking plan.

One of the men killed in the helicopter attack, Mohammed Besharat of the Islamic Jihad group, was high on Israel's most-wanted list.

The Israeli army said the strike against Besharat's car ``undoubtedly foiled a terrorist attack'' inside Israel.

Sharon told reporters: ``We had a cabinet meeting about 10 days ago and we decided then that we'll conduct active defence, and we are going to exercise our right of self-defence.''

SHARON SAYS ARAFAT IS ISRAEL'S BIN LADEN

Speaking to members of his right-wing Likud party, Sharon compared Arafat with bin Laden.

``Look, everyone's got his own bin Laden,'' he told reporters.

``For instance the United States regards Osama bin Laden to be a great danger,'' he said in English. ``So, that's their bin Laden. He's the one that causes them security problems. Arafat causes our security problem, therefore I compared them.''

Islamic Jihad vowed in a statement that ``every Zionist in every inch of Palestine and the depth of Zionist settlement will be a target for our human bombs, car bombs and...bullets.''

Palestinian security officials said the helicopter had fired at least six missiles at the Mazda, turning it into a blackened pile of metal and killing Besharat and two other militants, Sameh Nuri Abu Hameish and Walid Sudki Besharat.

Thousands of mourners marched in a funeral procession for the men in Jenin on Monday, chanting: ``Jihad, Jihad, bring car bombs to Tel Aviv and Israeli cities.''

Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat met U.S. Consul General Ron Schlicher on Monday and conveyed the ``strongest protest against the Israeli government's crimes against the Palestinian people,'' a Palestinian Authority statement said.

Raanan Gissin, Sharon's spokesman, said if Palestinian attacks on Israeli citizens continued the truce would collapse.

While the Palestinians insist the seven-day test period of calm has begun, Israel says it has not.

``While Arafat is counting days of a ceasefire that's not here, we are counting our dead,'' Sharon said. ``We see no ceasefire in place.''

At least 472 Palestinians, 120 Israelis and 13 Israeli Arabs have been killed since the Palestinian uprising began.

--------

U.S. Blames Both Israel And Palestinians for Violence

New York Times
July 2, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-mideast.html

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The United States blamed both Israel and the Palestinians for an upsurge of violence that threatens to wreck a fragile U.S.-brokered cease-fire aimed at ending nine months of bloodletting.

The 15-day-old cease-fire faced its most difficult test on Monday after a Palestinian and an Israeli were killed in separate incidents, two car bombs exploded near Tel Aviv and Israel killed three Islamic militants.

Following the rise in violence, which had subsided for more than a week after the sides agreed to a truce, Israel said it would reassess its policies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Fifteen Palestinians and eight Israelis have been killed since the warring parties adopted the truce brokered by U.S. CIA Director George Tenet on June 13.

``We think the Palestinians have not done enough to fight terror and to end the violence. We also want to make clear that we remain opposed to Israel's policy of targeted killings,'' said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.

``Both sides need to exert maximum efforts to halt the violence and we will continue to urge them to do so,'' he told a daily briefing in Washington.

Israeli radio and television reported that Israeli and Palestinian security officials met late on Monday to try to save the truce from collapse.

An Israeli helicopter gunship fired a missile at a car in the West Bank late on Sunday, killing three Islamic militants Israel said were responsible for attacks against Israelis.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine said the car bombings were in retaliation for the ``assassinations.''

Palestinian President Yasser Arafat lashed out at Israel, accusing it of violating the truce and committing an ``ugly crime'' by killing the three militants.

SHOOTINGS ECHO THROUGHOUT WEST BANK, GAZA

The Israeli army reported more than half a dozen shooting incidents in the West Bank and Gaza Strip overnight on Monday. It said one civilian was wounded in a West Bank shooting.

A Jewish settler spokesman said a Jewish settler had gone missing while out with his sheep. The Israeli army and a search party were looking for him after his sheep returned without him.

Palestinian security officials said soldiers fired on a police post in Gaza, forcing it to be evacuated.

In a shooting near the Israel-West Bank border earlier on Monday, Palestinian gunmen killed Aharon Abidya, 41, Israeli police said.

Later, Israeli troops shot dead Radwan Eshtaya, 37, at the entrance to the West Bank village of Salem, Palestinian security and hospital officials said. The army was checking the report.

The U.N.'s Middle East envoy, Terje Roed-Larsen, told reporters in Gaza: ``The situation is very difficult. The last events of the last couple of days show how fragile the cease-fire is. All indications are now it will not hold.''

In New York, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged both sides ``to exercise maximum restraint so that a total collapse of the cease-fire can be prevented.''

At least 473 Palestinians, 120 Israelis and 13 Israeli Arabs have been killed since the Palestinian uprising began in September after peace talks stalled.

Following the latest wave of violence, Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer told reporters:

``The situation that is happening on the ground is a new situation that in my opinion requires us to reassess everything that is happening in the territories.'' He did not elaborate.

Jibril Rajoub, head of Palestinian Preventive Security in the West Bank, told Israeli radio:

``As long as the situation doesn't change in the field and the closures continue, don't ask the Palestinian people or the Palestinian Authority to do anything, because we cannot do anything.''

ISRAELI ARMY CHIEF CUTS U.S. VISIT SHORT

The latest violence and a tense weekend on the Israel-Lebanon border forced Israeli army chief Shaul Mofaz to cut short a trip to the United States where he met senior security officials, the Israeli army said.

Speaking to Israel Channel One television before leaving Washington, Mofaz said no country would allow ``terrorism'' to run unchecked without retaliating.

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

The Military Spending Crunch

New York Times
July 2, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/02/opinion/02MON2.html?searchpv=nytToday

Last week the Bush administration added a further $18 billion to its Pentagon budget request for next year, bringing the total to $329 billion. That is a lot to be spending on defense programs in a world where America confronts no superpower rivals. Yet most of the latest additions are reasonable, with the bulk of the $18 billion going for improvements in military pay, housing and health care, training and spare parts. There is also new money for additional research and testing of missile defenses.

Still, this increase builds upon an earlier one, and if Congress approves the full request, as seems likely, next year's military spending will be $33 billion more than this year's, the biggest one-year increase since the Reagan buildup in the early 1980's. Even bigger spending jumps are anticipated in the following year's defense budget, which will be drawn up after completion of the ambitious reviews of strategy and weapons requirements ordered by President Bush this spring. Those are likely to call for expensive and futuristic new weapons programs. With the recently enacted tax cut and a weakening economy eroding future budget surpluses, Washington cannot afford repeated big increases in defense spending.

Although the United States already has the world's most advanced weapons, continued investment in modernization is needed to keep the armed forces prepared for the rapidly changing military needs of the future. The Navy needs lighter and faster ships. The Army needs lighter artillery pieces and smaller tanks. The Air Force needs more pilotless drones.

To pay for these needs, the Pentagon will have to eliminate obsolete weapons systems designed for cold war needs, including some just now entering into production. There is also a strong case for trimming the overall size of the armed forces to fit their likely new missions. One purpose of the current Pentagon reviews is to target appropriate areas for such savings.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's recent calls for retiring a third of the Air Force's obsolete B-1 bombers, dismantling 50 MX multiple warhead missiles and closing scores of unneeded military bases are a good start. But more aggressive cutting will be needed, much of it likely to arouse fierce Congressional opposition from affected districts. Military modernization will be affordable only if the Bush administration proposes and then fights for deep cuts in Pentagon programs that have outlived their usefulness.


-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

Personal power: solar utility in a backpack

Monday, July 02, 2001
http://enn.com/news/enn-stories/2001/07/07022001/backpack_44179.asp

The U.S. Army is testing one at its South Pole station. Greenpeace International has ordered some for use in India. A dive boat operator is using one to run compressors and lights in the Caribbean.

A solar power unit that can be carried in a backpack was created by a Portland, Oregon, inventor and is already making its way around the world.

The Solar Power Pack contains a folding monocrystalline solar panel, battery, controller, plugs, cords and light. It weighs only 24 pounds but provides users with 120 watt-hours of power a day.

The unit can power AC and DC electronics up to 300 watts. It can be used in recreational vehicles as well as for field research, emergency home power, disaster relief and international aid.

After charging for six hours with the unit's solar photovoltaic panel, the Solar Power Pack can run a laptop computer for three hours or its own high-efficiency light for 14 hours.

"The Solar Power Pack is a personal solar power utility designed to be operated and transported by a single person," said Toby Kinkaid, founder and CEO of Solardyne Corporation, a developer and on-line retailer of renewable energy technology and high efficiency appliances.

An international traveller, Kinkaid came up with the idea for the solar backpack when he ran out of camera batteries while exploring Malaysia and the Maldives.

People in the Maldives, an island nation in the Indian Ocean, use noisy diesel generators for power, said Kinkaid. Getting fuel there is difficult, as it is in all remote areas.

Kinkaid studied physics in university and has been running a solar laboratory for 18 years. To reduce the cost of expensive solar electric cells, he developed a process that intensifies sunlight before it is converted into electricity.

His Mariposa solar module uses reflectors to concentrate twice the amount of solar energy onto half the number of the solar cells. "Reflectors cost $1 per square foot, he says. Solar cells cost $30 per square foot.

The result is a solar pack that sells for $549. The solar panel is designed to last 20 years. The battery lasts for 600 charge cycles, which equals about two years if the system is used daily. Once spent, the battery can be replaced and recycled.

Kinkaid discovered that he could rely on his invention when the battery in his old BMW car ran out of juice. "The solar pack unit was not even fully charged," he said, "but I put on the cable and jump-started my car."

Greenpeace ordered units for use in India. Solardyne has added a converter for Indian power that runs at a higher voltage than power in the United States. The package includes a water sterilizer powered by the solar pack that decontaminates tap water using ultraviolet rays.

"We are particularly excited about the prospect of humanitarian organizations using the Solar Power Pack for their relief efforts," Kinkaid said. "Imagine the difference these groups can make in people's lives by taking a portable source of ready power to Third World nations."

----

New Mexico music fest tunes into solar power

USA: July 2, 2001
Story by Zelie Pollon
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11398

TAOS, N.M. - As Californians struggle with power shortages and the White House pushes a national energy plan, hundreds of people gathered in New Mexico on Friday for an annual music festival singing the praises of solar power.

The third annual Taos Solar Music Festival in the northern New Mexico mountain resort of Taos combines a weekend of rock, pop and folk with a hefty dose of proselytizing for the virtues of nonpolluting power from the sun.

Dozens of booths with information on solar technology border two stages in a city park that will host a three-day lineup including rock legends Little Feat and bluegrass innovators The String Cheese Incident.

"I'm here to support a worthy cause and to boogie my butt off," said Pilar West, a Taos realtor who was lingering near a booth for KTAO, a local solar-powered radio station.

Only one of the two stages is completely solar powered. It runs off 16 solar panels that measure 41 feet by 18 feet (13 by six metres) and produce 4 kilowatt hours, enough energy to run a small home, said Scott Laughlin from Boulder, Colorado, renewable energy company Jade Mountain, which is supplying the technology for the festival.

The New Mexico Solar Energy Association, which organizes the festival, hopes the mix of popular bands will help make the public at large more aware of solar power.

"Solar energy requires a fairly educated consumer," said Ben Luce, president of the New Mexico Solar Energy Association. "The average American has no idea of the consequences of throwing a light switch. They don't see the CO2 (carbon dioxide) coming out of the smokestack 500 miles (800 km) away from them in the coal-fired power plant."

Sun power proponents admit that the initial investment is steep for homeowners and businesses who want to install the technology, with a home set-up of photovoltaic cells, batteries and power management systems easily costing $30,000. But they argue the system can pay for itself in 10 to 15 years.

Jesse Torres, a computer scientist who recently moved to Santa Fe, said he built a completely solar home in Mexico that uses solar power to run televisions, computer systems, and all appliances, including a computerized control system that shuts appliances off at night.

Torres said he had to spend about $38,000 on the technology but now won't need to worry about paying a utility.

"When I retire I don't want to worry about bills. Especially with the prices of electricity, I don't know why more people don't have it (solar energy)," said Torres.

Laughlin from Jade Mountain said he hoped to have the whole festival powered by renewable energy in the future.

"I'd like to look at doing a hybrid with wind and solar power. But it might require four trailers instead of one," he said.

-------- death penalty

O'Connor Questions Death Penalty

New York Times
July 2, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-OConnor-Death-Penalty.html

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said Monday she has ``serious questions'' about whether the death penalty is being fairly administered in the United States.

``If statistics are any indication, the system may well be allowing some innocent defendants to be executed,'' O'Connor said in a speech to the Minnesota Women Lawyers group.

O'Connor, who has been a swing vote on several death penalty cases, said six death row inmates were exonerated and released last year, and that 90 inmates have been exonerated and set free since 1973.

O'Connor said the growing availability of DNA testing may alleviate some concerns. But she said most states with capital punishment have not passed laws addressing post-conviction testing.

She also said the quality of defense lawyers for people in capital cases has been inadequate in too many cases.

``Perhaps it's time to look at minimum standards for appointed counsel in death cases and adequate compensation for appointed counsel when they are used,'' she said.

O'Connor noted a rise in the number of executions since she was appointed to the high court in 1981. She said there were 856 death row inmates across the country that year, compared to 3,711 in 2000. O'Connor said one inmate was executed in 1982, compared to 85 last year.

Noting that Minnesota does not have the death penalty, O'Connor said, ``You must breathe a big sigh of relief every day.''

-------- environment

Koizumi, Blair Agree to Seek U.S. Return to Kyoto

New York Times
July 2, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-japan-b.html?searchpv=reuters

LONDON (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said on Monday that he and British counterpart Tony Blair had agreed to seek a way to bring back the United States into the Kyoto treaty on global warming.

``We agreed that it was important for Japan and Britain to cooperate to find a way to have the United States take part,'' Koizumi told reporters after the two leaders met in London.

``Japan and Britain support the principles of the Kyoto pact. It is still too early to leave the United States behind.''

Koizumi said it was ``theoretically possible'' for the European Union and Japan to go ahead and ratify the Kyoto Protocol, leaving behind the United States -- although he questioned how effective the treaty would then be.

``And when I said that if we wish to make the Kyoto Protocol effective then U.S. participation would be desirable, Prime Minister Blair agreed with me,'' he later told Britain's Channel Four television news.

Washington decided to abandon the treaty earlier this year, causing international concern, with President Bush saying it was ''fatally flawed.''

The pact calls for industrialized countries to trim output of carbon dioxide by an average of 5.2 percent from 1990 levels by 2012.

FIND WAY FORWARD

Blair's official spokesman, speaking to reporters in London, said the two prime ministers agreed work with Bush to find a way forward on climate change.

He said Blair had stressed to Koizumi that Britain saw the Kyoto agreement as a way of addressing the issue of global warming and would ratify the treaty.

While Tokyo is expected to propose a revision of the 1997 treaty to woo Washington back, Koizumi said he did not raise it in his talks with Blair.

A Japanese foreign ministry official did not give details, but admitted that Japan had ideas up its sleeves.

Koizumi, who met Bush on Saturday, agreed with the U.S. leader to have their environment ministers discuss the issue before talks on the pact are held in Bonn, Germany, later this month.

The Japanese and British leaders also talked about Bush's proposed missile defense system, with Koizumi telling Blair how Japan ``understands'' the U.S. plan after his talks with Bush.

Blair said Britain shared Bush's concern about the threat posed by the proliferation of ballistic missiles, but said it wanted Washington to discuss the actual deployment of the system thoroughly with allies, a Japanese official told reporters.

Blair also gave his backing to the Japanese prime minister's structural reform measures, saying it was necessary to carry them out despite expected opposition, a Japanese official said.

The Japanese leader last week unveiled a manifesto outlining steps to lead Japan back to growth, including guidelines to clean up banks' bad loans to deadbeat firms.

The Japanese prime minister is on a three-nation tour which takes him to Paris on Tuesday for talks with French President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin.

-------- genetics

Scientists Manufacture Human Eggs

New York Times
July 2, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Creating-Eggs.html

LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) -- Scientists appear to have found a way that someday could allow women to become mothers after they no longer can produce viable eggs, a potential advance in breaking the last great barrier to fertility treatments.

The technique, described Monday at a conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Lausanne, involves taking a cell from an infertile woman's body, and inserting it into an emptied donated egg. The resulting egg contains the genetic material of the woman wanting the baby, not of the donor.

Scientists warned that the work is still in the preliminary stages, and it could be years before the technique produces a healthy baby, if ever. When they fertilized the manufactured egg with sperm, it divided once, then collapsed.

But theoretically, the method could create an unlimited supply of eggs for the infertile woman and allow her to have a child at a much older age. However, experts tried to play down that possibility, saying they strongly discourage post-menopausal motherhood on ethical and practical grounds.

Dr. Gianpiero Palermo, a professor of embryology at the Center for Reproductive Medicine and Infertility at Cornell University, said that besides older women, his technique could help those who can't use their own eggs, either because they don't have any or because their eggs are no good.

Such women could include those whose ovaries are removed before cancer treatment, those who were born without ovaries or women who reach menopause at a young age.

Prominent fertility researcher Dr. Zsolt Peter Nagy, who was not connected with the project, said the technique potentially is one of the most important advances in fertility treatment ever.

Fertility treatments took a major step forward in 1978, when a team led by Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe conquered Fallopian tube problems with the introduction of in vitro fertilization, where the egg is fertilized outside the body and implanted in the womb.

Then, in 1992, while he was working in Belgium, Palermo circumvented the failure of sperm to swim to the womb by injecting the sperm directly into the egg -- a technique called ICSI.

The problem of declining egg supply as women age has probably been the biggest major challenge in fertility treatment since then, experts say.

``I am sure one day this will work,'' said Nagy, scientific director at the Central Research Clinic of Human Reproduction in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Nagy is pursuing similar research.

``And if it does, it will be the biggest development, after IVF and ICSI,'' he said.

Edwards called the research ``promising.''

Others were more skeptical that manufactured eggs could produce healthy babies anytime soon, saying the technique would likely create gross genetic abnormalities. Scientists believe that DNA deteriorates with age and fear that the older the cell, the more likely the chance of major defects.

All people inherit two sets of chromosomes from their parents -- one from their mother and one from their father. Normally, all the cells in the body, except the sperm and the egg, have two copies of each chromosome, which contain the genes.

A mature egg contains only one set of each chromosome. When a cell from elsewhere in the body is inserted into an emptied egg, it then has two sets.

To make the egg viable for fertilization, the scientists had to get rid of one of the sets of chromosomes. An electric shock split the pairs in half and prompted the egg to expel the unwanted set of chromosomes, making it suitable to receive the sperm.

Roger Gosden, a fertility pioneer from McGill University in Montreal, Canada, said Palermo's technique was ``plausible.''

``If there's a way we can help people have a genetic child rather than a donated egg, then we should. This is interesting science, it's very preliminary, but who knows?'' he said.

-------- health

U.S., Vietnam Talk About Research

New York Times
July 2, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Vietnam-US-Agent-Orange.html

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) -- American and Vietnamese officials met Monday to discuss ways for the former foes to conduct joint health and environmental research on the wartime defoliant Agent Orange.

The talks are the second in a series between the two governments over research into the possible effects of the millions of gallons of herbicide -- primarily Agent Orange -- sprayed by U.S. planes to destroy jungle cover for enemy troops during the Vietnam War.

Agent Orange contained the most toxic form of dioxin, which has caused cancer in lab animals. Agent Orange exposure has been associated with cancer, birth defects and miscarriages, though a direct link to those health problems remain unproven.

A recent study by American researchers showed some Vietnamese had ``alarmingly high'' dioxin levels in their blood, more than three decades after the U.S. military stopped spraying Agent Orange.

The first talks between the two governments on Agent Orange research, held over five days in Singapore last November, ended inconclusively.

Vietnam's government has estimated it has about 1 million people affected by exposure to Agent Orange among its population of 78 million. Thousands of Americans were also exposed to Agent Orange, and blame ailments on the defoliant.

Participating in the talks are representatives of the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Science, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and officials from Vietnam's Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment.

-------- human rights

Belgian Judge Opens Probe Against Israel's Sharon

New York Times
July 2, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-crime-b.html

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A Belgian judge has opened an investigation of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for alleged crimes against humanity in a 1982 massacre of hundreds of Palestinians, a judicial spokesman said on Monday.

Examining Judge Patrick Collignon opened the investigation after finding merit in two complaints filed against Sharon for his alleged role in the killing of Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon, said Josef Colpin, spokesman for the public prosecutor's office in Brussels.

The investigation was to determine whether there is enough evidence to press charges against Sharon, Colpin said.

The complaints, filed earlier this month by Lebanese and Palestinian survivors of the massacre, accuse Sharon of war crimes and genocide under a relatively new Belgian law allowing its courts to prosecute foreigners for human rights abuses committed outside the country.

The maximum punishment for the crimes is life imprisonment.

Chibli Mallat, a Lebanese lawyer who filed one of the complaints on behalf of 23 survivors, hailed the decision.

``It is an important day for the victims of Sabra and Shatila,'' he told Reuters in Beirut on Saturday after initial reports of the decision.

Mehdi Abbes, a Brussels lawyer who filed the second complaint on behalf of at least five survivors, said the opening of the investigation was the first step in a long process.

``We have a long road ahead of us,'' he told Reuters on Monday, referring to the amount of time that Collignon would need to do the investigation. ``It isn't going to done in 30 days.''

A landmark Belgian trial earlier this year of four Rwandans for involvement in their country's 1994 genocide occurred six years after an examining judge opened his investigation into complaints brought against them.

The trial, which led to the conviction of all four, was the first to apply the law and has since led to the filing of a slew of complaints in Brussels against figures ranging from Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo.

The complaints against Sharon, dismissed by a Sharon lawyer as a political stunt, have increased pressure on the Israeli leader as he prepares an official trip to Europe this week.

In 1983, an Israeli state inquiry found Sharon, then defense minister, indirectly responsible for the killing of hundreds of men, women and children at Sabra and Shatila camps during Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon.

Israeli soldiers allowed allied Lebanese Christian militiamen to enter the camps, ostensibly to search for Palestinian gunmen. The massacre continued for two days while Israeli troops surrounded the camps.

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

Russia's Entry to WTO Delayed Indefinitely

New York Times
July 2, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-economy.html

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's entry to the World Trade Organization (WTO) has been delayed until the country's legislation lives up to WTO criteria, local news agencies quoted a government official as saying on Monday.

Russia's chief WTO negotiator, Deputy Trade and Economy Minister Maxim Medvedkov said the WTO last week demanded that Moscow adjust all its legislation to its standards before further discussions on entry to the multilateral trading system.

``A working group arrived at a decision to indefinitely delay preparation of the protocol on Russia joining the WTO,'' Interfax news agency quoted Medvedkov as saying.

``They (the WTO) think that Russia, while moving forward, has not yet crossed the threshold necessary for a final stage of the talks and there are still a many loopholes in legislation,'' Prime-Tass quoted Medvekov as saying.

He said the protocol on Russia joining the WTO could be ready in three to four years, according to a pessimistic scenario, though there was still hope that in the autumn ``our partners' position may change.''

Medvedkov said there was hope that ``we shall sign protocols with a number of countries on completing negotiations by the end of the year.''

When former resident Boris Yeltsin in 1993 submitted Russia's application to become part of the WTO, he appealed for quick action.

Yeltsin's successor Vladimir Putin said in an April state of the nation address that joining the WTO was a top priority for his administration, and set the end of 2001 as the deadline for joining the club.

Prime-Tass quoted Putin as saying the WTO was unhappy about Russia's customs controls and drawbacks in standardisation and certification. Also, the WTO has suggested that draft laws should be discussed jointly with the WTO states.

``We think it's unacceptable, because it will never end in consensus,'' Medvedkov said.

He said Russia had prepared 10 bills necessary for joining the WTO and two were under discussion, adding that the cabinet would consider joining the WTO at its meeting on July 26.

Medvedkov said differences of opinion on some tariffs were serious, including tariffs on furniture, cars, agricultural goods, most chemicals, pharmaceuticals and toys.

Also, the WTO criticized Russia for maintaining low domestic energy prices, saying it was effectively a subsidy for the rest of the economy. Medvedkov said Russia did not agree.

-------- police / prisoners

Prisons Service decides to ease conditions for security inmates

By Gideon Alon
Ha'aretz Knesset Correspondent,
Monday, July 2, 2001
http://www3.haaretz.co.il/eng/scripts/article.asp?mador=14&datee=7/2/01&id=123267

The Prisons Service has decided to ease the rules for inmates serving time for security-related crimes - especially Israeli Arabs - the Prisons Services' legal advisor, Haim Szmulewitz, says in a letter to the chairman of the Knesset's Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, Ophir Pines-Paz (Labor).

"The order that defines the imprisonment terms of inmates jailed for security-related crimes has been changed. It is now optional whether to impose restrictions, in full or in part, on the inmate's contact with the outside world, provided that the inmate meets certain criteria," Szmulewitz said. Restrictions include visits, the right to use the phone and suchlike.

Some Israeli Arab prisoners have already been allowed to see more visitors. The Prisons Service, in conjunction with the Shin Bet security service, is now reviewing the case of each inmate individually, according to the criteria set in the amended order.

Only those prisoners who were not members or helpers of hostile organizations and who have served a third or at least 10 years of their sentence will be eligible for concessions. For each prisoner the Shin Bet security service must first confirm that lifting restrictions on his contact with the outside will not pose a danger to state security.

According to data discussed in a meeting of the Constitution, Law and Order Committee about a year ago, 29 Israeli Arabs are incarcerated for security-related crimes. Most are being held in Shata Prison, and most have been convicted of murder or attempted murder.

In the same meeting the committee protested the inhuman treatment of Israeli Arabs, who were not even allowed to attend funerals of their close kin or use the phone.

-------- spying

The name's Bond, Gerbil Bond, MI5 agent with licence to smell a rat

By Michael Smith
London, The Telegraph
July 2, 2001
Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0107/02/world/world14.html

Britain's MI5 considered using highly-trained gerbils to detect spies and terrorists flying into the country during the 1970s, Sir Stephen Lander, the service's director-general has revealed.

The plan was based on the ability of gerbils to detect a rise in adrenalin from changes in the scent of human sweat.

Sir Stephen said the Israelis put the idea into practice, placing gerbil cages at security checks at Tel Aviv airport. A fan wafted the scent of the suspect's sweat into the cage. Gerbils were trained by Pavlovian response to press a lever if they detected increased adrenalin, receiving food as reward.

The system was never put into practice by MI5 because the Israelis abandoned it after they found the gerbil could not tell the difference between terrorists and passengers who were scared of flying.

Speaking at a conference at the Public Record Office in Kew, Sir Stephen said MI5 archives contained a complete volume on the idea - which was based on Canadian research for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police - written in the 1970s.

Although Dame Stella Rimington often spoke publicly to try and change MI5's secretive reputation, the Missing Dimension conference was only the second time Sir Stephen has.

The conference marks a new exhibition on espionage, Shaken Not Stirred, which includes exhibits on agents, including Mata Hari and a spy paid the equivalent of £6.5 million ($A18 million) by King George I to spy on the Stuarts in the 18th century.

Missing Dimension shows that most histories are written before intelligence files are released, and so omit a crucial element of what occurred and why.

--------

U.S. Navy Spy Plane Begins Return

New York Times
July 2, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-China-Spy-Plane.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Exactly three months after the U.S. Navy EP-3E spy plane made an emergency landing on China's Hainan island, it began returning in pieces to U.S. custody, officials said Monday.

Parts of the dismantled aircraft were flown aboard a Russian-designed cargo plane to Kadena Air Base on the Japanese island of Okinawa on Sunday. The cargo plane is to make a final flight with the EP-3E's stripped-down fuselage on Wednesday, U.S. Pacific Command spokesman Maj. Sean Gibson said.

The EP-3E was part of an electronic surveillance group based at Kadena. Its return in pieces will mark an end to an episode that put severe strain on the U.S.-China relationship. Vice President Dick Cheney said ``the jury's out'' on whether the United States and China can forge stronger bonds.

``We're not enemies at this point, probably not friends either,'' Cheney said in a telephone interview with WHAM, an all-news radio station in Rochester, N.Y. He said the two countries share common interests, including maintaining peace in Asia.

``Occasionally our interests come into conflict as they did earlier this year when we had the accident involving our surveillance aircraft, the EP3, and that led to a confrontation but we were able to get it worked out,'' he said. ``So, the jury's out. ... But over time, if we keep working at it, hopefully we can build the kind of relationship that's founded on trust and we're not adversaries.''

The crated spy plane is to be flown to Lockheed Martin's aircraft plant in Marietta, Ga., on Thursday, officials said. The Navy has said it hopes to have the EP-3E put back together and returned to service; it is negotiating a contract with Lockheed Martin to do the reassembly work, officials said.

The United States originally wanted to repair the EP-3E at the Lingshui military airfield on Hainan island, where it had stood since the April emergency landing, but China refused to permit that. As an alternative, the United States sent Lockheed Martin technicians to the island to remove the plane's wings, all four engines, its landing gear, radome, tail section and other parts.

The Lockheed Martin team arrived on Hainan Island on June 15 to begin the dismantling project.

Gibson, the Pacific Command spokesman, said he did not immediately have full details on the schedule for the final flight carrying the EP-3E's fuselage from Hainan Island. He said Sunday's flight carried some plane parts to Kadena aboard a chartered Antonov-124 cargo plane. The flight was not announced.

The Antonov-124 was returning to Hainan to pick up the fuselage, Gibson said.

The propeller-driven EP-3E landed on Hainan on April 1 after colliding in flight with a Chinese fighter jet while on a surveillance mission over the South China Sea. China blamed the crash on the U.S. plane and detained its 24-member crew on Hainan for 11 days. The Chinese pilot was killed.

The plane's crew destroyed much of the plane's sensitive eavesdropping devices and data before they left it, but China is believed to have removed some equipment and may have gleaned some useful information.

--------

Five Cuban Spies Put in Isolation

New York Times
July 2, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Cuban-Espionage.html

MIAMI (AP) -- Five Cuban agents convicted last month of spying on the United States have been moved from the general prison population to isolation cells without explanation to their lawyers.

``The Bureau of Prisons hasn't told us why, and there's no reason that we can see,'' defense attorney Phil Horowitz said Monday. ``Even after the verdict, they've been kept in general population for a couple of weeks with no incidents and no problems.''

The Federal Detention Center issued a statement Monday saying only that the inmates were moved for ``nonpunitive'' reasons.

The five were transferred Tuesday to the Special Housing Unit, six days after the Cuban government responded to their conviction with newspaper articles and TV specials praising them as heroes.

A letter attributed to them was also published in the official Communist Party newspaper in Havana, in which they said they ``honored our duty to our people and our homeland'' and were ``in no way repentant.''

``If it has to do with the letter, then I guess so much for exercising your First Amendment rights,'' said defense attorney Jack Blumenfeld.

In the SHU, inmates and visitors sit on opposite sides of a window, and a small slot can be used to exchange paper.

Inmates are usually placed in solitary because of disciplinary problems or concerns for their safety or the security of the prison.

Three of the Cubans face life sentences.

-------- terrorism

Saudis Say They, Not U.S., Will Try 11 in '96 Bombing

New York Times
July 2, 2001
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/02/world/02SAUD.html

JIDDA, Saudi Arabia, June 30 - Saudi Arabia's interior minister said today that 11 of the 13 Saudis indicted by the United States about 10 days ago in connection with the truck bombing of the Khobar Towers apartments in 1996 were in prison in the kingdom and that the case would be referred to Saudi, but not American, courts soon.

The minister, Prince Nayef bin Abdel Aziz, when asked if any of the suspects held by Saudi Arabia would be sent to the United States to stand trial, responded: "No. Never. Impossible."

He added, "We have nothing whatsoever to do with the U.S. court, and we are not concerned with what has been said or what is going to be decided by the U.S."

The prince, who is a brother of King Fahd and the head of the government's investigation, made his first extensive remarks since the indictment. They reflected the gulf that has divided the Saudis and the Americans almost from the moment on June 25, 1996, when a huge explosion rocked an eight-story building used to house American military personnel in Dhahran, in the Eastern Province. The attack on the building, the Khobar Towers, killed 19 United States servicemen and wounded nearly 400 others.

He said the whereabouts of the two remaining suspects were not known, and expressed disappointment that an understanding with the United States to help capture the two appeared to have stalled. He said a 14th man indicted, a Lebanese accused of building the bomb, was also at large.

The F.B.I. has long complained that Saudi Arabia has hampered its efforts by limiting access to the suspects and evidence like the getaway car, while the Saudis were reported to have found the Americans dismissive of their police work.

In a compromise, American investigators were eventually allowed to watch from behind glass as Saudi investigators posed questions to suspects.

On June 21, a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., returned a 46-count indictment charging 13 Saudis and a Lebanese man of carrying out the attack.

The prince said that his government had been awaiting the capture of the two fugitives to complete its own investigation of the case, but that it would no longer delay referring the matter to the Saudi courts.

"The U.S. promised us to help in searching for them and in arresting them and handing them to us, as they have connections with some countries," Prince Nayef said, without specifying which other countries might be involved.

"We have seen nothing from what we have been promised in this issue," he said, "nor have we been informed of what they have done, despite their promise to cooperate with us."

He also expressed surprise with the indictments themselves, noting that they had not been mentioned by Louis J. Freeh, the F.B.I. director, during a meeting in May in Boston.

At the time of the indictments, Mr. Freeh said efforts were under way to get the defendants to stand trial in the United States, though the United States does not have an extradition treaty with the Saudis. Mr. Freeh, for whom the investigation had become a personal priority, stepped down as F.B.I. director days after the indictments.

"It was a friendly meeting and the man is kind, honest and direct, but he never told me anything about what they just announced," the interior minister said.

Although the indictment outlined heavy Iranian involvement in training the men involved and in planning the attack itself, it did not accuse any Iranian directly of any crime. Iran has denied any connection.

After the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979, Saudi-Iranian relations were tense, largely because Tehran often accused the Saudis of being unfit guardians of Islam's holiest shrines. Since the Khobar attack, relations have been on the mend, with Prince Nayef himself signing a security pact with Tehran in April.

The interior minister would not specify whether Saudi Arabia believed that Iran had organized the attack. "We can never point a finger of accusation at any side until we are sure they were involved," he said.

But the prince said he did not agree entirely with the picture that was painted in the United States indictment. It said Shiite Muslims, disaffected by discrimination they faced in Saudi Arabia, had been recruited for military training in Iran and Lebanon and eventually carried out the truck bombing.

The indictment depicts the two men still at large, both of whom are charged with murder, among other crimes, as the ringleaders of the group and its main liaisons with Iran. The indictment said the bombers wanted to drive American forces out of the Persian Gulf region.

"What has been published is partly true," the prince said, "but the details are not exactly as what they made public." He said only Saudi Arabian investigators could have had full access to all the information.

Prince Nayef said the details of the case, ranging from the accusations to what the Saudis believed happened, might emerge only after the court proceedings. No specific date for those has been set, but the prince said it would be "very soon."

Saudi Arabia's legal system grants wide powers to individual judges. The accused will be assigned lawyers only at the discretion of the judge, and the courts are not open. Any public record of a case is extremely rare, although convicted murderers are usually beheaded in public squares and the reason for the verdict is announced.

-------- activists

BERN HOLDS ANNUAL INDEPENDENCE DAY PROTEST AT NSA

From: Max Obuszewski <MObuszewski@afsc.org>
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001
Baltimore Emergency Response Network,
311 E. 25th Street, Baltimore, MD 21218
PHONE: [410] 377-7987

PRESS RELEASE-FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 2, 2001

WHO: The Baltimore Emergency Response Network (BERN) is a local organization working to halt U.S. intervention and promoting peaceful solutions to conflict. For example, BERN members continue to protest economic sanctions against the Iraqi people and the weapons contracts of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. On June 5, Rev. John Oliver, of the United Church of Christ and a BERN activist, was arrested protesting missile defense research at the APL.

WHAT: BERN has organized an Independence Day protest at the National Security Agency each year since 1996. And each year a letter is sent to the agency director requesting a meeting. Bern would like to discuss with Lieutenant General Michael V. Hayden the NSA's involvement in Ballistic Missile Defense, which will never work, but will drain the national treasury and provide billions of dollars in corporate welfare to weapons contractors. Other items to discuss would be Echelon, the NSA's participation in the Space Command Vision for 2020 and its mission of illegal intelligence gathering. The director of the NSA consistently declines to meet with BERN, so peace and justice activists intend to organize a protest at Fort Meade.

As part of the protest, activists will go to the National Security Agency bearing "Star Wars" balloons. Missile defense is unworkable, as even decoys can outwit the system. So the balloons will be delivered to the NSA to be used as a more cost-effective form of missile defense.

WHEN: Wednesday, July 4, 2001 at 10:30 AM

WHERE: National Security Agency, 9800 Savage Road, Fort Meade, Maryland

WHY: Independence Day is an appropriate holiday to demand a meeting with the head of the NSA so that secret matters can be opened to the light of the democratic process. BERN believes the work of the National Security Agency, spying on foreigners, both friend and foe, to be an illegal invasion of privacy.

The NSA's involvement in missile defense is particularly noxious. Missile defense will only lead to an arms race that is both dangerous and costly. The NSA must be challenged for its role in wasting billions of dollars for Star Wars, when funding is desperately needed for social services in Baltimore.

----

London vigil to stop torture of Kalahari Bushmen

http://www.survival-international.org/index2.htm

On 27 June, Survival International began a weekly vigil outside the Botswana High Commission in London. Leading up to the UN Conference on racism being held in South Africa, the vigil will highlight the serious situation of the 'Bushman' tribal peoples of the Central Kalahari.

The government of Botswana is flouting international law with its refusal to recognise the ownership rights of the Bushmen over the land they have lived on for at least 20,000 years. Harassment of the Bushmen is widespread, and Survival is extremely alarmed by recent cases of torture. In one incident, 12 Bushmen were tortured by government wildlife officials over a six day period for allegedly exceeding their hunting quota. Survival has repeatedly called on the government to ensure such attacks cease.

When 5pm-7pm every Wednesday from 27 June 2001 to 29 August 2001

Where Opposite the Botswana High Commission, 6 Stratford Place, London W1 (nearest tube is Bond Street)

In the 1980s, the government of Botswana began to settle the formerly nomadic tribes collectively known as Bushmen. Since then, hundreds have been evicted from their ancestral homelands in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, originally created as a haven for the Bushmen in the 1960s.

Those outside the Reserve live in bleak resettlement camps where there is little opportunity for hunting or gathering of fruits and tubers, the Bushmen's usual source of food, and social problems such as alcoholism have arisen. Inside the Reserve, hunting is severely restricted, and Bushmen are often tortured for supposed over-hunting. The formerly independent Bushmen have now become reliant on government rations. Recently, however, the local council voted to withdraw all services to Bushmen communities within the Reserve, in an attempt to drive them out.

http://www.survival-international.org

Survival is a worldwide organisation supporting tribal peoples. It stands for their right to decide their own future and helps them protect their lives, lands and human rights.

----

China Tries Tiananmen Protester

New York Times
July 2, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-China-Human-Rights.html

BEIJING (AP) -- A man who twice protested in Beijing's Tiananmen Square over the military's crushing of pro-democracy demonstrations has been tried on subversion charges, a judge said Monday.

Shen Zhidao was arrested near the square on June 4, 1999 -- the 10th anniversary of the massacre of hundreds by government tanks and troops -- after he raised an umbrella covered in pro-democracy slogans. He was arrested again in the square exactly a year later, after holding banners saying ``Overthrow despotic communism'' and ``Freedom, democracy, fairness, human rights.''

Shen was tried June 18 on charges he subverted state power, said Zhu Xiaoguang, presiding judge of the Intermediate People's Court in the northeastern city of Shenyang, in a telephone interview.

It was not clear when the outcome of the trial would be announced.

``The case is still under study and discussion,'' Zhu said.

Shen is not in police custody, and still lives with his wife at home in Shenyang.

Zhu hinted that Shen might be treated leniently, suggesting he was suffering from mental illness during his protests.

``As for his mental problem, we will take it into account according to the laws,'' Zhu said.

In another case related to the massacre, a pro-democracy group reported police charged a south China businessman with sedition, saying he distributed e-mail copies of a book called ``The Tiananmen Papers,'' which claims to tell the inside story of the government's decision to use force to end the 1989 protests.

According to the Hong Kong-based group, the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy, Li Hongmin was arrested in Shaoyang, Hunan province, on June 13 after sending friends electronic versions of the Chinese-language edition of the book.

The book reports Chinese leadership was at odds over how to handle the protests, and alleges key decisions were made by retired senior leaders rather than the formal heads of the Communist Party and government.

The American academics who compiled the book have said it is based on smuggled internal documents, minutes of meetings and recordings of phone calls among Chinese leaders leading up to the crackdown.


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