------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Uranium shell tests halted
U.S. Toughens Terms for Talks With North Korea
North Korea tests its missile engine
N. Korea Missile Work Continues
'Fate of mankind' resting on US missile talks - Putin
Russia's nuclear-waste gambit
Bush budget has $116 M for Tridents
Nuclear Management tests shut Mich. nuke for cracks
EPA rule for Yucca Mountain faces two lawsuits
Nuclear waste shipment passes through the state

MILITARY
Bush Decides to Keep Sanctions on Afghanistan
Pentagon Role in Africa May End
Last Kalahari Bushmen tortured & facing starvation
U.S. "Supplier of Choice" for Weapons Sales
Defiant Milosevic set for Hague court
Milosevic scorns UN tribunal
Milosevic Won't Cooperate With U.N.
Spray or Else: U.S. Cuts No Slack in Colombia
Plan to Burn Chemical Arms Worries Alabamians
DynCorp's Drug Problem
U.S. and Britain Drop Effort to Change Iraq Trade Rules
The Iraqi threat
U.S., Britain to Extend UN Program
Iraq Hails Dropping of UN Vote As 'Victory'
A Conservative Total for U.S. Aid to Israel: $91 Billion
Israel Continues Policy of Killing Militants
NATO Chief Indicates Macedonia to Receive Aid If Peace Holds
U.S. Drops Objection to Russia Eventually Joining NATO
Germany Won't Intervene in Macedonia
Georgia and Russia spar over army base
Padre Island Impact Study Ordered
Vietnam agrees to urgent dioxin survey

OTHER
Shell to provide solar power for Chinese homes
Power Company Rebuts Accusations of Gouging
Bush Scales Back Plans to Drill in Gulf of Mexico
Power Company Rebuts Accusations of Gouging
Japan Has Pivotal Role to Play in Kyoto Pact Talks
Waste burning hurts sexual development - Greenpeace
US, Hanoi officials discuss Agent Orange
Ford Money Drives Environmental Partnership
Climate Research: The Devil Is in the Details
Wood Products to Get Arsenic Label
G.O.P Leaders in the House Fight Stem-Cell Aid
AIDS Epidemic Takes Toll on Black Women
Escape From a Prison-State
Turkey Arrests Leader of Sect Over Prayers Without Permit
Turkey Sends Preacher to Jail
Text for Free Trade Accord Released
China, EU, U.S. Say Breakthrough in WTO Entry Talks
Teenager Dies at Arizona Boot Camp
CIA Gave $10 Million to Peru's Ex-Spymaster
Two Panels Begin Reviewing Technologies and Reorganization
Last Parts of U.S. Spy Plane Leave China

ACTIVISTS
Activists Invade British 'Star Wars' Base
Protesters occupy radar base
Critic of China Flees to U.S., Fearing Arrest in Crackdown
Protesters confront police at Salzburg summit


-------- NUCLEAR


-------- depleted uranium

Uranium shell tests halted;
Firing was re-started in February

Tuesday, 3 July, 2001
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/scotland/newsid_1420000/1420916.stm

Testing of depleted uranium shells has been halted at the Dundrennan firing range in Kirkcudbright.

Defence Minister Lewis Moonie revealed in a House of Commons written answer that the Ministry of Defence has put its firing programme on hold.

The tests caused a storm of controversy after allegations of a possible link between depleted uranium and cancer.

Mr Moonie said the firing programme - which is only half way through - could be resumed.

The suspension of firing will be welcomed by some residents living near the Dundrennan facility who called for the shell tests to be stopped amid growing fears about the health risks posed by depleted uranium.

The MoD insisted that the environmental contamination caused by the shells was negligible as they were fired into a cloth target and there was no known risk to public health.

There has been no firing at the range recently because of the foot-and-mouth restrictions over access to land.

On Tuesday afternoon, in a written Commons answer, Mr Moonie revealed testing had come to an end.

He said the MoD was satisfied by the quality of the tests on the uranium penetrators - which are used in shells fired by Challenger tanks - and no more are needed.

However, he did not rule out further firings in the future.

Thousands of depleted uranium tipped shells have been test fired from the range into the Solway Firth in the past 20 years.

'Balkan syndrome'

Public concern at the testing has grown following allegations about a possible link between exposure to depleted uranium and cases of cancer among British troops who served in the peacekeeping force in the Balkans.

Nato warplanes dropped 10,000 rounds of depleted uranium ammunition in Bosnia in 1994 and 1995.

Soldiers from several countries, including Britain, Italy, Portugal and France, have fallen ill with what has been dubbed Balkan Syndrome.

-------- korea

U.S. Toughens Terms for Talks With North Korea

New York Times
July 3, 2001
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/03/world/03KORE.html?pagewanted=all

Though the Bush administration has now agreed to reopen talks with North Korea, it has set demands far broader than those pressed by President Bill Clinton, raising the prospect of protracted negotiations while Pyongyang continues to sell missiles around the world.

Just six months ago, American and North Korean diplomats appeared to be closing in on a deal to ban the development, production and sale of North Korean missiles. But now, reacting to the changed signals from Washington, North Korea has also publicly staked out a tough stance.

The two sides have yet to set a date for high-level talks. And Bush administration aides have told the South Koreans that the chances of Pyongyang's agreeing to all of its demands are low.

Some senior Bush administration officials hope that economic pressures will lead North Korea to seek a far-reaching accommodation with the West. But some experts worry that unless both sides indicate a willingness to compromise, the result may be deadlock while North Korea exports medium-range or even long- range missiles. In the face of a prolonged stalemate, they say, North Korea might also threaten to resume testing long-range missiles, thereby developing the means to strike the United States.

The basic position of the Bush administration, worked out after an intensive review, is that an accord that focuses on missiles is no longer sufficient. Only a comprehensive program to limit North Korea's military potential, administration officials say, can serve as a foundation for improved relations with the West. So North Korea must make simultaneous concessions on nuclear issues and conventional arms, and any missile agreement must be subject to extensive verification.

"We need to see some progress in all areas," a senior administration official said. "We are prepared to wait. We don't feel any urgency to provide goodies to them in response to their rhetoric or threats."

But while the administration is demanding more from North Korea, it has spoken in only general terms about what economic and political benefits it is prepared to give in return.

North Korea, for its part, is now insisting on millions of dollars in aid to ease a chronic electricity shortage and has put pressure on Washington by freezing its relationship with South Korea. And it has shown no sign of stopping its missile sales.

Continued sales by North Korea would be a worrisome development for the United States. The administration has cited the missile threat from "rogue states" in trying to build international support for an antimissile defense.

"It makes sense for the administration to try to get progress on all of the issues they have identified: missile, nuclear and conventional," said Gary Samore, a senior fellow at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies who was a top aide for proliferation issues on President Clinton's National Security Council.

"But that is going to be difficult to achieve, especially in the absence of clear inducements," Mr. Samore said. "If a comprehensive package is not possible, the administration should look at a stand-alone deal on missile exports because the North Koreans are actively selling missiles around the world, especially to the Middle East."

With a million-man army, nuclear expertise and missile factories, North Korea has long been a major worry for the United States. Acting at the advice of former Defense Secretary William J. Perry, the Clinton administration stressed the importance of focusing on North Korea's nuclear and missile programs.

The reasoning was that those programs created new dangers for the United States, and that Washington had long experience in deterring North Korea's conventional military threat.

In 1994, the Clinton administration and North Korea worked out an "agreed framework," in which Pyongyang agreed to freeze its plutonium production program and eventually to dismantle it. In return, the United States agreed to replace North Korea's graphite-moderated reactors with two light-water reactors, which are less useful in making bomb-grade material.

Under that understanding, North Korea also agreed to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect several suspected nuclear waste sites and place any undeclared plutonium stockpiles under international safeguards.

Those steps are deemed necessary because the West suspects that North Korea has separated more plutonium than it has acknowledged - perhaps enough for one or two bombs' worth in all. Under the agreement, North Korea is required to cooperate with the energy agency once a "significant portion" of the light-water reactors is completed.

Having frozen Pyongyang's nuclear program, the Clinton administration turned its attention to North Korea's missile program. In 1999, North Korea agreed to suspend tests of long-range missiles like the Taepo Dong-1 missile that it test-fired in August 1998. Pyongyang has extended that moratorium through 2003.

In the final year of his presidency, Mr. Clinton sought to negotiate a broader accord that would end North Korea's production of medium- and long-range missiles, as well as the export of missile technology.

To compensate the North Koreans, the Clinton administration offered a presidential trip to Pyongyang, which would signify a new political relationship between the two countries, as well as hundreds of millions of dollars in annual food aid and other assistance. Mr. Clinton also agreed to a North Korean proposal to provide two or three free launches of North Korean civilian satellites annually. But time ran out before the deal could be nailed down.

The Bush administration initially refused to continue the talks with North Korea, saying it needed to conduct a review. That policy distressed President Kim Dae Jung of South Korea, who had initiated a "sunshine policy" aimed at ending the hostility on the Korean peninsula and who has been hoping for a second summit meeting with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il.

After completing its assessment in early June, the Bush administration decided to re-engage with North Korea. Many commentators concluded that pressure from South Korea and anxious European allies, as well as coaxing from Mr. Bush's father, had led the new administration to temper its hard-line instincts and continue engaging Pyongyang.

"There is agreement on the necessity to engage with North Korea in a constructive way, and there is agreement not to try to bury North Korea," a senior administration official said. "We support the South Korean sunshine policy."

But the re-engagement came with important differences.

One was the broadened agenda. The Bush administration wants North Korea to start cooperating now with the atomic energy agency to resolve discrepancies over its past plutonium production. Former Clinton administration aides say it would be good for North Korea to do this because it would fulfill the nuclear deal Washington made with Pyongyang and pave the way for the light- water reactors to be completed without further long delays.

But Clinton aides also note that North Korea is not legally obliged to do that until the main nonnuclear components of the light-water reactors are delivered, which is not expected until 2005, according to the current schedule. And Pyongyang may balk on early cooperation with the energy agency to keep the West guessing about its nuclear potential and maintain leverage on the United States to keep its bargain.

The Bush administration also wants North Korea to ease the threat that its huge conventional military forces along the border pose to South Korea. The administration has yet to define what steps it has in mind, but they are expected to include modest confidence-building measures, like giving notice of military exercises.

Even on the missile issue, the administration seems to be driving a harder bargain than Clinton officials did. The verification measures Bush officials have devised call for "challenge inspections" in which American officials would have access to a range of sites in North Korea at short notice.

Reflecting deep-seated suspicion of North Korea's autocratic government, administration officials say such rigorous verification is needed to guard against cheating. But the administration's verification package goes well beyond what most Clinton aides believed was needed or obtainable, given Pyongyang's wariness of outsiders.

While stiffening demands, the Bush administration does not appear to have increased the benefits it is prepared to provide North Korea; it may even be offering less. The administration has suggested that it is prepared to take "political steps," a phrase that is generally taken to mean normalizing relations, organizing assistance by international financial institutions like the Asian Development Bank, and providing some aid.

But wary of the perception that it is willing to pay North Korea to restrain its military potential, the administration has been vague about how much it is prepared to do and noncommittal about the satellite launches offered by the Clinton administration.

A senior Bush administration official said the Clinton administration had been too generous in trying to secure a missile accord.

"I would say that we are definitely not willing to do that much for that little," the official said. "We are certainly not going to do a presidential trip. We think they were a little overeager."

Some issues remain unsettled in the Bush administration and could re-emerge if the negotiations make headway, some American officials say, like how much progress to demand in the nuclear and conventional areas if a missile deal appears to be at hand and how much aid to give North Korea.

"There are no preconditions or anything we can't talk about," a senior official said, referring to talks with Pyongyang.

But some experts see a tough road ahead.

"The Bush administration has not picked up the ball where Clinton dropped it," said Lee Sigal, the author of a book on negotiating with North Korea. "It has moved the goal posts."

----

North Korea tests its missile engine

July 3, 2001
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010703-20309440.htm

North Korea conducted an engine test of its long-range missile last week in a sign the communist government was continuing development of the Taepodong missile after agreeing last year to limit flight tests. U.S. intelligence officials said the ground test was the first major development in the long-range-missile program since North Koreans conducted the surprise first flight test of the Taepodong-1 in August 1998.

"It's unclear why they conducted the test," said one intelligence official.

"It could have been to test the capabilities of the existing engine, or there could have been other, unknown reasons."

Other officials said the engine test is another sign of the growing anti-U.S. posture of the Pyongyang government, which has sharply increased its verbal attacks on the United States over the past several months.

Official statements from North Korea have said the government would resume missile testing and development in response to U.S. plans to develop missile defenses -- a key defense priority of the Bush administration.

The engine firing was detected at a testing facility near the town of Taepodong on North Korea's northeastern coast, officials told The Washington Times on condition of anonymity.

The effects of the engine test -- a large burn area -- were photographed by U.S. military reconnaissance aircraft, said officials familiar with intelligence reports of the test.

North Korea is working on a longer-range missile known as the Taepodong-2, which will be able to hit Alaska and Hawaii with a nuclear, chemical or biological warhead, said defense and intelligence officials.

Some officials said the engine test could be related to Taepodong-2 development.

The ground test does not appear to violate North Korea's announcement last year that it will not conduct flight tests while it holds discussions with the United States on its missile program.

The engine test came less than a month after the Bush administration announced it would resume talks on the program with the isolated North Korean government.

The decision to continue the Clinton administration policy of engagement with North Korea followed a policy review by the Bush national security team. The policy calls for pursuing negotiations on missiles and a 1994 nuclear agreement that was supposed to have frozen North Korea's nuclear arms program.

Critics of the engagement policy, including many in Congress, have said it was tantamount to appeasement of the communist government.

The engine test coincided with a summit last weekend between President Bush and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who discussed U.S. missile-defense plans and other topics at Camp David.

North Korea's state-controlled official press said last week that the proposed resumption of talks with the United States was an excuse to learn the missile program secrets of North Korea, formally called the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

"As far as the U.S.-touted issue of 'missile verification' is concerned, it is aimed at sifting through the DPRK's national defense industry and military bases," the Rodong Shinmun newspaper said. "The DPRK has no intention to beg for a dialogue with its bullet-proof jacket stripped off."

Mr. Bush said earlier this year he would insist on "verification" of any agreement with North Korea on limits to its missile program.

North Korea's official Central News Agency reported yesterday that the United States had increased military surveillance of the country.

A U.S. U-2 reconnaissance jet flew over Korea on Friday in what the news agency said was "aerial espionage." Earlier last month, several RC-135 surveillance aircraft "committed espionage on strategic targets," the news agency said.

In September 1999, the Clinton administration agreed to lift some economic sanctions against North Korea in exchange for a pledge by the Pyongyang government to freeze long-range missile tests.

North Korea reaffirmed the flight-test ban in June 2000.

However, North Korea has threatened to continue flight tests of its missiles in response to U.S. development of a national missile-defense system.

A Pentagon report made public in September said "progress" in North Korea's ballistic missile development program is a sign that "it remain a top priority" of the communist government.

"Pyongyang is developing multi-stage missiles with the goal of fielding systems capable of striking the continental United States," the report said. "They tested the [1,240-mile] range Taepodong-1 and continue work on the [3,100-mile] Taepodong-2."

Last week's engine test, which involved placing a large rocket booster on its side and firing the engine, occurred at the same missile testing facility where the first flight test originated.

The North Korean government contended that the missile was a space launcher that put a satellite into orbit.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il told Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright during her visit to Pyongyang last year that the 1998 Taepodong flight test was a satellite launch and would be the last.

The North Korean leader also sought to reach an agreement with the United States to limit its missile program in exchange for U.S. help in launching satellites.

The deal was close to being concluded at the end of the Clinton administration and was to have involved a visit to North Korea by President Clinton.

----

N. Korea Missile Work Continues

New York Times
July 3, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-US-North-Korea.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- North Korea is going ahead with development of its long-range missile, raising questions among U.S. officials about the Asian country's willingness to move toward a missile-control agreement with the United States.

Last week, according to a senior Bush administration official, North Korea conducted an engine test of the Taepodong-1 missile. That cast doubt on whether the communist government is applying restraint to the program.

North Korea promised in September 1999 to suspend flight tests of the long-range missile, and the United States responded by lifting some economic sanctions that had been applied to the country.

Narrowly, North Korea has kept to the bargain by not launching any missiles, said the official who spoke to The Associated Press on Tuesday, on condition he would not be identified.

But the program can be advanced considerably without flight tests, and it is clear that North Korea is going ahead with development of the missile, the official said.

Taepodong-1 was flight tested in August 1998. Concern over North Korea's program was one of the reasons cited by Bush administration officials in exploring the possibility of building a defense for the United States against long-range missiles.

In reply, North Korea has warned it would resume flight tests if the administration proceeds with the missile-shield program.

According to The Washington Times, effects of the engine test -- a large burn area -- were photographed by U.S. military reconnaissance aircraft.

The newspaper said Tuesday the engine test could be related to development of a longer-range missile, the Taepodong-2, which would be able to hit Alaska and Hawaii with a nuclear, chemical or biological warhead.

After months of reconsideration, the Bush administration decided in June to resume talks with North Korea, at a low level. One of the aims is to try to determine whether its leader, Kim Jong Il is interested in reconciliation with an accommodation with the United States.

The Clinton administration avidly pursued Pyongyang, providing food to help offset droughts and arranging to provide North Korea with new sources of civilian power in exchange for freezing its nuclear weapons program.

No further talks have been set since an opening exchange was held three weeks ago in New York. If the dialogue picks up speed, the United States will try to turn discussions to reducing North Koreas huge war-making capability, almost 50 years after the Korean War ended.

The State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Tuesday he could not say whether North Korea had tested the engine. ``Whether or not such an event occurred would be an intelligence matter, and I can't talk about intelligence matters,'' he said.

But, Boucher said, the Bush administration believes North Korea's missile activities continue to pose a threat to regional security and stability and to U.S. friends, forces and interests.

``We expect North Korea to abide by its moratorium on the launch of long-range missiles. We will continue to take steps to address North Korea's overall missile efforts and to work closely with other countries in doing so,'' Boucher said.

The spokesman also said a flight test ``would be a very serious matter and contrary to the understandings between the two sides.''

Gen. Thomas Schwartz, commanding general of the combined U.S.-South Korean Forces, told the Senate Armed Services Committee this spring that after a summit with South Korea in June 2000 the training cycle for the North Korean People's Army ``was the most extensive ever recorded.''

-------- russia

'Fate of mankind' resting on US missile talks - Putin

Tuesday, July 3, 2001
AFP
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/world/2001/0703/wor6.htm

RUSSIA: The Russian President, Mr Putin, cautioned yesterday that the "fate of mankind" depended on Moscow's negotiations with the US over Washington's controversial plans to abandon the 1972 ABM treaty.

Mr Putin warned that Moscow was prepared to drop its plans to eliminate nuclear missiles from its arsenal should President Bush go ahead with further testing of the missile shield.

"We are ready for future controlled reduction of weapons of mass destruction to the level of 1,500 warheads and even lower," Mr Putin told a joint press conference with the visiting French President, Mr Jacques Chirac.

"But this problem is closely linked to keeping the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty," said Mr Putin.

"We do not want to monopolise this discussion with the United States, because the fate of mankind rides on how this question is resolved."

Mr Putin added that "one binding security system cannot be replaced with another if [the new system] flings open the doors to new excesses and threats."

Mr Chirac for his part said that missile defence was an issue that had to be resolved between Moscow and Washington and issued no direct comment on the dispute. France has previously expressed concern over US missile defence plans.

Mr Igor Sergeyev, Mr Putin's spokesman on nuclear issues, warned over the weekend that if Washington withdrew from the ABM treaty, Russia would take the necessary measures "to secure its national interests and its natural security."

Last Wednesday Russia testfired an intercontinental ballistic missile of a kind which Moscow has earlier threatened to pile up with nuclear warheads in breach of existing agreements.

--------

Russia's nuclear-waste gambit
A $21 billion cash for trash plan is now before Putin.
Critics say it will magnify safety problems.

By Scott Peterson
The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/07/03/p6s1.htm MOSCOW

The thicket of nettles is chest high as Vladimir Katzenbogen and Nikolai Popov force their way through, searching with Geiger counters and a gamma-ray detector for radioactive hotspots.

The brush thickens, then opens up to the bank of a muddy stream beside an abandoned factory in northwest Moscow. The crackling of the detector leads the two-man patrol to a hole where, at some point in Russia's less-than-careful nuclear past, radioactive material was dumped.

"People are usually joyful when they see us, to know that this control is going on so they can live safely," says Mr. Katzenbogen, who works for Radon, the government's radiation-control arm.

Two weeks ago, a Radon patrol seized more than 50 pounds of contaminated berries from a market - a common occurrence. In Moscow alone in the past five years, Radon has disposed of some 450 tons of potentially dangerous material - from soil at construction sites to market mushrooms - as limits on acceptable levels of radioactive contamination have steadily strengthened.

But while the patrols demonstrate a measure of success in Russia's efforts to clean up its nuclear act, they are dwarfed by the magnitude of the problem resulting from past failures to safely manage spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste. Which is why many people at home and abroad are skeptical of a government plan - awaiting President Vladimir Putin's signature - to import 20,000 tons of nuclear waste over 10 years, earning a projected $21 billion.

"I don't think you'll find any place else in the world where spent nuclear fuel is stored in such bad conditions," says Thomas Nilsen, who studies Russia for the Norwegian environmental group Bellona, in Oslo. "The first priority should be to secure spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste already existing in Russia. You don't do that by importing more."

Moscow's nuclear track record includes the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and last year's sinking of the Kursk submarine, with two nuclear-powered engines on board. Decades of improper storage of nuclear waste have left environmental devastation from Murmansk across Siberia to the Kamchatka Peninsula nine time zones away.

Russia's Ministry of Atomic Energy, or Minatom, is pushing the waste-import plan as a means of rescuing the industry. Proceeds also are meant to be used for a cleanup of waste sites, and may avert a disaster for the "100 old nuclear submarines" that are "becoming rusty and that one beautiful morning might just sink," says Minatom spokesman Vitaly Nasonov.

Current nuclear-waste storage facilities are virtually full, however, the only working processing plant is nearly a quarter-century old, and after decades of neglect, transport infrastructure - by which radioactive material would be moved - is collapsing.

"It's a calculated risk," says John Reppert, head of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Mass. "It is something they are clearly technically able to handle," he says. "But it is not something they have traditionally handled well or they wouldn't have that mess to clean up." And while Russia's vast unused spaces mean a wide margin for error, Mr. Reppert adds: "If they are going to create the world's largest and least-safe nuclear-waste dump, then it will be a long-term consequence for the rest of the world."

Critics, such as Bellona's Mr. Nilsen, also are concerned that the money will be misspent. "We are suspicious that most of the income from spent nuclear fuel will end up inside Moscow's ring road, and not in Siberia where the money is needed for environmental clean-up," he says.

There is one encouraging example. Reppert says that Russian experts have adhered strictly to tough fiscal and radiological standards when using official American funds - some of which he helped account for - to deal with weapons-grade nuclear material. The US is spending $874 million on such nonproliferation projects this year, though not all are deemed so successful. President Bush's 2002 budget slashes this spending by 10 percent.

The key to the large, new program is likely to be transparency, says Reppert. But unlike the built-in oversight tied to US donations, there may be few checks on how new funds are used.

Already, the plans are taking an unusual political path. The measure was due before the Federation Council, Russia's upper house, on Friday. But two days earlier, council chairman Yegor Stroyev quietly signed off on the plan, sending it directly to the president.

The plan is far from popular. A poll commissioned by the environmental group Greenpeace - echoed by other surveys - found that nearly 80 percent of Russians want Mr. Putin to block nuclear imports.

Yuri Schekochikhin, an opposition lawmaker in the Duma, or lower house, says he has seen the contents of one Berents Sea nuclear-waste facility washing out from a cracked concrete housing. The spillover, he says, sent a Geiger counter "off the scale."

"Russia is not ready to handle this dangerous cargo," he says.

Russia's scientific community appears divided. "Mass imports of spent nuclear fuel mean unavoidable catastrophic consequences for the ecology that will threaten the lives of Russia for centuries to come," nine members of the Russian Academy of Sciences warned in an open letter last month. Another letter - signed by three Nobel prize-winning Russian scientists - urged Putin to approve the bill, saying: "Nuclear fuel is not waste," will create jobs, and prove a future energy boon.

The example of Moscow's radiation-control teams should be taken into account, says Radon first deputy director Vladimir Safronov. Teams still find vials of highly radioactive radium paint - once used for luminescent clock faces, instrument dials, and even fishing lures. Rules first imposed in the 1960s and '70s, have only grown tougher. In 1998, acceptable contamination levels for food were slashed by a factor of 10. Eight tons of produce were destroyed that year. Mr. Safronov is "absolutely sure" that there are enough nuclear specialists to ensure the safety of the waste-import plan, but he is concerned that few young scientists are training for the future.

Radiation specialist Katzenbogen is not convinced. "Our generation will bring this material into the country, the next will process it, and the third will pay for all the mistakes," he says. "Everyone was sure that Chernobyl could never happen, and it did."

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

Bush budget has $116 M for Tridents

The SUN, Bremerton, Washington,
July 3, 2001,
By Lloyd A. Pritchett Sun Staff
From: Stephen Kobasa <skobasa@pop.snet.net>

There's little opposition in Congress to the conversion money.

President Bush's newly revised defense budget contains $116 million to kick off a project many thought would never happen - the conversion of at least two Bangor-based Trident submarines to carry cruise missiles instead of nuclear warheads.

The funding is just a down payment on the expected $1.9 billion cost of the conversion program. But it shows the Bush administration is firmly committed to the plan.

"This (start-up funding) is clearly a manifestation of a commitment to do the project in future years," said George Behan, spokesman for U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Belfair. "It's encouraging, and we expect a portion of the work to be done at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard."

The conversion idea was first proposed more than three years ago as a way to make good use of the four oldest Trident submarines after they are removed from the strategic nuclear forces to comply with the START II arms reduction treaty.

The four subs, while older than the 14 Tridents that will remain in the strategic force, are still relatively new by Navy standards. All have at least 20 more years of potential service left in them if their nuclear fuel is replenished.

Under the current plan, two of the four subs would be converted to carry up to 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles apiece, along with dual advanced SEAL commando delivery systems.

The conversion would take place immediately after the subs' removal from the strategic fleet in 2003-04.

When first proposed a few years ago, the idea of putting cruise missiles on the Trident platform faced long odds, and some fast-attack submariners derided the new concept as a billion-dollar "slow attack sub."

But Navy officials continued to refine the concept, and the Bush administration has latched onto the plan as a way of mating tremendous precision strike power with a stealthy undersea platform at a fraction of the cost of building a new sub.

The 2002 budget proposal contains $30 million for researching and developing the new concept and $86 million for advance procurement of long-lead equipment needed for the conversion, said Navy spokeswoman Lt. Brauna Carl.

Money for the actual conversion work and refueling are expected to be included in the 2003 and 2004 defense budgets. All of the funding must be approved by Congress before it can be spent.

Carl said the current plan envisions converting two Trident submarines at an estimated cost of $950 million apiece. The price tag includes refueling of the subs' nuclear powerplants.

She said the price of each individual conversion would drop to $700 million if four submarines were to be retrofitted.

So far, the proposal has generated little opposition in Congress, and many senators and representatives openly back it.

Dicks has supported the idea from the beginning because it adds to national security while providing potential benefits to local Navy facilities.

Based on discussions with top Navy officials, Dicks has said he believes that much of the conversion work could be completed at PSNS, bolstering the shipyard's work force, and that one or more converted subs could be based at the Bangor submarine base.

At the same time, however, it's expected that Connecticut's congressional delegation will try to steer the conversion work to the commercial Electric Boat Co. shipyard in Groton, Conn.

Already, U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons, R-Conn., has told Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that the plan to convert the submarines is a "brilliant ... marvelous idea."

Delegations from Georgia and Florida also are expected to try to get the converted subs homeported at Kings Bay, Ga.

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

-------- michigan

Nuclear Management tests shut Mich. nuke for cracks

USA: July 3, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11417

SAN FRANCISCO - Nuclear Management Co. is testing for possible cracks in the equipment that controls the rate of nuclear fission in its 789-megawatt Palisades nuclear power plant in Michigan, a spokesman for the company said yesterday.

On Sunday, the company reported "an indication" of a crack in a weld in part of the control equipment to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

Mark Savage, a spokesman for the company, told Reuters that all 45 "control rod drive mechanisms" will be examined using X-rays. He declined to say how the long the work will take.

Nuclear Management operates the plant for owner CMS Energy Corp. .

The control rod equipment, which sits atop the vessel that houses the nuclear reactor, acts as a brake or accelerator to control the rate of fission in the reactor, which increases or reduces the amount of electricity produced by the plant.

The plant, in South Haven, Mich., was shut on June 25 after a small leak was discovered in the primary reactor coolant system from a cracked weld.

Savage said the work "is not a safety issue because the plant is in cold shutdown." The company decided to inspect all of the control rod equipment after the first crack was found, he said.

On Friday, in a separate issue, the NRC fined Palisades $55,000 for violating NRC rules in a case involving a regulatory change in February 2000.

Consumers Energy, a unit of CMS Energy and the former operator of the plant, agreed to pay the fine.

Nuclear Management operates the nuclear plants of CMS, Xcel Energy Inc. , Alliant Energy , Wisconsin Energy Corp.'s Wisconsin Electric Power Co., and WPS Resources Corp.'s Wisconsin Public Service Co.

-------- nevada

EPA rule for Yucca Mountain faces two lawsuits

Tuesday, July 03, 2001
By Environmental News Network
http://enn.com/news/enn-stories/2001/07/07032001/yucca_44171.asp

The state of Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency and a coalition of national and Nevada-based environmental and public interest groups filed separate lawsuits June 27, challenging the new radiation protection standards for the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's radiation protection rule, which takes effect July 13, sets the standards by which the site's suitability to contain radioactive waste will be determined. At issue is where the standards will apply and for how long.

The petitions for judicial review were filed in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, by the state agency and the Citizen Action Coalition of Indiana, Citizen Alert, Natural Resources Defense Council, Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force, Nevada Desert Experience, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, and Public Citizen.

They allege that the EPA was wrong to set radiation protection standards for Yucca Mountain that last for only 10,000 years. The standards should be set for hundreds of thousands of years because the waste will be radioactive for at least that long, the plaintiffs claim.

Department of Energy scientists have estimated that peak emissions of radiation can be expected up to 800,000 years into the future.

John Hadder, northern Nevada coordinator with plaintiff group Citizen Alert, said, "This undermines the purpose of radiation protection standards, by presuming that a repository at Yucca Mountain will not contain nuclear waste throughout the thousands of years it remains dangerous."

Another source of contention is the 11 mile radius from the site where a dose of no more than 15 millirems per year is mandated. The 11 mile radius allows repository designs "to rely on dilution and dispersion rather than containment of radioactive waste," the groups said.

They don't want the repository in Nevada at all, but as standards are set, the radius of containment should be much smaller, they believe.

"Exposure limits are built around expected levels of radioactive contamination leaking from the dump, thus establishing a regulatory framework for legalized nuclear pollution in Nevada," Hadder said.

In the state's lawsuit, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects Robert Loux, says the EPA's standards fail to satisfy the agency's duty to protect the health and safety of the people of Nevada from releases from radioactive materials stored or disposed of at the Yucca Mountain repository.

Loux said the rule ignores Nevada's advice to the EPA that people may one day live much closer to Yucca Mountain than they do now. "It is not reasonable to assume that for even hundreds of years into the future that people will continue to live only where people live today," the suit says.

Loux's suit complains that EPA language expressing the "intent of isolating it [radioactive waste] for as long as reasonably possible" in the Yucca Mountain Rule "is arbitrary and capricious and violates the letter and intent of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to the detriment of public health and safety."

Yucca Mountain is the only site under consideration by the Department of Energy as a potential repository for high-level nuclear waste from weapons facilities and commercial nuclear power plants across the country. The waste is now stored on-site at these facilities.

If the Yucca Mountain repository is built, the hot waste would be transported by road and rail to Nevada. Nevada Congresswoman Shelley Berkley, a Democrat, has begun a campaign to learn the exact routes by which nuclear waste would travel on its way to Yucca Mountain.

"We have advocated a protective standard at all stages of the process leading up to this rule being finalized. We are now bringing this issue before the courts because our concerns have not been addressed," said David Adelman, senior attorney with the plaintiff Natural Resources Defense Council.

"We cannot accept a rule that sets artificially weak standards to allow a fundamentally flawed project to move forward," he said.

Meanwhile, the EPA's national ombudsman, an independent investigator within the agency, began an inquiry June 25 into the scientific basis for the EPA's Yucca Mountain radiation health standards.

Nevada Governor Kenny Guinn is opposed to the location of the repository in Nevada as are most state elected officials. In April, the governor said a new report by the U.S. Inspector General's office showed evidence that the process to find a scientifically suitable site for the storage of high-level nuclear waste has been tainted by bias targeting Yucca Mountain.

"The idea that political concerns could, in any way, affect a process with such severe health and safety ramifications for the people of Nevada is shocking and disheartening," Governor Guinn said. "The only acceptable standards for the evaluation of high-level nuclear waste storage are scientific."

-------- us nuc waste

Nuclear waste shipment passes through the state

The Associated Press,
July 3, 2001
Lincoln Journal Star (Nebraska)
http://www.journalstar.com/nebraska?story_id=3695&date=20010703&past=

A truck carrying a shipment of spent nuclear fuel has crossed the state with no problems.

Gov. Mike Johanns' office said Monday that the shipment recently passed through the state but little else could be confirmed.

Federal law prohibits government officials from commenting on any nuclear shipment until 10 days after it has reached its destination, said Chris Peterson, the governor's spokesman.

The shipment, which included uranium, was headed to the U.S. Department of Energy's National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory in Idaho.

Missouri state officials reported that the shipment was trucked across that state Wednesday, traveling on Interstates 70 and 29.

The cargo was from a German reactor and was shipped on three trucks from South Carolina. State police in each state accompanied the shipment, which was coordinated by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Several states had opposed the shipments, citing safety concerns.

"We were very pleased with the shipment and the way it went through without incident," said Capt. Chris Ricks of the Missouri Highway Patrol.

The trucks crossed Nebraska and Wyoming en route to the Idaho lab.

Peterson could not confirm what route the trucks took across Nebraska or anything other than that they did travel through.

Federal regulators gave state officials seven days' notice of the shipment, but asked that they keep its movement confidential.

The cargo was the first of a decade of shipments of foreign waste that the United States has committed to take from nuclear research reactors in more than three-dozen countries. The United States once supplied enriched uranium for those reactors.

The next shipment this summer to the Idaho lab is expected to move by rail across parts of Nebraska. That shipment will contain wastes from West Valley, N.Y., where a company once ran a center to reprocess nuclear fuel.

The Energy Department says great care is taken with the shipments, and the shipping canisters that are used can withstand extremely high heat and severe crashes.

-------- MILITARY

-------- afghanistan

Bush Decides to Keep Sanctions on Afghanistan

New York Times
July 3, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/03/world/03AFGH.html

WASHINGTON, July 2 - President Bush signed an executive order today maintaining economic sanctions against Afghanistan and its ruling Taliban movement for giving the Saudi exile Osama bin Laden a safe haven.

Mr. Bush's order continues a sanctions policy begun by the Clinton administration two years ago, after the bombing of two American Embassies in eastern Africa, for which the United States has blamed Mr. bin Laden. The order freezes all property of the Taliban in the United States and prohibits Americans from trade involving the territory of Afghanistan controlled by the Taliban.

The decision came after Washington warned Taliban leaders on Friday that they would bear responsibility for any attack on American interests by Mr. bin Laden.

The American ambassador to Pakistan, William B. Milam, delivered the warning during a meeting at the Taliban Embassy in Islamabad, the Taliban ambassador, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, said last week. He said he assured Mr. Milam that the Taliban would not allow him to attack American targets from their territory.

-------- africa

Pentagon Role in Africa May End
Training Program Put Under Review

By Douglas Farah
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, July 3, 2001; Page A16
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10851-2001Jul2?language=printer

BUNDASE TRAINING CAMP, Ghana -- U.S. Special Forces trainers strode up and down the firing line here one recent morning, barking instructions and encouragement as Ghanaian troops struggled to get a feel for the new American-supplied M-60 machine guns they will take with them to nearby Sierra Leone on a U.N. peacekeeping mission.

Earlier in the morning, some of the 100 Americans from the 3rd Special Forces Group trained the Ghanaians on M-16 rifles. During the 10-week training program, the troops also will learn to use mortars and sophisticated communications equipment.

"We are trying to make sure these people will operate under live fire," Lt. Col. Jay Glover said as he sat in the camp's U.S.-style mess tent built for the training. "If they can't, people will get killed when they turn around and go into combat."

Glover and his team are part of Operation Focus Relief, the most visible and costly of the myriad programs the Pentagon has been conducting in 22 countries of sub-Saharan Africa. They include training elite battalions like this one for peacekeeping duties, readying other soldiers for disaster relief, AIDS prevention, and other smaller programs.

But many of the programs, which together cost $130 million a year, may be short-lived. Most were initiated by former president Bill Clinton as a compromise between sending U.S. troops into war-torn African countries and doing nothing. They are now under review by the Bush administration, which is divided over what military commitments to make on this continent.

The White House must assess whether the programs are "misguided, inadequately resourced or simply need more time to bear fruition," according to a working paper published last month co-written by Jendayi E. Frazer, director of African affairs at the National Security Council. Despite the programs, the paper said, "there was no noticeable change in any of Africa's wars."

During a visit to Africa last month, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell acknowledged that he disagrees with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld over funding military missions here.

The United States, Powell said, should remain committed to equipping and training African peacekeepers, but Rumsfeld "is always looking for opportunities to back off on some of the overseas commitments we have. It is just trying to find the right balance between getting too committed and not getting committed enough."

So far, two 800-man Nigerian battalions have been trained, equipped and deployed to Sierra Leone under the $90 million Focus Relief program. The Ghanaian battalion, along with one from Senegal and three from Nigeria, are to be deployed by the end of the year.

The program was rushed into existence last year after the rebel Revolutionary United Front in Sierra Leone took 500 U.N. peacekeepers hostage. With the U.N. operation in disarray and Britain, the former colonial power there, rushing in troops, Clinton was under pressure to do something to help fight a rebel force renowned for hacking off the arms and legs of women and children.

He was unwilling to commit troops and opted instead to provide training and equipment for seven West African battalions to step into the breach. "Certainly the motivation was to get troops on the ground that were not U.S. troops," said a senior Pentagon official.

According to U.N. sources and observers in Sierra Leone, the two Nigerian battalions are a marked improvement over other African forces deployed there, but have not yet faced any serious challenges in combat.

A broader U.S. program is the $20 million-a-year African Crisis Response Initiative, started in 1996 to create a pan-African force for peacekeeping and disaster relief. U.S. Special Forces provide training, uniforms and communications equipment but no weapons.

With State Department funding, the ACRI program has trained 8,000 troops since 1997, and plans to train a total of 12,000, U.S. officials said.

It began when the Clinton administration feared Burundi would implode on the heels of the 1994 Rwanda genocide crisis. A U.S. official familiar with the program said it was initially "ill thought-out and rushed" through the policy-approval process.

None of Africa's major armies took part, either because they declined or could not qualify because of rules that limited participation to countries with democratic governments. Nigeria was initially ineligible and later chose, along with South Africa, not to participate. Uganda, Ethiopia and Ivory Coast all joined but were suspended because of military coups, political unrest or involvement in wars. Only smaller countries such as Benin, Malawi, Mali and Ghana signed up.

The NSC paper said that after spending more than $100 million on ACRI, "it is unclear what the United States has to show for its efforts."

Other programs include a $10 million U.S. Navy program to combat the spread of AIDS in African armed forces, and the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, which brings regional military and civilian leaders together.

In Guinea, the United States has supplied more than $1 million of communications equipment, spare parts and meals to its army. A multimillion-dollar aid package is under consideration, Pentagon officials said.

Many African armed forces, faced with sharp budget cutbacks and the end of Cold War largess, welcome the U.S. training and the equipment that often goes with it.

Ghana, participating in both Focus Relief and ACRI, is one of the most enthusiastic countries about the new military ties. In an interview, Defense Minister Kwame Addo-Kufuor said his troops received advanced equipment and "orientation toward democratic traditions and a better appreciation of the democratic way of life."

About 300 of the 800 soldiers being trained here come from the 64th Battalion, known for its loyalty to former president Jerry Rawlings, who led two coups, governed the country for 20 years and is widely accused of using the unit to suppress dissent and violate human rights. Rawlings left office in January.

None of the units trained in either Focus Relief or ACRI has been accused of human rights abuses. But human rights groups argue that training armies that have histories of brutality must include effective vetting of participants and have a strong focus on human rights and humanitarian law.

Janet Fleischman, Africa director of Human Rights Watch, said human rights training and vetting are the "weakest link" in the Focus Relief program. "If done right, with strong human rights vetting, humanitarian law instruction and a clear mechanism for monitoring and accountability, this could be a new model," she said. "But we haven't seen if they are going to give sufficient emphasis to these fields to make it work."

Lt. Col. Glover said troops he trains receive seven hours of human rights instruction, with additional training incorporated into other exercises.

A senior Pentagon official said "all participating individuals are vetted for human rights violations." But in the cases of Nigeria and Ghana, where until recently the United States has had scant military contact, vetting is limited to checking the names of training candidates against lists of suspected rights abusers kept by the State Department, Defense Department or intelligence agencies.

"We don't really know who these guys are or where they come from," acknowledged a U.S. official in the region. "We have very little to match the names against because we haven't worked with this army for decades."

-------- africa

Last Kalahari Bushmen tortured & facing starvation

News from Survival International
Tue, 03 Jul 2001
http://www.survival.org.uk/bushmanuab0105.htm

The last Kalahari Bushmen are being forced to leave the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) in Botswana. Survival has received a report that the local district council intends to cut essential services to the Bushmen such as food, water and basic healthcare. This latest move is part of a long standing drive by the government of Botswana to evict the Khwe Bushmen from their land to make way for tourism and diamond mining.

The President of Botswana was in the UK last month to promote Botswana's diamond mining industry, with the slogan "Diamonds for development". However diamonds could mean death for the Bushmen who live in the mineral rich CKGR. If the central government approves the district council's decision this will destroy the Bushmen communities in the CKGR.

The authorities forbid this hunter gatherer people from hunting more than a few animals a year, and have now voted to withdraw their food and water supply in an attempt to drive them from the CKGR. Several Bushmen have recently been tortured by wildlife officials and local police for supposedly exceeding their hunting allowance. The government is forcing the Bushmen to choose between starvation and leaving the land they have lived on for 20,000 years.

In the 1960s the government settled the formerly nomadic Bushmen. The authorities severely restricted the numbers of animals the Bushmen are allowed to hunt, making them dependent on government rations.

The Central Kalahari Game Reserve was created in the 1960s as a haven for the Bushmen and the wildlife on which they depend. However since the 1980s the government of Botswana has repeatedly tried to evict Bushmen communities from their ancestral land. The government is violating international law by not recognising the Bushmen's land ownership rights.

This week Survival is launching a letter writing campaign in support of the Bushmen's rights. Survival's Director General, Stephen Corry, said today, "The government of Botswana's outrageous and illegal treatment of its Bushmen today makes a mockery of its claim that its diamonds are 'clean'."

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.

http://www.survival-international.org

-------- arms sales

U.S. "Supplier of Choice" for Weapons Sales

The Role of U.S. Arms Transfers in Human Rights Violations:
Rhetoric Versus Reality, July 3, 2001 by William D. Hartung www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/reports/testimony030701.htm

From: "Frida Berrigan" <BerrigaF@newschool.edu>

New York, NY. The United States remained the world's leading arms merchant in 2000, with almost $18.6 billion in sales, according to a new report from the Congressional Research Service. Almost 70% of U.S. weapons were sold to the developing world.

The release of this authoritative report, Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 1993- 2000, provides an opportunity to examine U.S. weapons sales to regions of conflict.

International arms sales totaled nearly $36.9 billion in 2000, an increase of 8 percent. The U.S. was responsible for almost half the weapons sold, but was not the only major arms merchant. Russia was second with $7.7 billion in sales, then France with $4.1 billion, Germany with $1.1 billion, Britain with $600 million, China with $400 million and Italy with $100 million.

In preliminary research for the forthcoming Weapons at War: Weapons Sales to Regions of Conflict report, the Arms Trade Resource Center found that: · The United States had supplied arms or military technology to parties to 39 of the 42 of the active conflicts worldwide, more than 92%. · While in some cases the levels of U.S. arms and training were relatively modest, in well over one-third of the conflicts -- 18 of 42 -- the United States was a major supplier, providing anywhere from 10% to 90% of the arms imported by the government party to the dispute.

Drawing on statistics from the Pentagon's Defense Security Cooperation Agency on deliveries under the Foreign Military Sales and Commercial Sales programs during Fiscal Year 1999, the United States delivered roughly $6.8 billion in armaments to nations which violate the basic standards set out in the International Code of Conduct on Arms Sales.

There is a long way to go before the ideals of democracy and human rights become serious factors in Washington's decisions on which military forces to arm and train.

One small but important step that should be taken immediately is for the State Department to adopt the International Arms Sales Code of Conduct which has two main elements: · Calling upon the president to "attempt to achieve the foreign policy goal of an international arms sales code of conduct" by "taking the necessary steps to begin negotiations within appropriate international fora" toward that end. · Calling upon the Secretary of State to "describe the extent to which the practices of each country meet the criteria" of the Code of Conduct in the annual human rights report to Congress.

As the leading arms supplier - and as the world's oldest, most widely respected democracy - the United States has a special obligation to set strict standards about the kinds of governments that receive U.S. weaponry. If we don't do it, no other nation will. As Jimmy Carter put it in 1976, "we cannot have it both ways. We can't be both the world's leading champion of peace and the world's leading supplier of arms."

For More Information:
Email: Berrigaf@newschool.edu
Phone: 212-229-5808 ext. 112

-------- balkans

Defiant Milosevic set for Hague court
Protests have followed Milosevic to The Hague

Tuesday, 3 July, 2001,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1419000/1419437.stm

Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic is preparing to make his first appearance before the United Nations war crimes tribunal.

He is the first former head of state to stand accused of crimes against humanity in an international court.

When the hearing begins at 0800 GMT on Tuesday, he will be asked to plead guilty or not guilty of crimes arising from the killing and deportation of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo in 1999.

Mr Milosevic has already said he does not recognise the authority of the tribunal in The Hague, and has described the charges - which carry a possible life sentence - as political.

He has declined to appoint a defence counsel, despite meeting two lawyers on Monday, who had been representing him before his extradition from Belgrade.

One of them, Zdenko Tomanovic, said because Mr Milosevic did not recognise the tribunal he would not allow lawyers to appear before it.

Political statement

Mr Milosevic will attend Tuesday morning's hearing to hear the indictment against him read out.

But his lawyers seemed to indicate that instead of entering a plea he may try to make a political statement.

The BBC's Angus Roxburgh in The Hague says tribunal judges have in the past clamped down on any such attempts to make speeches.

If Mr Milosevic refuses to enter a plea within 30 days of the initial hearing, a plea of "not guilty" will automatically be entered for him under the rules of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

Visa considered

Following the arraignment, both sides are expected to spend months preparing their cases for a trial which could take years.

The Dutch authorities are considering whether to allow Mr Milosevic's wife, Mira Markovic, an entry visa so that she can be present at her husband's court appearance.

As part of remaining European Union sanctions against Mr Milosevic's regime, members of his family are not allowed access to EU member states.

Meanwhile, politicians in Belgrade are struggling to deal with the aftermath of the extradition, which set Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic against the incumbent Yugoslav President, Vojislav Kostunica, and brought down the Yugoslav Government.

Talks on forming a new government have been postponed for 10 days.

Milosevic supporters have pledged to continue demonstrating against his handover - 15,000 marched through the centre of Belgrade on Monday.

Suicide watch

The UN tribunal is keeping Mr Milosevic in isolation, away from the 38 other war crimes suspects from the former Yugoslavia.

He is under 24-hour observation to ensure he does not attempt to kill himself - as both his parents did.

Mr Milosevic is accused of having ultimate responsibility for the mass deportation of 740,000 Kosovo Albanians and for the murder of hundreds of individually named Albanians, said to have been committed by Serb soldiers and militias.

Further charges are also being drawn up against him relating to the wars in Croatia and Bosnia in the early 1990s which led to the break-up of the former Yugoslavia.

---

Milosevic scorns UN tribunal

Tuesday, 3 July, 2001
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1419000/1419772.stm

Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has made a brief and dramatic first appearance before the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague to face charges of crimes against humanity.

In an opening session that lasted less than 15 minutes, a stony-faced Mr Milosevic denounced the proceedings, which were promptly adjourned.

"I consider this tribunal a false tribunal and the indictments false indictments," the former champion of Serbian nationalism told the presiding British judge, Richard May.

But Judge May ignored his objections.

"Mr Milosevic, you are now before this tribunal and you are within the jurisdiction of it. You will be tried by the tribunal," he told the former president.

Dressed smartly in a dark suit, Mr Milosevic sat alone in the court, apart from a United Nations guard on either side of him.

The bench for his defence counsel was empty as he had decided to appear in court without a defence team - a move that gave him more chance to speak for himself.

A BBC correspondent at the court says Mr Milosevic treated the proceedings with total contempt. He made no move to stand when the judge entered the courtroom, but did so when prompted.

When Judge May asked him if he wanted to hear all the charges against him, Mr Milosevic replied in English: "That's your problem."

He refused to enter a plea and continued arguing against the legal status of the court.

"This trial's aim is to produce false justification for the war crimes of Nato committed in Yugoslavia," he said.

At that point Judge May used a button on his desk to cut off Mr Milosevic's microphone.

"Mr Milosevic, this is not the time for speeches," he said, adding that he would be able to challenge the legitimacy of the court at a later date. Judge May then adjourned the case until 27 August - an automatic procedure in cases where the defendant refuses to enter a plea.

Click here to read the transcript of the hearing - http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1419000/1419971.stm

Across the courtroom sat Carla Del Ponte, the UN chief prosecutor who led the fight for Mr Milosevic's extradition. Afterwards, Ms Del Ponte and Mr Milosevic spoke briefly, away from the cameras.

"There were no harsh words, no insults," an adviser to Ms Ponte told reporters.

Months of preparation

Mr Milosevic is the first former head of state to face war crimes charges in an international court.

He is facing charges arising from the killing and deportation of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo in 1999.

Both sides are now expected to spend months preparing their cases for a trial which could take years.

The UN tribunal is keeping Mr Milosevic in isolation, away from the 38 other captured war crimes suspects from the former Yugoslavia.

He is under 24-hour observation to ensure he does not attempt to kill himself - as both his parents did.

Mr Milosevic is accused of having ultimate responsibility for the mass deportation of 740,000 Kosovo Albanians and for the murder of hundreds of individually named Albanians, said to have been committed by Serb soldiers and militias.

Further charges

Further charges are also being drawn up against him relating to the wars in Croatia and Bosnia in the early 1990s which led to the break-up of the former Yugoslavia.

Mr Milosevic was flown out of the Yugoslav capital, Belgrade, last Thursday - the day before an international donor conference critical to the economic reconstruction of Yugoslavia.

The United States had made it clear that any aid was conditional on Mr Milosevic being brought before the war crimes tribunal.

The Serbian Government handed him over, ignoring opposition from the federal president and the junior coalition partner in the federal government. This sparked the collapse of the federal government.

Mr Milosevic had been held in jail in Belgrade since 1 April on charges of corruption and abuse of power.

-----

Milosevic Won't Cooperate With U.N.

New York Times
July 3, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Milosevic-Scene.html

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) -- Slobodan Milosevic showed his contempt for the U.N. war crimes tribunal from the start -- ignoring a judge's order to rise, declining headphones that would have translated the events into Serbo-Croatian, and refusing to enter a plea.

``That's your problem,'' the former Yugoslav president huffed when a judge asked if he wanted the indictment read aloud in court.

The 12-minute arraignment before the U.N. war crimes tribunal Tuesday became a sparring match between a political tactician and a no-nonsense presiding judge who wasn't going to let Milosevic turn his courtroom into a soapbox.

Flanked by armed U.N. sentries and dressed in a blue jacket and shiny black shoes, Milosevic shifted in his seat while he waited for the judges.

He ignored the court clerk's request for all to rise as the black-robed judges and members of the registry filed into court. He stood only after a guard asked him to.

He refused headphones for the simultaneous translation, preferring to listen to the English as presiding Judge Richard May informed him of the court's rules and procedures. May, 62, is a former British prosecutor who has been a tribunal justice since 1997.

Milosevic squinted into the spectators' gallery looking for familiar faces. The attorneys who came from Belgrade, but whom he forbade to represent him, were not in the audience.

His wife, Mirjana Markovic, also was not there. She has asked the tribunal for permission to visit him, but was referred to the Dutch embassy in Belgrade. The Foreign Ministry said it had approached the European Union to lift travel restrictions against her in case she submits a visa application, which she had not done by Tuesday.

When May asked him whether he wanted the indictment read aloud in court, Milosevic looked aside and said, ``that's your problem,'' raising a ripple of laughter from the audience.

Across the courtroom, Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte looked on intently, raising her eyebrows when Milosevic refused to enter a guilty or innocent plea.

Instead, Milosevic lashed out at the court in Serbo-Croatian: ``This trial's aim is to produce false justification for the war crimes of NATO committed in Yugoslavia.''

``Mr. Milosevic, I asked you a question,'' May said. ``Do you want to enter your plea today, or are you asking for adjournment to consider the matter further?''

``I have given you my answer,'' Milosevic said. ``Furthermore, this so-called tribunal ... `` But May cut him off, entering a not guilty plea on Milosevic's behalf.

As the hearing neared its end, Milosevic tried again.

``As I have said, the aim of this tribunal is to justify the crimes committed in Yugoslavia. That is why this a false tribunal, and illegitimate ... ``

The judge glanced over his spectacles with pursed lips and told the former president: ``Mr. Milosevic, this is not the time for speeches.''

-------- colombia

Spray or Else: U.S. Cuts No Slack in Colombia

Philip Smith,
DRCNet http://www.drcnet.org,
July 3, 2001
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11121

Even as Plan Colombia, the US-authored effort to destroy the Colombian drug trade, falters in the face of rising domestic and international opposition, U.S. academic war hawks are calling for a deeper, more direct intervention in Colombia's long-festering and now flaring civil war.

Responding to intense domestic and international pressure, Colombian President Andres Pastrana has imposed a de facto moratorium on the US-backed campaign of herbicide spraying of coca fields, a key element in Plan Colombia. The Colombian government officially denies that it has halted spraying, but informed observers disagree and U.S. officials are quietly grumbling.

"In no case is there any intention by the government to stop fumigation," Pastrana spokesman Gonzalo de Francisco told the St. Petersburg Times late last month. "There is not a single airplane grounded because of the president," he claimed.

But Bruce Bagley, a University of Miami Colombia expert who advises the U.S. government on Colombia policy, told the Times that administration officials told him the spraying had been effectively halted. Pastrana's change of policy "came as a big surprise and it alarmed a number of people in Washington," including the DEA, CIA, Pentagon and the National Security Council," Bagley said. The U.S. response is, "Spray or else, buddy; they're very upset with him," Bagley added.

Colombian anti-narcotics police confirmed Bagley's account. They told the Times that spraying had been halted in southern Caqueta province on orders from Bogota because of protests from indigenous groups and environmental concerns. "It's suspended for those reasons," said Anti-narcotics Police spokesman Julio Rincon. "Those are the government's orders."

The U.S. State Department has also reported a halt to spraying in some regions. In a report titled Summary of Counternarcotics Operations in Colombia, the State Department noted that spraying in Putumayo province had been "temporarily suspended by the government of Colombia" on April 10th. Putumayo had been the scene of extensive spraying from December through February, and U.S. officials had hoped to re-spray the affected areas within 90 days to drive home the point that they were serious about aerial eradication.

The State Department report also noted that spraying in neighboring Caqueta province had been halted on May 3. In a nice bit of spin control, the State Department argued that Pastrana's decision to halt spraying was "in keeping with the government's integrated strategy to combine social programs, alternative crop development, and aerial eradication."

Adam Isaacson of the Center for International Policy (http://www.ciponline.org) returned from Colombia on Wednesday. He told DRCNet that the spraying indeed appeared to have been halted. "My understanding is that the spraying is on hold at the insistence of the Pastrana government while they wait for alternative development to actually be in place and underway," Isaacson said. "If that is the case, the Colombian government has responded to the broad international criticism of Plan Colombia."

Not only international criticism. Pastrana's own environmental minister, Juan Mayr, has filed a resolution opening coca-spraying to legal challenge within Colombia. The resolution took the Colombian drug policy office to task for failing to address questions about spraying's environmental impact. "It can be concluded," read the resolution, "that the documents delivered until now by the drug policy office to define an adequate environmental management plan for the spraying of illicit crops...have not responded to the scope and objectives requested in repeated occasions by this Ministry."

In an interview with the St. Petersburg Times, Mayr said that any Colombian citizen could theoretically use the resolution to sue the drug policy office to stop spraying. It would be up to a judge, he said, to decide if the resolution formed a proper basis for such a lawsuit. No such lawsuits have been filed as of this week, although the Colombian public interest group Fundepublico and environmental activists are studying such a possibility.

"This is not the end of the fumigation process," former U.S. Ambassador Myles Frechette told the Times, "but it's a real monkey wrench." But it is because of the deaf ear that Frechette and U.S. officials have turned to complaints from peasants about poisoned crops, livestock, and children, that the Colombian government has acted. Frechette characterized peasants' accounts of damage from spraying as "folk tales."

As if this weren't enough for Pastrana and the embattled aerial eradication program, the largest outbreak of anti-spraying civil unrest in recent years broke out last week in Tibu, a town near the Venezuelan border with a strong paramilitary presence. Over the weekend of June 8-11, thousands of coca farmers rioted against aerial fumigation. According to press reports, the protesters, numbering as many as 4,000, burned down a refueling base for US spraying aircraft, along with pesticides stored at the local airstrip and the fire station adjacent, as well as looting businesses in the town itself.

They were protesting a limited spraying campaign that had gotten underway two weeks earlier. "We want fumigation, but not for coca," said protest leader Rafeal Arciniega. "We want it for malaria and for dengue," which plague the region, he added.

One spraying aircraft was hit by ground fire on June 11, local police officials said.

President Pastrana is increasingly caught between a rock and a hard place. Forced aerial eradication infuriates coca growers and other peasants, along with environmentalists, domestic and worldwide, and potential European aid donor countries. But any moves to halt spraying bring U.S. denunciations.

"This is crazy," said an unnamed U.S. military official quoted by the Miami Herald. "So, if every farmer in Colombia makes a warm and fuzzy promise to destroy his own crops, Pastrana won't spray at all?"

While President Pastrana walks the tightrope, a new study of Plan Colombia by the RAND Corporation has raised the stakes in the U.S. debate over Colombia. The 113-page study, Colombian Labyrinth: The Synergy of Drugs and Insurgency and Its Implications for Regional Stability (http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1339/), accuses U.S. policymakers of making a faulty distinction between counter-drug efforts and siding with the Colombian government in its decades-long guerrilla war with the FARC.

The two wars cannot be disentangled, write the report's authors, RAND analysts Angel Rabasa and Peter Chalk. "This synergy of drugs and insurgency has generated a new kind of security threat -- neither an old-fashioned insurgency nor a simple criminal cartel, but a threat that incorporates elements of both ... The United States should reexamine the utility of distinguishing between counter-narcotics and counter-insurgency assistance and consider providing assistance to improve Colombia's conventional military capabilities."

"You would have to help Colombia double or triple its military budget for the next few years," scoffed CIP's Isaacson. "You're talking about $2 or 3 billion a year."

The RAND study did grant that further spending would be necessary for the Colombian armed forces to militarily defeat some 8,000 right-wing paramilitaries, 18,000 FARC guerrillas and 5,000 of their ELN cousins, not to mention a Colombian drug business that the report called "flatter, less hierarchical, and more diversified and hence harder to prosecute" than its repressed predecessors, the grand Medellin and Cali "cartels." But it didn't venture any hard numbers.

The report calls Plan Colombia a "doubtful strategy" because it relies on attacking coca production and distribution to weaken the FARC, and it criticizes the aerial spraying program. "[M]oving against the drug-producing areas could have the effect of increasing support for the guerrillas among those who stand to lose their livelihood," write Chalk and Rabasa.

"They have some of the same criticisms we do," said CIP's Isaacson, "but, boy, we certainly differ on policy prescriptions."

When it comes to specific policy, the RAND analysts pick some historical examples that are sure to bring back some very ugly memories. Perhaps instead of independent paramilitaries, Colombia could have "a network of government supervised self-defense organizations," they suggest, conjuring up visions of the Guatemalan military dictatorship's mandatory "civil patrols" and the Peruvian government's anti-guerrilla peasant "rondas" of the 1980s.

In another evocation of what the authors see as a foreign policy success, they write, "The U.S. program of military assistance to El Salvador during the Reagan administration could be a relevant model." During the 1980s, the US government spent roughly $4 billion to help the Salvadoran oligarchy and its armed forces fight a broad-based popular insurgency to a bloody draw. Nearly 75,000 persons were killed, the vast majority at the hands of the Salvadoran military and associated death squads.

"This is truly frightening," said Sanho Tree of the Institute for Policy Studies, "but I think the drug reform movement, with all the noise it has made about Colombia, can take some credit for pulling the legs out from under this phony drug war. The hardliners are now dropping the pretense that this is about counternarcotics," Tree told DRCNet. "Historically, RAND, and specifically its Air Force division [which commissioned this report] are the guys who got us into Vietnam -- and kept us there."

Isaacson similarly saw trouble if the report's prescriptions are followed. "The U.S. military keeps referring to the 'successful example of El Salvador,' but you know what happened there. There was only a negotiated peace after the military lost US aid. What kind of victory is that? It was very ugly, and there is no shortage of ugliness right now in Colombia. Do we want to make it worse?"

Well, maybe. According to the Miami Herald's Andres Oppenheimer, the RAND report "reflects the growing frustration in some Washington foreign policy circles" over the threat of peace negotiations between Pastrana and the FARC and the stalled state of Plan Colombia. Oppenheimer, well-connected in circles that consider the Caribbean "our pond," writes that, "Conservatives are running out of patience to continue paying lip service to Pastrana's peace process, and liberals are running out of arguments to keep praising it as a successful effort to end Colombia's war."

Still, Oppenheimer predicts "a growing shift in support of both greater US anti-guerrilla aid, and greater human rights conditions on it."

-------- chemical weapons

Plan to Burn Chemical Arms Worries Alabamians

New York Times
July 3, 2001
By DAVID FIRESTONE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/03/national/03CHEM.html?searchpv=nytToday

ANNISTON, Ala., June 27 - There are few residents of Calhoun County's mountain ridges who do not know, to the tenth of a mile, how far they live from the smokestacks of the Army's towering new incinerator, which within a year is to begin destroying thousands of tons of the deadliest chemicals ever devised.

People here have been told that a shrill whoop-whoop is the most serious of several public-address siren tones, signaling a toxic leak of nerve or mustard gas. They have been shown how to operate government- issued alert radios designed to awaken them should a catastrophe occur. And the 35,000 people who live too close to the incinerator to be evacuated after an accident are being issued plastic sheeting and duct tape to seal their windows and doors should one occur. Local officials, leery of the duct-tape approach, are pressing the federal government to distribute 35,000 protective hoods, too.

For 40 years, people here have shared eastern Alabama's piedmont with 2,254 tons of lethal chemicals, packed in aging rockets and mortar rounds and sealed in reinforced concrete bunkers, known as igloos, at the Anniston Army Depot. Most have uneasily come to terms with the slim possibility of a chemical disaster as a trade-off for the military's strong economic presence in the area.

But now that the Army is getting ready to burn those chemicals, there is a heightened sense of concern among many of the 75,000 people who live within 10 miles of the depot. The $1 billion incinerator is to begin destroying the munitions and their contents next April, and many residents say they are profoundly worried about the safety of the procedure and the federal government's preparedness for an accident.

Anniston stores only 7 percent of the nation's chemical stockpile, but it is the most populous of the eight sites around the country where chemical weapons are being stored or destroyed. Aware that its actions here will profoundly affect the future of America's $14 billion disposal program, the Army is working hard to reassure the public that incineration is far safer than continued storage of the old weapons.

Government officials now acknowledge that more than 800 of the mortar rounds and M-55 rockets in the igloos have actually leaked minuscule amounts of deadly nerve gas. They have even distributed pictures of the aging shells to demonstrate an urgent need for disposal.

County officials agree with the Army's warnings that it is far more dangerous to leave the rusting weapons in their igloos than to burn them, but they are bitterly critical of the government's emergency preparations. They consider the duct-tape plan - reminiscent of the Israeli response to Iraqi missile attacks - entirely inadequate. So they are insisting that the federal government buy residents who are closest to the incinerator the 35,000 gas-filter hoods, which look like gas masks but fit over the neck as well as the head, at a cost of $10 million.

"If there's an accident at the incinerator, there would be far too much exposure if people are asked to tape up their homes in the eight minutes it would take for a gas plume to spread," said Michael A. Burney, director of the county's Emergency Management Agency. "We think these hoods would provide far better protection, and would allow people to evacuate in a timely and orderly fashion." The hoods would protect the wearer for six to eight hours.

The proposal, which has been submitted to the Army and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, raises the possibility that 35,000 adults and children would have to carry the hoods with them everywhere they go in the zones near the depot - to the grocery store, to the movies and to school - for at least six years and possibly longer, until the burning is complete.

Many residents disdain plans for either hoods or plastic sheeting, and say the weapons should be left in their igloos until a safer technology is developed. They cite an accident at a Utah weapons incinerator in May of last year that allowed a small amount of the nerve gas sarin - the type used by terrorists to kill 12 people on a Japanese subway in 1995 - to escape from the smokestack into the atmosphere. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention later determined that the leak had been too small to pose a danger, but the incident has undermined the Army's assurances about the safety of the procedure among an already nervous populace.

"That stuff has been safe underground for 40 years, but once you start moving it around, you know it's not safe anymore," said Elvin Hall Jr., an electrician who lives in one of the neighborhoods closest to the incinerator, four and a half miles away. "I just wish they'd leave it alone."

Army officials say they are disappointed that so much public emphasis has been placed on the risks of incineration when, they say, the dangers of continued storage of the depot's 661,000 chemical weapons are so much greater. Until a few years ago, the Army spent decades assuring the public that storage was quite safe, and in fact there has never been any serious exposure to stored chemical weapons. But now the Army is fully committed to its incineration program, and is talking freely about the growing danger of leaks of sarin, VX and mustard gas.

"Those M-55 rockets are extremely fragile munitions," said Lt. Col. Bruce E. Williams, commander of Anniston Chemical Activity, in an admission that would have been unthinkable during the cold war. "We think we can continue to store them safely, but you can't escape the fact that if there were a one-in-a-million earthquake, or lightning strike, or a 747 crashing on an igloo, the damage would dwarf the worst-case thing that could ever happen at the incinerator. The only real protection I can offer this community is to destroy this stockpile, and destroy it quickly."

Since Congress ordered the destruction of the chemical arsenal in 1985, the Army has incinerated 2,000 tons of chemicals on Johnston Atoll, near Hawaii. Another incinerator, at Tooele, Utah, has destroyed 5,100 tons since it began operation in 1996. Although there have been several instances of small internal spills and of workers' being exposed at the Tooele incinerator, no one has been seriously hurt, and the only leak to get outside was the one in May 2000. Timothy K. Garrett, the project manager for the Anniston incinerator, said the Tooele event had "opened our eyes" and provided valuable lessons for the local plant, which he said had added a $50 million charcoal filter to its smokestack that the other incinerators do not have.

Incinerators are also being built at chemical weapons arsenals in Pine Bluff, Ark., and Umatilla, Ore. Two other depots, in Aberdeen, Md., and Newport, Ind., will use another process, chemical neutralization, for disposal, and no method has yet been chosen for the remaining depots, in Pueblo, Colo., and Richmond, Ky.

The Army has invited local residents to tour the 19-acre incinerator before it begins operation in April, hoping to impress them with the plant's thick concrete walls and massive airlock doors, remote-control conveyer lines and elaborate mazes of filtered ductwork. But only a few hundred have made it out to the plant, which is not far from the sinister-looking igloos, and its effect on the community has been clear: Scores of houses around the depot are for sale, but no one is buying. Many houses and mobile homes sit empty. Calhoun was the only county in the northern half of Alabama to lose population in the most recent census, and its leaders have no doubt that the incinerator was the reason.

"We hadn't had a house for sale on my street in 23 years, and now four or five or them are for sale," said James Eli Henderson, a county commissioner from the depot area. "There's been no new industry to locate in our county in three years. I feel like the government should compensate us for all this economic damage, but all we're getting is plastic and duct tape."

Federal officials have not dismissed the request for gas hoods, but they seem amazed that so many people in the county do not consider the incinerator the best long-term investment for the region, permanently eliminating a dreadful weapon for the benefit of future generations.

"It's specious to argue that we need masks when the incinerator itself is going to destroy these weapons," Colonel Williams said. "Nobody appreciates more than I do how horrendous those weapons are, but that's why I'm so motivated to see them destroyed."

-------- drug war

DynCorp's Drug Problem

by Jason Vest,
The Nation,
July 3, 2001,
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=special&s=vest20010703

Could the State Department's antidrug contractors in South America possibly be dabbling in narcotics trafficking? A key part of the US's $1.3 billion contribution to Plan Colombia--the scheme that will supposedly expedite the end of Colombia's civil war--calls for the use of private contractors (as opposed to actual US military assets) to fly airborne missions against both the fields that grow coca and poppy and the labs that process them. While some contractors, like Aviation Development Corporation of Montgomery, Alabama, fly surveillance missions for the CIA, those that fly on retainer for other US government agencies are a bit more expansive in their missions.

Consulting giant DynCorp's private pilots in the Andes fly everything from fixed-wing fumigation runs to helicopter-borne interdiction missions ferrying troops into hot spots. If you take DynCorp's word for it, any notion of the organization's being involved in drug trafficking is ludicrous. "Whether or not you believe this, we are a very ethical company," said a senior DynCorp official, who insisted on being quoted off the record. "We take steps to make sure the people we hire are ethical."

Yet the existence of a document that The Nation recently obtained (under the Freedom of Information Act) from the Drug Enforcement Administration--combined with the unwillingness of virtually any US or Colombian government agency to elaborate on the document--has some in Washington and elsewhere wondering if, like virtually every other entity charged with fighting the drug war, DynCorp might have a bad apple or two in its barrel. According to a monthly DEA intelligence report from last year, officers of Colombia's National Police force intercepted and opened, on May 12, 2000, a US-bound Federal Express package at Bogota's El Dorado International Airport. The parcel "contained two (2) small bottles of a thick liquid" that "had the same consistency as motor oil." The communiqué goes on to report that the liquid substance "tested positive for heroin" and that the "alleged heroin laced liquid weighed approximately 250 grams." (Freebase heroin, it bears noting, is soluble in motor oil, and can therefore be extracted without much trouble.)

But perhaps the most intriguing piece of information in the DEA document is the individual to whom it reports that the package belonged: an unnamed employee of DynCorp, who was sending the parcel to the company's Andean operations headquarters at Patrick Air Force Base, Florida. More interesting still is the reluctance of DynCorp and the government to provide substantial details in support of their contention that this situation isn't really what it seems.

According to DynCorp spokeswoman Janet Wineriter,the viscous liquid that the Colombians tested was not, in fact, laced with heroin; it was simply "oil samples of major aircraft components" that DynCorp technicians are required to take and send to the US "on a periodic basis." Explaining that the drug test was conducted "with apparently faulty equipment" that produced "an incorrect reading," Wineriter could not specify what testing procedures or equipment were used. She identified her source for the explanation as Charlene A. Wheeless, DynCorp's Vice President for Corporate Communications.

Unable to cite any source other than Wheeless ("I'm assuming when someone passes along this information that it's accurate"), Wineriter told The Nation to call the Colombian National Police and the State Department for further details. The State Department liaison with DynCorp did not return phone calls, and when the Colombian National Police in Bogota were contacted, an official informed The Nation that the CNP would not comment on the matter, referring all queries to the DEA. A DEA spokesman in Washington said the matter was not a DEA case, and referred calls to the US Embassy in Bogota.

It took six days for the embassy to produce a terse, 143-word response to The Nation's queries--a response that echoed, but did not mirror, DynCorp's account. The embassy did confirm that the vials of oil are "routinely shipped to DynCorp facilities at Patrick AFB for analysis related to proper maintenance" of aircraft, and confirmed that "several aircraft motor oil samples" were confiscated by Colombian police who used "NARCOTEX equipment [and] detected the presence of heroin in unspecified amounts." Unlike Dyncorp, the embassy did not blame the test results on a false positive caused by faulty equipment; what's odd is that the embassy has no idea what ultimately became of the seized oil. "The samples seized at the airport were sent to the CNP's Forensic Institute for further analysis, but the CNP did not subsequently pursue the matter with the U.S. Embassy or DynCorp personnel in Colombia," the embassy said, adding that the embassy has "asked the CNP to clarify the status of any investigation of this matter."

Many questions remain about the CNP interception of the DynCorp package in Bogota last year. While there's nothing unusual about sending aircraft oil samples to DynCorp's main base in the US, DynCorp's assertion thatpoorly calibrated drug testing equipment caused a false positive has experts scratching their heads--as does the US Embassy's description of the testing itself.

When asked to specify what, exactly, "NARCOTEX equipment" is and what testing methodologies it uses, an embassy official responded that he had "no idea." A veteran DEA agent said he had "never heard of anything called NARCOTEX," and after a hard round of research, staffers at the International Association of Chiefs of Police's Drug Recognition Experts Section told The Nation they couldn't find evidence of any drug testing technology with the name. And according to a number of scientists with backgrounds in chemical testing and opiate research, the information provided by DynCorp and the US Embassy in Bogota isn't nearly enough to ascertain independently just what was in those bottles seized by the Colombian police.

Peter Facchini, a University of Calgary biochemist and leading expert on opiates, notes that any number of several types of tests may or may not have been conducted, and without knowing specifics or lab protocols, it's impossible to render a scientific conclusion. But, he and others add,it's unlikely that any testing apparatus would errantly identify something as heroin in motor oil. Drug tests for coca and opiates look for the presence of alkaloids--and alkaloids, says Facchini, aren't naturally present in fuel oils. "I can't imagine any reason there should be even a trace of an alkaloid in aircraft oil or motor oil--that doesn't make any sense at all," he says.

Thomas Tullius, chair of Boston University's chemistry department (and author of the study refuting the US government's claim of possessing reliable evidence that the al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan was producing nerve gas), also finds DynCorp's explanation curious. "Maybe there is something in motor oil that might cross-react, but I would be surprised to find that true," says Tullius. "This is like the al-Shifa thing--people aren't telling you precise methods used or numbers found."

And according to Adam Isacson, senior associate and Latin America specialist at the Center for International Policy, DynCorp and State's handling of the situation doesn't exactly inspire confidence. "It sounds like they have no idea what the outcome of this case was, and it doesn't look like they have much of a burning desire to find out what happened," observes Isacson. "They have an interest in sweeping this under the rug. They don't want anything to derail Plan Colombia, and key to that is the willingness to let contractors operate in almost complete secrecy. Anything that raises questions is to be avoided like the plague--they don't want people to think about DynCorp, because then people might actually look at the whole policy."

Which is what critics of Plan Colombia are hoping will happen over the next few weeks. On June 27, the Foreign Operations Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee began crafting next year's overseas budget package, which includes funding for the Andean Counterdrug Initiative, a measure that essentially expands Plan Colombia to neighboring Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Brazil and Panama. While the Bush Administration has requested more money for development assistance, the bulk of the money still goes to military assistance (71 percent, in Colombia's case), and there is continued financing for the fumigation and manual eradication of coca and poppy crops that DynCorp carries out under contract for State.

A number of amendments have been offered to the appropriations bill that would do everything from imposing a moratorium on fumigation to reining in US military spending in the Andes, and activists are hopeful that some of these amendments may actually pass. While the Republican ranks are full of proud drug warriors, even some conservatives--such as House Government Reform Committee Chairman Dan Burton--are growing increasingly leery of DynCorp's operations; Burton is reportedly so irked by what he sees as lack of the contractor accountability that he's considering taking legislative action himself. Democratic Representative Jan Schakowsky, meanwhile, is championing a bill that would impose a ban on the use of private military contractors like DynCorp, citing everything from State's intransigence in answering Congressional queries to the possibility of the US's getting more involved in a foreign war that is conducted largely out of the public eye.

"All these concerns reinforce my views that the US should immediately terminate its contract with DynCorp and all other private companies conducting sensitive, military-like operations in the Andean Region,"says Schakowsky."Reports that DynCorp employees have been implicated in drug trafficking, the very thing they are paid to help prevent, only strengthens my conviction that outsourcing is the wrong policy. It's frustrating for reporters, but outrageous for members of Congress not to have access to information about US involvement in the Andean region and how taxpayer dollars are being spent--most of the information we have is from investigative news reports that raise more questions than answers."

thenation.com

-------- iraq

U.S. and Britain Drop Effort to Change Iraq Trade Rules

New York Times
July 3, 2001
By BARBARA CROSSETTE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/03/world/03NATI.html

UNITED NATIONS, July 2 - Facing a Russian veto in the Security Council, the United States and Britain today abandoned efforts for now to change the rules for permissible trade with Iraq.

The plan would have expanded civilian trade while tightening controls on smuggling oil and prohibited weapons, depriving President Saddam Hussein of an excuse that it was the sanctions alone that were hurting the Iraqi people.

Russia, with strong commercial interests in Iraq and a long history of military and diplomatic cooperation, had introduced its own resolution, which reopened the issue of lifting the sanctions imposed in 1990 after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. A Russian veto would have killed the American and British proposal for the foreseeable future.

The United States and Britain decided to abandon the fight for now and to seek an extension of the current "oil for food" program for five months. A month's extension on the program's current mandate runs out at midnight on Tuesday.

The decision not to force a showdown, after winning agreement for the plan from China and France and thereby isolating Russia among the five permanent Council members with vetoes, was a setback for the Bush administration, which had made a new policy on Iraq a high priority.

With a postponement of five months, Iraq would emerge with what it wants in the short term - the status quo. That could bolster hard- liners in Washington who have always contended that diplomatic efforts were wasted on President Hussein and that more direct methods are needed to keep Iraq from posing a threat to other nations.

Ambassador James B. Cunningham, the American representative on the Council, said in an interview that the United States was in no way "shelving the policy."

Mr. Cunningham said the United States agreed to the five-month extension because it was the better of two choices: Washington could have risked a veto or decided instead to buy more time to get the Russians to join the consensus. He said there would be more high-level meetings with the Russians over the next few months and those opportunities would be used to press the case for the resolution.

"It strikes us as illogical for the Russians to take this position when it is so clear that there is a basis in the Council for an agreement - an agreement that would help the Iraqi civilians," he said. He called the postponement of the new oil plan "a defeat for the Iraqi people."

American officials have said in recent weeks that they have been mystified by what the Russian motivations may really be and have often have been sent mixed signals about what Russia's real concerns are. Diplomats said China's decision to accept the outlines of the American and British plan was important because it indicated that the Russian position was difficult to understand and had virtually no support.

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 took the lead in fighting for in the absence of a new permanent 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."

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, placing them in an escrow account under United Nations control. Iraqi smuggling, and illegal oil sales to neighbors that the United States tolerated to keep allies like Turkey and Jordan happy, are now giving the Iraqis $1 billion or more outside the system.

Contrary to Iraqi wishes, however, Russia does not argue for lifting sanctions immediately, but says the embargo should be suspended after Iraq allows arms inspectors, who have not been allowed to work in Iraq since late 1998, 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 separate Security Council resolution laid out the steps Iraq must take not only to allow inspectors to work but also to meet certain crucial disarmament tasks, still to be determined. The Security Council has required Iraq to eliminate its weapons of mass destruction.

Ambassador Sergey Lavrov of Russia turned that argument around today, saying it was the American- British proposal that had strayed from the essential purpose of selling oil to buy civilian goods and materials to rebuild Iraq's 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. He added 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 and American plan, denying itself, and presumably the Iraqi civilian population, millions of dollars in income.

Finding a way to prevent Iraq from gaining propaganda advantage from the unquestioned deprivation most Iraqis - though not Mr. Hussein's inner circle - suffered from a decade of sanctions has always been a problem for the Security Council and its member governments. The United States said in introducing the new plan that it wanted to rob Iraq of an excuse for its own failure to spend money on the civilian population in need of medicines and a wide range of public goods and services.

Shortly after the 1991 American- led war to free Kuwait, a United Nations team visited Iraq and warned that there was a catastrophe in the making, as the embargo cut off most trade links with the outside world. In August of that year, Iraq was first offered an oil-for-food program, but turned it down, demanding an end to sanctions instead. It was not until 1995 that Iraq finally agreed to an oil sales program supervised by the United Nations. It began functioning late in 1996, and was broadened three years later to remove the limit on oil sales.

Since 1996, most recently aided by high oil prices, Iraq has exported over $43 billion in oil. The United Nations deducts part of the profits to compensate victims of the Iraqi war against Kuwait and a share for the Kurds in northern Iraq who had suffered intense persecution, including poison gas attacks, by the government in Baghdad. Iraq is now free to spend the rest of the money on a wide range of imports, and nearly $25 billion in goods have been ordered. The new British-American plan would have removed remaining restrictions on civilian trade.

A sticking point, however, was a list the United States wanted to annex to the Council resolution, which would enumerate certain weapons banned under existing international agreements and some other ostensibly civilian goods that could have military purposes. The list of so- called "dual use" items was not prohibitive; it called only for a right to review purchases of those goods.

Last week, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was able to persuade the French and Chinese to drop their objections after the list was whittled down. What remained to block passage of the resolution, in addition to persistent Russian opposition, was the question of how to compensate Iraq's neighbors - Jordan, Syria and Turkey - for loss of oil supplies Iraq had been selling outside the system at reduced prices.

That illegal trade, to which the Security Council at first turned a blind eye, became more of a concern as oil prices rose and the Iraqis were accumulating money that could have gone into illegal arms.

Iraq threatened to cut off all oil to its neighbors if they joined the United Nations-supervised system. Jordan, in particular, said that its economy would be devastated by such a move.

Then a month ago, Iraq stopped all exports of oil anywhere to protest the Security Council's move toward revamping the oil-for-food program and its decision to put off a vote from June 3 to July 3. Iraq has lost $1.3 billion it could have spent on consumer goods and services.

----

The Iraqi threat

Boston Globe Editorial,
7/3/2001
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/184/editorials/The_Iraqi_threat+.shtml

A CRUCIAL LESSON that ought to have been learned from the last century is that the world paid a terrible price for not stopping criminals with state power before they were ready to kill millions. Sad to say, there is mounting evidence that this lesson has been forgotten by policy makers who have been looking on passively as Saddam Hussein accumulates billions of dollars through oil smuggling and acquires weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them.

The danger of ignoring this threat is driven home in a recent article on Saddam's methods of importing his weapons of mass destruction. The article, published in Commentary and written by the director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, Gary Milhollin, and a research associate, Kelly Motz, draws on confidential reports compiled by United Nations weapons inspectors before they were kicked out of Iraq in 1998.

The authors recount in detail how Saddam peddles oil to Jordan and Syria outside the UN's oil-for-food program and then how some of the proceeds from these illegal oil sales are used to pay for weapons of mass destruction, missiles, and the means to manufacture them. These lethal materials are delivered to middlemen in Jordan, Syria, or Lebanon and then transported easily as contraband to Iraq.

When the UN inspectors were compiling their reports, they kept secret what they had learned about the countries and the companies that sell Iraq machine tools and parts for nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. Milhollin and Motz name countries, companies, and even some of the middlemen. Saddam's four principal suppliers are Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Romania. The first three have obstinately refused to halt their violations of the UN arms embargo on Iraq.

The UN inspection team had kept their discoveries about Saddam's supply networks secret for two ignoble reasons. They did not want to cause the four culpable countries to cease all cooperation with the UNSCOM team, and since all permanent members of the UN Security Council were needed to authorize weapons inspections in Iraq, they were chary about offending Russia and its allies.

One ominous conclusion reached by Millholin and Motz is that Saddam's nuclear and long-range missile programs were not halted even when UN inspectors were able to operate inside Iraq. As the defecting Iraqi nuclear scientist, Khidir Hamza, has explained, Saddam has dispersed components of his nuclear weapons program to hospitals, schools, and other civilian sites. According to Hamza, Saddam now has everything needed for nuclear weapons with the possible exception of fissionable material.

Once he has nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them, it could be too late to stop Saddam.

----

U.S., Britain to Extend UN Program

New York Times
July 3, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-UN-Iraq.html

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- In a victory for Baghdad, Security Council members backed a five-month extension of the U.N. humanitarian program for Iraq on Tuesday after Russia threatened to veto a U.S.-British proposal to overhaul sanctions against the oil-rich Mideast nation.

A final vote on the extension of the oil-for-food program was delayed, however, when Russia opposed including a reference to the U.S.-British plan in the resolution.

A vote was expected before the midnight expiration of the current phase of the 4 1/2-year-old program, which allows Iraq to sell oil on condition that the proceeds are spent on food, medicine and other essential goods.

Also Tuesday, diplomatic and police sources confirmed that two senior diplomats at Iraq's U.N. mission had requested asylum in the United States for themselves and their families. Previous defections by Iraqi officials have caused considerable embarrassment to the Baghdad government.

Britain decided against pressing for a council vote on its U.S.-backed plan to overhaul the 11-year-old sanctions regime against Iraq in order to avoid a Russian veto and try to win Moscow's support in the coming months.

In a draft resolution to extend the oil-for-food program circulated Monday, the British included a reference to the Security Council's ``determination'' to agree to a new system of sanctions ``at the earliest opportunity.''

It would also reaffirm ``principles'' contained in a June 1 resolution extending the oil-for-food program for one month, which are the guts of the British sanctions overhaul -- lifting most restrictions on civilian goods entering Iraq, plugging up lucrative Iraqi smuggling routes and tightening enforcement of the arms embargo.

Russia's U.N. Ambassador Sergey Lavrov signaled problems with the draft Monday, saying: ``We agreed to a neutral text. This is not a neutral text.'' Diplomats said he demanded at Tuesday morning's closed-door council meeting that the reference to the U.S.-British plan and the June 1 resolution be dropped.

Britain and the United States agreed to drop the ``determination'' to reach agreement quickly, Western diplomats said. But the two allies, backed by other council members, insisted on including the reference to the June 1 resolution -- which Russia supported at the time.

``If we omitted it, some people might interpret that we are resigning from the work we agreed to a month ago,'' said Britain's deputy U.N. ambassador, Stewart Eldon.

Iraq, which halted its oil exports June 4 to protest the overhaul resolution, claimed victory Tuesday, even before the council vote. The Iraqi military's Al-Qadissya newspaper called the extension ``a victory for Iraq's rights.''

``Iraq will bury any future resolution that does not include the total lifting of sanctions and the payment of compensation for the damages inflicted on the people of Iraq,'' the daily Babil wrote.

Iraq said Monday it would resume oil shipments if the humanitarian program is extended without any mention of the U.S.-British plan.

The failure to win consensus on a sanctions overhaul is a far cry from expectations in Washington and London when the proposal was first submitted May 22.

U.S. and British diplomats tried to push through the proposal in just eight working days but ran up against concerns from the other three veto-wielding members on the council -- China, France and Russia -- as well as Iraq's neighbors. The three permanent members of the council demanded more time to study the plan, which includes long lists of military-related items that could be banned from entering Iraq.

Lacking consensus, the council agreed to extend oil-for-food for one month, instead of the usual six, to allow more time for negotiations.

Thirty days later, France and China agreed to the lists, but not Russia.

Despite personal intervention from both British Prime Minister Tony Blair and U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, Russia threatened to veto the plan altogether, forcing Britain to postpone the vote.

Russia argues that any overhaul of sanctions must address the lifting of sanctions that critics say are responsible for human suffering in Iraq.

Under council resolutions, sanctions imposed after Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait cannot be lifted until U.N. inspectors certify that Iraq has dismantled its weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles.

Weapons inspectors left Iraq ahead of U.S.-British airstrikes in December 1998, and Baghdad has since barred them from returning.

--------

Iraq Hails Dropping of UN Vote As 'Victory'

New York Times
July 3, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-iraq-sa.html

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The Iraqi press on Tuesday celebrated as a ``victory'' the U.N. Security Council's decision to drop a vote on a U.S.-British plan to revamp sanctions.

Naji Sabri, minister of state for foreign affairs, called the indefinite postponement a ``defeat for the Anglo- American policy against Iraq.''

Confronted by a Russian veto, Britain and the United States on Monday dropped for now their proposal to revamp sanctions against Iraq and instead decided to extend the current U.N. humanitarian program without change.

The U.S.-British proposal had called for the introduction of ``smart'' sanctions under which the U.N. oil-for-food program would be modified to allow Iraq to import civilian goods more easily, while making it harder to obtain military goods.

Britain, which drafted the resolution on the plan, told Security Council members that in light of Russia's objections, the U.N. oil-for-food program should be extended for five months. It is circulating a draft for a vote on Tuesday, when the current phase of the program expires.

``This is how Iraq...emerges victorious in the Security Council,'' the government newspaper al-Jumhouriya said.

``The retreat of the British in the Security Council is a defeat for the Anglo-American so-called smart sanctions,'' Sabri told Reuters.

Babel newspaper, owned by President Saddam Hussein's eldest son Uday, said dropping the vote was a ``necessary blow to rid the world of the evil of a professional thief that steals human rights in the world'' -- a reference to the United States.

The official al-Iraq newspaper called the delay ``the beginning of the end of American hegemony against the world.''

The newspapers praised Russia and some Arab countries for rejecting the draft resolution. ``We have friends who helped us to foil the Anglo-American proposal and our Arab brothers also stand with us,'' al-Iraq said.

Iraq cut off oil sales on June 4 under the U.N. oil-for-food program to protest against the U.S.-British proposal and threatened to do the same for direct sales to its neighbors if they co-operated with the plan.

BAGHDAD AWAITS NEW RESOLUTION

Sabri said Iraq would wait until the Security Council issued a new resolution to extend the oil-for-food deal. ``Let us wait and see the resolution first and then we will decide.''

The Security Council was expected to extend its oil-for-food exchange with Iraq on Tuesday. But it was not clear how long the deal would be extended and whether it would be linked to the U.S.- British proposal.

Baghdad has said it will resume exports under an unchanged oil-for-food program but will not restart shipments if talks on sanctions continue.

``We are against linking this food-for-oil formula with any element of the malicious Anglo-American proposal which has now become something in the past,'' Sabri said.

The oil-for-food program allows Baghdad to sell oil to buy a wide range of civilian supplies under U.N. control, easing the impact of sanctions imposed when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990.

-------- israel

A Conservative Total for U.S. Aid to Israel: $91 Billion--and Counting

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2001,
Congress Watch, Pages 15-16,
By Shirl McArthur
http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/010201/0101015.html

With the turmoil surrounding the presidential election essentially freezing Congress into inaction, this is probably a good time to take another look at aid to Israel. The common figure given for U.S. aid to Israel is $3 billion per year-$1.2 billion in economic aid and $1.8 billion in military aid. As impressive as this figure is, however, since it represents about one-sixth of total U.S. foreign aid, the true figure is even more remarkable. It is difficult, however, to arrive at an exact number. Much of the money the U.S. gives Israel is buried in the budgets of other government agencies, primarily the Defense Department (DOD). Other subsidies come in a form that isn't easily quantifiable, such as the early disbursement of aid, which allows Israel to gain (and the U.S. taxpayer to lose) the interest on the unspent money.

This year's appropriations bills for FY 2001, which began Oct. 1, 2000, include, in addition to the $2.82 billion in economic and military foreign aid to Israel, an additional $60 million in so-called refugee resettlement and $250 million in the DOD budget, plus $85 million imputed interest, for a total of at least $3.215 billion. In addition, on Nov. 14, 2000, President William Clinton sent a special request to Congress for an additional $450 million in military aid to Israel in FY 2001, plus $350 million for FY 2002.

The package also included $225 million in military aid for Egypt and $75 million in security assistance for Jordan. The $450 million for Israel is not included in these calculations, because it is unclear at this writing whether Congress will approve the package in the current political climate.

Calculating Total U.S. Aid

Unquestionably, Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. aid since World War II. Estimates for total U.S. aid to Israel vary, however, because of the uncertainties and ambiguities described above. An Oct. 27, 2000 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report, using available and verifiable numbers, gives cumulative aid to Israel from 1949 through FY 2000 (which ended Sept. 30, 2000) at $81.38 billion. On the other hand, last year the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs estimated total aid to Israel through FY 2000 at $91.82 billion.

The CRS number surely is too low, because, although it does include such things as the old food-for-peace program, the $1.2 billion from the Wye agreement, and the current subsidy for "refugee resettlement," it does not include money from the DOD budget, on the grounds that those funds are for joint research and development projects. Nor does the CRS figure include estimated interest on the early disbursement of aid funds. Last year's Washington Report estimate imputes an amount for "other aid" (including the DOD) that may no longer be valid, based as it is on a thorough study of three representative years. While this year's estimate is more conservative, the results are still shockingly high.

To the CRS number of $81.38 billion through FY 2000 can be added (with details to follow):

• $4.28 billion from the DOD; and

• $1.72 billion in interest from early disbursement of aid, for a total of $87.38 billion through Sept. 30, 2000. To that can be added the $3.22 billion detailed above, giving a grand total of $90.6 billion total aid to Israel through FY 2001. Approval of Clinton's special request for $450 million more in military aid would push the number over $91 billion.

Defense Department Funds

A search going back several years was able to identify $3.423 billion in specific DOD line items appropriated to Israel. Since that figure includes only the programs that were uncovered, it is reasonable to add 25 percent, or $856 million, to account for what was not found. The largest items in the DOD budget were $1.3 billion for the cancelled Lavi attack fighter project; $628 million for the ongoing Arrow anti-missile missile project; and $200 million for the completed Merkava tank. The fact that the U.S. military was not interested in the Lavi or the Merkava for its own use and has said the same thing about the Arrow would seem to invalidate the argument that these are "joint defense projects."

Interest

Israel began receiving early disbursement of U.S. economic aid in 1982, and of military aid in 1991. It would be inaccurate to simply apply the rate of interest to the amount of aid, because it has to be assumed that the aid monies were drawn down over the course of the year. In 1991 it was reported that Israel earned $86 million in interest on the economic aid money deposited in the U.S. Treasury. Since the period from 1982 to 1991 was a time of relatively high interest rates, the figure of $860 million (86 x 10) seems a reasonably conservative estimate for those 10 years. For the nine years since 1991, a 6 percent rate was applied to one-half of the economic aid, for a total of $324 million over the past decade.

On the military aid, the 6 percent rate was applied to one-half of the military aid for the 10 years it has been disbursed early, for a total of $540 million.

Some Comparisons

The impressive numbers for U.S. aid to Israel become even more so when they, and the attached conditions, are compared with other Middle East countries. The roughly $3.3 billion in annual aid compares with some $2 billion for Egypt, $225 million for Jordan, and $35 million for Lebanon. Aid for the Palestinian Authority (PA) is not earmarked, but has been running at about $100 million. Furthermore, aid to the PA is strictly controlled by the U.S. Agency for International Development, and goes for specific projects, mostly civil infrastructure projects such as water and sewers.

On the other hand, the U.S. gives Israel all of its economic aid directly in cash, with no accounting of how the funds are used. The military aid from the DOD budget is mostly for specific projects. Significantly however, considering current events, one of those projects was the development of the Merkava tank, which has been encircling and firing on Palestinian towns in the West Bank and Gaza.

The only condition the congressional foreign aid bill places on military aid to Israel is that about 75 percent of it has to be spent in the U.S. In contrast with other countries receiving military aid, however, who purchase through the DOD, Israel deals directly with U.S. companies, with no DOD review.

Special mention should also be made of the details of the Wye agreement. All of the $400 million going to the PA under the agreement is economic aid, whereas all of the $1.2 billion for Israel is for military projects and programs. These include $40 million for armored personnel carriers and $360 million for Apache helicopters, again significant considering current events.

Loans, The "Cranston Amendment," and Loan Guarantees

Currently, Israel owes the U.S. government almost $3 billion in economic and military loans. Direct government-to-government loans are included in the above numbers for total aid, because repayment of several loans has been "waived" by the U.S. Israeli officials are fond of saying that Israel has never defaulted on a loan from the U.S. Technically, this is true. The CRS report, however, notes that from FY 1994 through FY 1998 $29 billion in U.S. loans have been waived for Israel. Therefore, it is reasonable to consider all loans to Israel the same as grants.

There seems to be much confusion about the so-called "Cranston Amendment," named after the California senator who sponsored it in 1984. The amendment said, simply, that it is "the policy and intention" of the U.S. to give Israel economic aid "not less than" the amount Israel owes the U.S. in annual debt interest and principal payments.

Since official economic aid to Israel has always been considerably higher than the annual debt repayments, this is something of a non-issue. Furthermore, since the amendment is simply a statement of policy and intent, it may not be legally binding. In any event, although the amendment was included in every aid appropriations bill through FY 1998, it has not been repeated in the FY 1999, 2000, and 2001 appropriations bills.

The amount of U.S. government loan guarantees to Israel was not included in the above numbers, because they have not cost the U.S. any money (yet), although they are listed as "contingent liabilities" (that is, they would become liabilities to the U.S. should Israel default). Nevertheless, they unquestionably have been of tangible financial benefit to Israel. The major loan guarantees issued by Washington have been $600 million for housing between 1972 and 1990; the much publicized $10 billion for Soviet Jewish resettlement between 1992 and 1997; and some $5 billion for refinancing military loans commercially. Currently, the total U.S. contingent liability for Israeli loans is about $10 billion.

The Neeman Agreement

After Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told Congress in 1996 that he wanted to reduce the level of U.S. economic aid to Israel, Israeli Finance Minister Yaacov Neeman met with members of Congress in January 1998 to negotiate the details. After much backing and forthing, they reached agreement that Israel's then-$1.2 billion in economic aid would be decreased annually, beginning FY 1999, by $120 million, and the $1.8 billion in military aid would be increased by half that, or $60 million.

As a little-reported part of the deal, the amount of military aid that Israel was allowed to spend in Israel would be increased by $15 million per year. From FY 1988 through 1990 Israel was allowed to use $400 million of its $1.8 billion U.S. military aid in Israel. Beginning in FY 1991 that was increased to $475 million. As a result of the Neeman agreement, beginning in FY 1999 the aid appropriations bill gave the amount to be spent in Israel as a percentage of the total, rather than a stated amount. This maneuver helped hide from U.S. defense contractors the fact that the U.S. direct subsidy to their Israeli competitors was being increased by $15 million per year. For FY 2001 the stated percentage works out to $520 million. None of this is included in the above figures, because it does not represent a direct cost to the U.S. taxpayers. It is clearly an indirect cost, however, in terms of lost tax revenue and lost business for American companies. X

Shirl McArthur, a retired foreign service officer, is a consultant in the Washington, DC area.

SIDEBAR #1

Arab Americans Lose Ground in Congress

While Arab-American candidates broke even in the 2000 elections for the House of Representatives, a major loss was suffered in the Senate, where the only Arab-American senator, Michigan Republican Spencer Abraham, was narrowly and unexpectedly defeated by former Rep. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI). Stabenow had a neutral score in this magazine's Congressional Report Card (August/September issue), with one positive and one negative mark, although she did sign the letter to President Clinton urging the delinking of the economic sanctions against Iraq from the military sanctions.

In the House, Arab-American Reps. John Baldacci (D-ME), Chris John (D-LA), Ray LaHood (R-IL), Nick Rahall (D-WV), and John Sununu (R-NH) all were re-elected. In addition, Republican newcomer Darrell Issa was easily elected in California. Issa's victory offset the narrow defeat of Democrat Steve Danner in Missouri for the seat previously held by retiring Rep. Pat Danner (D-MO).

Other re-elected representatives sympathetic to issues important to Arab Americans include Reps. David Bonior (D-MI), John Conyers (D-MI), Tom Davis (R-VA), John Dingell (D-MI), Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Bob Ney (R-OH), and Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA). Unfortunately, a champion of Arab-American issues was lost when Rep. Tom Campbell (R-CA) failed in his bid to unseat Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA).

Other congressional election news included the surprise defeat of Rep. Sam Gejdenson (D-CT), who was the ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee. Although he was widely considered a good friend of Israel, Gejdenson's report card was only slightly negative, with no positive and one negative mark. He is expected to be replaced as ranking Democrat on the committee by Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA), also considered a strong friend of Israel. A Holocaust survivor, Lantos might be expected to be sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians living under the heel of a brutal occupying power, but his report card showed one positive and two negative marks. Lantos also signed the letter to Clinton urging the president to "stand firm" in keeping the economic sanctions on Iraq. -S.M.

--------

Israel Continues Policy of Killing Militants

New York Times
July 3, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html

JERUSALEM (AP) -- Ariel Sharon and his closest advisers brushed aside U.S. criticism and said Tuesday that Israel would stick to its policy of tracking down and killing suspected Palestinian militants.

Israel television reported that a forum of top Israeli leaders authorized the military to step up the campaign of targeted killings. Sharon's spokesman, Raanan Gissin, said the number of killings depends on Palestinian efforts to stop attacks. ``The less they do, the more we have to do,'' he said.

A senior Palestinian official, Ahmed Abdel Rahman, called the Israeli policy ``the biggest violation'' yet of the faltering Mideast cease-fire.

Israel insists it will carry out pre-emptive strikes in a bid to prevent Palestinian attacks that have persisted despite the U.S.-brokered truce. Israel's deputy defense minister, Dalia Rabin-Pelossof, who was part of the forum of Israeli leaders that met Tuesday, defended the policy.

``When we know of a terrorist who is a ticking bomb, meaning he is on his way, carrying explosives, to carry out an attack in Israel, it is incumbent on us to prevent it and that is what we do,'' she said.

Rabin-Pelossof, daughter of assassinated Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin, was asked about media reports that Prime Minister Sharon was weighing a broad assault against the Palestinian Authority if the cease-fire collapsed entirely. ``We have to consider all the existing options,'' she told Israel radio.

Interviewed by German television, Sharon said he is committed to the cease-fire and blamed Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for the violence. ``The Palestinian Authority is behind terror and has done nothing to stop it,'' he said.

The continuing unrest has prevented the launch of a seven-day test-period the sides agreed to during Secretary of State Colin Powell's visit last week. Israel says that for the count to begin there must be no violence whatsoever. The test-period would trigger a series of other stages leading to resumed peace talks.

Israel began its targeted attacks against Palestinian militants last November, and has killed 24 people in 19 attacks, according to the Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights. The attacks have included helicopter strikes, exploding telephones and sniper shootings.

In the most recent raid, an Israeli helicopter fired missiles Sunday night, obliterating a car carrying three militants in the West Bank which was, according to Israel, filled with explosives.

A total of six Palestinians and two Israelis were killed Sunday and Monday in the worst surge of violence since the cease-fire was declared June 13. No major violence was reported Tuesday as of the evening, but both sides said the truce remained unstable.

``The Israelis are the ones who violate it,'' Arafat said. ``We are passing through a very dangerous period.''

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said the truce was in ``a profound crisis and everything has to be done to save it.'' A meeting between Israeli and Palestinian security chiefs Monday night was acrimonious and produced no breakthroughs, both sides said.

Peres, the most prominent dove in Sharon's government, has come under criticism from some fellow Cabinet members for his willingness to meet with Palestinian leaders despite the violence. But he said he would press ahead.

``If I am not allowed to fulfill the foreign policy in which I believe, there is no point in my being foreign minister,'' he said. He called for removal of settler outposts in the West Bank, which were set up without permission.

``It is a first-class political mistake'' to refuse to remove the outposts, Peres said. ``It focuses attention on an issue on which the world is united against us.''

The U.S. State Department said Monday the Palestinians were not doing enough to prevent violence, but spokesman Richard Boucher also stressed that the United States was ``opposed to Israel's policy of targeted killings.''

Israeli Science Minister Matan Vilnai scoffed at the U.S. criticism.

``I'm not sure they (American officials) really understand the rules of the game,'' Vilnai told Israel Radio. ``I would like to see how the Americans would react if a car packed with explosives blew up in the middle of Manhattan.''

On Monday, two car bombs exploded in central Israel, but no one was hurt. A radical Palestinian group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, said it carried out the attack to avenge the killing of Islamic Jihad activists Sunday.

-------- nato

NATO Chief Indicates Macedonia to Receive Aid If Peace Holds

By Ben Richardson,
Bloomberg News,
July 3, 2001
http://quote.bloomberg.com/fgcgi.cgi?T=uspolitics_news.ht&s=AO0CEaRSBTkFUTyBD

Salzburg, Austria, July 2 (Bloomberg) -- NATO Secretary General George Robertson indicated Macedonia will receive financial aid from Western donors if the Balkan country hammers out a peace agreement with ethnic Albanian rebels that are fighting government forces.

Robertson, speaking at a conference in Salzburg, Austria, where he met with Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic to discuss stability in southeastern Europe, said there would be ``rewards'' for Macedonia if peace holds.

``Macedonia has been very close to the precipice of civil war,'' Robertson said. ``It should take the opportunity to rejoin the European family of nations. There are clear indications there would be rewards'' for doing so.

Yugoslavia won $1.28 billion of aid pledges after the country turned over former President Slobodan Milosevic to the United Nations war crimes tribunal in the Hague.

Robertson's comments came after Djindjic urged North Atlantic Treaty Organization leaders to unite behind forging peace in the Balkans or risk an escalation of violence in Macedonia and neighboring Kosovo.

A soldier was killed earlier today as fighting broke out between Macedonian troops and ethnic Albanian rebels near the northwestern town of Tetovo, Agence France-Presse said. The fighting ended several days of relative calm.

----

U.S. Drops Objection to Russia Eventually Joining NATO

Foreign Affairs News
Source: Europeaninternet.com
Deutsche Presse-Agentur
July 3, 2001
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b42341b59e6.htm

WASHINGTON, Jul 3, 2001 -- (dpa) The Bush administration has dropped U.S. resistance to the possibility of Russia one day joining NATO, saying the "door is open" to eventual membership in the Atlantic alliance by its former adversary.

The Clinton administration had ruled out Russian membership, but the new team in Washington is open to the idea if it might keep Russia focused on Europe, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

"This administration believes that the door should be open and that Russia's destiny continues to lie in Europe", Boucher said.

NATO membership is open to any European country that is "ready and willing to assume the burdens and responsibilities of membership," Boucher told reporters.

He added that President George W. Bush "has made quite clear that we want Russia to continue to look toward Europe".

----

Germany Won't Intervene in Macedonia
Germany Not to Take Part in Macedonian Force, Top Soldier Says

Foreign Affairs News
Europeanintenet.com
Deutsche Presse-Agentur
July 3, 2001
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b423a2f6284.htm

BERLIN, Jul 3, 2001 -- (dpa) Germany will not take part in a planned NATO mission in Macedonia, the Chief of Staff of the German armed forces, Harald Kujat, said in an interview published Sunday.

Kujat told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper that the proposed operation to disarm ethnic Albanian rebels would comprise mainly French, British, Italian and Greek contingents with backing from the United States.

Germany had not been requested to contribute to the 3,000-man force for the operation, which was planned to take 30 days, he said. He added that the German armed forces were not in a position to take part in the operation.

An advance copy of the interview was made available to Deutsche Presse-Agentur.

Originally, there had been talk of Germany supplying about 500 troops. But the German Defense Ministry had known since the beginning of the week that Germany would not be involved, ministry spokesman Detlef Puhl told the Welt am Sonntag.

Kujat's declaration in the newspaper comes as a surprise because the political debate about possible German involvement was still raging on Saturday.

NATO officials in Brussels approved Friday the operational plan for a peacekeeping force in Macedonia which is likely to be called MFOR.

The alliance proposes sending about 3,000 soldiers to collect weapons from rebels. It says it has no plans to take part in any fighting.

-------- russia

Georgia and Russia spar over army base
The Vaziani base was handed over as agreed last week

Tuesday, 3 July, 2001
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/monitoring/media_reports/newsid_1420000/1420023.stm

Russia and Georgia are engaged in a war of words over the Russian army's failure to close a military base by a deadline agreed two years ago.

Russia pledged to shut down its base at Gudauta, in the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia, and to withdraw troops and equipment from one of its three other Soviet-era bases in Georgia at a summit of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, in Istanbul in 1999.

The Vaziani base outside Tbilisi was formally handed over on Friday, but Russian troops remain at Gudauta despite the expiry of the 1 July deadline.

Georgian parliament chairman Zurab Zhvania accused Russia of flouting the internationally brokered agreement and of "ignoring" alternative solutions proposed by Tbilisi.

Russian 'obstruction'

Georgian TV described the turn of events as "a classic example of obstruction" by the Russian military.

Russian military officials told the Georgian authorities last week that they wanted to keep 300 servicemen at Gudauta to guard the equipment at the base.

Georgia said it would consider Moscow's request to maintain a presence there only after all the equipment had been removed.

But on Tuesday the Russian Foreign Ministry said the pullout had not taken place because the Georgian side had not answered its request in time.

The pullout has been complicated by Gudauta's location in Abkhazia, most of which has been outside the control of the Georgian central authorities since local separatist forces defeated government troops in a 1992-93 war.

At the time Georgia accused elements in the Russian military, including personnel at the Gudauta base, of covertly aiding the separatists.

The commander of Russia's Airborne Troops, Georgiy Shpak, said a week before the deadline expired that Russia would be unable to pull its troops and equipment out of Gudauta because local people, fearing the resumption of fighting with Georgian Government troops, were "blockading the base".

"It is impossible to solve the problem of disbandment and removal of the base at Gudauta without an agreement between Georgia and Abkhazia," he said.

Georgian accusations

Mr Zhvania, however, accused Moscow of using the Abkhaz opposition as a "pretext" and the Abkhaz of "stage-managing" the protests.

The Abkhaz themselves complain that Georgia, Russia and the OSCE have all ignored Abkhazia's views in their talks on the future of the base.

Last year Russia suggested transforming Gudauta into a "training and rehabilitation centre" for its 3,000-strong peacekeeping contingent, which has been deployed in Abkhazia since 1994.

Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze first indicated that Russia's proposals might be accepted, but later linked the issue to Russia dropping its plans to abolish visa-free travel between the two countries.

There have been no reports of the two sides discussing Russia's proposals since visas were introduced last December.

Talks continue

Speaking on Georgian radio on Monday, Mr Shevardnadze said that talks on the closure of the base would continue.

While stressing the need for "unconditional and unquestionable implementation of all the agreements reached earlier", he said he hoped that any decision would take into account both sides' national interests.

Apart from Russia's pullout from Gudauta and Vaziani, the Istanbul agreement also calls for the closure of its two other bases in Georgia but sets no date.

Russia says it needs 14 years to complete the process while Georgia says that three years is enough.

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

Padre Island Impact Study Ordered

New York Times
July 3, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bombing-Padre-Island.html

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- A Texas official has ordered an environmental impact study of proposals to let the Navy use Padre Island as a bombing range in place of Puerto Rico's Vieques Island.

``Bombing Texas beaches just doesn't make sense,'' state Comptroller Carole Keeton Rylander said Tuesday. ``I think some may think there's economic benefits. I don't.''

Using 220,000 acres of sparsely populated Kenedy County for practice bombing is one plan being considered as an alternative to the training now done on Vieques. President Bush has said bombing on Vieques will end by May 2003, but demonstrators want exercises stopped immediately.

The Navy has said it's too early to comment on the Texas plan, but Kenedy County commissioners have already voted unanimously against the idea.

County officials cited the possibility of environmental damage, noise, the possibility of stray bombs and disruption of oil and gas operations, from which the county derives most of its tax revenue.

Environmentalists also call the area a critical habitat for migratory birds and several endangered species, including the Kemp's Ridley sea turtle.

Supporters pitch the plan as a possible economic boon, including protection for area military installations that community leaders want to protect from closure by the federal government.

``It's easy to say `Not in my backyard,''' said Gary Bushell, a consultant for the Corpus Christi Chamber of Commerce. ``That will cost American lives.''

-------- vietnam

Vietnam agrees to urgent dioxin survey

Tuesday, July 03, 2001
By Reuters
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2001/07/07032001/reu_elephants_44190.asp

HANOI - A leading U.S. researcher said Vietnam's Health Ministry agreed on Monday on the need for emergency steps after people living near a former U.S. base where there was a big wartime spillage of the toxic defoliant Agent Orange were found to have "alarmingly high" dioxin levels.

University of Texas Professor Arnold Schecter told Reuters he had met Health Minister Do Nguyen Phuong in the morning to discuss U.S. laboratory findings showing tests of blood from 24 out of 25 people taken in the southern city of Bien Hoa in 1999 and 2000 showed elevated levels of dioxin, some "alarmingly high."

Schecter, one of the foremost Agent Orange experts after research in Vietnam dating back to 1984, gathered the samples with Hanoi's top researcher Le Cao Dai, executive director of the local Red Cross. Expensive tests were done in the United States.

"The minister of health agreed that what Professor Dai and I had been showing does constitute an urgent public health matter," Schecter said.

"He is going to meet with the Minister of Science and Technology and Environment to discuss an emergency medical survey or health survey. That will involve monitoring of blood and food in hotspots and comparison areas."

The government has not commented.

Schecter said he envisaged hundreds or perhaps thousands of people being tested in 30-50 Agent Orange "hotspots" starting within weeks, not months. He said it would be the biggest survey of its kind ever carried out in Vietnam.

Schecter cautioned that the initiative still needed to be approved by Vietnam's Committee 33, the body in charge of Agent Orange projects under Science Minister Chu Tuan Nha.

Schecter had earlier complained he had been unable to secure permission from Committee 33 on Sunday to collect new blood and food samples. He said he was now more optimistic about future cooperation, although there were still potential obstacles.

U.S., VIETNAM IN TALKS

The professor's report came just as U.S. and Vietnamese officials were to resume talks on Agent Orange in Hanoi, picking up from an inconclusive initial meeting in Singapore in December.

The United States says the purpose of the talks is to discuss U.S. proposals for joint Agent Orange research. Schecter, who is not on the U.S. negotiating team, said the last round stalled on Vietnam's insistance an agreement should include humanitarian assistance to Agent Orange victims.

The United States sprayed millions of gallons of Agent Orange and other defoliants on Vietnam from 1962 to 1971 to deny communist fighters jungle cover. The chemicals were contaminated by TCDD, the most dangerous form of dioxin.

Washington argues that there is still no solid scientific proof Agent Orange was responsible for a wide range of maladies, including tens of thousands of mental and physical birth defects.

Schecter estimated about a million Vietnamese had been exposed to elevated levels of Agent Orange, but by current research, it was impossible to tell how many may have been made ill.

Bien Hoa, is a city of more than 350,000 north of Ho Chi Minh City. It was once home to a huge U.S. base where there was a major spillage of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. This is thought to have contaminated a lake where locals fish and swim.

Schecter said the tests showed "a large number of people at increased risk for illnesses of all kinds caused by dioxin, whether its cancer, lower IQ for children, emotional problems for children...spontaneous abortions and maybe some malformation if the mother is exposed."

He said there was a need to find out exactly how people were being contaminated. While there was a suspicion the contamination came from fish from the lake, this was not known for certain and pork and duck meat also needed to be tested.

He said the longer research was delayed, the more people would be contaminated, and added: "This would be considered a public health emergency in the United States and immediate action taken."

Schecter thought Washington could be more imaginative and dynamic in its approach to the problem, but said its attitude was complicated by foreign policy implications and the fact that costs of care for any proven victims and cleanups of contaminated areas would likely run to hundreds of millions of dollars.


-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

Shell to provide solar power for Chinese homes

UK: July 3, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11418

LONDON - Royal Dutch/Shell is to supply solar power systems to nearly 80,000 homes in China over the next five years, the oil giant said yesterday.

Shell Renewables has signed an agreement with the Sun Oasis Company Ltd in Beijing to supply solar systems for up to 78,000 households in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of western China.

"This project demonstrates yet again that solar power is starting to provide a solution for some of the two billion people in remote areas who have little chance of ever getting grid power", said Phillippe De Renzy-Martin, chief operating officer at Shell Solar in a statement.

De Renzy-Martin said Shell saw 10 percent of sales coming from rural markets like Xinjiang. Sun Oasis Company will install and maintain the solar power systems.

China's primary energy source is coal, which accounts for 70-75 percent of total needs although solar power is not unknown. In Xinjiang more than 10,000 solar power systems have been installed over the past 10 years.

In June, Shell declared it would spend $500 million to $1 billion on renewable energy programmes over the next five years. The Anglo-Dutch group's existing five year $500 million renewables spending plan is due to end in autumn 2002.

Though significant in the nascent green energy sector, the $100 million a year spend is small in relation to Shell's annual capital spending budget which exceeds $10 billion.

-------- energy

Power Company Rebuts Accusations of Gouging

New York Times
July 3, 2001
By JAMES STERNGOLD
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/03/national/03CALI.html

LOS ANGELES, July 2 - Duke Energy, one of California's larger electricity generators, and state officials today rebutted charges by three former Duke employees that the company had manipulated output to drive up prices, saying the shifts had been ordered by a state- controlled agency.

The agency, the California Independent System Operator, agreed. Stephanie McCorkle, a spokeswoman for the semi-independent agency, which is empowered to manage the state's power grid, said it largely controlled how much power was being produced by the Duke Energy plant. She added that the agency had not offered this information at the time the former employees testified in the State Senate because it had not been asked.

In the Senate hearings last week, the three former plant workers said the company had ramped output up and down, manipulated maintenance schedules and even thrown away some spare parts at a plant in suburban San Diego County in an apparent effort to drive prices higher in January when supplies were tight.

The hearing was another theater in the war of words between the state and the electricity generators, as each has accused the other of causing the energy crisis.

The state, particularly Gov. Gray Davis, has accused the generators of gouging the state on the wholesale power market. Gov. Davis recently demanded about $9 billion in refunds from the generators, including Duke, while the companies have asserted that the state fell victim to market shortages created by its own policies.

Some top state officials had called the testimony by the three former Duke Energy employees - two plant mechanics and a control room technician - the first "smoking gun," proving market manipulation.

"In my opinion, there was price manipulation," Glenn Johnson, a certified power plant mechanic, said of Duke's actions at the San Diego plant. Duke supplies about 5 percent of California's electricity from four plants in California.

But today Duke Energy sought to demonstrate that the state itself had caused the fluctuations at its plants and that the people who testified were simply unaware of the company's overall commitments to the market.

The company offered a highly detailed presentation, saying that the rise and fall in output had been ordered by the agency.

Jeff Stokes, an executive vice president of Duke Energy, which has its headquarters in Charlotte, N.C., offered copies of handwritten logs from the plant and other documents to show that the workers saw only a partial picture of the operation of the plants and so were unaware that at various times the agency had deliberately set aside some of the output capacity as a reserve.

Mr. Stokes explained that at times the plants are actually put at the disposal of the agency, which increases or decreases output to maintain balance in the overall electrical grid. At other times, the agency keeps some operating capacity off- line as a reserve, so it can meet sudden increases in demand, he explained.

Mr. Stokes said the bottom line was that during those critical days in January covered by the testimony in the State Senate, the plant, which has four operating units, was effectively at the state's disposal.

"The full available output was offered at all times," Mr. Stokes said.

Ms. McCorkle, the spokeswoman for the agency, said of the presentation, "I thought it was a very accurate description." She added that at times the agency had not bought all the output from the plant because Duke was asking too much for the power, not because it was being withheld from the market.

Still, some remained skeptical. Governor Davis, who switched on a brand new power plant in Sutter County today, said through his spokesman that he was not convinced. Earlier, Mr. Davis had invited the three former plant workers to breakfast and had offered a tribute to their integrity.

"There are still a lot more questions out there," said Steve Maviglio, the governor's spokesman.

Mr. Maviglio said that even if Duke had refuted the charges the most important issue outstanding was how much the power generators should refund to the state for overcharges.

There have been numerous investigations by federal and state agencies of the wholesale prices charged this year, and several have found what they have described as convincing evidence of overcharging. But no definitive orders have been handed down and a host of investigations are continuing.

Indeed, for an industry that was supposedly deregulated several years ago, the utilities and power generators are now subject to the most intensive regulatory scrutiny perhaps in their history.

In fact, California triggered price limits in 11 Western states today by issuing a power alert. It was the first time the limits went into effect since they were imposed by federal regulators two weeks ago.

--------

Bush Scales Back Plans to Drill in Gulf of Mexico

New York Times
July 3, 2001
By JOSEPH KAHN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/03/politics/03OIL.html

WASHINGTON, July 2 - The Bush administration sharply scaled back its plans today to drill for oil and natural gas in the Gulf of Mexico, trying to defuse an issue that has pitted President Bush against his brother Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida.

Gale A. Norton, the secretary of the interior, said the administration would seek to let oil companies drill on about 1.5 million acres in the gulf, a quarter of the roughly 6 million acres that the Clinton administration first proposed opening for leasing in 1997.

The compromise plan retreats from Mr. Bush's national energy strategy, released in May, which argued that urgent steps were needed to find more domestic energy sources, including in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. It hands a clear victory to Governor Bush, who along with Florida's influential Congressional delegation opposed any drilling that might threaten the state's beaches.

Administration officials acknowledged that the decision reflected the president's efforts to find a way out of a political quandary that involved family ties, splits in the Republican Party and attacks by environmentalists on Mr. Bush's energy policies.

The officials argued that the new lease area still included a rectangular chunk of the original drilling site, off the southeastern tip of Alabama, that contains the richest potential reserves of oil and natural gas. The reduced scale might also help the administration overcome heated Congressional opposition to any drilling in the area, they said.

But the compromise was hit from both sides. Environmentalists and some lawmakers said it could still open the door to drilling off Florida, while some Republicans and industry groups accused the president of caving in to political opposition.

The administration's support for drilling in the so-called 181 area was an open wound for Governor Bush, who is expected to face a close re- election fight in 2002 and who had so far gained little from his brother's presidency. Late last month, Florida Republicans openly criticized President Bush as ignoring them when he visited the state, where he promoted his environmental credentials by appearing with Democrats at the Everglades National Park.

"This goes a long way to washing away the bitterness from that visit and solving a dilemma for his brother," said Representative Mark Foley, Republican of Florida. "It's a win-win compromise because it allows some drilling but respects those who were adamantly opposed."

Jeb Bush applauded the revised drilling plan. Speaking from his parents' home in Kennebunkport, Me., he called the new proposal a victory for "Florida's fight to protect our coastline."

"Any lease sales that do occur in the 181 area will occur off the coast of Alabama, not Florida," he said. "Floridians have spoken loud and clear, and their voices have been heard by President Bush."

The governor said that he talked to his brother about the issue on Thursday and had stayed in close contact with other administration officials since then. Ms. Norton said she coordinated the policy change with Governor Bush and other parties from the region.

Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, where the energy industry is strong and the tourism business less significant, have tended to be far more supportive of drilling in the eastern gulf. The administration's move to back off its support for drilling in the zone proposed by the Clinton administration drew sharp responses from both Democrats and Republicans in those states.

"By caving into Nimbyism in Florida, the Bush administration has decimated its own energy plan," said Representative David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana. "I think this really just shuts down the opportunity to do anything productive to reduce our dependence on foreign oil."

If Congress does not block the plan, the administration intends to begin leasing offshore blocks to development in December. They would be the first leases in the Gulf of Mexico in more than a decade.

Ms. Norton said her department estimated that the revised area, part of the Outer Continental Shelf, contains 1.25 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, which she said was enough to serve one million American families for 15 years. She put oil reserves in the area at 185 million barrels, enough to power the cars of one million families for nearly six years.

"Development of resources in the O.C.S. is an important part of our national energy strategy," she said. "My decision today represents a very reasonable compromise."

The sale area as proposed by the Clinton administration came as close as 17 miles to Pensacola in Florida's Panhandle. The revised site is 100 miles from Pensacola and also farther from other big coastal cities in Florida, including Tampa and Panama City. It is only 64 miles from Venice, La.

Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, said President Bush listened to the people of Florida and worked with governors of states adjoining the Gulf of Mexico to "come out with a plan that is environmentally sensitive and balanced."

Administration officials said that the reduced drilling area preserved the most promising section of the original site. The reduced site, though only one-fourth the acreage, has about 44 percent of the oil deposits and 47 percent of the natural gas deposits that the larger site had, an official said.

Industry groups, which have estimated much more significant oil and gas reserves in the gulf, said the loss was far greater. The industry especially coveted the "stovepipe" section of the Clinton administration's proposed drilling area that came closest to Florida's Panhandle. The area, now ruled off limits, was expected to contain heavy natural gas deposits in relatively shallow water.

Chevron, BP, Exxon Mobil, ARCO and Shell Oil are among the corporations seeking to drill in the eastern gulf. The companies promoted drilling in the area as environmentally safe and economically sound.

While the revised plan was praised by some Florida environmentalists, most national environmental groups are opposed to any new drilling in the gulf and were quick to criticize the administration's compromise plan.

They argued that offshore drilling poses the threat of oil spills. Drilling also pollutes the water, they said, while pipelines needed to transport oil and gas create hazards when crossing coastal wetlands.

The Natural Resources Defense Council said that most recoverable oil and gas reserves were in the central and western parts of the gulf, which are already open to drilling.

Even the new plan may face obstacles in Congress. The House voted 247 to 164 last month to bar exploration in the eastern gulf until April, reflecting the Florida delegation's power.

Though some House Republicans said that the plan sapped the momentum of efforts to impose a moratorium on new drilling, Democrats said there were still risks, including other offshore drilling sites, that posed an imminent threat to Florida's coast.

"It is the proverbial camel's nose under the tent - to allow oil companies into the rest of the Gulf of Mexico," Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, said.

--------

Power Company Rebuts Accusations of Gouging

New York Times
July 3, 2001
By JAMES STERNGOLD
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/03/national/03CALI.html

LOS ANGELES, July 2 - Duke Energy, one of California's larger electricity generators, and state officials today rebutted charges by three former Duke employees that the company had manipulated output to drive up prices, saying the shifts had been ordered by a state- controlled agency. And the agency, the California Independent System Operator, agreed.

Stephanie McCorkle, a spokeswoman for the semi-independent agency, which is empowered to manage the state's power grid, said it largely controlled how much power was being produced by the Duke Energy plant. She added that the agency had not offered this information at the time the former employees testified in the State Senate because it had not been asked.

In the Senate hearings on June 22, the three former plant workers said the company had ramped output up and down, manipulated maintenance schedules and even thrown away some spare parts at a plant in suburban San Diego County in an apparent effort to drive prices higher in January when supplies were tight.

The hearing was another theater in the war of words between the state and the electricity generators, as each has accused the other of causing the energy crisis.

The state, particularly Gov. Gray Davis, has accused the generators of gouging the state on the wholesale power market. Gov. Davis recently demanded about $9 billion in refunds from the generators, including Duke, while the companies have asserted that the state fell victim to market shortages created by its own policies.

Some top state officials had called the testimony by the three former Duke Energy employees - two plant mechanics and a control room technician - the first "smoking gun," proving market manipulation.

"In my opinion, there was price manipulation," Glenn Johnson, a certified power plant mechanic, said of Duke's actions at the San Diego plant. Duke supplies about 5 percent of California's electricity from four plants in California.

But today Duke Energy sought to demonstrate that the state itself had caused the fluctuations at its plants and that the people who testified were simply unaware of the company's overall commitments to the market.

The company offered a highly detailed presentation, saying that the rise and fall in output had been ordered by the agency.

Jeff Stokes, an executive vice president of Duke Energy, which has its headquarters in Charlotte, N.C., offered copies of handwritten logs from the plant and other documents to show that the workers saw only a partial picture of the operation of the plants and so were unaware that at various times the agency had deliberately set aside some of the output capacity as a reserve.

Mr. Stokes explained that at times the plants are actually put at the disposal of the agency, which increases or decreases output to maintain balance in the overall electrical grid. At other times, the agency keeps some operating capacity off- line as a reserve, so it can meet sudden increases in demand, he explained.

Mr. Stokes said the bottom line was that during those critical days in January covered by the testimony in the State Senate, the plant, which has four operating units, was effectively at the state's disposal.

"The full available output was offered at all times," Mr. Stokes said.

Ms. McCorkle, the spokeswoman for the agency, said of the presentation, "I thought it was a very accurate description." She added that at times the agency had not bought all the output from the plant because Duke was asking too much for the power, not because it was being withheld from the market.

Still, some remained skeptical. Governor Davis, who switched on a brand new power plant in Sutter County today, said through his spokesman that he was not convinced. Earlier, Mr. Davis had invited the three former plant workers to breakfast and had offered a tribute to their integrity.

"There are still a lot more questions out there," said Steve Maviglio, the governor's spokesman.

Mr. Maviglio said that even if Duke had refuted the charges the most important issue outstanding was how much the power generators should refund to the state for overcharges.

There have been numerous investigations by federal and state agencies of the wholesale prices charged this year, and several have found what they have described as convincing evidence of overcharging. But no definitive orders have been handed down and a host of investigations are continuing.

Indeed, for an industry that was supposedly deregulated several years ago, the utilities and power generators are now subject to the most intensive regulatory scrutiny perhaps in their history.

In fact, California triggered price limits in 11 Western states today by issuing a power alert. It was the first time the limits went into effect since they were imposed by federal regulators two weeks ago.

-------- environment

Japan Has Pivotal Role to Play in Kyoto Pact Talks

New York Times
July 3, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-environ.html

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan has a pivotal role to play as efforts persist around the world to keep alive the Kyoto global warming treaty, a position based as much on sentiment as cold facts.

For Japan was the site of the crucial -- and contentious -- 1997 conference that resulted in the drawing up of the world's first treaty to reduce greenhouse gases and ameliorate a warming of the planet that could lead to disaster.

But nearly four years later the treaty has been put in danger by President Bush's decision to dump it -- and Japan may hold the key to its salvation.

``There's no question that Japan believes it has a special responsibility toward the Kyoto treaty because it was drawn up here,'' an Environment Ministry official said. ``A majority of Japanese believe that, and I strongly believe it too.''

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, currently in Europe on the last leg of a three-nation visit that began in the United States, will seek a way to bring Washington back into the treaty, a Japanese official said.

But that does not mean Tokyo supports the U.S. decision to abandon it, he said.

Koizumi met British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Monday and said afterwards the two leaders had agreed to find a way to try to bring back the United States into the Kyoto treaty.

The European Union (EU) has been at odds with Washington over the pact, which calls for industrialized countries to trim output of carbon dioxide by an average of 5.2 percent from 1990 levels by 2012, and a U.S.-EU summit last month failed to bridge the gap.

``Japan has been given the important and unusual opportunity to take a central role in a global issue,'' said Tsuneyuki Morita, a director at the National Institute for Environmental Studies. ''This will be quite good for it in a political sense for the future.''

NUMBERS GAME

Koizumi said in a television interview on Monday that it was still ``theoretically possible'' for the EU and Japan to go ahead and ratify the Kyoto Protocol, leaving out the United States -- though he questioned how effective the treaty would be.

In simple numbers, too, Japan may hold the key.

For the pact to take effect legally, it must be ratified by 55 states representing 55 percent of total man-made output of carbon dioxide.

If Japan, Russia, the European Union (EU), and a number of Eastern European nations joined hands, they would make up the needed 55 percent even without Washington -- even though the United States is the world's largest producer of greenhouse gases.

The EU nations produce some 24.4 percent, Russia 17.4 and Japan 8.5 percent.

Many EU member nations have said they will move forward without the United States and have been trying to persuade Japan to follow suit. An EU mission is set to visit Japan next week to try again.

``It's all a question of numbers,'' said Yurika Ayukawa at the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Japan. ``The EU is generally in favor and Russia seems amenable to their persuasion.''

``We need the EU, Japan and Russia. If Japan doesn't join in, the Kyoto pact is dead.''

JAPAN STANCE SOURCE OF CONCERN

This said, Japan's current stance is a source of concern for environmentalists, who worry about suggestions that Japan may propose treaty revisions to lure Washington back.

Japanese officials have hinted that Tokyo has some ideas up its sleeves, but have declined to give details.

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 Germany later this month.

Among the revisions Japan might propose is a change in the base year against which reductions are gauged to 2000 from 1990, and a cut in the U.S. target for reducing its emissions from the seven percent to which it was originally committed, Kyodo news agency reported on Monday.

Ayukawa at WWF Japan said such talk was worrying.

``If you change the contents of the treaty to suit one country, what's to stop other countries from demanding more favorable conditions for themselves?'' she said.

Morita, at the National Institute for Environmental Studies, agreed that revisions should be avoided but warned that enacting the pact without Washington could risk hurting Japan's economic competitiveness against the United States.

``Until the last minute, Japan should make every effort to persuade Washington -- without revisions. Then, and only then, it should side with the EU and move ahead without America.''

--------

Waste burning hurts sexual development - Greenpeace

THAILAND: July 3, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11410

BANGKOK - Environmental activist group Greenpeace yesterday urged the Thai government to act swiftly against incineration of waste, which its said would have a severe impact on the sexual development of children.

The global lobby group quoted a May 2001 study in the international medical journal, The Lancet, as saying teenage boys living near incinerators had smaller testicles and female teens had smaller breasts than those living in rural areas.

"Shrinking testicles is but another item in the growing litany of ailments connected with the burning of mixed rubbish," said Tara Buakamsri, Toxics Campaigner for Greenpeace Southeast Asia, in a statement.

Greenpeace said it had started a campaign against a series of proposed incineration plants in the Thai capital of Bangkok.

It said a medical waste incinerator which has been operating for years was also a "faulty solution" for hospital waste and lacked a proper monitoring processes to check environmental and health impacts.

"The incineration of waste either in the open or in enclosed facilities emit super-toxic chemicals such as dioxins and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which are also being examined for their alleged role in altering sex ratio among populations resulting in the birth of more females than males."

----

US, Hanoi officials discuss Agent Orange

Boston Globe World,
July 3, 2001
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/184/nation/The_World_Today+.shtml

HANOI - American and Vietnamese officials met yesterday 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 US 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 laboratory animals. A recent study by American researchers showed that some Vietnamese had ''alarmingly high'' dioxin levels in their blood, more than three decades after the US military stopped spraying Agent Orange. The first talks between the two governments on Agent Orange research, held in Singapore last November, ended inconclusively. (AP)

----

Ford Money Drives Environmental Partnership

By Richard Morin and Claudia Deane
Tuesday, July 3, 2001
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10807-2001Jul2?language=printer

Are the Greens getting in bed with the greenbacks -- or is it the other way around?

Ford Motor Co. has given $25 million to Conservation International to establish the Center for Environmental Leadership in Business, which opened recently at CI's offices on M Street.

"CI's idea here is that corporations and the environmental sector can work together; environmentalists should harness the private sector's ingenuity to make a difference," said CELB spokesman Jason Anderson.

The new center will identify environmentally friendly business practices, get specific companies to adopt them and then publicize any resulting environmental and economic benefits.

Center officials have identified a Ford manufacturing plant in Sonora, Mexico, as a partner in improving water conservation practices. CI has worked with Starbucks to change the way its coffee is grown in Chiapas, Mexico, to help protect that haven of biodiversity. They also hope to work with the travel industry to lighten the burden tourists place on the environment.

"It's our goal to make sure it's not just what we call 'greenwashing,' that there are actual, tangible results" on the environmental side and on the companies' ledgers, Anderson said.

The center's dozen employees will work as a division of CI. They are governed by an executive board of heavy hitters -- including the head of BP and the executive director of the Natural Resources Defense Council -- and will operate independently from the environmental group and Ford.

--------

Climate Research: The Devil Is in the Details

New York Times
July 3, 2001
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/03/science/03CLIM.html?searchpv=nytToday&pagewanted=all

In 1922, Dr. Lewis Fry Richardson, a British physicist with a penchant for grand ideas, described how to forecast the behavior of the atmosphere.

He had details wrong but the basic concept right: a suite of equations that, when applied to measurements of heat, cloudiness, humidity and the like, could project how those factors would change over time.

There was one grand problem. To predict weather 24 hours in advance, he said, 64,000 people with adding machines would have to work nonstop - for 24 hours.

Dr. Richardson pined for a day "in the dim future" when it might be possible to calculate conditions faster than they evolved.

That dim future is now. But while much has changed, much remains the same.

Supercomputers have answered Dr. Richardson's plea. Weeklong weather forecasts are generally reliable. But long-term climate predictions are still limited by the range of processes that affect the earth's atmosphere, from the chemistry of the microscopic particles that form cloud droplets to the decades-long stirrings of the seas.

With its oceans, shifting clouds, volcanoes and human emissions of heat-trapping gases and sun-blocking haze, earth remains a puzzle, said Dr. Michael E. Schlesinger, who directs climate research at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign.

"If you were going to pick a planet to model, this is the last planet you would choose," he said.

So even as the evidence grows that earth's climate is warming and that people are responsible for at least part of the change, the toughness of the modeling problem is often cited by those who oppose international action to cut the emissions of heat-trapping gases.

And while American research centers once dominated this effort, they have recently fallen behind others overseas.

By many accounts, the dominant research effort is now at the Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research, 30 miles west of London. More than 100 scientists there are using extremely powerful computers just to explore long-term questions. Several recent studies by the National Academy of Sciences found that other countries had provided superior supercomputers for advanced climate research.

The academy found that efforts in the United States were hurt in the 1990's by a Commerce Department tariff of 450 percent on Japanese supercomputers. The tariff was lifted this spring.

The results are vexing for American scientists, said Dr. Maurice Blackmon, director of climate studies at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

Last week, Dr. Blackmon said in an interview, he met a climatologist from a Swiss university who was preparing to run a copy of the Boulder laboratory's most sophisticated model on a supercomputer in Bern "six to eight times faster than we can here."

"That's the definition of frustration," Dr. Blackmon said.

Even with the best computers, though, important parts of the climate puzzle still elude both the machines and the theoreticians, although progress is being made.

Dozens of mathematical models of the atmosphere and things that affect it are being applied to the problem. The most ambitious of these - about 20 or so around the world - simulate not only the air but also the oceans and, increasingly, other dynamic features of the planet: its shifting sea ice and glaciers, its cloak of vegetation, its soils.

These imagined earths are generated by supercomputers that tear through decades in a day, creating a compressed view of how the climate might behave if one influencing force or another changed.

The biggest models have improved substantially in the last few years, with many no longer requiring "flux adjustments" - essentially fudge factors - that were once needed to prevent the machine-generated, theoretical climates from drifting out of the realm of the possible.

The signal achievement in recent years has been the accumulation of evidence, much of it from advanced models, that rising levels of greenhouse gases in the air have discernibly warmed the planet.

But moving beyond that general conclusion presents enormous problems.

"We will of course improve our models," said Dr. Mojib Latif, the deputy director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany, "but I don't really see the biggest or most important results changing in the next 10 years."

"In terms of policy," Dr. Latif said, "the models have done their job."

But the models have not clearly answered a pivotal question: how sensitive is the climate to the intensifying greenhouse effect? In other words, how big is any coming climatic disruption likely to be?

The models still predict essentially the same wide range that was calculated nearly 30 years ago: roughly an average rise of 3 to 8 degrees Fahrenheit if greenhouse gases double from the concentrations measured before coal and oil burning and forest cutting significantly altered the atmosphere.

And that is a global prediction. When asked to predict local effects of global warming - say, on the Southwest or Europe - the margins of error grow, and competing models stray far and wide.

For example, the change in climate in particular places in the models still varies markedly depending on how programmers start the simulation - what values they pick for the initial conditions on earth.

The first set of numbers plugged into the matrix of equations is always an educated guess, said Dr. Curtis C. Covey, a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who compares the performance of various models.

"Can you tell me what the initial conditions were in 1850? Can anybody?" Dr. Covey asked.

In fact, some top modelers say even the most powerful simulations can be pushed only so far before they reach limits of usefulness.

Dr. Syukuro Manabe, who in 1969 helped create the first model coupling the atmosphere and oceans, said in an interview that the most advanced versions had already gone too far.

"People are mixing up qualitative realism with quantitative realism," said Dr. Manabe, who did most of his work at the Commerce Department's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, N.J. He is now helping Japan create a $500 million supercomputing center in Yokohama that is expected to dwarf all the other climate research efforts.

He explained that models incorporating everything from dust to vegetation looked more and more like the real world but that the error range associated with the addition of each new variable could result in nearly total uncertainty. Speaking of some climate models, he said, "They are more caught up in trying to show what a great gadget they have than in showing how profound their study is in understanding nature."

Of course, Dr. Manabe said, the models still play a vital role in earth science, providing practically the only means of looking into the future, albeit through a cloudy lens.

And there are still many ways to sharpen the picture, he and other climate experts said.

First, there is improving resolution and speed. Though climate modelers use the same machines that help nuclear weapons designers and astrophysicists, they still face a big trade-off between detail and time.

The most advanced models consist of several hundred thousand lines of computer code that divide the air, land and oceans into a grid of hundreds of interacting boxes. As conditions change in one box, the changes ripple through neighboring boxes.

Until now, modelers had been forced to dice the atmosphere into a grid where each box was about 185 miles on a side. The best ocean models right now are composed of cubes about 85 miles across. The Hadley Center is creating a new model that will take the ocean resolution to cubes about 20 miles on a side, which is detailed enough to capture the important eddies that shunt heat and carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into the depths.

But Dr. Geoff Jenkins, the director of climate prediction at the center, noted that the three-dimensional nature of the problem meant that each doubling of resolution required a 16- fold increase in computing. In tests, Dr. Jenkins said, the new model "completely clogged up" one of the center's supercomputers.

Many features of the earth that are critical to climate change remain much smaller than the model boxes so must still be approximated.

Dr. Blackmon, at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said features as important as California's Central Valley and the mountain ranges around it remained invisible.

"We can't tell you anything about what's going to happen there," he said. To do so would require a grid of boxes 19 miles on a side, he said. To achieve that detail would require computers 1,000 times as powerful as those at the research center.

Dr. Manabe said the goal of the Japanese project, the Frontier Research System for Global Change, was to use vastly greater computer power to accelerate model runs, doing more work in less time and providing a much finer-scale view of what lies ahead.

The center will have 5,120 linked high-speed processors, able to perform 40 trillion calculations per second. The most powerful computers currently used for climate modeling have about 1,000 slower processors and crunch numbers at about a hundredth of that speed.

But more brute computing power is only part of the solution.

Ronald J. Stouffer, a senior meteorologist at the fluid dynamics laboratory in Princeton, said that the key to progress was to move ahead in three realms at once: in the models, in the basic research into the processes that are mathematically represented in models and in the measurements of environmental change that will allow the testing of models.

"It's a triangle," Mr. Stouffer said. "Observations, modeling and theory. Any one can lead the other two for a while but can't lead much before you get stuck." That leads the climate scientists inevitably back from their simulated worlds to the real one.

The modelers have been lobbying for more money, not just for their work but also for ongoing measurements of change in the oceans, atmosphere, polar ice and forests. The value of this work was illustrated this spring, many say, when 50 years of ocean temperature measurements showed warming that matched the models' projections.

Other large mysteries still confront the researchers when they look earthward. Within clouds, for example, the chemistry and physics of the particles like soot and sea salt that form droplets are only slowly being revealed, scientists say.

A small change in the way droplets form could have a large impact on the climate, said Dr. Jenkins, in Britain. He said that Dr. Anthony Slingo, another scientist there, found a decade ago that in theory, a decrease or an increase in the size of water droplets of just 10 or 20 percent "could either halve or double the amount of climate change you'd get."

Eventually, laboratory work and observations should narrow that range, many climate experts say, but uncertainty will always remain.

"The best we can do," said Dr. Manabe, in Yokohama, "is to see how global climate and the environment are changing, keep comparing that with predictions, adjust the models and gradually increase our confidence. Only that will distinguish our predictions from those of fortunetellers."

--------

Wood Products to Get Arsenic Label

New York Times
July 3, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Arsenic-Lumber.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Consumers this fall should start seeing warning labels about the 22 percent arsenic found in a wood preservative used in nearly all the treated lumber in the United States.

The Environmental Protection Agency announced Tuesday an expanded information program it is beginning to warn about the chromated copper arsenate (CCA) that goes into the making of playgrounds, decks, railings, picnic tables, fences, posts and docks.

Also Tuesday, the Consumer Product Safety Commission took a first step toward possibly banning CCA-treated wood from playground equipment. Chromated copper arsenate is a powerful pesticide put into lumber under pressure in a factory to protect the wood from decay and insect damage.

Arsenic, a substance that is both manufactured and naturally occurring, has been much discussed recently in wrangling over how much to limit it in drinking water.

By early fall, the EPA-required labeling is to include all pieces of CCA-treated lumber. The program also is to include stickers and signs for all in-store displays, a new toll-free hotline and a Web site.

``Now consumers will understand that this treated wood contains arsenic,'' said Stephen Johnson, the EPA's director of the Office of Prevention, Pesticides, and Toxic Substances.

EPA had decided that consumers were not being adequately informed. In May, it asked for opinions from the public and from the wood preservative industry on ways to increase consumer awareness.

In late October, the agency also plans to hold a public meeting of one of its science advisory panels to better calculate children's potential exposure in playgrounds.

Next year the EPA expects to release a comprehensive review of CCA-treated wood that could lead to more regulatory changes. That review will include an evaluation of how well the new consumer information programs are working.

In late May, the private Environmental Working Group and the Healthy Building Network petitioned the Consumer Product Safety Commission to ban CCA-treated wood from all playground equipment and to study whether it is safe for other consumer uses.

The groups said the commission's 1990 study underestimated the risk of cancer by failing to account for the risks of CCA-treated wood rubbing off on skin or leaching into places where it can be ingested by people and animals.

The commission has stood behind the study but said it is open to new research.

The commission voted 3-0 on Tuesday to let the public comment on the petition by publishing it in the Federal Register. Based on those comments and on additional research, the commission could vote to begin rule-making on whether to ban CCA-treated wood from playgrounds, spokesman Scott Wolfson said.

``The commission has many options,'' he said. ``We're at the early stages of the process.''

Switzerland, Vietnam and Indonesia have banned CCA-treated wood. Japan, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Australia and New Zealand have either limited its use or proposed restrictions.

-------- genetics

G.O.P Leaders in the House Fight Stem-Cell Aid

New York Times
July 3, 2001
By ROBERT PEAR
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/03/politics/03STEM.html

WASHINGTON, July 2 - House Republican leaders urged President Bush today to prohibit the spending of federal money on biomedical research that used cells derived from human embryos. The research, they said, relies on "an industry of death."

The strongly worded statement came as a battle was raging within the Bush administration over whether to allow federal support for experiments with embryonic stem cells - primordial cells that can reproduce themselves and can, in theory, be manipulated to create almost any cells in the human body.

Some conservatives who oppose abortion, like Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, and many scientists have urged Mr. Bush to encourage such research with federal money. The Roman Catholic Church and most anti-abortion groups staunchly oppose the research because, they say, it destroys human life.

Three top House Republicans - Dick Armey of Texas, the majority leader; Tom DeLay of Texas, the majority whip; and J. C. Watts Jr. of Oklahoma, the chairman of the House Republican Conference - came down firmly today against federal spending for research with cells extracted from human embryos.

The conference consists of all 222 House Republicans, but there was no indication that Mr. Watts had polled the members.

In a joint statement, the three Republican leaders said: "The federal government cannot morally look the other way with respect to the destruction of human embryos, then accept and pay for extracted stem cells for the purpose of medical research. It is not pro-life to rely on an industry of death, even if the intention is to find cures for diseases. We can find cures with life-affirming, not life-destroying, methods that are becoming more promising with each passing day."

The speaker of the House, J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, did not join in the statement. John P. Feehery, a spokesman for Mr. Hastert, said that the speaker was strongly opposed to abortion and did not necessarily disagree with the statement, but that he "wanted to see what the president would do."

Opponents say that in obtaining embryonic stem cells, scientists destroy the embryos, killing human life to secure research material.

Health policy experts in the Bush administration, led by Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of health and human services, say that research with embryonic stem cells may lead to new treatments and even cures for Parkinson's disease, diabetes, heart disease and spinal cord injuries. In a report to Mr. Thompson last month, the National Institutes of Health said that embryonic stem cells had helped reverse symptoms of diabetes in mice and that similar treatments for humans "may soon be possible."

But the president's political advisers, led by Karl Rove, worry that federal support for research with embryonic stem cells will alienate conservative voters, anti-abortion organizations and the hierarchy of the Catholic Church.

In a recent letter to the president, Mr. Armey said, "Such research is not only illegal, it is immoral and unnecessary."

Mr. Armey urged Mr. Bush to increase federal spending on research with stem cells derived from the tissue of adults. In its report, the institutes said that both types of stem cells held immense promise but that for some purposes the embryonic stem cells were more useful.

Administration officials have said that Mr. Bush will probably make his decision this month. Mr. Bush is scheduled to meet Pope John Paul II outside Rome on July 23, and it is unclear how that meeting might affect the timing of his decision.

The pope said last year that embryos were, from the moment of fertilization, a form of human life to be protected as "human persons" with inviolable rights.

Stem cells used in research are from embryos created for fertility treatment. The embryos are typically about five days old and consist of 200 to 250 cells, scientists say.

Aides to the three House Republican leaders said their statement was intended to shore up support for Mr. Rove, after many prominent Republicans had weighed in on the opposite side of the debate.

Among the Republicans who have endorsed the use of federal money for research with embryonic stem cells are Mr. Hatch and Senators Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and Susan Collins of Maine, as well as Representative Jennifer Dunn of Washington.

In a recent letter to an anti-abortion group, Mr. Bush said, "I oppose federal funding for stem cell research that involves destroying living human embryos." But, he added, "I support innovative medical research on life-threatening and debilitating diseases, including promising research on stem cells from adult tissue."

Federal officials said the administration was considering several compromises. One would permit the use of federal money for research on collections of stem cells already derived from human embryos. But experts said that the existing collections, known as cell lines, had different properties and different therapeutic potential, and some are controlled by institutions that have commercial or proprietary interests in them. It is unclear whether the government could compel the owners of those cell lines to share them with other researchers.

The specific question for Mr. Bush is whether to accept, reject or modify guidelines issued by President Bill Clinton last August.

Under a federal law adopted each year since 1996, no federal money can be used to create human embryos "for research purposes" or to finance research in which an embryo is destroyed, discarded or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death.

The Clinton administration said the ban did not apply to stem cell research because "stem cells are not human embryos."

Under the Clinton administration guidelines, scientists can use federal money to conduct research with embryonic stem cells created in the course of fertility treatments. But scientists cannot use federal money to extract the stem cells from human embryos.

The National Conference of Catholic Bishops and other critics denounce this distinction as sophistry.

In their statement today, Mr. Armey, Mr. DeLay and Mr. Watts said they hoped Mr. Bush would "uphold current law" and ban federal spending on research with embryonic stem cells.

"Republicans in Congress take a back seat to no one when it comes to promoting medical research," they said. "Under our leadership, the National Institutes of Health has received record levels of funding in order to find cures for diseases. We will continue to properly fund this crucial research, but it must advance the cause of life without sacrificing some lives to better others."

-------- health

AIDS Epidemic Takes Toll on Black Women

New York Times
July 3, 2001
By KEVIN SACK
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/03/health/03AIDS.html?pagewanted=all

GREENWOOD, Miss. - Here in the rural South, the image of AIDS today looks very much like Tyeste W. Roney.

Not a gay white man. Not a crack-addicted prostitute. But a 20-year-old black woman with a gold stud in her nose, an orange bandanna covering her braids, and her nickname, Easha, tattooed on one leg.

In the back of her mind at least, Ms. Roney had known for years that she could contract H.I.V. by having unprotected sex. Her mother had been telling her so since Ms. Roney was 13, when she lost her virginity. But either the lesson did not stick, or Ms. Roney did not have the power to negotiate safer sex with older lovers. She says that many of the men she can count as partners did not use condoms.

In February, after enduring 10 days of bleeding, Ms. Roney went to a health clinic. First a nurse surprised her by telling her that she had been pregnant and had miscarried. Then the nurse asked Ms. Roney if she knew she was carrying the virus that causes AIDS.

"I said, `Get out of here, that can't be so,' " Ms. Roney recalled. "I just broke down and cried. I thought I wasn't going to be here long. Maybe a month."

It is a scene that has become all too familiar for poor black women here in the Mississippi Delta and across the rural South. Even as the AIDS epidemic has subsided elsewhere in the United States, it has taken firm root among women in places like Greenwood, where messages about prevention and protection are often overtaken by the daily struggle to get by.

Researchers say that in many ways the epidemic in the South more closely resembles the situation of the developing world than of the rest of the country. Joblessness, substance abuse, teenage pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, inadequate schools, minimal access to health care and entrenched poverty all conspire here to thwart the progress that has been made among other high-risk groups, particularly gay men.

While AIDS rates in the United States remain lower among women than men, women now account for a fourth of all newly diagnosed cases, double the percentage from 10 years ago. That growth has largely been driven by the disproportionate spread of the disease among heterosexual black women, particularly in the South.

For those who contract H.I.V. or AIDS in the rural South, life can become intensely isolated. Because of widespread misunderstandings about the ways H.I.V. is transmitted, the stigma facing those who are infected is often suffocating.

Many women are terrified to tell even their families, and they find their only comfort in the monthly meetings of a support group. One woman here, who lives with her son, is convinced that he would make her eat on paper plates and would keep her away from her grandchildren if he knew of her illness. Ms. Roney, who has informed only her family members, said she lost several neighborhood friends after they saw a health department van pull into her driveway to pick her up for a clinic visit.

Black women, who make up 7 percent of the nation's population, accounted for 16 percent of all new AIDS diagnoses in 1999, a percentage that has grown steadily since the syndrome was first identified 20 years ago. By comparison, black men made up 35 percent, white men 27 percent, Latino men 14 percent, and white and Latino women were each 4 percent.

While the number of new AIDS cases in the United States began to decline in the mid-1990's, the reversal started later for Southern black women, and the drop has been slower.

From 1981 to 1999, 26,522 black women developed AIDS in the 11 states of the former Confederacy. In Mississippi and North Carolina, statistics show that more black women than white men have contracted H.I.V. over the epidemic's course.

Unless a cure is found, the share of AIDS patients who are black and female is likely to rise. The trend is strikingly visible in Southern states with large black populations. Here in Mississippi, 28.5 percent of those reporting new H.I.V. infections in 2000 were black women, up from 13 percent in 1990. In Alabama, the number rose to 31 percent, from 13 percent. In North Carolina, it rose to 27 percent, from 18 percent.

"While the H.I.V. epidemic is also increasingly affecting men in the South and black men, the overall trends for women are distinct," concluded researchers with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in a paper published in March in The Journal of the American Medical Association. "The H.I.V. epidemic in women initially centered on injection drug-using women in the urban Northeast, but now centers on women with heterosexual risk in the South."

An Explosive Increase

In 1997, Dr. Hamza O. Brimah, a Nigerian- born physician who received training in AIDS care in London and New York, opened the Magnolia Medical Clinic in a strip mall here in affiliation with the Greenwood Leflore Hospital. Dr. Brimah is the only AIDS specialist in a nine-county area. He started with fewer than 10 AIDS patients. Now he has 185. He assumes he is seeing only a fraction of those who are actually infected.

"In the beginning, I remembered everybody's name," Dr. Brimah said. "Now I have a hard time. Who's this? Who's that? They're coming at me so fast."

Sixty percent of Dr. Brimah's AIDS patients are women and 95 percent are black, in an area where 61 percent of the population is black. Almost all were infected through heterosexual transmission, and a majority, he estimates, came to him with a history of sexually transmitted disease.

Research has shown that people with sexually transmitted diseases like syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia have twice to five times the risk of contracting H.I.V., because the diseases cause ulcerations in protective mucous membranes. The South has consistently had the country's highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases. In 1999, for instance, 9 of the 10 states with the highest rates of gonorrhea and syphilis and 7 of the 10 with the highest rates of chlamydia were in the South, according to C.D.C. figures.

Dr. Brimah hears from his patients that H.I.V. is often the least of their worries. "There are issues," he said, "of looking after children, trying to get insurance, the lack of a father in the home, alcohol, drugs. They have so much going on."

Because of that, he said, women rarely seek out H.I.V. testing for themselves or their partners. Many of his patients, like Ms. Roney, learn that they are positive only when they become pregnant.

The other thing Dr. Brimah hears repeatedly from his patients is that they understood before they were infected that H.I.V. could be transmitted heterosexually. Typically, they hold no misconceptions that H.I.V. victimizes only gay white men. And yet, like smokers, speeders and drug users, they place themselves knowingly at risk.

Dr. Brimah told of one patient who dutifully took annual H.I.V. tests for three years, who clearly understood the nature of the virus and who then tested positive in the fourth year. "She was clued up, but she took the risk," he said. "She really couldn't explain it."

The women often struggle to explain their recklessness. They look down at the floor when asked to discuss their sexual behavior. Even those who have had many sexual partners will say that they were choosy, that they had known their partners for years, sometimes for a lifetime, and that they trusted them. Over and over, they say, they just did not think it could happen to them.

"I just wasn't thinking about no H.I.V., and I wasn't thinking about no AIDS and I wasn't thinking about no pregnancy," Ms. Roney said. "I was just being hardheaded. I don't know any other way to break it down."

Jean, a 44-year-old woman with AIDS who did not want her last name used, said she fell into a fast lifestyle after getting divorced in 1987. She said she might have had 30 to 35 partners over the last 10 years, and that they only occasionally used condoms.

"I guess I just blocked it out of my mind," she said. "I thought I had a good heart so it wouldn't happen to me. I knew it could happen, I guess, but I was just being stupid."

Health workers and researchers who hear these stories say that such high-stakes risk- taking may seem to make no sense, but that it must be viewed within the context of lives defined by fatalism, faith and powerlessness. Often they say, there is little to break the tedium and despondency of life here, and certainly little that provides pleasure, other than sex.

"There's a sense that you don't control your life that much, and if God wants me to have H.I.V. I'll get it," said Kathryn Whetten-Goldstein, an assistant professor of public policy at Duke who has been studying AIDS in Southern states. "All of their life experiences teach them that they have very little control over their future."

Some girls start having sex at extremely young ages, almost always with older men, and find they have little ability to persuade their partners to use condoms.

"Most times I asked them to use one," said Ms. Roney, a ninth-grade dropout, "but you know how guys are. They do their little sweet talk. `It doesn't feel the same. Let's use one next time.' I just went along with it. I fell into that trap."

Poverty, Drugs and Risk

Often, though not always, drugs and money play a vital role as well. Indeed, Dr. Brimah said the desperate need for money had become an H.I.V. risk factor in the Delta in the same way that needle-sharing was in the cities.

The Mississippi Delta, where the young green cotton crop shares the summer landscape with immense catfish farming ponds, has for years been among the poorest regions in America.

The median income here in Leflore County was $21,027 in 1997, more than $7,000 below the state median, which is itself the second lowest in the country. Three of every 10 Leflore residents live below the poverty line. The unemployment rate in April was 7.1 percent (some neighboring counties have broken well into double digits) and the recent closing of several large plants has made work even harder to find than usual.

The poverty is apparent on the rough streets and unpaved alleys of black neighborhoods like Baptisttown and McLaurin, where men and women sweat out steamy nights on the porches of dilapidated shotgun shacks. Just across the Yazoo River lies another world of brick mansions and lovingly tended lawns, where the white people live.

As everywhere, some poor women here make ends meet through prostitution. But the more common practice is a less formalized sex-for-money exchange in which nothing is negotiated up front. Rather, several women and health workers explained, there is an unstated assumption that a woman who engages in casual sex with a man will be rewarded with a little financial help, perhaps in paying the rent, perhaps in buying groceries. As one woman explained it to Dr. Brimah: "You know how it is with men, doc. No honey, no money."

Gina M. Wingood, an assistant professor of public health at Emory University who has studied AIDS in rural Alabama, said: "It's just trying to make ends meet, day-to- day survival. We sort of see it in terms of prostitution, but they see it as how they have to frame their lives, especially if they have children or elderly parents to care for."

Jean, the 44-year-old AIDS patient, said she regularly operated that way. "Some of them would pay me for sex but it wasn't like I was out on the street," she said. "The guy would just give me a little something sometimes. I had an apartment and had bills and I wasn't working."

Jerome E. Winston, a health department worker who tracks the sexual networks of infected people in the Delta, said he had heard complaints from some women about other women who accepted insufficient compensation for their companionship.

"What we had said to us a couple of times by the older girls is that the younger girls are messing up the system because they're giving it away virtually for free," Dr. Winston said. "They don't negotiate anything except for maybe a new CD or a pair of shoes."

Sex is also sometimes exchanged for drugs, particularly crack cocaine, though this seems to be more common in larger towns in the southern part of the state.

Sharyn Janes, a professor of nursing at the University of Southern Mississippi, said she heard horror stories while conducting interviews with people considered at high risk of infection. One man, she said, told her that he once drove a woman out of town when she refused his demand for sex after he gave her crack. He told her that "nobody gets a free ride" and left her to walk home, Ms. Janes said.

Tracing Sexual Networks

Because of the breadth and casualness of sexual networks here, an infection can be virtually impossible to track and control.

In the first half of 1999, for instance, health officials untangled a trail left by two H.I.V.-positive men in Greenwood who had had sex with 18 women over a three-year period. Two of the women had had sex with both men. Five were themselves infected with the virus, and they in turn had had sex with 24 other men.

A study of the cluster by the C.D.C. found that half of those interviewed had a history of other sexually transmitted diseases, that some of the H.I.V.-infected women were as young as 13, and that the median age of the infected women was 16, compared with 25 for the infected men.

"The teenager's concept is that this guy is older so he's going to know what he's doing and he will take care of me," said Dr. Shannon L. Hader, a Centers for Disease Control researcher who studied the Greenwood cluster. "The reality is that older men have had more partners and are therefore more likely to have S.T.D.'s."

Clearly, Dr. Hader said, messages about prevention are not getting through. The rural South is politically conservative, and prevention programs in the schools tend to be episodic and focused on abstinence. Parents of students in the Greenwood schools must grant written permission before their children can be taught about condoms. Many local pastors are also reluctant to encourage explicit discussions about sex.

Dr. Hader also found a lack of knowledge about H.I.V. treatment. Five of the seven infected members of the Greenwood cluster had no idea that those with H.I.V. could now live for long periods with the help of antiretroviral drugs. That misconception has made it difficult to get patients into care, where they could also receive information about not spreading the virus.

Those who do seek care have few options. Before Dr. Brimah opened his clinic here, AIDS patients had to travel more than two hours to Jackson or Memphis, a trip that many could not make. Sandra Moore, a 32- year-old Greenwood woman who first learned that she had AIDS in 1990, would sometimes drive as far as New Orleans for treatment. Ms. Moore had withered to 60 pounds when she first visited Dr. Brimah, and was seemingly weeks away from death. Now on medication, she has increased her weight to 105 pounds and talks of living to see her four young children graduate from high school.

The cost of treatment is also prohibitive for many here. The pills typically prescribed by Dr. Brimah can cost up to $1,200 a month. Medicaid covers many of the poorest patients, and other state and federal programs help. But the working poor often have trouble qualifying for the programs.

Last year, Dr. Brimah received a three- year, $1.2 million grant under the Ryan White Care Act, the primary source of federal money for AIDS treatment. He uses the money to pay staff members, to buy equipment, supplies and medication, and to provide transportation to needy patients.

But in general, many Southern states have received a disproportionately small share of Ryan White funds. The money is appropriated to states by a formula based on the number of people living with AIDS in that state. But the growth of the epidemic in the South has been relatively recent, and many of those infected have not progressed from H.I.V. to AIDS. Congress changed the formula last year so that money will eventually be based on H.I.V. counts, but the new system might not take effect for years.

The other factors obstructing treatment, and thus prevention, are denial and stigma. Many infected women here never tell family members and close friends for fear of being shunned and abandoned.

"A lot of people don't understand about it," said Jane Smith, who has only told her pastor and her mother-in-law since learning two years ago that she has AIDS. "I guess they're scared they can catch it from being around people with it, if they cough on them or shake their hands."

One married couple, both infected, said they were open about their status when they lived in New York but had told no one since moving to Mississippi, not even their friends at Narcotics Anonymous meetings. "Everybody would scatter if they knew," said the wife.

Jean has lied to her family members, telling them that she has cancer, and has batted away their questions. Her joy, she said, is her grandchildren, and she is convinced that her son would not let her near them if he knew.

"I want to tell my family," she said, "but I know they're not going to accept it, and I'm just not strong enough right now for them to reject me. It would just send me over the edge."

-------- human rights

Escape From a Prison-State

Tuesday, July 3, 2001; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10780-2001Jul2?language=printer

LAST WEEKEND seven members of a North Korean family managed to achieve what tens of thousands of other refugees from their country's brutal dictatorship have been unjustly denied: protection provided by the United Nations and asylum in South Korea. Like up to 300,000 other North Koreans, the family of Jung Tae-jun fled the state-imposed starvation, police brutality and labor camps of the north for China, where they hid for two years among the ethnic Korean population. Unlike all the rest, they managed to contact the Beijing office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which, after several days of standoff, overcame China's resistance to allowing their evacuation. This small victory for the UNHCR, which has done little to help one of the world's biggest communities of refugees, ought to raise a much larger question: Why should the thousands of other Korean refugees in China be denied similar assistance?

The first obstacle is the Chinese government, which has signed an international convention on protection of refugees but refuses to respect its terms. The Communist government, still friendly with the North Korean regime of Kim Jong Il, does not maintain tight security along its northeast border, so hundreds of thousands of desperate North Koreans can slip across. But it will not allow the UNHCR to operate in the area or screen the arrivals, instead ludicrously insisting that all are mere economic migrants not suffering from persecution by the world's strictest totalitarian government. As a result anywhere from 30,000 to 300,000 North Koreans live a precarious existence in northeast China; periodically Chinese authorities conduct roundups and deport the emigrants back across the border -- where they face prison camp or execution for the crime of fleeing. Some make desperate efforts to reach South Korea via Mongolia or Southeast Asia. But only a few hundred have made it in the past 10 years.

Earlier this year an extraordinary total of 11.8 million South Koreans signed a petition to the United Nations asking for better treatment for the refugees. But it's not clear their own government is entirely on board. South Korean officials have not pressed China to grant the refugees access to the UNHCR or freedom to travel to the South, instead preferring what they call "quiet diplomacy." The government of Kim Dae Jung may fear that China would react to serious pressure on the issue by sealing its border with North Korea, making the situation even worse.

But it may also be that some in South Korea and in the West fear success. If China were to allow more North Korean emigrants to be designated refugees and evacuated to the South, enormous numbers might head for the border. As all the parties well know, it was just such an outpouring of refugees that caused the collapse of East Germany's Communist regime in 1989. China no doubt prefers North Korea's dependent Communists to a united and democratic Korea. And though South Korea hopes for unification with the North some day, it fears a precipitous collapse of the Pyongyang regime that would swamp it with refugees.

Thanks to such concerns, North Korea's refugees have been hemmed into a miserable no-man's land, both diplomatically and literally. The bravery of the Jung Tae-jun family last week at last put their suffering on the international agenda. The United Nations and the Bush administration should act to keep it there -- by beginning a serious campaign to give the UNHCR access to the thousands of families left behind.

----

Turkey Arrests Leader of Sect Over Prayers Without Permit

New York Times
July 3, 2001
By DOUGLAS FRANTZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/03/world/03TURK.html

STANBUL, July 2 - The leader of an American-based mystic Islamic Sufi sect was arrested on Thursday in Izmir on charges of praying in a group without a permit and wearing banned religious dress in public.

Aydogan Fuat, also known as Sheik Abdul Kerim Fuat, was arrested while holding a prayer meeting for 40 followers. The police videotaped part of the session and questioned the followers before arresting Mr. Fuat. He has been held without bail pending a hearing on Tuesday. A judge is expected to decide whether Mr. Fuat should be turned over for trial in the state security court.

An official from the American consulate in Izmir, in the southwest, was not allowed today to visit Mr. Fuat, a naturalized American citizen, an assistant said.

A spokesman for the American Embassy in Ankara said privacy laws prohibited him from commenting on whether officials had been refused access to Mr. Fuat.

Mr. Fuat, 44, was born in Turkish Cyprus. He is the spiritual leader of a group with several hundred followers, mostly in New York, and he has conducted services here for many years, said Meryem Brawley, his assistant.

Sufism is a mystic tradition in Islam, dating from the eighth century and the Ottoman Empire. The best known Sufi tradition is dervishes' dancing to achieve a higher state of awareness.

Although Sufism is practiced in parts of Turkey, the state exercises strict control over religion and enforces tough laws against organizations and religious leaders considered outside the mainstream. Last week, the highest court closed the main opposition party after having accused it of being a center for Islamic activities opposed to the secular government.

Ms. Brawley said Mr. Fuat had been charged with violating a law against conducting services for a group of people without a permit and for wearing a turban and a flowing religious coat in public.

--------

Turkey Sends Preacher to Jail

New York Times
July 3, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Turkey-US-Preacher.html

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) -- A Turkish court ordered a Muslim preacher who is an American citizen held in jail to face charges of insulting the secular state, his lawyer said Tuesday.

Aydogan Fuat, who leads an Islamic group with several hundred followers in New York, was detained last Thursday during a meeting at a private apartment in the Aegean port city of Izmir.

Fuat, whose followers call him Sheik Abdul Kerim Fuat, faces up to three years in prison if convicted of insulting military officers and Turkey's secular government.

Fuat's lawyer, Abdullah Kaya, said he asked the court to release him from jail and to move the case from a security court that deals with anti-state crimes to a civil court. Both requests were denied Tuesday, he said.

No trial date has been set, but Kaya said he expects his client to stay in jail for a month before a trial begins.

Private Show TV on Monday broadcast footage of Fuat speaking to his followers during the meeting at which he was detained.

Fuat was wearing a cloak and a green turban -- clerical clothing that only religious leaders on the government payroll are allowed to wear. It is illegal to hold religious meetings in private homes.

``What does the state want? They want secularism. Secularism means no religion,'' Fuat told about two dozen followers during the meeting. ``I came here to change this place into paradise.''

Fuat, 44, is a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in northern Cyprus.

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

Text for Free Trade Accord Released

New York Times
July 3, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Hemisphere-Trade.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A draft negotiating text for an agreement to create a hemisphere-wide free trade zone was released Tuesday, prompting praise from the Bush administration and criticism from opponents of the pact.

The 434-page draft of the Free Trade Area of the Americas Agreement was posted on the Web site of the FTAA secretariat. President Bush and the leaders of 33 other countries involved in the negotiations had pledged at a summit in Quebec in April to make the draft document available.

In a statement, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick called release of the negotiating text an ``unprecedented effort to make international trade and its economic and social benefits understandable to the public.''

However, various opponents of the free trade negotiations charged that the draft text confirmed their worst fears about the threats posed to environmental protections and labor rights.

``Under this anti-environmental, antidemocratic trade agreement, multinational investors will have the right to sue governments and challenge environmental laws and regulations before secret and unaccountable international tribunals,'' said Brent Blackwelder, president of Friends of the Earth.

Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizens' Global Trade Watch, said that the heavily bracketed text, indicating language still in dispute, showed how little progress negotiators have been able to make despite seven years of effort.

She questioned whether the full negotiating text was being released given that the North American Free Trade Agreement, which covered the United States, Mexico and Canada, was over 700 pages long.

``This was supposed to be a PR move aimed at calming FTAA opposition, but the governments have obviously put out a fragment of the total agreement, one that has been sanitized by eliminating vital information,'' she said.

Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, a critic of the administration's trade policies, said he was troubled by the contents of the draft text and the delay in releasing the document. He and 53 other Democrats in Congress had called on the administration to make the document public in March, before the Summit of the Americas meeting in April.

``The Bush administration has shown only minimal interest in addressing either the impact of trade on environmental and labor standards or in assuring a reasonable level of transparency and public participation in trade decision-making,'' said Doggett.

Administration officials said the delay in releasing the text, which had been expected to appear shortly after the Quebec summit in April, was due to the need to translate the document into the four official languages of the FTAA -- English, Spanish, French and Portuguese.

The goal of negotiators is to wrap up discussion in time for the free trade area to go into effect in 2005. But the many brackets in the agreement language underscore how much ground negotiators have to cover to achieve that goal.

The United States is hoping the deal will eliminate Latin America's high tariffs on American manufactured goods. Brazil, the largest economy in South America, is insisting that the United States reduce its farm subsidies and antidumping rules, which keep out Brazilian products such as steel, sugar and orange juice.

--------
570
China, EU, U.S. Say Breakthrough in WTO Entry Talks

New York Times
July 3, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-trade-c.html

GENEVA (Reuters) - China, the European Union and the United States agreed on Tuesday there had been a major breakthrough in key talks on the terms for Beijing's admission to the World Trade Organization (WTO).

``All major issues have been resolved,'' chief Chinese negotiator Long Yongtu told reporters after a meeting of WTO members, and U.S. delegation chief Jeffrey Bader said ``core issues'' had been wrapped up.

The EU's Karl Falkenberg said ``major progress'' had been achieved on completing final versions of key texts at the heart of the vast package of accords that will make up the Chinese admission pact.

A trade official close to the talks said it was clear that ''there is a strong political will to get China in.''

In Beijing on Tuesday, Chinese President Jiang Zemin reaffirmed that his country would press ahead with its economic opening to the outside world, although he said globalization -- often identified with the WTO's open trading rules -- was a ''two-edged sword'' for developing countries.

Chinese membership of the world trade body will accelerate the opening of the country's huge and potentially lucrative market to foreign competitors, especially in areas like telecommunications, insurance and banking.

China will lower tariff barriers on imports of goods such as cars, and make it easier for foreign firms to buy local companies or set up their own networks, for instance in the retail sector.

Membership will help Chinese exporters in some areas, notably textiles, because other members will have to scrap import quotas on Chinese goods.

Bader and Falkenberg, speaking at the closed-door WTO meeting, agreed that the advances in areas like services, agriculture and patent protection indicated the 15-year process could be wrapped up soon, diplomats present said.

But trade officials said there could be holdups as efforts were made to tidy up language and agree on precise phrasing in some texts, and to resolve a problem over insurance dividing the EU and the United States.

CHINA MAY JOIN NEXT YEAR

One official quoted Falkenberg as telling the meeting that the advances of the past few days indicated that China, the world's ninth largest trader, could take its place in the 141-member body early next year.

``Given the amount of documentation that has to be compiled once the remaining textual problems have been resolved, that looks to be the most likely scenario,'' said one trade envoy.

Diplomats from WTO countries -- of which about 40 negotiated separate accords with Beijing and one, Mexico, is holding out for tougher terms to protect its industries against a flood of Chinese goods -- set two new sessions to review the texts.

After a meeting on Wednesday to formalize the outcome of the latest talks, they will meet again for five days from July 14, and then again in mid-September when officials said the overall agreement could be completed.

If that timeframe is met, the package would then be approved by trade ministers from all present WTO states when they meet in Doha, Qatar, from November 9-13 for their two-yearly conference to set the agenda for the body.

After that, the Chinese parliament has to ratify the pact and Beijing has to formally notify the WTO that this has been done. Exactly 30 days after the notification, it will automatically become a member.

INSURANCE MAY CAUSE PROBLEMS

Some trade officials and diplomats were concerned that the insurance issue -- involving the influential U.S. conglomerate American Insurance Group or AIG -- and agriculture problems could still upset that scenario.

Pushed by AIG and its tough-talking chief executive Hank Greenberg, U.S. negotiators are asking China to agree to allow firms already established there to open branch offices around the country without seeking new permission.

EU officials say this would give AIG, already in China, an unfair advantage over European firms which might come in later, and that either the U.S. request should be dropped or Beijing should agree to give similar terms to all foreign companies.

On the agricultural issue, India, Malaysia and South Korea have voiced alarm over a concession made by China to the United States in which it agreed to set a ceiling for production subsidies to its farmers at 8.5 pct of output value.

The developing countries that make up nearly three-quarters of the WTO membership are normally allowed up to 10 pct. The three dissenting countries want assurances that they will not be pressed to lower their own subsidy ceiling.

-------- police

Teenager Dies at Arizona Boot Camp

New York Times
July 3, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Boot-Camp-Death.html

PHOENIX (AP) -- A 14-year-old boy died at a boot camp where troubled youngsters were allegedly kicked and forced to eat mud.

Anthony Haynes of Phoenix died Sunday at the America's Buffalo Soldiers Re-enactors Association camp near Buckeye, where the regimen includes forced marches, black uniforms, in-your-face discipline and a daily diet limited to an apple, a carrot and a bowl of beans for the day.

The boy had been about a week into a five-week program.

The boy's mother, Melanie Hudson, said the camp director told her that her son had eaten dirt and refused to drink water. The Arizona Republic reported that the boy had vomited dirt.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said he was treating the death as suspicious and awaiting autopsy results to determine the cause. ``There have been some serious allegations of abuse at that boot camp,'' he said.

Authorities removed about 50 children from the camp and returned them to their parents.

The organization that runs the camp did not return calls seeking comment Monday and Tuesday. But camp director Charles Long told KSAZ-TV: ``Our camp is a rough camp, but we endure it. When the facts come out about what happened, it's not the components of this program that's the problem.''

The camp is operated by a private organization and is for troubled youngsters who are sent there by their parents.

The sheriff said detectives had learned that the children slept outdoors in sleeping bags on concrete slabs and that they had been under the supervision of 17- and 18-year-old staff members since at least Wednesday. No medical personnel were at the camp, Arpaio said.

``If you do have this type of environment, you have to make sure it's humane,'' he said.

Unidentified former drill instructors at the camp told the Republic that youths were kicked and forced to swallow mud.

The boy's father, Gettis Haynes Jr. of Hannibal, Mo., told the newspaper that he blames the camp for his son's death and himself for sending the boy there.

``At the time, I thought I was doing the right thing. It was probably the biggest mistake I ever made in my whole life,'' he said.

The boy's mother told KPNX-TV that her son was a shoplifter with anger problems. She told the newspaper that she enrolled him in the program after he slashed her tires.

A year ago, participants in another boot camp operated by the same group reported that they were kicked, choked and subjected to other cruelty by drill instructors. They also said they were handcuffed together. Authorities said no juveniles were injured, and no arrests were made.

-------- spying

CIA Gave $10 Million to Peru's Ex-Spymaster

Angel Paez,
The Public i
July 3, 2001
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11131

The Central Intelligence Agency gave ex-Peruvian spymaster Vladimiro Montesinos at least $10 million in cash over the last decade, as well as high-tech surveillance equipment that he used against his political opponents, the Center for Public Integrity has learned.

Montesinos, who now faces trial on murder, arms and drug trafficking charges, among others, had founded and personally controlled a counter-drug unit within Peru's National Intelligence Service, known by its Spanish acronym SIN.

It was to that Narcotics Intelligence Division, known as DIN, that the CIA directed at least $10 million in cash payments from 1990 until September 2000, U.S. officials told the Center's International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Most of the money was to have financed intelligence activities in the drug war, though officials acknowledged a small part was for antiterrorist activities.

The CIA knew the money was going directly to Montesinos and had receipts for the payments, the sources said. "It was an agency-to-agency relationship," said one U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity in Lima, the capital, "with Vladimiro Montesinos as the intermediary.... Montesinos had the money under his control."

The new information on Montesinos is part of an extensive soon-to-be-released report by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) on U.S. aid to Latin America. The material on Montesinos is based on multiple interviews with U.S. and Peruvian officials.

A CIA spokesman in Washington refused to confirm or deny that the agency had helped fund DIN, and that part of those funds went into Montesino's pockets.

However, an intelligence official who asked not to be further identified confirmed that Montesinos had pocketed some, but not most, of the funds. He said that the CIA had been fully aware that Montesino was involved in corrupt deals and that the CIA had briefed the National Security Council, State Department and Pentagon about the alleged corruption. He said the agencies directed the CIA to continue to work with Montesinos because he was Peru's designated chief of counternarcotics and the only game in town.

Montesinos disappeared in October as the regime of Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori collapsed under wide-ranging corruption allegations and was seized in Venezuela on Saturday night, June 23. Montesinos was returned to Peru on June 25 to face an array of government charges.

U.S. Shrugged Off Reports

Over the years, the United States accumulated plenty of evidence of corruption, human rights abuses and other anti-democratic actions by Montesinos, but it shrugged off the reports because Montesinos -- the unofficial head of the National Intelligence Service -- was a CIA asset deemed key to Washington's drug war in the Andes.

But the final blow appeared to be Montesinos double-dealing in Colombia. In what is surely among the most embarrassing turns in post-Cold War U.S. foreign policy, Montesinos used his CIA-backed position of influence to get rich and to betray his benefactors. He arranged an arms deal that sent at least 10,000 AK-47 assault rifles from Jordan to Colombia's leftist FARC guerrillas, collectively public enemy number one in the U.S. war on drugs in Latin America and the main target of Washington's $1.3 billion counternarcotics aid package to Colombia.

Montesinos had long been fingered as corrupted by drug money, although many of the earlier claims that surfaced came from arrested drug dealers. But by 1997, the State Department began to document Montesinos' questionable activities in its annual human rights reports. The Senate Appropriations Committee noted in 1999 that it had "repeatedly expressed concern about U.S. support for the Peruvian National Intelligence Service" and requested that it "be consulted prior to any decision to provide assistance to the SIN."

Diversion of Funds No Surprise

The CIA suspected that Montesinos was involved in some illegal activities and was not surprised when informed of the diversion of funds, U.S. sources said. It continued doing business with him "because he solved problems, including problems he created himself," one U.S. source told ICIJ.

The U.S. Embassy has provided Peru's anti-corruption prosecutor with detailed information about the CIA's payments to Montesinos in response to the Peruvian government's wide-ranging investigations into Montesinos' malfeasance. The prosecutor, Ana Cecilia Magallanes, has told U.S. officials that she has documents showing the diversion of SIN money, including the CIA payments, toward illegal activities. Sources would not elaborate on what those activities included, but the prosecutor said it did not appear that those monies were diverted into Montesinos' personal accounts.

However, Peruvian prosecutors also allege that Montesinos collaborated with drug traffickers, who paid him and his associates protection money. After 10 years as the power behind Fujimori, Montesinos had at least $264 million deposited in foreign bank accounts in Switzerland, the United States, the Cayman Islands and other nations, Peru's equivalent of attorney general, Nelly Calderon Navarro, announced in June.

According to U.S. embassy officials in Lima interviewed by ICIJ, the SIN's narcotics intelligence unit was funded and assisted by both the CIA and the State Department's Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement. The State Department's share included $36,000 in 1996, $150,000 in 1997 and $25,000 in 1998, according to U.S. Embassy officials. In 1999, State withheld aid to the SIN because of congressional anger about reports that Montesinos was using the unit to gather intelligence on the regime's political opponents.

Three separate Peruvian military intelligence sources told ICIJ that surveillance equipment provided by the CIA for use in the drug war was instead used by the SIN to intercept the conversations of opposition political figures, journalists, businessmen and military officers suspected of disloyalty to the Fujimori regime. "Intelligence services" were sold to wealthy individuals, corporations or influential officers. A buyer could pay $1,000 to $2,500 per week to receive intercepts from the tapping of a single phone. Or, the military intelligence sources said, the wealthy buyers could pay spies to gather other information about individuals of their choosing.

Support Began in 1970s

The CIA began supporting Montesinos in the mid-1970s when he, as a middle-ranking Peruvian army officer, came to Washington on an unauthorized visit and handed over documents concerning Soviet arms deals with Peru. When the CIA learned of Montesinos' double-dealing with Colombia's FARC guerrillas, according to U.S. and Peruvian sources, it decided to try to bring him down.

The demise began with the mysterious release of a videotape showing Montesinos paying a $15,000 bribe to an opposition politician in September 2000. Hundreds of videotapes subsequently made public showed Montesinos and his subordinates paying off politicians, businessmen and journalists. Former military officers and civilian officials have since come forward to provide court testimony about the regime's involvement in bribery, arms and drug trafficking, and human rights violations including torture, espionage, extortion of political opponents and harassment of the press.

Peruvian military sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, told ICIJ that they believed that the CIA leaked some of the videotapes showing Montesinos' dirty deals.

Fujimori, who was re-elected president in June 2000 and amended the Peruvian constitution in order to retain the office for nearly three presidential terms, fled to Japan, where he resigned from office on Nov. 20, 2000.

Angel Paez is a Peruvian member of the Center for Public Integrity's International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

----

Two Panels Begin Reviewing Technologies and Reorganization

By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 3, 2001
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10809-2001Jul2?language=printer

The Bush administration's top-to-bottom review of the nation's intelligence capabilities begins today when retired Gen. Brent Scowcroft convenes a panel of outside experts to assess new collection technologies and consider ways for reorganizing the U.S. intelligence community.

A review panel of internal experts, meanwhile, holds its opening session on Thursday, with Joan Dempsey, deputy director of central intelligence for community management, serving as chairwoman.

Both panels were mandated by President Bush when he issued a directive in May, which charged CIA Director George J. Tenet with conducting "a comprehensive review of U.S. intelligence." The process is scheduled to be completed by the end of September.

While final members are still being added to both groups, Scowcroft's panel will include retired Adm. David Jeremiah, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, among its seven to nine members, according to one senior intelligence official.

Scowcroft, who served as national security adviser in the Ford and first Bush administrations, has also agreed to serve as the next chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, according to intelligence sources. But no announcement has been made yet by the White House.

The internal panel will have 10 to 12 members, including the deputy directors of the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency.

Under the May directive, the two panels are directed to conduct "independent, but parallel, reviews" of four areas: 21st century intelligence threats and priorities; current capabilities; new and "highly advanced" technologies for intelligence collection and analysis; and possible reorganization of the community.

With only three months to complete the review, the Scowcroft group will initially focus on new technology while the Dempsey group will focus on assessing current capabilities, the intelligence official said.

DOE SECURITY: In yet another sign that the Clinton administration is really over, the House Appropriations Committee has recommended a $19.3 million cut in funding for security and emergency operations at the Department of Energy's weapons laboratories, concluding that current security practices may be excessive.

"The Department's safeguards and security programs seem to careen from one incident to another -- alleged loss of nuclear weapons secrets, misplaced computer hard drives with classified information, and alleged discriminatory actions towards visitors," the committee said in a report on a fiscal 2002 appropriations bill.

The committee urged the Bush administration "to review the underlying basis for each of the Department's security practices to determine if current procedures result in excessive costs without commensurate protection for employees, facilities, and national security programs."

The panel also chided the DOE for using citizenship "as a security screening tool," noting that Rep. David Wu (D-Ore.) was detained on his way into DOE headquarters by security guards and twice asked whether he was an American, even after the two-term House member of Chinese descent showed his congressional identification.

But it wasn't all that long ago that Congress was lambasting the Clinton administration for lax security and counterintelligence at the weapons labs, citing an espionage investigation at Los Alamos National Laboratory involving physicist Wen Ho Lee as proof that China had stolen U.S. nuclear weapons secrets.

Congress also closed the weapons laboratories to foreign visitors for a time, the ultimate use of citizenship as a screening tool.

"Congress is singing a remarkably new tune about security at the Department of Energy," Steven Aftergood writes in his regular e-mail publication, "Secrecy News." He directs the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy,

"The modest reference to an 'alleged' loss of nuclear weapons secrets is a significant retreat from the past insistence by the congressional Cox Committee and others that China simply 'stole' the nation's 'most sophisticated nuclear weapons technology,' " Aftergood writes.

He adds that a "furor" in Congress over suspected espionage at Los Alamos led to an "indiscriminate" security buildup at the labs that included proposals to require thousands of scientists to submit to polygraph testing. "But now Congress implicitly acknowledges that the security frenzy it inspired has exceeded reasonable boundaries," Aftergood concludes.

IN-Q-TEL REVIEW: A group called Business Executives for National Security has completed a congressionally mandated assessment of In-Q-Tel, the CIA's unclassified venture capital fund, finding that it represents a promising model for developing new information technologies, intelligence sources said.

But the group's study, sent to the House and Senate intelligence committees yesterday, found that the "interface" between In-Q-Tel and the CIA is not what it should be, the sources said.

In a final message to CIA employees in January, retiring Inspector General L. Britt Snider called In-Q-Tel "the first significant step" toward bridging the huge divide between the open, entrepreneurial world of information technology and the closed, classified world of the intelligence community.

"Agency managers and overseers," Snider wrote, "must find a way to make it work."

Vernon Loeb's e-mail address is loebv@washpost.com.

--------

Last Parts of U.S. Spy Plane Leave China

New York Times
July 3, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-China-US-Spy-Plane.html

MANILA, Philippines (AP) -- The last disassembled parts of a U.S. spy plane that collided with a Chinese fighter jet, sparking a crisis in U.S.-China relations, were flown off southern China's Hainan island Tuesday.

The fuselage of the EP-3E and equipment used to dismantle the plane were packed onto an Antonov-124 cargo aircraft that arrived in the Philippine capital of Manila on Tuesday evening, refueled and then departed for Hawaii.

``Things went extremely smoothly,'' said Navy Cmdr. John Fleming of the U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii. ``It was a very well-orchestrated operation.''

He said the work crew was able to finish well before its July 11 target date, and added that Chinese officials had been helpful.

``By every measure, the cooperation from the host nation was outstanding,'' Fleming said.

The Russian-designed transport aircraft took off from Hainan at 4:45 p.m. Tuesday (4:45 a.m. EDT), the Navy said. It arrived in the Philippines about 2 1/2 hours later, refueled and left for Hawaii shortly before 1 a.m. (1 p.m. EDT).

Customs and flight records filed by Polet Cargo listed 40 tons of ``aircraft parts.'' Two Americans joined the flight in Manila as petty officers.

The EP-3E, packed with sophisticated electronic surveillance equipment, made an emergency landing April 1 on Hainan after colliding with a Chinese fighter jet over the South China Sea.

The collision and China's 11-day detention of the U.S. crew caused the worst tensions between Beijing and Washington since the bombing of China's embassy in Yugoslavia by U.S. planes in 1999.

China blamed the crew of the U.S. spy plane for the collision and accused the United States of violating its sovereignty by making the unauthorized emergency landing on Hainan. Chinese President Jiang Zemin demanded an apology and an end to U.S. surveillance missions off China's coast.

Washington blamed the Chinese pilot, saying he flew recklessly and collided with the EP-3E. The Chinese pilot parachuted out of his jet and is presumed dead after a lengthy search failed to find him.

A 12-member team from Lockheed Martin, the plane's manufacturer, that was sent to dismantle the EP-3E was expected to leave Hainan on Wednesday, said Navy Chief Journalist Doug Holl of the Pacific Command.

After arriving in Hawaii, the EP-3E was to be transported to a Lockheed Martin facility in Marietta, Ga., where it would be reassembled in preparation for returning to service.

Other parts of the aircraft have already been taken to Kadena Air Base on the Japanese island of Okinawa, Holl said.

The United States had wanted to repair the plane and fly it out of Hainan under its own power, but China refused to allow that.

The two sides eventually compromised, agreeing that the EP-3E would be transported out, but disassembled in such a way that it could be put back together again.

The collision inflamed anti-U.S. feelings in China, still strong two years after the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. Beijing never accepted Washington's explanation that the bombing was a mistake caused by faulty targeting.

In Washington, politicians angered by Beijing's detention of the U.S. plane's crew canceled visits to China and warned of commercial retaliation if the crew wasn't returned. The crew was released after President Bush approved a letter saying the United States was ``very sorry'' for the loss of the Chinese pilot and for the U.S. plane's unauthorized landing on Hainan.

Both sides have said they now want to put the incident behind them.

``China-U.S. relations, though having encountered difficulties recently, now have momentum for improvement,'' Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said Tuesday.

China has asked for compensation for its plane and pilot. Washington says it will only pay expenses incurred in the EP-3E recovery operation.

Vice President Cheney said Monday that the plane incident showed the sides needed to keep working to build a relationship ``that's founded on trust.''

``We're not enemies at this point, probably not friends either,'' Cheney said in a radio interview.

-------- activists

Activists Invade British 'Star Wars' Base

New York Times
July 3, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-arms-br.html?searchpv=reuters

LONDON (Reuters) - A group of 100 protesters on Tuesday invaded a British defense site which could play a key role in the United States ``Son of Star Wars'' missile defense system.

British, Danish and American protesters were among a group of activists occupying three areas in the Menwith Hill base in northern England, campaign group Greenpeace said.

President Bush's proposed shield system is intended to protect the United States and its allies from long range missile attack.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has said he has taken no decision on whether to back the project but his spokesman has signaled broad support.

Many Europeans are skeptical about the proposed missile shield's capability after some test failures. They are also concerned that the United States should not tear up key arms control treaties with Russia that limit such defenses.

Greenpeace said 50 activists, some carrying flags with the message ``Star Wars Starts Wars'' and others dressed as missiles, had gone in through the base's front gate. Others had scaled the razor wire perimeter fence.

Greenpeace member Helen Wallace said: ``I am chained to a water tower inside the site.

``A number of people have been arrested. We are going to stay here to make our point that Menwith Hill is part of Bush's dangerous Star Wars plan and we want Tony Blair to stop that,'' she told BBC radio.

A Ministry of Defense spokeswoman said protesters were on a water tower and on the roof of the control room after a group of 100 had rushed the main gate and scaled the fence.

``There have been a number of arrests,'' she added.

Greenpeace said that if Britain gives the go-ahead, Menwith Hill will be used as a ground relay station to transmit information on missile location and trajectory back to the U.S. to help with targeting for interceptor missiles.

----------

Protesters occupy radar base
Protesters have chained themselves to a water tower

Tuesday, 3 July, 2001
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_1419000/1419762.stm

More than 100 demonstrators have broken into a major British defence site in North Yorkshire.

Greenpeace activists entered the Menwith Hill base, near Harrogate, North Yorkshire, at 0500BST in protest against American plans to use it as part of the so-called "Son of Star Wars" national missile defence programme.

Some have chained themselves to buildings or hidden around the site, while others are demonstrating by the main gate as workers arrive at the radar early warning complex.

North Yorkshire Police say they are at the incident, and a Ministry of Defence spokesman has confirmed that some arrests have been made.

A Greenpeace spokesman co-ordinating the protest said: "At the moment we have 20 people on top of the radar building, 15 on top of the water tower and another 15 in various locations around the base.

"We will stay there for as long as we possibly can."

Reports suggest that demonstrators were on the site for almost an hour before security teams reacted.

'Dangerous plan'

Protester Helen Wallace told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that she was among the group chained to the water tower.

"There are around 20 people here on top of the tower, and other people chained down below," she said.

"We are going to stay here continuing to make our point that Menwith Hill is part of Bush's dangerous Star Wars plan."

Greenpeace says one group of protesters walked straight through the main gate playing the Mission Impossible theme tune.

Some carried flags emblazoned with the message "Star Wars Starts Wars", while others dressed as missiles.

Other teams scaled three-metre fences topped with razor wire to get in.

Protester Eleanor Gordon, 30, of Manchester said: "About 30 went in through the main gates. There were only one or two security guards on duty and they were just overwhelmed.

"My team headed in the direction of a water tower and some climbed up, while others chained themselves to the bottom.

"I was locked to the bottom with chains and a padlock but eventually a group of four security officers came along, used bolt cutters to cut the chains and escorted me off the site.

"The protest may seem drastic but the effects of the Star Wars programme could be so devastating for the world that only direct action will do."

Greenpeace UK executive director Stephen Tindale, who is at Menwith Hill, said President George Bush's proposed missile defence programme was "a disaster".

He called on Prime Minister Tony Blair to turn down American requests to use UK-based sites at Menwith Hill and Fylingdales, North Yorkshire.

He said President Bush needed the two sites as the "eyes and ears" of his planned Star Wars system.

"But Bush can't install the system without Tony Blair's approval.

"We urge Mr Blair not to kowtow to Bush on such a crucial issue. He must say no to UK involvement."

He said Greenpeace had been planning the operation to enter the base for six months, but added that he had been surprised at "how easy it was to get in".

"We decided to do it today because we thought tomorrow, being American Independence Day, they would be expecting us."

----

Critic of China Flees to U.S., Fearing Arrest in Crackdown

New York Times
July 3, 2001
By CRAIG S. SMITH
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/03/world/03CHIN.html

SHANGHAI, July 2 - A maverick Chinese economist who is an outspoken critic of China's endemic corruption has fled to the United States, fearing that she was about to be arrested in a crackdown on dissidents and scholars with ties to the West.

The economist, He Qinglian, 44, was already planning on leaving China on June 26 for a year's sabbatical at the University of Chicago.

But, speaking by telephone today from a conference at American University in Washington, she said she left China instead on June 14, after security agents broke into her apartment in Shenzhen and seized documents, including invitations to academic conferences in the United States, Japan, Taiwan and Sweden.

Just two months earlier, she added, security agents had seized her cell phone and other personal effects. And for the last year, ever since she was dismissed as a writer for The Shenzhen Legal Daily, she said, the police had regularly shadowed her, and her telephone had been tapped.

Fearful of being arrested, Ms. He left her apartment on June 14 without any luggage, and adhered to her usual routine - except that instead of going to work, she went to the bank, then to Baiyun Airport in Guangzhou for a flight to Beijing. She then flew to Singapore, and landed in the United States on June 16.

"I was very worried that I would not be able to safely leave the country because they knew that I was going to the United States in two weeks," Ms. He said. "I have decided to leave China for now."

In recent months China has arrested scores of dissidents, closed newspapers and fired outspoken editors in an accelerating effort to tighten control on public discourse. And it has charged several visiting scholars with spying, including a naturalized American who had been teaching in Hong Kong and a United States resident who had been working at American University in Washington.

No one knows why, though theories abound.

Recently issued regulations allow the government to close publications that mention a broad range of subjects, including speculation on China's coming leadership transition.

Jiang Zemin, who is president, general secretary of the Communist Party and chairman of the Central Military Commission, is expected to step down as leader of the party next year and to retire from the presidency in 2003. Li Peng, the chairman of the National People's Congress, and Prime Minister Zhu Rongji are also expected to step down in 2003. Who fills those posts will be decided next year, at the party's 16th Congress.

The crackdown may also be motivated by a growing fear of espionage by disaffected Chinese nationals for the United States or Taiwan.

Ms. He, educated as an economist in Shanghai, made her name in 1998 with "China's Pitfalls," a pessimistic evaluation of the economic and political system as irretrievably corrupt. Nine companies refused to publish the book until after it had been published in Hong Kong and had won the praise of Liu Ji, an academic who is a close adviser to Mr. Jiang.

Its subsequent mainland edition sold a 170,000 copies, and an estimated one million more were sold in pirated editions.

Her attacks have been unrelenting, eroding the government's patience.

In March 2000, she published a long analysis of the growing inequalities in Chinese society in Reading Room, a magazine based in Changsha. The essay formed the core of another book, "We Are All Still Gazing at the Stars."

The book included criticism of Mr. Jiang's three priorities for the party, the cornerstone of what he hopes will be his intellectual legacy. He says the party should represent "the advanced forces of production, advanced culture and the interests of the grass roots." But Ms. He's book said that theory was really just an attempt to consolidate the power of the ruling elite.

The book was banned, and Reading Room's editor in chief and several other senior editors were removed from their jobs.

----

Protesters confront police at Salzburg summit

Tuesday, July 03, 2001
By Reuters
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2001/07/07032001/reu_salzburg_44191.asp

SALZBURG, Austria - Anti-globalisation protesters beat on police riot shields with sticks and threw stones in the Austrian city of Salzburg on Sunday as European political and business leaders gathered for an economic summit.

But no serious incidents were reported as several hundred demonstrators, some of them hooded, roamed the outside of a police barrier chanting slogans such as "Our streets, our streets."

Reuters reporters and photographers said police, who appeared to far outnumber the protesters, surrounded the demonstrators on three sides and prevented them from progressing towards the congress centre.

Small groups of demonstrators occasionally tried to break through police barriers, beating on police riot shields with sticks, and some stones and bottles were thrown.

But after several hours of protests, there appeared to have been no property damage, serious injuries or arrests.

The World Economic Forum's (WEF) sixth annual European Economic summit, attended by some 15 heads of state and government as well as ministers and hundreds of business executives, was due to last until Tuesday.

The main issues were likely to be enlargement of the European Union and the mounting crisis in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, where ethnic Albanian rebels are battling government forces.

The future of Yugoslavia and Russia were also on the agenda.

Security was the tightest ever seen in Austria's fourth largest city, best known as the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and for the 1960s film "The Sound of Music," filmed here and in Salzburg's spectacular Alpine surroundings.

Anti-capitalist protesters have disrupted numerous international gatherings in recent years and Salzburg police were determined to prevent a recurrence of the serious violence seen at an EU summit in Gothenburg, Sweden, last month.

Most of the left-wing demonstrators, who carried placards with slogans such as "Smash the power of the banks and corporations," dispersed after their rally, which began in the square near Salzburg railway station.

"We want a peaceful protest," said Jochen Hoefftever of the Austrian Young Socialists. "We have done that. And now we want to leave."

Austria last week temporarily reimposed border controls on its frontiers with Germany and Italy, suspending the Schengen accord under which most EU countries allow travel without passport checks.

EU Enlargement Commissioner Guenter Verheugen said he was deeply saddened by the fact that such tight security measures were necessary in Salzburg.

"I wouldn't have anything against speaking to people who hold views different from mine right here in front of the congress centre," Verheugen told reporters.

"But you can't do that when there's the danger violence will be used, which is both terrible and deplorable."


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

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