------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
US call for more bases in Australia
Nuclear desalination still a remote solution
Nuclear threat drives summit with Pakistan
U.S. plans to raise Arrow funding
U.S., North Koreans Talk in New York
Making missile shield inevitable
Pentagon Sets Ambitious Tests of Missile Plan
Putin Adviser Warns on U.S. Missiles
Pentagon May Deploy Defenses Early
U.S. charting 'collision course'
Jamie McIntyre on stepped up missile defense tests
Arms tests to stray from ABM pact
QUOTES ON STAR WARS FROM SENATE HEARING
30 YEAR OLD BOLTS THREATENED NUCLEAR SAFETY
Senate panel OKs bill to keep Hanford cleanup on schedule
Bush Uninterested in Prolonged Nuclear Arms Talks

MILITARY
Rebels Stop Sierra Leone Disarmament
Rights Group Accuses Countries
In Pakistan Outback, Guns Abound
Group Says Pakistan Defying Sanctions
Croatian Govt. Says War Crimes Suspect to Surrender
U.S. Citizens Found in Serbia Grave
NATO Tells Bosnia to Stop Living in the Past
Nobel Laureate Rips US Drug Policy
Security Chief: Israelis Wants War
Military Scuttles Strategy Requiring '2-War' Capability
The Rumsfeld Defense
Nuclear Testing and National Honor
Pentagon Shifts War Strategy

OTHER
Small Power Plants Planned in Nassau County
Bush Tackles Global Warming
Kofi Annan Presses Japan to Back Kyoto
China to Be Keen Observer at Bonn Climate Talks
Cos. Compete to Create Stem Cells
Study Breaks New Ground on Variations in Genome
Company Using Cloning to Yield Stem Cells
President faces issue of stem cell research
U.S. Faults Some Allies On Human Trafficking
Nepal Search for 70 Policemen Continues
Feds to Probe West Palm Beach Cops
Algerian Convicted of Millennium Bomb Plot

ACTIVISTS
Italy to Use Border Control Security
Russian Police Detain Protesters
Talk Radio Spurred Anti-Tax Protest
INTERNATIONAL ACTION CAMP-AUGUST 18-24 2001
Ukraine Opposition Plans Independence Day Protests
EU adopts new citizens agenda


-------- NUCLEAR

-------- australia

US call for more bases in Australia
The Target is China

http://www.anti-bases.org/no_new_bases.htm

Statements by top US military chief General Charles Robertson that the US needs more bases in Australia and other Asia-Pacific sites is further proof that the US Government is turning its attention away from the Europe and towards our region. With an Australian Prime Minister who wants to be US "deputy sheriff", we may see the already excessive 30 US bases in Australia swell to include US troops and weaponry stationed in this country. By Denis Doherty AABCC Co-Ordinator

The call for more US bases comes on the back of US moves to develop its National Missile Defence (NMD) and its policy to thwart China's desire for a united China which will include Taiwan.

NMD is a deliberately aggressive policy and has nothing to do with defence. It is the projection of US power into space so that quite literally the US can attack any terrestrial target without fear of retaliation. US military chiefs already talk of controlling space as the colonial powers controlled the sea in the 17th, 18th and 19th Centuries.

A recently released US strategic review which suggests the US reorder its priorities in response to an "aggressive" China also forms a backdrop to the demand for more US bases in Australia.

In 2000, for the first time ever, the US held more military exercises in the Asia-Pacific region than in the European 'theatre'. The evidence is overwhelming that the US and its allies are positioning themselves to fight China.

The ABC program Foreign Correspondent (19/6/01) reported on a US exercise called Cobra in Thailand to strengthen its border against China. Australia has just seen the Tandem Thrust exercise that was designed to improve US-Australian joint operations in sea borne invasions.

General Robertson, chief of the US mobility command, complained last week that US forces had "a very, very small toehold in Australia". He also mentioned New Zealand, Singapore, Thailand and the Indian Ocean. Just what is this "small toehold" that the US has in Australia?

The US has permanent facilities with a range of sophisticated electronic, communications and intelligence gathering abilities. It has unlimited access to all Australian Defence Force (ADF) training facilities, such as the bombing range at Delamere near Katherine and the jungle training area at Shoal Bay near Rockhampton.

The use of all these facilities is subsidised by subservient Australian Governments, both Liberal and Labor.

Treaties and other agreements exist which put Australian ports, airports and military bases at the disposal of the US military in the case of an emergency. In the event of military action, the US already has in place the necessary formal agreements and the lines of communication, intelligence and logistics needed for them to use Australian territory. Such joint operations have already been tested and practised in war games.

Not satisfied with these major contributions to the US by successive sycophantic Australian Governments, the US military now wants to put its jack-booted foot on our country through even more military bases. One facility frequently mentioned is a US marine base at Darwin to replace a similar facility that had aroused the fury of the local community at Okinawa in Japan. RAAF bases are also in line for use by the US military so they can have high speed transport aircraft ready to overcome 'the tyranny of distance in the Asia-Pacific region'.

Every year talks are held between the Australian and US Foreign and Defence Ministers. This year it is Washington's turn to play host. The Howard Government is keen to gain and flaunt US approval in an election year. The ALP is critical (in opposition) of NMD but still supports the bases and other facilities the US has in Australia.

A major fight is looming to protect Australia's interests and to prevent Australia becoming even more involved in US aggression against China.

-------- china

Nuclear desalination still a remote solution

July 13, 2001
KYODO NEWS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010713-87392375.htm

BEIJING -- As the worst drought in a decade leaves millions short of water in northern China, a handful of officials and scientists are pushing plans to use nuclear power to desalinate seawater for drinking.

Although the technology for nuclear desalination exists, critics say, the cost is likely to be prohibitive for many years to come.

Plans are being vetted for a nuclear-powered desalination plant in parched coastal Shandong Province that would yield 160,000 tons of fresh water daily, said academician Li Zhaohuan of the China Society of Nuclear Science.

He said, however, that the plan is far from winning government approval and would take "at least 10 years" to materialize.

China has one desalination plant in operation -- an electric-powered facility on Xingshan island off the coast of Zhejiang Province. It provides only 500 tons of potable water daily, and is designed to meet the needs of a local population previously dependent on water shipped from the mainland at high cost.

A similar desalination plant, to turn out 1,000 tons per day powered by remotely generated electricity, is planned for Shandong's Chang island.

For large-scale desalination, however, the only feasible energy source is nuclear power, Mr. Li said. "Nuclear power is cheap," and the expense of using conventional energy sources to remove salt is prohibitive.

Shandong -- short on water and relatively wealthy -- is the obvious place to start.

Mr. Li and other nuclear-desalination boosters are plugging for a 160,000 ton-per-day plant in the port city of Dalian. The project would cost "several billion yuan," or hundreds of millions of dollars, but would be able to provide fresh water at a cost of 4 yuan per ton, he said.

That is four times as much as most Chinese consumers are paying for their subsidized drinking water, but it is about on par with what they will have to pay when China's tentative policy of "rational pricing" for water takes hold, industry sources say.

Skeptics, however, say nuclear-powered desalination is a pipe dream. "The real price ends up being more like $800 to $1,600 per ton, if you include all the costs of constructing and maintaining a nuclear plant," said nuclear scientist Dong Duo of Qinghua University's Nuclear Research Institute.

"There is a very serious drought this year in Shandong, so people are kicking around this idea as one possible solution," he said. "But there is no plan for a project yet."

Shandong has no nuclear-power plant, and indeed China suspended all nuclear-power development in 1997 when a host of new thermal generators came on line, creating an energy glut.

"If they are linking nuclear power to the effort to solve China's water problems, I would say that is some very creative thinking," one power analyst told Kyodo.

-------- india / pakistan

Nuclear threat drives summit with Pakistan

July 13, 2001
By Ben Barber
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010713-668747.htm

Leaders of South Asia's two nuclear-armed giants, India and Pakistan, are squaring off in the press in advance of their first summit Sunday in Agra, India, better known for its temple to love, the Taj Mahal.

Avoiding a nuclear war is driving the meeting, say some sources.

"We have to be mindful that both countries have been at each other's throats and have nuclear weapons," said a senior U.S. official. "The conflict could get out of hand or they could have accidents."

Pakistani military strongman Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who appointed himself president a few weeks ago, says he wants only to discuss Pakistan's claim to Kashmir, the picturesque fruit-rich valley turned into a blood bath by a Muslim separatist movement since 1989.

Indian nationalist Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee blames Pakistan for fueling the Kashmir conflict and warns that letting Kashmiris vote on independence or joining Pakistan is a non-starter.

He wants to discuss security of the nuclear weapons each side has revealed in 1998 tests, conventional forces, tension reduction, terrorism, hot lines, trade, visas, water and other issues.

Kashmir "is not the core issue," Indian Foreign Minister Jasawant Singh said yesterday, repeating Indian insistence it alone has sovereignty over Kashmir.

Indian political leaders also have announced they will boycott a tea party tomorrow at Pakistan's embassy in New Delhi with Gen. Musharraf because the latter has invited separatist Kashmiri leaders of the Hurriyat Conference.

Expectations for the Indo-Pakistani summit hardly could be much lower.

At most, officials hope the summit will lead to a resumption of some sort of dialogue between the leaders of India's 1 billion people and the 140 million Pakistanis, violently separated at the birth of both countries in 1947.

Gen. Musharraf, speaking on state television Wednesday, said: "I go [to India] with all seriousness to initiate a process of movement toward the resolution of the Kashmir dispute.

"The entire world's attention is focused on this dialogue. So I only hope that we achieve progress in the dialogue toward resolution of the core dispute of Kashmir."

The U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said, "I have no reason to think that a breakthrough is likely.

"Musharraf continues to insist that there can be no progress in other areas unless Kashmir is addressed. But there is no indication Musharraf is interested in making a deal on Kashmir.

"And there is a question as to whether he has the power" to make a compromise on Kashmir, given the deep emotional commitment in Pakistan to winning Kashmir away from India, the official said.

"That's why I don't think a breakthrough is possible."

The president of the Pakistan-American Congress, Nisar Chaudhry, said that "neither side can risk a backlash" by radicals at home by appearing to be weak.

The deputy chief of Pakistan's embassy in Washington, Zamir Akram, said the summit is unlikely to end the state of near war that has dominated most of the past half century in South Asia.

"We are realistic, and it is best to have modest expectations instead of expecting a major breakthrough," Mr. Akram said in an interview in his embassy office in a turret overlooking Massachusetts Avenue.

"It's hard to expect five decades of distrust to be washed away in one meeting. At best, the summit may put a dialogue in place to discuss Kashmir and other issues."

U.S. officials were surprised when Mr. Vajpayee invited Gen. Musharraf to a meeting in India, the Brookings Institution said in a statement.

Anger remains deep in India because an earlier Vajpayee summit with Pakistan in 1998 was followed by a Pakistani incursion at Kargil, Kashmir, that killed close to 1,000 Indian troops.

The fighting in Kargil, which began after both sides tested nuclear weapons in May 1998, ended after President Clinton pressured Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to withdraw during a July 4, 1999, meeting in Washington.

Mr. Sharif later was overthrown by Gen. Musharraf in a coup.

Some Pakistani journalists have broken a taboo by writing that it is apparent India will never relinquish Kashmir for fear it would spark other ethnic separatist movements inside India.

They proposed that the Line of Control dividing Kashmir become an international border and that India grant some autonomy to the mainly Muslim inhabitants of its portion.

However, Mr. Akram said Pakistan's government does not accept such a view.

-------- israel

U.S. plans to raise Arrow funding

Friday, July 13, 2001
By Natan Guttman
Ha'aretz Correspondent
http://www3.haaretz.co.il/eng/scripts/article.asp?mador=14&datee=7/13/01&id=124146

WASHINGTON D.C. - The U.S. has decided to boost its annual contribution to funding the Arrow anti-ballistic missile program by $20 million, following recent successful tests of the system and the administration's own plans to develop a ballistic missile shield.

Lieutenant General Ronald Kadish, director of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization announced the decision at the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday. The increase in funding requires Senate approval.

The increase in funding is part of adjusted defense department budget that will go to Congress for approval. It will bring the total American participation in the Arrow program for the coming year to a total of $67 million.

Kadish told Armed Services Committee the Arrow is "a very successful system" and he said the U.S. is satisfied with the tests so far and the performance of the integrated systems.

-------- korea

U.S., North Koreans Talk in New York

The Associated Press
Friday, July 13, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010713/aponline173323_000.htm

WASHINGTON -- North Korean officials met with a U.S. diplomat Friday seeking more information about President Bush's five-week-old proposal for a resumption of security negotiations between the two countries, a State Department official said.

Edward Dong, director of the office of Korean affairs at the State Department, was dispatched to New York to meet with North Korea's United Nations representatives.

A senior official said the purpose of the trip was to receive a message from Pyongyang, but another official said after the meeting that the North Koreans were seeking more information about Bush's June 6 proposal.

There was no indication during the meeting about whether Pyongyang would accept or reject the proposal.

A week after Bush made the offer, the State Department dispatched Jack Pritchard, a Korea expert, to New York to make a formal presentation to the North Koreans.

The two countries have not had serious negotiations since late last year, when the Clinton administration tried to reach agreement with Pyongyang on curbing the country's missile development and missile export programs.

Bush said last month that he wanted to broaden the talks to include the North's massive conventional force deployment near the South Korean border.

North Korea has expressed unhappiness with the alternate approach through its media but has not yet responded formally to the offer.

Secretary of State Colin Powell will be in Vietnam in two weeks and is expected to have an opportunity to meet with North Korea's foreign minister there. The State Department says a meeting is very possible but has not yet been arranged.

-------- missile defense

Making missile shield inevitable
Bush team insists US will go forward - even if tomorrow's rocket test reveals technology shortcomings.

By Peter Grier (grierp@csps.com)
The Christian Science Monitor
FRIDAY, JULY 13, 2001
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/07/13/p1s1.htm WASHINGTON

The US has a big missile defense test scheduled for Saturday, and here's what the Bush administration has to say about it: The outcome, in one sense, doesn't really matter.

Not that the White House isn't keenly interested in the technology of its top security priority. But whether or not the experiment succeeds, the Bush team plans to push ahead with missile-defense development at an accelerated pace - fast enough, in fact, to perhaps deploy a rudimentary shield before the end of President Bush's current term.

As the Pentagon presses forward with the president's objective, it continues to play a game of geopolitical chicken with Russia and NATO allies who oppose any US action that would unilaterally violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

The White House's point of view: Once they see we're serious, they'll come around.

"This is clearly still part of their plan, to instill a sense of inevitability about the process," says Joseph Cirincione, nonproliferation project director at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

In the latest evidence of the increasing intensity of the administration's approach toward defense, Pentagon officials announced this week that they intend to begin ground-clearing in August for a new missile-defense test site in Alaska.

The site, at Fort Greely, near Fairbanks, will be used as a base for five to 10 interceptor missiles. Together with an upgraded "Cobra Dome" radar at Alaska's Shemya Island, the Fort Greely installation will allow more realistic tests involving dummy warheads traveling in the direction of the continental United States, according to the Pentagon.

If development proceeds apace, Fort Greely might be declared the command-and-control center of an operational system, perhaps as early as 2004, near the end of Mr. Bush's current term in office.

But the ABM Treaty expressly forbids any antimissile system intended to protect an entire nation. (It does allow deployment of a small system to protect one city, or ICBM field. Moscow has long been ringed by missile interceptors, while the US once had a small number of interceptors based in Grand Forks, N.D.)

Thus construction at Fort Greely will inevitably progress toward a violation of the ABM pact, as currently constituted. When that boundary will be crossed is open to legal interpretation. But, under administration plans, crossed it will be.

"As the program develops and the various testing activities mature, one or more aspects will inevitably bump against treaty restrictions and limitations," said Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz in congressional testimony on Thursday. "Such an event is likely to occur in months, rather than in years."

The Bush team's emphasis on defense-development speed can also be seen in its plans for and attitudes toward the Pentagon's testing program.

First of all, there will be more tests, of more systems, than the Clinton administration had planned. The White House is seeking a 57 percent boost in missile-defense spending for 2002, to $8.3 billion. This money will help pay for 17 big experiments of defensive technology now scheduled for the next year or so, according to the Pentagon.

Of these tests, 10 will involve the ground-based interceptor technology that was the centerpiece of the Clinton missile-defense plan. Seven will involve upgraded Navy sea-launched missiles that might form part of a mobile, shipborne screen.

Second, individual tests will no longer be occasions for pauses and reflections.

Under Bill Clinton, major tests of interceptor technology became, in essence, tests of the viability of the missile-defense concept.

Last July, after the failure of an interceptor kill-vehicle to separate from its booster, Mr. Clinton postponed a decision about whether to proceed with plans for defense deployment. The test failure showed such a decision was premature, he said.

The Bush administration, by contrast, is downplaying the importance of Saturday's similar experiment, in which an interceptor launched from Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific will race toward a Minuteman booster launched from California in an attempt to hit and destroy its warhead.

Test failures provided Clinton an "escape hatch" to delay work on something he didn't want to deploy anyway, says Baker Spring, a defense analyst at the Heritage Foundation here.

But Bush wants to prevent his plans from being derailed by any similar flops.

"A test in the development phase is just that - a test," says Spring. "[Saturday's scheduled interception] is almost certain to be, at some level, a mixed bag."

One recent uncertainty that has entered the Pentagon's calculations is the ascension of Democrats to power in the Senate.

Key Democratic senators - notably Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the new chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee - have said they will try to eliminate funds for any defense activity that might violate the ABM Treaty.

And much of the rest of the world remains skeptical of missile defenses, despite intense Bush administration wooing.

Vladimir Rushailo, head of Russian President Vladmir Putin's Security Council, said Thursday that defenses would lead to "a new powerful spiral of the arms race, particularly in space."

Even Britain has recently indicated its intention to withhold judgment on the advisability of antimissile system deployments.

Would the US go it alone?

"I still think the administration is committed to a consultative process," says Mr. Cirincione.

----

Pentagon Sets Ambitious Tests of Missile Plan

New York Times
July 13, 2001
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/13/international/13MISS.html

WASHINGTON, July 12 - Senior Pentagon officials announced details today of an ambitious missile-testing plan that they said could lead to a working system of land-based, sea- launched and airborne weapons in four years. Senate Democrats immediately attacked the proposal, saying it was highly likely to violate the Antiballistic Missile Treaty within a year.

Democrats, responding to testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, accused the Bush administration of being intentionally vague about the new plan to lure Congress into financing work that might violate the ABM treaty next year. And they threatened to block any spending that seemed likely to breach that treaty.

"The administration's plans for missile defense for fiscal year 2002 have been harder to zero in on than a target in a missile defense test," said Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Armed Services Committee.

"The president alone has the right to withdraw from a treaty, but Congress has the heavy responsibility of determining whether or not to appropriate the funds for activities that conflict with a treaty," he said, raising his voice at times.

The clash occurred as Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz provided the most detailed description yet of the administration's vision for missile defenses. Mr. Wolfowitz outlined to senators a two-tiered strategy of negotiating with Russia to amend the treaty while aggressively testing antimissile technologies, particularly ship-launched interceptors, land-based missiles and jet-mounted lasers.

Some of those tests, Mr. Wolfowitz predicted, would clash with the ABM treaty "in months rather than in years," though he declined to be more precise. He said the administration was prepared to withdraw from the treaty if the Russians did not agree to changes to allow those tests. The 1972 treaty with the Soviet Union prohibits the development and deployment of nationwide defenses against long-range ballistic missiles.

"We are on a collision course," Mr. Wolfowitz told the committee. "No one is pretending that what we're doing is consistent with that treaty. We have either got to withdraw from it or replace it."

As part of the plan for encouraging Russia to amend the treaty, Mr. Wolfowitz also said, the Pentagon plans to begin reducing the nation's nuclear arsenal by 1,000 weapons, or nearly one-seventh, in the coming year by scrapping 50 MX missiles, retiring 33 B-1 bombers and replacing nuclear-tipped missiles on two Trident submarines with conventional weapons.

The hearing was held as the Pentagon was preparing for its first attempt to shoot down an intercontinental ballistic missile in a year, on Saturday. The last two flight tests failed, and the test on Saturday is being closely watched as a potential barometer for whether the program should be slowed or accelerated.

Trying to reduce expectations for the test, senior Pentagon officials have argued that the administration will remain committed to the program, even if the interception missed, asserting that failure would yield as much useful data as success.

Democrats, on the other hand, have warned that the administration should not use a successful interception to justify a swift withdrawal from the ABM treaty or rushed deployment of missile defenses.

The new accelerated testing schedule calls for 10 flight tests through next year involving ground- based interceptors, according to a Pentagon document. It also proposes seven flight tests involving interceptors fired from ships, even though the Navy has yet to develop a missile fast enough to hit an intercontinental ballistic missile.

The plan proposes building a "test bed" in Alaska that would include a command center and five missile silos at Fort Greely, near Fairbanks, and about five more silos on Kodiak Island. The plan also calls for upgrading radar in Alaska and Aegis radar systems on ships to track long- range missiles.

In today's hearing, Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, director of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, said that the Pentagon would consider declaring the Fort Greely site a working missile-defense system if a crisis seemed imminent, possibly by 2005 or earlier.

"We have designed the program so that in an emergency, and if directed, we might quickly deploy test assets to defend against a rapidly growing threat," General Kadish testified. "But barring such a emergency, we do not intend to deploy assets until they are ready."

Though the general said the new sites were intended to allow for more realistic tests, arms-control advocates contend that the Bush administration is trying to begin deployment of a working missile shield under the guise of testing, because the ABM treaty allows certain types of tests.

"They are trying to claim that they are staying within the confines of the treaty because this is only a testing program," said Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers. "Will the allies and Congress be fooled? I hope not."

Though Mr. Wolfowitz said Pentagon lawyers were reviewing the plan to see which tests might run afoul of the ABM treaty, he hinted at one that might - trying to track a long-range missile with a ship-based radar system designed for monitoring shorter- range missiles. The ABM treaty allows defenses against shorter-range missiles, but it bars using that technology against intercontinental ballistic missiles.

"Will these tests exceed the limits of the treaty?" Mr. Wolfowitz asked. "In each case, there will be those who argue on all three sides of the coin."

He said that by the time such tests arrive, the administration expected to have reached an agreement with Russia. If it has not, he added, "we would be left with two, less than optimal choices - to allow an obsolete treaty to prevent us from defending America or to withdraw from the treaty unilaterally, which we have every right to do."

Those views were later echoed by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who told a group of supporters of missile defense that the ABM treaty was "an impediment" to robust testing.

Despite Mr. Wolfowitz's assurances otherwise, some Democrats said they would push to cut the administration's request to increase missile defense spending by $3 billion next year.

"I think if we throw out the ABM treaty here, we're throwing out the baby with the bath water," Senator Max Cleland, Democrat of Georgia, said. "Congress ought to use the power of the purse in rejecting this increase."

--------

Putin Adviser Warns on U.S. Missiles

New York Times
July 13, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-Missile-Defense.html?searchpv=aponline

MOSCOW (AP) -- U.S. plans to start building a missile defense test facility will lead to the ruin of an international arms control regime and trigger a global arms race, a senior adviser to President Vladimir Putin said Friday.

The comments by Putin's military adviser, Igor Sergeyev, came after Pentagon officials on Thursday explained their plans to begin construction in April on a project that could violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

``Unfortunately, our forecasts are coming true -- no reasons or arguments we cited during the consultations with the American side could stop the United States' striving for hegemony in the strategic arms sphere,'' Sergeyev said in remarks carried by the Interfax news agency.

U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said Thursday that a number of missile test activities, including the start of construction of a new missile defense test facility in April 2002, would raise questions about compliance with the ABM treaty.

He did not identify the site, but other officials said he was referring to Fort Greely and Kodiak Island in Alaska, where the Pentagon plans to build missile interceptor silos for test launches. Some preliminary work at Fort Greely is to start in August, with construction beginning in April, officials said.

Sergeyev said that Moscow views the U.S. plans to deploy a missile defense base in Alaska as evidence of the U.S. intention to withdraw unilaterally from the ABM treaty. That U.S. action, he said, would set off an arms race worldwide.

Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said that Moscow would continue ``patient'' consultations with Washington on the ABM and refused to comment on the latest U.S. statements.

Putin discussed ABM issues with former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who was in Moscow attending a session of the International Olympic Committee. Kissinger later told reporters that Washington and Moscow can find a compromise.

``I'm optimistic that an agreement can be reached,'' Kissinger said after the meeting.

The ABM treaty proceeded from the assumption that a ban on nationwide missile defense systems would discourage both Moscow and Washington from launching the first strike out of fear of retaliation.

Washington wants to deploy a missile defense system to fend off threats from smaller states antagonistic to the United States and says it wouldn't be able to deal with the kind of massive nuclear strike Russia is capable of launching. But Russia has strongly opposed the U.S. plans, warning that the deployment of such a system would offset the strategic balance and make other arms control agreements void.

--------

Pentagon May Deploy Defenses Early

New York Times
July 13, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/news/AP-Missile-Defense.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon is designing a missile defense test program that would allow some of its elements, such as ground-based interceptors or airborne lasers, to be used in combat within a few years.

Bush administration officials said this would be done only in a national emergency such as a threat of missile attack from North Korea.

Pentagon officials, explaining the approach Thursday in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, made clear that they intend to accelerate work on a deployable missile defense even at the cost of withdrawing from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty banning national missile defenses.

The administration has set no date for deploying a defensive barrier against long-range ballistic missiles.

The officials encountered sharp questioning from some Democrats, including the committee's chairman, Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, who declared themselves unwilling to support the administration's request for $8.3 billion for missile defense research and testing in 2002. That would be a 57 percent increase over this year's allocation.

Levin criticized Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz for failing to clarify for Congress whether missile defense tests planned for the budget year starting Oct. 1 would violate the ABM Treaty.

``I've yet to receive an answer,'' Levin told Wolfowitz. In his testimony, Wolfowitz said missile defense tests will ``bump up against'' treaty restrictions, and this probably will occur ``in months rather than in years.''

Wolfowitz said a number of missile test activities, including the start of construction in April 2002 on a new missile defense test facility, will raise questions about treaty compliance. He did not identify the site, but other officials said he was referring to Fort Greely and Kodiak Island in Alaska, where the Pentagon plans to build missile interceptor silos for test launches. Some preliminary work at Fort Greely is to start in August, with construction beginning in April, officials said.

Separately, in remarks at a missile defense conference on Capitol Hill, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said excavation and other ground-clearing work at Fort Greely gives no cause for concern.

``Everyone's hung up on tearing down some trees in Alaska, as though we're going to violate the treaty. We're not. Period. Full stop,'' Rumsfeld said.

Rumsfeld was asked when the missile defense testing program will come in conflict with the treaty.

``There's no way to know,'' he said. ``That's why they call it research and development -- you're looking for things you don't know the answers to, and you don't know how fast they're going to go or how successful they're going to be.''

As the Pentagon looks for those answers, it is structuring its test program in a way that would allow some parts to be deployed as an interim defense, even before they are fully tested, Wolfowitz said.

``In an emergency we might, if appropriate, deploy test assets to defend against a rapidly emerging threat,'' he said. He noted that this was done with some weapons used during the 1991 Gulf War and 1999 Kosovo bombing campaign.

``But barring such an emergency, we need to consider the operational deployment of test assets very carefully, because such deployments can be disruptive, and can set back normal development programs,'' he said.

An administration paper, copies of which Levin's committee made public Thursday, is even more explicit about the intent to pursue testing in a way that would allow some elements to be used separately.

The paper cited two examples. One is a prototype airborne laser -- a laser mounted on a modified Boeing 747-- which is scheduled to attempt its first test shoot-down of a missile in 2003.

``If this test demonstrates the capability to intercept, the airborne laser prototype could be available to provide an emergency missile defense capability,'' the paper said.

Likewise, deployment of an interim ground-based missile defense system could be completed in Alaska as early as 2004 by upgrading existing radar and deploying missile interceptors drawn from the testing program, it said.

``A limited interim capability is warranted in light of existing and emerging near-term threats and the unpredictable nature of those threats,'' the paper said.

``Such capabilities, even if not fully mature, will provide more protection than we currently have -- which today is no capability at all against longer-range missile able to strike American cities.''

--------

U.S. charting 'collision course'

07/13/2001
By Andrea Stone,
USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/july01/2001-07-13-missile.htm

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon's No. 2 official said Thursday that the Bush administration is determined to accelerate development of an expanded missile-defense system that could violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia within months. "We are on a collision course," Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told the Senate Armed Services Committee. "We have got to withdraw from (the treaty) or replace it."

Wolfowitz's comments angered Democrats who are concerned that discarding the treaty would infuriate Russia, China and U.S. allies in Europe. Republicans applauded the push to develop a system that they said would shield the United States from missile attacks by hostile nations such as Iraq.

The Pentagon wants $8.3 billion for missile defense next year, a 57% increase over this year. The ambitious blueprint includes money for development of several programs that are barred by the ABM Treaty, including sea-, air- and space-based defenses shunned by the Clinton administration.

The hearing came two days before the Pentagon conducts a fourth test of its land-based missile interceptor. Two of the first three such tests, including one a year ago, missed their targets.

The Pentagon wants to start clearing a site in Alaska next month to begin construction next April on a missile-defense test site. It hopes to have a workable system as early as 2004.

Wolfowitz said the treaty is "loaded with ambiguities" as to what stage of development represents a violation. The treaty bars testing and deployment of a nationwide missile shield but allows for some limited testing. "We will not conduct tests solely for the purpose of exceeding the constraints of the treaty," he said. "But neither have we designed our program to avoid doing so."

In Moscow, Russian officials pressed the Bush administration to consult with them before embarking on its missile plan. Russia has warned that if the United States pursued its program, Moscow would develop its own defense system or build up its nuclear arsenal.

On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he had no intention of breaking the ABM Treaty because he hoped to reach an agreement with Moscow before violating the pact. Only if the talks fail would President Bush give a required six months notice for withdrawing from the treaty.

Bush's plan includes research into space-based interceptors similar to the "Brilliant Pebbles" program championed by the first President Bush but killed by President Clinton.

Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., warned that the administration's plan could start "a new Cold War" with Russia and China

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Jamie McIntyre on stepped up missile defense tests

July 13, 2001
http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/07/13/mcintyre.debrief.otsc/index.html

The Pentagon says it will greatly increase the frequency of major missile defense tests as it aims to deploy a working missile shield between 2004 and 2008. CNN Military Affairs Correspondent Jamie McIntyre elaborates on the issue.

Q: Is there a consensus in the Pentagon that a missile defense shield can or should be developed? Or is this primarily politically driven?

McINTYRE: There's a pretty broad consensus that missile defense technology can work and is worth developing. The question for most of the military has always been: At what price? How much scarce money will go into missile defense as opposed to other urgent needs?

At the moment with the current budget levels, I think the general feeling is that just about the right amount of money is going toward missile defense. But some are skeptical: If the Bush administration is proceeding with a multi-layer missile defense that involves not only ground-based interceptors but also sea-based systems, an airborne laser and space-based lasers, then down the road that can add up to a substantial amount of money and begin competing with some of the other urgent needs, such as pay benefits, training, ammunition and conventional weapons.

Q: What is the final cost likely to be?

McINTYRE: Nobody knows. The administration is investing more than $8 billion this year to develop missile defenses.

The system the Clinton administration was developing was estimated to cost from $30 billion to $60 billion. With the Bush administration talking about a multi-layered approach that would be much more robust, the estimates exceed $100 billion. It could potentially be very, very expensive.

Critics argue that even if the system works, it's not worth the money because the more likely threat from terrorists or rogue nations is not from ballistic missiles, but from bombs or chemical weapons or a nuclear weapon delivered in a suitcase.

Q: Is the United States on its own in development of the missile defense system or are other countries helping?

McINTYRE: The United States eventually hopes to get the cooperation with some of its allies, particularly with the placement of radars to help track potential missiles from adversaries. But right now this is a U.S.-only project.

Way down the road -- we're talking 10, 15, 20 years from now -- there may come a point when the United States may ask some of its friends to allow interceptor missiles to be based on their territories to make the system more effective.

Q: What is the likelihood that this could become an international missile defense system and not just a national missile defense system?

McINTYRE: The Bush administration has stopped calling it national missile defense. Officials refer to it now as just missile defense, and they insist it will protect not just the United States but also U.S. allies, particularly in Europe.

There are two things the United States wants to do to ease the concerns of allies: One, negotiate an agreement with the Russians so the ABM treaty doesn't have to be scrapped. Two, extend the missile shield so that it protects America's allies being threatened by ballistic missiles from the Middle East or other regions.

Q: How does the administration react to critics who say the missile shield will begin a new arms race?

McINTYRE: They dispute it would result in any arms race. First of all, they say Russia already has thousands of nuclear weapons, and the Russia economy is in such poor shape that Russia really doesn't have the money to pour into new nuclear weapons. They argue that this very limited defense really doesn't affect Russia at all, and it is unlikely that Russia would increase its nuclear weapon production.

China is another story. It has a much smaller number of nuclear weapons, and it is building up its arsenal, as well as its conventional military forces, at a pretty steep rate. But the administration argues that China is going to do that regardless of a missile defense system.

So the administration says missile defense is not going to lead to a new arms race. In fact, they argue the opposite -- that having a missile defense may dissuade some countries from investing in ballistic missiles.

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Arms tests to stray from ABM pact

July 13, 2001
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010713-72704104.htm

The United States is planning tests that would stray from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty "in months rather than in years" to achieve President Bush's vision of a global defense against ballistic missiles, the Pentagon's No. 2 official testified yesterday.

The blunt declaration from Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz came in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Majority Democrats want to scale back Mr. Bush's $8.3 billion request for missile defense next year.

Mr. Wolfowitz told the committee of an expanded and accelerated test plan, beginning in 2002, that would have the United States build a new interceptor site in Alaska and test the Navy's powerful Aegis radars at sea. The goal is to activate a "layered defense" against ballistic missiles, a far more ambitious and costly security architecture than previously envisioned by the Clinton administration.

"As the program develops and the various testing activities mature, one or more of those will inevitably bump up against treaty restrictions and limitations," Mr. Wolfowitz told the committee. "Such an event is likely to occur in months, rather than in years."

But the deputy secretary painted an optimistic picture of how Moscow will ultimately react. He predicted that the United States will reach an "understanding" with Russian President Vladimir Putin in order that tests which conflict with the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty constraints may be conducted.

If Russia says no, Mr. Wolfowitz said, the administration has two choices: "either to allow an obsolete treaty to prevent us from doing everything we can to defend America or to withdraw from that treaty unilaterally, which we have every legal right to do."

Committee Democrats, however, remain skeptical. Chairman Carl Levin, Michigan Democrat, portrayed the Cold War ABM pact as the glue that holds other arms treaties together. He suggested Russia, China and other nations will respond by igniting a new arms race and increase the deployment of nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) in order to compensate for this country's limited anti-missile defense system.

"Would that response increase the possibility that unimaginable horrors of a nuclear attack would be rained upon us as a result of breaching the treaty?" he asked.

Mr. Wolfowitz said the envisioned system is only designed to knock down a relatively small number of missiles and thus there is no need for Russia to increase an arsenal that could already overwhelm U.S. anti-missile defenses.

While Mr. Wolfowitz was putting Congress on notice that Mr. Bush plans to keep his campaign promise to field a defense system, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld also appeared on Capitol Hill before a pro-defense group to make the same point.

"The United States is not going to violate the treaty," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "If we get to the point where we need to get beyond the treaty and we haven't been able to negotiate something, obviously, there's a provision you can withdraw in six months and that's what you'd have to do."

The administration's offensive on missile defense came two days before the Pentagon conducts an important test of a proposed ground-based interceptor. Tomorrow night's flight test, involving an interceptor and a dummy ballistic missile, is the first since July 2000, when the attempt to "hit a bullet with a bullet" failed.

Mr. Wolfowitz made an impassioned call for the committee to approve Mr. Bush's $8.3 billion request, a 57 percent increase over this year's budget. He said the world has changed considerably since the now-defunct Soviet Union and the United States signed the 1972 ABM Treaty. He said only nine countries possessed ballistic missiles 29 years ago; today, that number has increased to 28.

He said the United States has made little progress in developing a defense to stop any type of ballistic missile attack since an Iraqi Scud missile 10 years ago struck a barracks in Saudi Arabia, killing 28 American service members.

"While we have been debating the existence of the threat for nearly a decade, other countries have been busily acquiring, developing and proliferating missile technology," he told the committee. "Thanks in no small part to the constraints of the ABM Treaty we have wasted the better part of a decade. We cannot afford to waste another one."

----

QUOTES ON STAR WARS FROM SENATE HEARING

Bruce K. Gagnon, Coordinator
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
July 13, 2001

Friends:

I watched the entire hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee (July 12) on C-SPAN and took extensive notes. Thought I'd pass on some relevant quotes that give an indication of where Republican and Democrats are lining up on NMD and TMD.

Bruce

PO Box 90083 Gainesville, FL. 32607 (352) 337-9274 http://www.space4peace.org globalnet@mindspring.com

- Paul Wolfowitz (Deputy Secretary of Defense): "We will either withdraw from or replace the ABM Treaty.......By us investing in these systems we will discourage other countries from challenging us with these systems.....The airborne laser is the most important system for the Korean peninsula."

- Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI): "NMD tests will bump up against the ABM Treaty in months rather than years.....I wish the administration hadn't said you will deploy first before consultations are done."

- Sen. John Warner (R-VA): "Congress will work with the administration on this...We can't let the Russians veto (NMD).......Questioning the president's position hinders his negotiations with Russia."

- Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT): "Not whether we will deploy missile defense but how and when......I hope we can have bi-partisan support."

- Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK): Quotes Henry Kissinger as saying that "It's nuts to make a virtue out of our vulnerability" making the point that the ABM Treaty should be scrapped.

- Sen Max Cleland (D-GA): After speaking against deployment of NMD he said, "I happen to be a big supporter of TMD. I'm as much for TMD as anyone."

- Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY): "Spending money to protect the U.S. from ballistic missiles should be out top priority."

- Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI): "Stable structure for arms control is in danger."

- Sen. Mark Dayton (D-MN): "We want a partnership with the administration."

- Sen. Wayne Allard (D-CO): "The president is committed to bringing about world peace......A new test bed (Alaska) will solve the criticism that realistic tests are not now being done."

- Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE): "We should never say no to missile defense outright.....I don't have any problem with TMD at all.....I'm in favor of research and development to get to the point where (NMD) works."

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-------- minnesota

30 YEAR OLD BOLTS THREATENED NUCLEAR SAFETY

July 13, 2001
ENS
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jul2001/2001L-07-13-09.html

MONTICELLO, Minnesota, Two nuclear power plants learned this week that packing clamps left in place 30 years ago could have threatened radioactive containment in the event of a reactor accident.

The Duane Arnold Energy Center in Palo, Iowa found packing bolts still attached to vents in the pipes intended to direct radioactive steam or hot water away from the reactor in case of a nuclear meltdown or other reactor accident. The bolts could have kept the vents, which work like giant bellows, from expanding enough to encompass all the steam, causing some steam to be released into other parts of the reactor containment building.

The bolts were attached when the vents were shipped to the plant almost 30 years ago to keep the vents from expanding during transit.

After the bolts were discovered, plant operator Nuclear Management Co. notified its other nuclear plants of the potential problem. Bolts were also discovered attached to the vents at the Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant in Monticello, Minnesota.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is investigating the plants to learn why the bolts went undiscovered for three decades. Nuclear Management officials said that none of the routine inspections required by the NRC, state agencies or the utility itself would have found the bolts.

Both plants have reactors and turbines designed by General Electric, and both were built by Bechtel in the early 1970s.

The leftover bolts did not pose a safety hazard to plant workers or the public, the NRC said. Officials from the NRC said that even if the bolts caused one or more of the vents to fail during a reactor accident, radioactive steam would still have been contained within the reactor containment building, and would not have been released into the atmosphere.

While agreeing that the bolts had not endangered the public in the past, David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer and spokesperson for the Union of Concerned Scientists, warned that failed vents could have increased the amount of radiation released in a nuclear accident 100 fold.

-------- washington

Senate panel OKs bill to keep Hanford cleanup on schedule

Fri, Jul 13, 2001
By John Stang
Tri-City Herald staff writer
http://www.hanfordnews.com/2001/0713.html

A key U.S. Senate committee on Thursday approved an appropriations bill that would provide just enough money to keep Hanford cleanup efforts on their legal schedules for fiscal 2002.

This bill provides $841 million more for nationwide nuclear cleanup -- with almost half going to Hanford -- than the Bush administration originally proposed.

The Senate Appropriations Committee approved $6.754 billion for Department of Energy nuclear cleanup work, which would send a tentative $1.834 billion to Hanford, said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.

That is $2 million more than what DOE believes is the bare minimum needed to keep Hanford on its cleanup timetable.

The allocation -- part of the Senate energy and water development appropriations bill -- is scheduled to go to the full Senate early next week. After Senate action, the House and Senate then will have to compromise on their proposed appropriations.

This bill could prompt an autumn showdown between the budget priorities of the Bush administration and Congress, said Murray, a member of the Appropriations Committee's energy and water subcommittee, which is a major player on Hanford funding.

"I can't predict what will happen at this point," she said.

The Bush administration had proposed slashing DOE's national cleanup budget, but bipartisan House and Senate nuclear cleanup caucuses spearheaded efforts in both chambers to add several hundred million dollars.

Murray is co-chairwoman of the Senate nuclear cleanup caucus, and Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., is a leader of the House caucus.

Here are the basic numbers in the evolving cleanup budget:

-- In fiscal 2001, DOE's national cleanup budget was $6.267 billion, with $1.456 billion for Hanford. DOE calculated Hanford would need at least $1.832 billion to meet its minimum 2002 legal cleanup obligations, plus to accelerate cleanup along the Columbia River.

-- The Bush administration budget request to Congress called for $5.913 billion for cleanup, with $1.4 billion for Hanford. That request would fall at least $432 million short of Hanford needs, would eliminate most of Hanford's river shore work and could delay completion of the site's top-priority tank waste glassification project.

-- Congress is expected to approve this summer an extra $53 million in 2001 Hanford funds, which is expected to be added to DOE's fiscal 2002 work at the site. Fiscal 2002 begins Oct. 1.

-- The full U.S. House recently passed a nationwide DOE cleanup budget of $6.613 billion. With the extra $53 million, that would translate to a Hanford 2002 budget of $1.814 billion -- $18 million short of its legal needs.

-- The Senate Appropriations Committee approved a $6.754 billion DOE nationwide cleanup budget. With the extra $53 million, that would translate to $1.834 billion for Hanford -- $20 million more than the House proposal.

Murray cautioned Bush could veto the bill containing the cleanup increases -- depending on how other federal budget bills develop in the next few months.

Bush likely will not want the entire federal budget to exceed a certain level, she noted. And the administration is pushing for huge increases in defense spending. Congress also appears likely to increase other parts of the federal budget, which could influence a Bush veto, Murray said.

However, Murray voiced cautious optimism because the administration has not visibly opposed congressional efforts to increase cleanup funding.

-------- us nuc politics

Bush Uninterested in Prolonged Nuclear Arms Talks

Friday July 13 1:58 PM ET
By Randall Mikkelsen
Reuters
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010713/pl/bush_europe_dc_1.html

WASHINGTON - The United States has little interest in prolonged nuclear arms reduction talks as it seeks to deploy a national missile defense system, U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) said on Friday.

Rice, briefing reporters on President Bush (news - web sites)'s upcoming trip to Europe and planned second meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites), signaled that Bush was unlikely to accept Putin's proposals for the United States and Russia to cut their nuclear arsenals to 1,500 warheads each. She said Bush prefers to make unilateral cuts.

``He (Bush) is going to look at lowering the numbers of offensive nuclear weapons for the United States that is consistent with our own security requirements and doesn't try to get into a one-to-one match,'' Rice said.

A U.S. official said the administration was ``actively working'' on Bush's plans for unilateral cuts.

Putin, who opposes U.S. plans to scrap the 1972 Anti Ballistic Missile treaty, has proposed mutual cuts in the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals in consultation with other major nuclear powers France, China and Britain.

However, Rice said, ``there's a good reason not to get into 15-year negotiations, which what it has taken to create arms control treaties ... it is not necessary.''

There was more trust and less hostility in relations with Russia than during the Cold War, when meticulously detailed arms pacts were essential, she said.

U.S. officials have also shown no enthusiasm for multi-party talks as proposed by Russia.

The Bush administration on Thursday outlined a plan to quickly develop missile defenses, including breaking ground on an Alaskan test site, that within months will come into potential conflict with the ABM treaty.

Bush's talks with Putin will again be a highlight of his trip to Europe. He is due to meet Putin a week from Sunday on the sidelines of a summit of the major nations in Genoa, Italy. The two met for the first time in Slovenia in June, after which Bush said he found Putin honest and straightforward.

The U.S. and Russian leaders agreed that their officials would meet to work out ways of resolving the missile defense issue.

The major focus of the Genoa summit will be on reducing global poverty. It will also deal with major global issues such as renewed violence in the Middle East, a slowdown in major economies and, possibly, prospects for a new round of world trade talks.

Bush is also to hold one-on-one meetings in Genoa with French President Jacques Chirac, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in Genoa, and Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien.

The U.S. president will travel to Rome after the summit to meet Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and Pope John Paul (news - web sites) II.

Bush, who has said the U.S. military has been overstretched by foreign peacekeeping missions, will visit U.S. troops in Kosovo on the way home. On his last trip to Europe, Bush made clear that any U.S. withdrawal from international peacekeeping in the Balkans would be timed with other NATO (news - web sites) partners.

``He intends to convey through his visit his appreciation to America's forces, demonstrating our commitment to working with our allies to advance peace and stability in the region,'' Rice said.

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-------- africa

Rebels Stop Sierra Leone Disarmament

New York Times
July 13, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Sierra-Leone.html

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP) -- A brutal rebel movement says it has stopped surrendering fighters under a U.N.-sponsored disarmament in this West African nation's 10-year-old war, citing complaints against the United Nations and the Sierra Leone government.

U.N. mission officials insisted Friday despite the rebels' announcement that disarmament was continuing -- saying two rebel fighters had appeared at a disarmament center in the east on Thursday to give up their arms.

``Disarmament has not stopped, but slowed to a trickle,'' U.N. mission spokeswoman Margaret Novicki said in Freetown, Sierra Leone's capital.

More than 6,000 combatants have laid down their arms since May 18, raising hopes amid a 5-month-old cease-fire between Revolutionary United Front rebels and the government-allied civilian militias fighting them.

Rebels have killed tens of thousands of civilians and raped, maimed and kidnapped many more in a terror campaign aimed at seizing control of the government and the West African nation's diamond fields.

Under military pressure from forces of the United Nations, Britain and neighboring Guinea, rebel leaders entered into the cease-fire and disarmament this year, announcing they wanted to revive peace efforts.

But disarmament slowed dramatically this month when it reached the diamond-rich Kono District. Since July 2, only 33 rebel fighters -- most on the first day -- and 89 militia fighters have laid down their assault rifles in the area.

Both sides are believed reluctant to yield in the diamond fields, which the rebels have held for at least three years.

Rebel spokesman Gibril Massaquoi didn't mention the diamond fields in announcing that rebels had stopped disarming.

Massaquoi cited instead U.N. Security Council sanctions that blocked travel by the rebels' political leader, Omrie Golley. The sanctions, which went into effect in May, were imposed over alleged arms- and diamond-trafficking between the rebels and the government of President Charles Taylor in neighboring Liberia.

Massaquoi also complained of cease-fire violations by the pro-government militias and the Sierra Leone government's refusal to release jailed rebel leaders. Foday Sankoh, the movement's founder, and about 120 other rebels were jailed in May 2000 after rebels broke a peace accord -- their third -- and restarted the war.

Sierra Leone released a handful of rebels last week -- but not Sankoh, nor any other prominent leaders.

Speaking to The Associated Press on Friday, Golley insisted that rebels ``remain committed to the peace process.''

``But these are problems from the RUF point of view; issues that need to be addressed,'' Golley said.

U.N., Sierra Leone and rebel representatives will meet Tuesday to try to get disarmament going again. Novicki, the U.N. mission spokeswoman, said it was the responsibility of the rebels and the government to resolve their problems.

The U.N. mission ``is not pleased with the pace of the disarmament ... and these problems are not going to jettison the whole peace process,'' Novicki said.

-------- arms sales

Rights Group Accuses Countries

New York Times
July 13, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Human-Rights-Afghanistan.html

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Human Rights Watch accused Pakistan, Iran and Russia of providing weapons for Afghanistan's civil war and wants a U.N. arms embargo to apply to all sides in the brutal conflict.

According to the report by the New York-based human rights group, Pakistan continues to be the main supporter of the ruling Taliban, which controls 95 percent of Afghanistan and has imposed a harsh brand of Islamic law.

Iran and Russia have lined up behind the opposition United Front, which is fighting the Taliban, the report said.

Both Iran and Pakistan denied the report's allegations Thursday, saying they were dedicated to helping end the war peacefully.

Andrey Granovsky, Russia's deputy U.N. ambassador, defended Moscow's links to the United Front, noting it is the internationally recognized government of Afghanistan.

Russia was providing ``political, diplomatic, humanitarian and other support'' to the United Front, he said, noting that there is no arms embargo against the anti-Taliban faction. He would not elaborate.

The report said that United Front helicopters are repaired at a joint Russian-Tajik air base. The report cited a United Front defector as saying Russia had given the group four transport helicopters.

Afghanistan has been wracked by war since Soviet forces left the country in 1989 after a 10-year presence.

Now, Human Rights Watch said, Afghanistan, ``whose main economic activity is as a global arms market and smuggling hub is threatening to become, again, a theater of geopolitical competition.''

Human Rights Watch called on the U.N. Security Council to create a unit to monitor an embargo already imposed on the Taliban and to broaden the ban to include supplies to the United Front.

The Security Council imposed sanctions on Afghanistan last year because it has refused to hand over suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden -- believed to have masterminded the twin U.S. embassy bombings in East Africa that left 224 dead in 1998.

``There is no question that the Taliban is the more unpopular of the two sides because the United States and Russia are against them as long as they protect Osama bin Laden and support Chechen rebels,'' said Joost Hilterman, who authored the report.

``But the result of supporting, de facto, one side against the other, will only mean that in the end the Taliban will be replaced by a regime that is equally abusive, even if it better serves Russian and American interests.''

The report, released during a U.N. conference on the illegal small arms trade, was especially critical of Pakistan, which has repeatedly denied it supplies arms to Afghanistan.

Shamshad Ahmad, Pakistan's ambassador to the United Nations, called the allegations ``baseless and fabricated'' and ``part of a mudslinging campaign.''

According to the report, artillery shells, tank rounds and rocket-propelled grenades cross the Pakistan-Afghanistan border by truck.

One retired, senior Pakistani officer told researchers that up to 30 percent of Taliban fighters were actually Pakistanis. Human Rights Watch said it interviewed several such fighters, but Ahmad called the findings ``absolutely exaggerated.''

``I do not rule out that some misguided individuals, private individuals, may have made their way into Afghanistan ... but it is not Pakistan that is sponsoring this,'' he told The Associated Press.

The report also accused Pakistan of training Taliban troops at a garrison in Rishikor, Afghanistan, southwest of Kabul.

The report accused Iran of training anti-Taliban fighters in northern Afghanistan and helping build a new arms supply route there. In October 1998, authorities in neighboring Kyrgyzstan stopped a trainload of weapons and ammunition hidden in flour that had left Iran and was bound for United Front forces in Afghanistan.

The weapons were reportedly shipped back to Iran, but the rights group said it believed they eventually ended up in Afghanistan.

Hossein Nosrat, a spokesman for Iran's U.N. mission, denied the findings.

``Iran is not fueling Afghanistan's civil war, but on the contrary has always been pushing for peaceful settlement of the Afghan crisis,'' he told the AP.

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In Pakistan Outback, Guns Abound

New York Times
July 13, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pakistan-Arms.html

DARRA ADAM KHEIL, Pakistan (AP) -- Gun-toting tribesmen jostle with goats and donkeys at a dust-blown bazaar on Pakistan's lawless northwest frontier, where slabs of hashish dangle above dirty roadside shacks and every third shop is a small armory of handguns, rifles and machine guns.

In this wild no-man's-land of 15,000 people, where druglords rule from hilltop forts and fugitives come to escape the law, gun-making is a tradition that goes back generations.

No one seems to care when a salesman cracks open the shop door, aims above the turbaned heads outside and fires off a deafening round, testing a handgun for a customer.

``We can copy any gun just by looking at the manual,'' boasts Arif Gul, owner of the grandly named but small and dingy Gul Engineering Works. ``I started making guns when I was about 15, and I've made thousands since then, even machine guns,'' said the 36-year-old Gul.

Business is down these days in Darra Adam Kheil, since the government launched a recent anti-weapons drive. But its guns remain part of a greater global problem: the illicit trade in light weapons.

Because guns, shoulder-fired missiles and light mortars are easy to make and hard to track, no one knows how many small arms and light weapons there are in the world, the United Nations says. It guesses there are more than 500 million worldwide -- up to 60 percent illicit.

But arms experts say large quantities of weapons, many sent by the United States for the Afghan war of the 1980s, are in use by insurgents throughout the Indian subcontinent.

Small arms are ``the weapons of choice'' in many of the small regional insurgencies in Pakistan, Kashmir, Sri Lanka or rebel movements in northeastern India, said Faruq Faisel, spokesman for the South Asia Partnership that analyzes regional security.

``The weapons are cheap and easy to operate even by children as young as 10,'' he said at a U.N. conference going from July 9 through July 20 in New York. More than 180 nations attending are trying to agree on a plan to curb the illegal trafficking in small arms and light weapons.

From 1979-89, the United States channeled at least $2 billion in weapons aid through Pakistan to Afghan mujahedeen who fought successfully to oust the Soviet army, according to the Small Arms Survey 2001 by the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies.

Their fates linked by the flood of arms, both countries have witnessed the scourges of proliferation first hand.

In Afghanistan, a surfeit of arms fueled a civil war that followed Soviet withdrawal in 1989, and Pakistan has witnessed the rise of a ``gun culture,'' where ethnic and religious differences have erupted into militancy and armed conflict.

The warring among the mujahedeen fighters brought more death and destruction than the war against Red Army troops. Most of Afghanistan is now in the hands of the Taliban religious militia, but there are still pockets of resistance where fighting continues.

Over the past two decades, Pakistan has witnessed the rise of ethnic and religious violence by heavily-armed groups.

In the largest city, Karachi, the militant Mohajir Qami Movement, which represents Muslims who migrated from India and their descendants, has waged a virtual insurgency and terrorist campaign.

Religious violence also has surged since the Afghan war between armed Sunni Muslim and Shiite Muslim groups.

Pakistan's government says 8,000 to 9,000 people are slain every year in crimes and in political and religious violence.

Earlier this year, Pakistan's military government launched an anti-weapons drive, urging people to turn in their weapons or face stiff fines and jail penalties.

Before the crackdown, no middle-class wedding was complete without a few bursts into the air from a Kalashnikov.

Moinuddin Haider, Pakistan's interior minister, told the U.N. conference Tuesday his country was determined to get rid of the illegal small arms and light weapons.

``Pakistan became a victim of this proliferation to the extent that even our places of worship and business became a target of this menace,'' Haider said. ``It threatened our political stability, social cohesion and economic growth,'' he said.

In Darra Adam Kheil, where government forces don't dare confront heavily armed tribesmen and tribal elders dispense their own law, the gun business is down since the crackdown. But there are telltale signs of who still comes shopping for guns.

On the wall of a workshop hangs a complimentary calendar from Harkat-ul-Mujahedeen, an underground guerrilla group fighting Indian troops in Kashmir that is on a U.S. list of terrorist organizations.

In a gun shop, Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, a militant Sunni Muslim organization that is waging an armed campaign against a rival Shiite group, has placed a collection box for donations.

Going for secrecy, the gunsmiths of Darra Adam Kheil have begun taking their cues from James Bond.

Walking sticks that fire a single shot and guns in the shape of ball point pens vie for customers alongside serious weapons like copied M-16 machine guns that come complete with ``Made in USA'' inscribed.

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Group Says Pakistan Defying Sanctions

New York Times
July 13, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pakistan-Afghanistan.html

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- The U.S.-based group Human Rights Watch accused Pakistan on Friday of defying U.N. sanctions by continuing to send arms and ammunition to the Taliban army that rules neighboring Afghanistan.

Pakistan denied the accusation, calling it ``absolutely not true.''

``It's difficult to know where they get their facts,'' Gen. Rashid Quereshi, chief spokesman for Pakistan's military ruler, said. ``We firmly abide by the U.N. sanctions.''

In January, the United Nations imposed an arms embargo on the Taliban to force them to hand over suspected terror mastermind Osama bin Laden, who is believed by the United States to have plotted the 1998 bombing of two U.S. embassies in East Africa.

Pakistan, considered the Taliban's biggest ally, is one of only three countries to recognize the hard-line Islamic militia's government. Pakistan has consistently denied sending either arms or ammunition to the Taliban.

``We cannot afford to be giving anything to anyone. We need everything that we have,'' said Quereshi. He said the Taliban were using what remains of ammunition dumps left by the former Soviet Union when it pulled its troops out of Afghanistan in 1989, ending a 10-year occupation.

Quereshi called those supplies ``enormous,'' saying, ``There is enough for years, and may be even for export to other countries. They don't need weapons and equipment from us.''

Human Rights Watch called for a complete arms embargo on Afghanistan to be lifted only after human rights abuses are ended and perpetrators brought to justice, and urged the United Nations to send monitors to Pakistan to monitor the arms embargo and for Pakistan to be penalized for defying the boycott.

Despite widespread belief that Russia and Iran are assisting opposition forces fighting the Taliban, the United Nations did not impose an arms embargo on the opposition. The Taliban rule roughly 95 percent of the country.

Human Rights Watch also accused Russia and Iran of also fueling the conflict.

In a statement issued Friday, Human Rights Watch said, ``Pakistan has violated the U.N. arms embargo on the Taliban ... permitting arms to cross its border into Taliban-controlled territory.''

As well as arms and ammunition, the report -- released Friday by the group's Arms Division -- accuses Pakistan of sending military advisers to provide strategic front-line advice during key battles. Human Rights Watch also says Pakistan encourages young Pakistanis to fight alongside the Taliban.

Quereshi demanded proof of the accusations.

``There are U.N. and NGO people running all over the place in Pakistan. There are no restrictions. Where is the proof? Pakistan is considered guilty and then asked to prove its innocence. That's all upside down,'' he said.

-------- balkans

Croatian Govt. Says War Crimes Suspect to Surrender

New York Times
July 13, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-croatia.html

ZAGREB (Reuters) - The Croatian government named on Friday General Rahim Ademi as one of two suspects sought by the U.N. war crimes tribunal and said he had agreed to surrender voluntarily in the next 10 days.

A local court has issued an arrest warrant for the other, still unnamed, suspect, the government added.

Croatian media, quoting official but unnamed sources, said the second suspect was retired General Ante Gotovina, who was quoted as saying in interviews that he did not recognize the court and would not hand himself in.

In a statement, the government said it had informed Ademi -- an ethnic Albanian -- that he was the person named in one of the sealed indictments served to Zagreb last month and that he had agreed to a voluntary surrender in the next 10 days.

``The government presented the content of the indictment to Ademi, and suspended the handover procedure to allow him to surrender voluntarily. General Ademi said he would make himself available to the Hague tribunal in the next 10 days,'' it said.

Ademi had stated publicly that his war conduct had been without blemish and that he wanted to defend himself in court.

In the meantime, a local Croatian court on Friday issued a warrant to arrest the other indictee wanted by the tribunal, without identifying him, in an early indication that police might soon move to seize the suspect.

Local media believe it is Gotovina, former Foreign Legion mercenary and one of the heroes of Croatia's 1991-95 war for independence as commander of the 1995 Operation Storm that restored the Serb rebel enclave of Knin to government control.

More than 150,000 inhabitants of the Serb-majority region fled the offensive and human rights groups say that hundreds who did not were murdered in the chaotic aftermath.

Damir Kos, deputy head of the Zagreb county court, told the state news agency Hina that the court had received the tribunal's arrest warrant, together with the sealed indictment.

``The material was forwarded to one of our judges who reviewed it and sent an arrest warrant to the police,'' Kos said. Gotovina, whose whereabouts are unknown, told newspapers in several interviews conducted over a mobile phone that the tribunal was a political tool he did not recognize and his surrender was ``out of the question.''

INDICTMENTS SPLIT NATION

Gotovina was among a group of generals President Stipe Mesic sent into early retirement last year after they publicly criticized the government's willingness to cooperate with the Dutch-based tribunal.

The indictments -- the first against Croatian officials -- split both the nation, which regards its generals as independence war heroes, and the democratic reformist cabinet of Prime Minister Ivica Racan.

Four ministers of the Social Liberal party resigned after the cabinet voted to comply with the tribunal's request at the weekend. The move forced Racan to demand a confidence vote for his cabinet in parliament -- to be held on Sunday.

On Friday, parliament debated future cooperation with the tribunal in a closed-door session that was likely to continue into the night, or resume on Saturday morning.

The nationalist camp demanded changes to a constitutional clause on cooperation, enacted during their rule under international pressure in 1996, to prevent handovers of suspects said to be wanted purely because of their senior position during the war.

Racan's coalition holds a substantial majority in parliament and is likely to brush off the demands. Failure to cooperate with the tribunal might result in international sanctions.

--------

U.S. Citizens Found in Serbia Grave

New York Times
July 13, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Yugoslavia-Americans.html

NIS, Yugoslavia (AP) -- Documents on the bodies of three males found in a mass grave in eastern Serbia indicate they were U.S. citizens of ethnic Albanian origin, an official said Friday.

However, a forensic examination will be required to verify their identity, the official, a member of a forensics team investigating the grave in Petrovo Selo, told The Associated Press.

The mass grave was discovered recently about 120 miles east of the capital, Belgrade, and has been linked to Slobodan Milosevic's campaign to cover up Kosovo atrocities.

The former Yugoslav president was indicted by the U.N. war crimes tribunal for atrocities carried out against non-Serbs in Kosovo and was extradited to the Netherlands-based court on June 28.

Papers found on the three men identify them as brothers -- Agron, Mehmet and Yli Bytyqi -- born in Chicago in 1978, 1976 and 1974 respectively, the source said on condition of anonymity.

The brothers lived in New York City and their mother and sister lived in Prizren in western Kosovo, the source said.

The southern Yugoslav province has been run by NATO since June 1999, when the alliance ended 78 days of airstrikes that punished Milosevic's regime for its crackdown on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

The bodies of the three men were lying atop a heap containing remains of 13 other ethnic Albanians in a ditch located on the fringes of a special police compound in Petrovo Selo, the source said. An adjacent collective grave contained 59 more bodies, bringing the total at the site to 75.

The position of the three -- the only ones who were blindfolded, their hands tied with wire -- points to the likelihood that they were killed nearby, the source said. The men were dressed in civilian clothes and were shot at close range.

A Serbian court document dated June 27, 1999, also was found on the brothers, indicating they were sentenced to 15 days in jail for entering the country illegally, the official told AP. The document ordered them sent to a penitentiary in Prokuplje, just north of Kosovo province.

The Belgrade-based office of the U.N. tribunal, whose experts are allowed to observe mass grave exhumations, said it could not confirm the identity of the men to AP.

A spokeswoman in the U.S. State Department's European affairs office said only that the United States ``encourages the Serbian authorities to fully investigate the mass graves.''

``We also encourage the Serbian authorities to work closely with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in their investigation and to hold accountable those responsible for war crimes,'' the spokeswoman said.

A report about the three men first appeared Wednesday in the Reporter weekly, which claimed they were arrested on the Kosovo-Serbian border.

The newspaper said the three Americans were fighting with pro-independence ethnic Albanian rebels in the so-called ``Atlantic Brigade'' consisting of up to 400 men before they were executed by Serbian security forces.

Pro-democracy officials who took over after Milosevic's ouster from power last October have accused the ex-president of ordering his associates to cover up evidence of war crimes in Kosovo.

They allege that Milosevic tried to hide the atrocities by ordering some 800 bodies to be buried in Serbia in locations far from the Kosovo province.

----------

NATO Tells Bosnia to Stop Living in the Past

July 13, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-nato-bo.html

SARAJEVO (Reuters) - NATO Secretary-General George Robertson said on Friday that Bosnia risked international isolation and a ``return to chaos'' if it did not work harder to overcome ethnic divisions.

``The future of this country is in the hands of the people but there are too many people living in the past and they hinder the development of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a state and they perpetuate ethnic division and lasting animosity,'' Robertson told a news conference at the end of a two-day visit.

Torn apart by war after it declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1992, Bosnia was divided into two autonomous entities -- a Muslim-Croat federation and a Serb republic -- by the U.S. brokered peace accord that ended the conflict in 1995.

International peace officials have sought to strengthen central institutions to create a viable state and allow NATO-led peacekeepers to withdraw, but nationalists continue to cling to the idea of three separate armies, governments and police.

Robertson said leaders of all three groups should take on the responsibility for their country's future.

``The consequence of doing nothing will be isolation and a return to chaos and Bosnia and Herzegovina will end up being an ethnically splintered backwater in a Europe of prosperity and stability,'' he said.

YUGOSLAVIA COULD TAKE LEAD

If Bosnia was not careful, neighbors such as Yugoslavia, an international pariah until Slobodan Milosevic was ousted last year, could take the lead in the race to join NATO and other international organizations.

``In Yugoslavia they have one army, they have political control of the military, they have a ministry of defense, these are crucial preconditions for Partnership for Peace,'' he said.

Bosnia's joint Muslim-Serb-Croat presidency had told him and the NATO ambassadors accompanying him that they wanted to join the Alliance's Partnership for Peace program, while Yugoslavia had not formally applied yet, Robertson said.

``It would be an amazing irony if Yugoslavia made an application for Partnership for Peace and was able to qualify before Bosnia and Herzegovina,'' he said.

Robertson said war crimes suspects like wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his military commander Ratko Mladic would be better off giving themselves up to the U.N. tribunal in the Hague, which indicted the two men for genocide in 1995.

Milosevic's handover to the tribunal last month has increased pressure on leaders of Bosnia's Serb republic, where tribunal prosecutors believe more than half of some 40 indictees are hiding, including Karadzic and Mladic.

``There is no safe haven any more and there is no statute of limitations either. The net is closing in on all of them and they would be much safer with the justice of the Hague than with the rough justice of the Balkans,'' Robertson said.

Asked why Karadzic had not been arrested yet, he said the NATO-led Stabilization Force in Bosnia did not know where he was.

``If we knew where he was, he would be arrested. SFOR's responsibility lies in Bosnia and Herzegovina under the Dayton peace agreement. If we have reliable knowledge that Radovan Karadzic is in Bosnia and Herzegovina then he will be arrested, make no mistake about that.''

-------- colombia

Nobel Laureate Rips US Drug Policy

July 13, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Colombia-Menchu.html

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- Nobel peace laureate Rigoberta Menchu criticized a U.S.-backed policy of fumigating farmers' drug crops, and said she was disillusioned with efforts to end Colombia's 37-year guerrilla war.

She said President Andres Pastrana, who leaves office in 13 months, might be missing a chance to use peace talks to halt the fighting.

``I was very hopeful that Mr. Pastrana's government would leave behind a significant foundation for peace,'' Menchu told The Associated Press. ``It's frustrating because a lot of things seemed possible two years ago.''

The talks have produced almost no tangible results since they begin in January 1999.

Menchu, whose native country Guatemala signed a peace accord in 1996 that ended a 36-year civil war, said Colombia's conflict has continued to get worse.

``Here you don't have a war between two valiant parties who turn their arms on one another, but rather a cowardly war in which arms are turned on the civilian population,'' said Menchu.

Colombia's war pits leftist guerrillas against the military and paramilitary groups. At least 3,000 people are killed annually, the majority unarmed civilians in massacres.

Menchu also criticized U.S.-backed efforts to eradicate crops used to make cocaine. Opponents say the program, in which herbicides are forcibly sprayed over farmers' plots, is ruining the environment and unfairly punishing poor people who grow coca to feed their families.

U.S. and Colombian officials insist the eradication plans are aimed only at large traffickers, and have offered small farmers aid for switching from coca. But Menchu, the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize, called it a ``nefarious'' policy that will create more internal refugees.

-------- israel

Security Chief: Israelis Wants War

New York Times
July 13, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Palestinian-Security-Chief.html

JERUSALEM (AP) -- Most Israelis want a war against the Palestinians, Gaza security chief Mohammed Dahlan said in an interview published Friday.

Dahlan told the Maariv daily that Israelis relate to the Palestinian people and its leadership as enemies. Palestinians, on the other hand, want to do business with Israel. ``They're always asking for exit permits,'' he said.

Dahlan is considered the most powerful security commander in Gaza and is close to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. He has taken part in CIA-sponsored meetings with Israeli security commanders, but lately has refused to attend.

``We could sit there for two years,'' he said. ``Up to now the Israeli government simply does not want to stop the violence because it doesn't want to get into the political issues.''

Israel has charged that the Palestinians are responsible for the continuing clashes. Speaking at a Jewish settlement south of Jerusalem, the chief of staff of the Israeli military, Lt. Gen. Shaul Mofaz, said Palestinian security forces ``are all connected to terror and have Jewish blood on their hands.'' He predicted a long battle between Israel and the Palestinians.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has demanded a total cessation of violence before political contacts resume, but Dahlan said that is impossible. ``That is like giving each little boy the power to sabotage any agreement against us,'' he told the newspaper.

Dahlan denied a Maariv report that Arafat gave orders to kill a Jewish settler every day. ``Our people don't need orders from (Arafat),'' he said. When they see Israeli forces killing Palestinians, ``they want revenge,'' he said.

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

Military Scuttles Strategy Requiring '2-War' Capability

New York Times
July 13, 2001
By THOM SHANKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/13/international/13MILI.html

WASHINGTON, July 12 - The United States is abandoning requirements that its military be prepared to fight two major wars simultaneously, according to a classified strategy document. Instead, the new strategy will order the armed forces to "win decisively" in a single major conflict, defend American territory against new threats and, at the same time, conduct a number of holding actions elsewhere around the globe.

For the first time, defense of the American homeland is incorporated into guidelines for American military strategy that are ultimately used to request money for the military. This elevation of homeland defense into one of the four main military "capabilities" refers mostly to administration plans for missile defense. But it also officially gives the military domestic duties in battling terrorism, especially in the case of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. Whether that mission is for the active force or the National Guard and Reserve has not been decided, officials say.

Since 1993, the American military has been told to prepare to fight two major regional wars simultaneously, for instance against Iraq and North Korea. The new requirements call on the military to fight and win one such war, while maintaining sufficient forces abroad to deter aggression by another enemy and to carry out an unspecified number of smaller-scale deployments like those in Bosnia, Somalia and Haiti.

While a change in military requirements had been expected in a strategic review under way at the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld told Congress as recently as June 21 that no action had been taken on whether to scrap the two-war requirement. This classified document will now shape that defense review mandated by Congress every four years.

Some senior administration officials had hoped that shifting from a two-war capability would provide significant savings through personnel cuts to free up money to modernize the armed forces and build a missile defense system.

But as civilian officials and the military began this week to draft specific plans to replace the two-war requirement, officials said it quickly became obvious that a sizable increase in forces might be required, because of the number of missions other than the major regional war for which the military must prepare.

The changes are laid out in a 29- page document known as the "terms of reference," which the Pentagon will use to guide specific policy and budget requests for personnel and weapons - the numbers of everything from carrier battle groups to jet fighters to troops on the ground.

After long and often difficult negotiations, a final version of the document was approved by Mr. Rumsfeld, the armed service chiefs and the regional war-fighting commanders about two weeks ago. Both civilian and military leaders described the text as a victory for compromise, even as they expressed concern that their new vision could be nullified by a shortage of available money, caused by the tax cut, Medicare expenses and other spending priorities.

"These terms of reference are realistic; they better reflect what we do and how we should prepare for it," one military officer said. "But is there enough money? If not, everybody will have to downsize their expectations."

The document requires the American military to maintain capabilities so that it can, "concurrently," carry out these four broad missions:

ķDefend United States territory.

ķPrevent aggressors from taking hostile action by making them afraid of a response from American forces in Europe, the Middle East, southwest Asia, northeast Asia and along the East Asian rim.

ķ"Win decisively" in one major conflict.

ķConduct "small-scale contingencies of limited duration in other areas of the world."

No specific number of missions beyond the one major war was stated, although closed-door debate centered on two or three such contingencies' flaring up at the same time, officials said.

The document is classified, officials said, mostly because of a few sections assessing risk and detailing the pre-positioning of war-fighting matériel. But more than a dozen senior civilian policymakers and military officers provided details of the document in recent days on the condition they not be identified.

The two-war requirement was always less a full-blown strategy than a system for deciding the size of the American armed forces. It became an issue in last year's presidential campaign when George W. Bush criticized the Clinton administration's military preparedness; the criticism involved a rating for one Army division as unready for its role in the two-war strategy - not because of poor training or morale, but because many of its troops were deployed by presidential order to a military mission in Bosnia.

"We haven't been able to do two- major-theater wars for years," a military officer said. "We paid it lip service. The new terms are supposed to acknowledge the realities of the world today. It's time we matched our forces to our strategy."

But some Pentagon officials and even members of Congress have warned that dropping the commitment to fight two major wars at once may frighten American allies, especially reluctant allies, for instance in the Middle East, and embolden adversaries like Iraq and North Korea.

"If an enemy seizes the initiative in a major way in one part of the world, we still have to prove we are not giving up everywhere else," a Pentagon official said. "We have to maintain the residual forces to win elsewhere - but perhaps not instantly."

One contentious issue that initially divided the military and civilians came when Mr. Rumsfeld's team described the expected outcome from war as one in which American forces would "prevail."

Such words have power, and the phrase struck those in uniform as equivocal, as allowing too much risk, as accepting a long period of combat with an outcome short of dominating victory.

"We don't like a fair fight," one officer said. "We want to win, absolutely and on our terms. The phrase, `win decisively,' was not just a victory for the Army or Air Force or Navy or Marines, but for all the people who have to carry out the mission."

The challenge facing the Pentagon now is to translate the broad guidelines of this document into a detailed strategy, as part of the Quadrennial Defense Review required by Congress, which Mr. Rumsfeld has pledged to complete on an accelerated schedule by August. That review will guide the budget proposals.

"What this Pentagon is looking at is a broader range of scenarios," said Michele A. Flournoy, who drafted the previous quadrennial review while serving in the Clinton Pentagon. "They are striving to break out of two-major-theater-wars and get to something else that still adequately supports our alliances and our global interests, and gives greater attention to defending the United States."

One problem, said Ms. Flournoy, who is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, is that there is no single predictable threat, and no single goal of a military campaign. For instance, the military requirements in a war to restore a national boundary are quite different from one whose goal is occupying an enemy or toppling a regime.

--------

The Rumsfeld Defense

New York Times
July 13, 2001
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/13/opinion/13FRIE.html?searchpv=nytToday

Fuzzy math, meet fuzzy strategy.

A month after President Bush's $1.35 trillion tax cut was rushed through Congress, we now hear that the math was indeed, well, a little fuzzy, and that the budget could fall short by some $50 billion, thus increasing the deficit. But the Bush budget isn't the only thing that's fuzzy in Washington these days. The Bush strategic vision doesn't add up either. Not only do many of its policies clash with one another, but the fuzzy math that was used to slash taxes is going to limit some of the truly innovative things Mr. Bush wants to do on the strategic side.

That's what happens when you have an administration that comes into office with no integrated political- strategic vision, but rather with a set of theological positions - on taxes, missile defense and trade - some of which clearly contradict others.

Grover Norquist, meet Don Rumsfeld.

Mr. Norquist, the Republican tax- cutting zealot who drove Bush budget policy, will be remembered as the biggest enemy of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's plans for a "Revolution in Military Affairs" and a revamping of America's strategic forces.

"I voted against the tax cut," Senator John McCain, a member of the Armed Services Committee, told me the other day, "because I felt that it would not protect Medicare, it would not protect Social Security and I didn't feel that there was going to be sufficient money for defense. We've had the Joint Chiefs up here [seeking additional funds] to cover spending shortfalls in just operations, maintenance, readiness and personnel issues - let alone paying for national missile defense and new programs."

That's not the only place where fuzzy math meets fuzzy strategy:

• President Bush vowed in an address at the Naval Academy to rebuild the U.S. military into a fighting machine "that relies more heavily on stealth, precision weaponry and information technologies." But the $18 billion in additional spending for 2002 that the Pentagon requested barely covers the increased costs of spare parts, pay and better housing for troops - and it's not even clear that this defense increase can be fitted into the tax-reduced Bush budget without tapping Medicare and Social Security. How they are going to raise the $60 to $100 billion for missile defense is a mystery, especially since Congress is resisting cutting any old programs.

• Mr. Bush called for expanding NATO all across the frontier with Russia. At the same time he urged Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, to support a U.S. plan at the U.N. for revamping sanctions on Iraq. Yes, Russia has its own cash incentives for protecting Saddam. But it seems never to have occurred to anyone on the Bush team that Mr. Putin might not have any interest in cooperating with us on Iraq while we are expanding NATO up to his doorstep. We may not connect the two issues, but he does.

• Mr. Bush is a strong, anti-protectionist advocate of free trade, but his first trade act as president was to do something that President Bill Clinton always resisted - erect a formal trade barrier to protect U.S. steel companies from foreign competition. This was done in part to neutralize opposition to the Bush global free-trade agenda, but since that agenda has not been fully spelled out or decisively pushed, the steel protection act stands out alone.

• Mr. Rumsfeld's Pentagon said yesterday that it was soon to begin building the Alaska portion of the missile shield, whether the technology works or not. Two weeks ago, in the face of threats by agents of Osama bin Laden, Mr. Rumsfeld hastily withdrew U.S. marines who were exercising in Jordan and also pulled the U.S. Fifth Fleet from its base in the Persian Gulf. Message: We will deploy weapons that don't work against an enemy that doesn't exist, and we will withdraw forces that do work against an enemy that does exist.

Clearly, the Bush team is still getting its ideas together, said Senator McCain, and clearly, Mr. Rumsfeld is committed to radical changes, "which is refreshing." But for now, Mr. McCain added, "except for national missile defense, I don't know what the Rumsfeld vision is. We have all these commissions, but so far nothing has come out of the Pentagon that adds up to a blueprint yet. That has paralyzed the process, because if we don't know what we're going to do it is hard to shape a defense policy. Hopefully, soon, we'll have that blueprint."

Hopefully, Mr. Rumsfeld will provide it. But I hope he checks first with Grover.

---------

Nuclear Testing and National Honor

New York Times
July 13, 2001
By RICHARD BUTLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/13/opinion/13BUTL.html?searchpv=nytToday

Last weekend, The New York Times reported the latest attack by the Bush administration on a major international agreement - the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, banning all test explosions of nuclear weapons. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz recently raised the possibility of circumstances "where you would have to contemplate" nuclear testing, and an administration official told Agence France-Presse that the treaty "has no support within the administration." Meanwhile, General John Gordon, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, recently informed Congress that he is looking hard at "improving test site readiness."

The intention of the White House to kill the test ban treaty, if fulfilled, would have deeply serious consequences for nuclear arms control and would constitute a major renunciation by the United States of undertakings it has solemnly made. It also throws glaring light on the extremist views of international law held within the administration.

The test ban treaty was signed by President Bill Clinton in September 1996, after its adoption by the United Nations General Assembly by a vote of 158 to 3. (Five nations abstained; nineteen others were either absent or so behind in their dues they could not vote.) The United States voted for it. The three states actively opposed were India, Bhutan (acting under Indian pressure) and Libya. The treaty has now been signed by 161 nations and ratified by 31 of the 44 nuclear- capable, or potentially capable, states named as necessary participants for it to enter into force. A test ban organization has been established, in Vienna, to verify the operations of the treaty. A global seismological network has been set up to detect violations. Until the treaty enters into force, it is universally agreed that a moratorium on testing should be observed.

Three years after President Clinton's signature, the Senate decided against ratifying the treaty by a vote of 51 to 48. Senate debate was gagged by the Republican leadership, and the vote was influenced by Republicans' wish to take retribution against President Clinton for winning the impeachment battle. Simply put, there was shabbiness all round, for which a terrible price was paid.

This treaty has been sought for almost 30 years. The United States had promised to support it on several crucial occasions during the last 10 years, when failure to end nuclear testing was manifestly threatening the broader nonproliferation effort that the United States said, and continues to say, it considers of fundamental importance for national security.

If the United States now destroys the test ban treaty and moves to resume nuclear testing, other nuclear- weapons states will follow suit, and still other states will consider acquiring nuclear weapons. The nonproliferation regime will perish.

Not only will the world be made a much more dangerous place in the obvious ways, but it will become a world in which the word of the United States will have been exposed as meaningless. There is such a thing as national honor. However intangible, it nonetheless exists and is the basis for successful relationships between states. The consequences of simply refusing to honor national commitments - of the United States going back on its word - are incalculable for American and global security.

In May 2000, as part of a regular review conference concerning the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the United States, together with the four other acknowledged nuclear-weapons states, declared that it remained unequivocally committed to "the ultimate goal of a complete elimination of nuclear weapons" and agreed to 13 steps toward nuclear arms control, including aggressive advocacy of the test ban treaty.

But that was in the distant days of the Clinton administration. The new team in Washington seems to have declared year zero as far as prior American undertakings are concerned. The attitude of senior figures in the administration to past commitments and to international law seems to suggest that there is no history before them, a ludicrous and dangerous conception.

At present, government legal analysts in Washington have prepared papers for senior policy makers on the attitude the United States should adopt toward international law. One such paper posits the existence of a new, threatening concept of international law that would gradually strip nations of their sovereignty, replacing national laws with global norms. International law, in this vision, would become a weapon used by a concert of nations against the United States.

The administration's approach is a fearful and misguided one of unilateral rejection. International agreements already in existence and considered offensive, virtually to the United States alone, include the treaties banning land mines and biological weapons, and the accord to establish an International Criminal Court. We might add the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and, most recently, a pact now being negotiated at the United Nations to limit small-arms trafficking. The administration seems to believe that international agreements will increasingly pressure the United States to sacrifice its sovereignty and become subject to direction by international institutions. This argument ignores reality. The United States depends on international treaties for its own safety and prosperity. After all, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is just that, a treaty organization. The World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the Free Trade Area of the Americas, the United Nations - all these are based on treaties, and the United States, under normal circumstances, has participated in them, often led them, and benefitted immensely. International commitments do not threaten American sovereignty. If anything, they make possible a measured extension of American sovereignty. Without them we would not have globalization and America would not, in all likelihood, enjoy its present prosperity or, indeed, its power.

Until recent months, America has behaved largely as a good international citizen. Fulminating against the dark forces of "new" international law can only limit American influence in the international arena. The wiser course now would be for the United States to work to improve treaties where they are flawed and to put its muscle behind gaining universal acceptance of them, to deploy, not withdraw, its sovereignty. If this does not occur, we may well find ourselves at year zero - on nuclear time.

Richard Butler is author of the forthcoming ``Fatal Choice: Nuclear Weapons and the Illusion of Missile Defense.''

----------

Pentagon Shifts War Strategy

New York Times
July 13, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/news/AP-War-Strategy.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon is redefining the military's war-fighting requirements, dropping a decade-old strategy of being prepared to fight two major regional wars nearly simultaneously, defense officials said Friday.

The new approach, given final approval by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and top military leaders in late June, requires the military to maintain enough forces to ``win decisively'' in one major regional war and have the capability to carry out three other high-priority missions at the same time.

The three other missions are to defend U.S. territory, conduct ``small-scale contingencies of limited duration'' in other parts of the world -- such as peacekeeping in the Balkans -- and deter aggression in ``critical areas of the world'' through the presence of America forces in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

Two defense officials discussed the matter Friday on condition of anonymity. The new approach, which is described in a classified document called the ``terms of reference'' for Rumsfeld's ongoing defense review, was first reported in detail in Friday's editions of The New York Times.

The defense officials said it remains to be determined whether this new approach will lead to changes in the size of the American military, which has about 1.4 million men and women in uniform.

One purpose of the new approach is provide the president with a ``broader range of military options for peacetime, pre-conflict, war and war termination,'' said one official, reading from the document.

President Bush campaigned on his view that the military was being asked to do too much with too few resources and he promised to finds ways to reduce military commitments. So far no commitments have been dropped, although Bush has asked for a $32 billion increase in defense spending for 2002.

Since the end of the Cold War in 1991, the U.S. military has stuck to what became known as the ``two-war strategy.'' The notion was that by sizing the military to deal with two major regional wars, an outbreak of conflict in, say, the Persian Gulf would not embolden North Korea to invade South Korea, where about 37,000 American troops are based.

Rumsfeld has indicated previously that the ``two-war'' approach was overdue for change. On June 21, he told the Senate Armed Services Committee that this strategy had outlived its usefulness, leaving the United States increasingly vulnerable to emerging threats like ballistic missiles.

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

He said in his testimony that he hoped to present a revamped strategy to Bush by late summer or early fall. He said that in moving beyond the ``two war'' approach it would be important to replace it with ``something better and not just undertake change for change's sake.''

In that testimony, he previewed the new approach by saying the key missions for the American military should be to defend the United States, assure a capability to ``win decisively against an adversary threatening U.S. vital interests anywhere in the world'' and maintain overseas forces to ``reassure friends and allies,'' to pursue security cooperation, to deter conflict and to blunt attacks in critical areas.

Some in Congress have been skeptical of Rumsfeld's approach.

Rep. Floyd Spence, R-S.C., told Rumsfeld during his June 21 testimony that he thought it was premature to drop the ``two war'' approach because it serves an important purpose in dissuading potentially hostile nations from thinking that they could catch the United States short if it became involved in a war in the Gulf.

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

-------- OTHER

-------- energy

Small Power Plants Planned in Nassau County

New York Times
July 13, 2001
By ELISSA GOOTMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/13/nyregion/13POWE.html

GLENWOOD LANDING, N.Y., July 12 - As part of efforts to stave off California-like blackouts on Long Island next summer, the Long Island Power Authority and the KeySpan Energy Corporation announced plans today to build two small power plants here on Nassau County's North Shore.

The plants, to be built across the street from a much larger, existing plant, would be used only during periods of peak electricity demand, like the hottest days of summer and the coldest days of winter, officials said. If approved quickly, the plants, as well as at least three other proposed mini-plants, could be ready by next summer, making for a total of at least 47 peak-use plants on Long Island.

Meanwhile, on the other end of the Island, energy experts, politicians and utility executives gathered today at Brookhaven Town Hall for a daylong meeting. The topic was how Long Island, which has limited links to regional power grids but plenty of air-conditioners and swimming pools, can meet its power needs.

Even as LIPA officials proposed the two plants here as an important step toward addressing those needs, some critics at the meeting said the plants were merely the latest pieces in a haphazard response to a tight electricity supply.

"I think it's a willy-nilly approach," said Gordian Raacke, executive director of the Citizens Advisory Panel, a watchdog group that monitors LIPA. "There ought to be a comprehensive plan, and LIPA obviously does not have it," he added.

The chairman of LIPA, Richard M. Kessel, said the new plant proposals were evidence of the utility's long- term thinking. Together, the two plants would generate about 79 megawatts of electricity, enabling them to circumvent a lengthy state environmental approval process required for generators that produce at least 80 megawatts of electricity. (A megawatt is enough to power about 1,000 average homes.)

The plants, which are fired by natural gas, still need a series of state and local approvals, and utility officials said they hoped to begin operating the plants by late spring. The plants would occupy a half-acre on a 28-acre plot of land owned by KeySpan in a light-industrial tract overlooking Hempstead Harbor, where the nearest home is about a quarter- mile away. Their two stacks will rise 145 feet. A 350-megawatt power station sits across the street, and a country club and a public park are also nearby.

Ashok Gupta, a senior energy economist at the National Resources Defense Council, criticized the technology of the smaller plants as outdated and inefficient, saying that larger plants emit much less air pollution because they require less fuel to produce the same amount of energy. He said there were better ways to meet peak demand, such as refurbishing old plants or building larger plants with components designated for peak use.

But Mr. Kessel said that the Glenwood Landing plants would be cleaner than most existing plants on Long Island, and that a larger plant could not be completed in time to help next summer.

"I think we have enough electricity to get us through this summer, but things are tight," he told those at the meeting. On June 28, he said, Long Island was about 300 or 400 megawatts away from its total generating capacity of about 4,500 megawatts for that day.

So, in addition to the Glenwood Landing plants, which KeySpan is spending $100 million to build, LIPA has proposed a 44-megawatt turbine in Far Rockaway and two others in Shoreham. "We are going to need a number of these small turbines on Long Island to get us through," Mr. Kessel said.

Mr. Kessel and Robert B. Catell, the chairman and chief executive of KeySpan, said their representatives had been meeting with community groups over the course of the past month to discuss the proposed plants.

Mr. Kessel said he hoped the Glenwood Landing plants would be received as warmly as a proposal that the two utilities announced in May to build a 250-megawatt plant in an industrial section of Melville.

The treasurer of the Glenwood- Glen Head Civic Association, Cecelia P. McCann, said her group was not planning to oppose the two mini- plants here, in part because of the longtime presence of the power station across the street.

"We've certainly heard nothing regarding emissions - noise emissions, smoke emissions - that would lead us to believe that there will be any negative impact," Ms. McCann said.

At a public park near Tappan Beach, less than half a mile down Shore Road from the site, there was little agreement about the plants among a group of mothers waiting to collect their sons from day camp.

Betty Clampet, 41, of Glen Head, agreed with Ms. McCann, saying she would welcome the extra tax revenue for the community.

"We have a lot of electrical stuff down here - what's the difference?" Mrs. Clampet said. "It's either we have electricity or we don't have electricity." But Eileen E. Murphy, 41, her neighbor, disagreed. "Let somebody else have a power plant," she said. "We already have one."

-------- environment

Bush Tackles Global Warming

New York Times
July 13, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Bush-Global-Warming.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Under attack for rejecting a climate change treaty, President Bush on Friday announced a series of multimillion-dollar studies and initiatives aimed at reducing the impact of heat-trapping gases on the globe.

The package, including a $120 million NASA research project on climate modeling, was unveiled in a written statement less than a week before Bush embarks on his second European trip. Allies of the United States have criticized Bush for abandoning a 1997 international treaty that would put limits on the emissions of gases that many scientists say are warming the globe.

Bush has promised European allies that he would help devise an alternative to the Kyoto treaty that would ease global warming without hurting the U.S. and other economies.

``These initiatives represent important steps in putting our principles to work through partnerships with other nations, industry and nongovernment organizations,'' Bush said in the statement.

The initiatives, which Bush said were produced by his Cabinet-level advisory panel, include:

-- A $120 million, three-year investment by NASA to research the natural carbon cycle, climate modeling and the link between atmospheric chemistry and climate. Bush said the study would help reduce uncertainties about global warming.

--An Energy Department agreement with the Nature Conservancy to study land use and forestry practices in Brazil and Belize. In a second move, the department and a host of energy companies have agreed to develop new technologies for reducing the cost of capturing carbon dioxide from fossil fuel combustion plants.

--The Department of Treasury entered into a $14 million agreement to help El Salvador conserve its forests.

--------

Kofi Annan Presses Japan to Back Kyoto

New York Times
July 13, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Germany-UN-Annan.html

BERLIN (AP) -- U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Germany's chancellor pressed Japan on Friday to ratify the Kyoto treaty, arguing that it has a ``special responsibility'' as the country where the global warming accord was born.

The 4-year-old agreement faces an important test at talks in Bonn, Germany, next week. The position of Japan, the world's second-largest economy, has become pivotal to its survival.

``Any attempt to prevent this internationally crucial agreement from getting under way in Bonn and making it ratifiable for everyone would be a serious political mistake,'' German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said.

President Bush has said the United States, the world's largest producer of carbon dioxide, won't sign. European Union nations want to press ahead, but Japan and Australia don't want to ratify the agreement without the United States.

``Japan as the host country has historic and special responsibility and I'm sure they will live up to that,'' Annan said after meeting Schroeder.

The German leader said he would call Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi next week to press the point, though an EU delegation earlier failed to persuade Tokyo to commit itself to ratification.

The Kyoto treaty aims to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases linked to global warming by a total of 5.2 percent of 1990 levels by 2012.

Bush maintains that the 1997 agreement is based on questionable science and would damage the U.S. economy while exempting two of the world's biggest polluters, China and India.

``There is enough scientific evidence to wake us up and let us take action,'' Annan countered Friday. ``We don't need to wait for perfect science to be able to act.''

The chairman of the Bonn conference, Dutch Environment Minister Jan Pronk, warned this week that U.S. opposition and Japanese ambiguity threatened to turn the Kyoto agreement into a ``dead letter.'' He insisted a breakthrough in Bonn is critical.

The 1997 Kyoto accord can only enter into force if it's backed by 55 countries, representing 55 percent of the industrialized world's emissions.

--------

China to Be Keen Observer at Bonn Climate Talks

New York Times
July 13, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-environ.html

BEIJING (Reuters) - China, cited by President Bush as a key reason why the United States walked away from a treaty aimed at cutting greenhouse gases, said on Friday it would send observers to next week's climate talks in Germany.

The Foreign Ministry said a senior official from its Treaty and Law department and experts from the State Environmental Protection Agency would attend the talks, whose prospects are clouded by disagreement between Europe and the United States.

``China will remain committed to working together with the international community in combating climate change,'' Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said on Thursday.

Bush rejected the Kyoto Protocol as ``fatally flawed'' because it exempts China and other developing countries from the limits on greenhouse gas emissions that developed countries are subject to.

China has nearly endless coal reserves and roaring economic growth -- ingredients that give it the potential to surpass the United States and become the biggest source of greenhouse gases.

The Kyoto Protocol requires the United States and other industrial countries to cut greenhouse gases by 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.

CLEANING UP ITS ACT

Most developing countries like China are waiting for developed countries to take the lead in reducing emissions.

But some experts say China, the world's most populous country and home to many of the world's most polluted cities, is cleaning up its act even without the force of treaty obligations.

According to the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in California, China has reduced carbon dioxide emissions 17 percent since the mid-1990s even though its economy grew 36 percent.

``Our success in reducing gas emissions over the past few years can mainly be attributed to the reduction of coal usage for energy purposes,'' said Zhou Dadi, director of the State Energy Research Institute.

``Currently, our policy emphasizes structural changes in energy usage by encouraging a shift toward cleaner sources of energy,'' he told Reuters.

China has taken pains to reduce subsidies for fossil fuels, boosted research and development, offer tax incentives and, most important, modernize inefficient coal-fired power plants.

CHINA FEARS GLOBAL WARMING

A key part of a $12 billion plan to clean Beijing's air and water to enhance its 2008 Olympics bid is a natural gas pipeline system to slash coal use. The target is for 83 percent of Beijing's energy to come from natural gas by 2008.

China, with severe environmental problems as many of its 1.3 billion people shake off poverty, fears global warming will only increase the woes of a land that is one-quarter desert and subject to frequent floods and drought.

Experts say China's deserts will become drier and water levels will rise in rivers unless action is taken.

``The frequent flooding in southern Asia and the continuous drought in northern China are the increasingly visible signs of damage from global warming,'' said Chen Qing, director of the South-North Institute for Sustainable Development.

``This point is undeniable,'' he added.

-------- genetics

Cos. Compete to Create Stem Cells

New York Times
July 13, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Stem-Cells.html

MENLO PARK, Calif. (AP) -- At least three for-profit companies are racing to develop large amounts of embryonic stem cells even as President Bush struggles to decide what the federal government should do.

The stem cells hold the potential to cure diseases and ailments from cancer to spinal cord injuries. If this dream can be realized, these companies stand to reap millions -- if not billions -- in profits.

Each company employs different but still controversial techniques to harvest embryonic stem cells. One buys leftover embryos from fertility clinics. Another is working to create embryos by way of a cloning method similar to the one used to make Dolly the sheep. The third pays men and women for their sperm and eggs, then creates embryos in the laboratory.

Each company's research involves plucking the coveted stem cells from 4- or 5-day-old human embryos, which must be destroyed in the process.

Anti-abortion activists and others consider all three techniques unethical, saying they result in the destruction of human life.

Proponents of such research argue that these days-old, undifferentiated cells cannot be viewed as human, and they stress that they have no intention of implanting them in a womb and producing babies.

Since 1996, federal law has banned the use of tax dollars for research that destroys embryos. The Clinton administration decided federal money could pay for research as long as the stem cells were extracted with private money.

Bush appears to be searching for a compromise -- possibly adopting a middle ground that imposes new restrictions but allows the research to move forward.

``The work will go on, one way or another,'' said Thomas Okarma, chief executive of Menlo Park-based Geron Inc., which funded the two scientists who first isolated human stem cells in 1998 and still dominates the field.

Geron buys leftover frozen embryos from fertility clinics and cracks them open to obtain the stem cells. Geron owns the worldwide rights to this process and has filed about 30 new patent applications for the various techniques and technology it uses.

Chief executive Thomas Okarma said he considers Geron's technique ethically sound.

``These things aren't people,'' he said. ``These are all frozen excess and no longer needed by the couple. And they are either going to be thrown away or stored forever.''

Eventually, Geron hopes to get stem cells without having to use embryos at all. It hopes to do this by finding and cloning the proteins in eggs that lead to the creation of stem cells. Then, Okarma said, ``living cells will be tomorrow's pharmaceuticals.''

Across the country in Worcester, Mass., Advanced Cell Technology is working on another technique that it hopes will enable it to generate stem cells by growing human embryos without the use of sperm.

Advanced Cell's plan is to pay women to take fertility drugs to produce excess eggs. Researchers would then take an egg, remove its nucleus and genetic material and fuse it with a skin cell containing adult genetic material. With a jolt of electricity, the researchers then would coax the egg to replicate as if it had been fertilized with sperm. After a few days, stem cells would be ready for harvesting.

So far, Advanced Cell has yet to obtain a stem cell with this technique. Chief executive Michael West, a Geron co-founder who left for Advanced Cell last year, said the company has not yet created embryos.

Many scientists consider the results of Advanced Cell's technique to be human embryos, since theoretically, they could be implanted into a womb and grown into a fetus. West himself has used the term ``embryo.'' However, his ethical advisers prefer terms such as ``ovumsum.''

``These are not embryos,'' said the chairman of Advanced Cell's ethics advisory board, Dartmouth University religion professor Ronald Green. ``They are not the result of fertilization and there is no intent to implant these in women and grow them.''

A third effort was announced this week by the Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine, a private fertility clinic in Norfolk, Va., that was responsible for the birth in 1981 of the nation's first test-tube baby.

The society said it believes the researchers there are the first in the United States to have created embryos expressly for stem cell research, using eggs and sperm from paid, consenting adults.

``At one level, it's cleaner'' ethically than using leftover embryos, society spokesman Sean Tipton said. ``There's no question what you're going to do with these embryos. You're going to the individuals up front.''

Only the Geron-generated cells would be eligible for federally funded research dollars under the Clinton administration guidelines, which called for using only surplus embryos from fertility clinics. The Advanced Cell and Jones Institute embryos would not pass this federal test.

--------

Study Breaks New Ground on Variations in Genome

New York Times
July 13, 2001
By NICHOLAS WADE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/13/health/genetics/13GENO.html

A large-scale study of the variability in the human genome has shown that each human gene may come in 12 different versions on average. The authors also say their findings cast doubt on the way that a large government and industry program is mining the genome for the genetic basis of common human diseases.

The study was undertaken by Genaissance Pharmaceuticals, a biotechnology company in New Haven, to discover the genetic basis for why individuals respond differently to given drugs.

The company's plan is to help doctors determine through a genetic test, rather than trial and error, which asthma or cholesterol drug, for example, would be best for a patient. The company has bought 60 of the latest-model DNA-sequencing machines, one of the largest sets outside those of the genome-sequencing centers, and installed them in a refurbished World War II munitions plant in New Haven.

The decoding of the human genome provided, in effect, a single DNA sequence. But what is of interest for most medical purposes is to know how each gene varies from one person to another and how those variations influence an individual's susceptibility to disease and response to drugs.

Government and industry have devoted considerable resources to looking for sites in the genome's three- billion-unit sequence where some people have one letter of DNA and some another. These sites of common variation are known as SNP's (pronounced snips). The hope is to correlate SNP's with disease and discover which versions of a gene predispose a person to diseases like diabetes or cancer.

So far three million or so SNP's have been cataloged, but they have been discovered more or less at random across the genome. Genaissance officials estimate that there are some 30 million SNP's in the human population, and say a SNP chosen at random is unlikely to pinpoint a gene variant that causes disease or drug response.

Instead, Genaissance is analyzing sets of closely bunched SNP's in the hope of correlating the patterns with a patient's response to various drugs. A connected set of SNP's inherited as a unit is called a haplotype, and so the company calls its method the haplotype approach.

Its ambition is to catalog the haplotypes of every human gene by decoding each gene in a total of about 90 people drawn from the three major human-population groups: Africans, Asians and Europeans. Company officials say they have already sequenced 4,000 of the estimated 30,000 human genes in this way and intend to sequence all of them within a few years.

Genaissance has published the results from 313 of these genes in today's issue of Science, in an article by Dr. J. Claiborne Stephens and several colleagues. From an analysis of the SNP's in these 313 genes, the authors calculate that each gene exists in 12 versions on average.

Dr. Kenneth Kidd, a population geneticist at Yale University who was not connected with the study, described the data as very important and said it confirmed how much genetic variability existed in the human population. He said he agreed with Genaissance's view that the SNP approach was "misconceived," and chided the government for having stripped ethnic identities from the panel of people whose genomes have been searched for SNP's.

But Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, said the SNP and haplotype approaches were not in opposition. His institute plans a workshop next week, he said, on how to build a haplotype map of the genome. There may be quick ways of arranging the SNP's already discovered into the sets or haplotypes in which they are usually inherited.

Dr. Gualberto Ruaņo, chief executive of Genaissance, said its haplotype catalog could help pharmaceutical companies to profile patients who respond best to their drugs, and to develop new drugs for any identified group of those who fail to respond.

Genetic information can be a delicate matter, particularly if it reveals a person's susceptibility to disease. Dr. Gerald F. Vovis, the company's chief technology officer, said Genaissance was developing information only about drug response, which in his view would fall into a less delicate category.

Both Dr. Kidd and Dr. David Altshuler of Harvard University said Genaissance was overcounting the number of SNP's and haplotypes, by including SNP's found in a single person. Because only common SNP's are likely to play a role in common diseases, geneticists usually count a DNA change as a SNP only it if occurs in at least 1 percent of a population. Many of the DNA changes Genaissance finds are singletons of perhaps no significance for any but the individual involved.

--------

Company Using Cloning to Yield Stem Cells

New York Times
July 13, 2001
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/13/health/genetics/13CELL.html

WASHINGTON, July 12 - In another example of how stem cell research is running ahead of public policy, a Massachusetts company is trying to use cloning technology to create human embryos that would yield the cells, which in turn might give rise to tissues that were a perfect match for patients.

The technique, being developed by Advanced Cell Technology Inc., a privately held biotechnology company in Worcester, Mass., is often called therapeutic cloning. It is the subject of intense debate in Congress, which is considering legislation, backed by President Bush, to ban such research.

"We've thought long and hard about this," Michael West, the president of Advanced Cell Technology, said in an interview today.

After keeping the experiments secret for a year, Mr. West said, he decided to talk about it when reporters began pressing him. The experiment was first reported today in The Washington Post. "We need transparency here, I agree," he said.

Dr. West would not say how far along the experiments were, or whether any embryos had been created. But he did say women were being recruited as egg donors for the research, and that the company had taken extreme precautions to prevent any embryos from being implanted into a woman's womb, where they might grow into a baby.

"We are not trying to clone people," Dr. West said.

The company's disclosure comes days after a Virginia fertility clinic said it had mixed donated eggs and sperm to create embryos for the express purpose of deriving stem cells, which may be useful in treating disease. Taken together, the studies are intensifying an already heated debate over the morality of stem cell work, which is opposed by religious conservatives because the embryos, microscopic balls of cells that they regard as nascent life, are destroyed.

In the case of the Massachusetts research, the company's bioethics board questions whether embryo is even the right term, because scientists are not working with the union of egg and sperm and have no intention of creating a baby.

"I'm tending personally to steer toward the term `activated egg,' " said Dr. Ronald M. Green, a bioethicist at Dartmouth College, the chairman of the board.

Until this week, the stem cell debate has centered on whether the federal government should pay for research on cells derived from frozen embryos that would otherwise be discarded by fertility clinics. President Bush is weighing a decision on that issue. Now, however, it is apparent that scientists are creating fresh embryos and also using a technology - cloning - that makes many people nervous.

"The comfort level that exists with embryonic stem cell research has been premised on the idea that the embryos would be lost anyway," said R. Alta Charo, a bioethicist at the University of Wisconsin. "These two techniques involve embryos that would not have been lost. So they put, quite squarely, the question of how we balance our interest in protecting people who are already born and our interests in protecting embryonic life."

Stem cells, which are extracted from embryos when the embryos are still microscopic clusters of cells, have the potential to grow into any of the body's more than 200 cell types. So scientists say they may be useful in repairing or replacing damaged body parts. But many scientists foresee a problem: immune rejection.

Some see therapeutic cloning as a way to get around that problem. Cloning for research is legal in Britain, but the United States government has no policy on it. Many ethicists here argue that it is morally justifiable, but others argue that it will lead to cloning people.

"Our technology is ahead of our thinking as a country," said Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, the author of the bill that would ban cloning for either research or reproduction. "I have been saying for some time that this is where we are headed, but we are getting here faster than I thought."

About a year ago, Advanced Cell Technology convened an ethics panel to review its proposed experiment. Dr. Green, the panel chairman, said the members agreed at the outset that the goals of the research were ethical. They have focused primarily on protecting the interests of egg donors, he said.

Dr. Green said the women were paid "in the middle range" of the $3,000 to $5,000 fee that is customary in New England. The company, he said, does not want to draw donors away from couples who want to have babies. Once their eggs are retrieved at fertility clinics, Advanced Cell scientist will try to create embryos with a technique similar to the one used to clone the sheep Dolly.

The procedure would begin by removing the nucleus of a donor's egg. Then, scientists would take a cell from the skin of another donor and slip it into the egg. If the cloning effort worked, the egg would reprogram the genes of the skin to make them ready to direct the development of an embryo. Advanced Cell scientists would then try to extract stem cells from the resulting embryo. The cells might later be coaxed to become those of the heart, liver or any other organ - "personalized cells," in the words of Dr. West, that could be transplanted into patients without fear of rejection.

"What a dream," Dr. West said. "To take a cell from a patient and take it back in this little time machine, of the egg cell, and make it young again."

But Dr. West's dream is not the only way to get around the immune rejection problem, said Dr. James Thomson, the University of Wisconsin developmental biologist who first isolated human embryonic stem cells three years ago.

And a former member of the Advanced Cell Technology ethics panel, Dr. Glenn McGee, was highly critical of the company today, saying he had resigned from the panel in protest over the company's secretiveness.

"This company has done everything it can to keep everything it does quiet as long as possible," said Dr. McGee, who teaches bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. "They are protecting their intellectual property interest rather than the public interest."

--------

President faces issue of stem cell research

July 13, 2001
By Joseph Curl
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010713-31801408.htm

President Bush stands on the precipice of one of the most politically risky decisions of his young presidency: whether to allow research using embryonic stem cells or ban the practice altogether, as he vowed to do during his campaign.

He must choose between angering liberal Democrats, who argue the research holds the key to curing diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, or conservative Republicans, who hold that life begins at conception and there is no such thing as a "surplus" embryo.

Any compromise likely will anger both sides.

"The administration thus far has badly handled this," said Richard Lessner, executive director of American Renewal, the lobbying arm of Family Research Council, which opposes embryonic stem cell research. "They have let it grow into a much bigger issue than it needed to be. Both sides have escalated the rhetoric and what's at stake."

Supporters of the research argue that the embryos now destroyed to harvest stem cells are "surplus" in that they are provided by parents who have produced extra embryos for in vitro fertilization. Because the unused embryos are destroyed according to the parents' wishes, researchers say, they are not really taking the life of an unborn child.

Morton Kondracke, the Washington journalist whose book "Saving Milly" lays out a case for embryonic stem cell research in search of a cure for Parkinson's disease, predicts the president will opt for a compromise.

"I've heard one theory in the administration: 'Let's go, we'll do a compromise that's satisfactory to nobody and kick the issue to Congress and let Congress try to solve the problem.' Then Bush wouldn't have to visit it again until he has to figure out whether to sign or veto a bill, if Congress can come up with something different."

Said Mr. Lessner: "There's zero political coverage for that."

But the White House has begun waffling on Mr. Bush's position, clearly stated during his campaign when he said he opposes federal financing of "experimentation on embryonic stem cells that require live human embryos to be discarded or destroyed."

Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer said this week that a new report that a Virginia company is creating human embryos from donated eggs and sperm exclusively to harvest embryonic stem cells for research is "a perfect illustration of the deep complexities" of the issue.

"The president views this as a reminder that this is not a simple matter, that this is a matter that involves very sensitive and important issues that involve questions that are fundamental about life -- about preserving life with science, on the other hand," he said.

That differs from what the spokesman said in January. "Bush said he would oppose federally funded research or experimentation on embryonic stem cells that require live human embryos to be discarded or destroyed," Mr. Fleischer said then.

The Roman Catholic Church sees no gray area on the issue.

"Our position on this has been very clear," said Richard Doerflinger, spokesman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. "We think anything that provides federal funds for research requiring the destruction of human embryos is morally wrong and is bad policy. We also think it's contrary to current statutory law."

At issue is the use of what are known as human pluripotent stem cells, microscopic cells harvested from embryos or fetal tissue. Such cells can develop into the specialized cells that form muscle, nerves, blood and eventually almost all other human body parts.

In 1995, Congress passed a law banning the use of federal money for creation of human embryos solely for research purposes, as well as all types of research in which embryos are "destroyed, discarded or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death."

The National Institutes of Health, encouraged by the Clinton administration, in August issued guidelines that allowed federally funded scientists to bypass the law, using stem cells provided by private laboratories. Such cells are not embryos, the guidelines said.

A surprising number of pro-life Republicans -- including staunch conservative Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina -- have backed embryonic stem cell research.

"Stem cell research facilitates life," said Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, Utah Republican, who is aggressively lobbying for the research. "Abortion destroys life; this is about saving lives."

-------- human rights

U.S. Faults Some Allies On Human Trafficking

By Alan Sipress
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 13, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A53969-2001Jul12?language=printer

The Bush administration has criticized some of America's closest allies, including Israel, Saudi Arabia and South Korea, for failing to make a serious attempt to prevent trafficking of women and children for prostitution and other forms of forced labor.

In its first annual report on the subject, the State Department found these allies were among 23 countries that have not made "serious efforts" to eliminate their role as a source, transit point or destination for human trafficking.

The report, required by Congress last year, does not call for the United States to take any immediate action against these countries. But it includes a threat to cut off non-humanitarian assistance in 2003 to those governments still receiving a failing grade.

"We hope this report will help to focus international attention on this abhorrent practice and galvanize systemic worldwide efforts to combat it," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said in releasing the document yesterday. "Our report should make clear that trafficking is going on all over the world in both developed and developing countries, even within the United States."

To confront the problem, State Department officials said the administration is establishing a task force including representatives from the departments of Justice, Labor and Health and Human Services. The State Department has set aside space for a new Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking and is looking for people to staff it, officials said.

The report evaluated whether 82 countries that have a significant trafficking problem have taken steps to eliminate the practice. Twelve countries, mostly in Europe, were found to meet minimum standards for fighting trafficking. Another 47 countries were deemed to be making serious efforts.

But the State Department judged that 23 countries were failing to seriously combat the practice -- labeled a "modern-day form of slavery" -- and placed some key allies in the same category as major violators of human rights, such as Burma and Sudan.

The department found that Israel is a destination for women from former Soviet republics and other countries on four continents and criticized it for devoting scant resources to fighting the problem. The report also faulted Israel for failing to protect the women, saying some victims had accused police officers of complicity with brothel owners and traffickers.

In criticizing Saudi Arabia, the report said expatriate workers from Asia and Africa have complained of forced prostitution and domestic servitude. The Saudi government denies the problem exists and sometimes detains and deports servants who try to flee their workplaces, according to the report.

South Korea, by contrast, is faulted for failing to crack down on trafficking of its own young women, who are sent mainly to the United States as prostitutes, according to the State Department. Chinese women are also smuggled through South Korea to the United States and elsewhere.

The State Department placed two NATO allies, Greece and Turkey, in the lowest category, saying they serve as a destination and transit corridor for women and girls from Eastern Europe and former Soviet republics. Both countries were cited for having inadequate laws to prevent trafficking.

Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), who sponsored the bill requiring the annual report, said the administration had correctly focused on its allies' failures. "Friends don't let friends commit human rights violations," he said. "If you are ever going to stop trafficking, you have to show where the weakest links are."

The report also drew praise from Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.), who co-sponsored the anti-trafficking bill. "While I can't say I agree with all of the State Department's assessments, establishing standards and publishing findings by our embassies around the world is an important first step to targeting U.S. and international aid to help countries combat trafficking."

While Human Rights Watch called the report a "good step forward," the New York-based group said it was surprised the administration had not provided a more detailed evaluation. In particular, the group said it had hoped for more specific information about possible criminal involvement of police and border guards.

-------- police / prisoners

Nepal Search for 70 Policemen Continues

New York Times
July 13, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-nepal-p.html

KATHMANDU (Reuters) - Nepal's home ministry said on Friday that 70 policemen had been kidnapped by Maoist rebels following an attack on a security post the previous day.

A Home (Interior) ministry statement said security agencies were coordinating a search for the police, who were captured at the site of the rebel attack in Rolpa district.

``The responsibility (of the search teams) was to get the captured police personnel released safely and recover the arms and ammunition seized by the rebels,'' the statement said.

Nepal's Maoist rebels stepped up their violent campaign to topple the constitution monarchy after the massacre of almost the entire royal family early last month.

The Maoist party chief, Prachanda, said in a brief statement that his group was ready to release about 80 captives if the government freed jailed members of his group.

He did not identify the 80 or say whether they included the 70 kidnapped police.

``Our party is ready to release about 80 prisoners of war on condition the government releases (Maoists) from government jails,'' he said.

The 70 police officers were abducted when the Communist Party of Nepal rebels attacked the post. One policeman was killed and one wounded in the attack.

Earlier on Friday, Deputy Prime Minister Ram Chandra Poudel resigned from the government following differences with Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala over how to contain the upsurge in rebel violence.

His resignation followed a string of deadly attacks on police posts by Maoists last week in which more than 50 people, among them 40 police and nine rebels, were killed.

The Maoists, considered ideologically close to Peru's Shining Path guerrillas, have waged a bloody campaign since 1996 to create a communist republic. More than 1,750 people have been killed in the violence.

Separately, web site Nepalnews.com quoted unnamed security sources as saying an army ``pilot and two others were injured when Maoists fired at a military helicopter'' in a Maoist area in the western part of the Himalayan nation.

``There were heavy casualties in the Maoist side in the first direct military operation against rebels,'' the web site said. Nepal's police had been solely responsible for trying to defeat the rebels.

Another report said the wounded soldiers were flown to Kathmandu. There was no official confirmation of the report.

--------

Feds to Probe West Palm Beach Cops

New York Times
July 13, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-BRF-Police-Probe.html

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) -- The West Palm Beach Police Department will undergo a preliminary civil rights review at the mayor's request, after black residents questioned how citizens and officers are treated.

Mayor Joel Daves said the Justice Department investigation will begin in a few months.

Daves requested the probe in May after eight current or former officers sued the city, claiming discrimination.

Police Chief Ric Bradshaw said a federal investigation is unnecessary.

-------- terrorism

Algerian Convicted of Millennium Bomb Plot

New York Times
July 13, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Millennium-Terror.html

NEW YORK (AP) -- An Algerian national was convicted Friday of charges that he played a pivotal role in a failed plot to detonate a suitcase bomb at Los Angeles International Airport just before the new millennium.

A federal jury deliberated barely two days in the case against Mokhtar Haouari, who was accused of providing the plan's mastermind with phony identification and $3,000 used to purchase bomb-making chemicals as part of a jihad -- a holy war against the United States.

The French-speaking defendant, who listened to trial testimony via an interpreter, was convicted of the top count of the indictment: conspiracy to supply material support to a terrorist act.

The Manhattan jury also convicted him of conspiracy to commit identification document fraud. But it acquitted Haouari of a third terrorism charge.

The proposed bombing at the crowded airport in the days before Jan. 1, 2000, was potentially the worst incident of terrorism in the United States since the 1995 Oklahoma City attack.

Haouari, a 32-year-old Algerian national who lived in Canada, could face up to 100 years in prison.

The prosecution case hinged on the testimony of two co-conspirators: Ahmed Ressam and Abdel Ghani Meskini. Both were convicted for their roles in the plot, and prosecutors said they were brought together by Haouari.

The bombing plot was foiled when Ressam was arrested crossing the Canadian border in a car with a trunkful of explosives on Dec. 14, 1999. Ressam, an admitted terrorist, agreed to become a government witness just three days before the trial began.

Prosecutors said that although Haouari didn't know the target of the bombing, he was aware that Ressam was on a terrorist mission, prosecutors said.

``The defendant played an important part in what could have been a terrible tragedy,'' prosecutor Robin Baker told the jury. She said the testimony, along with phone records, phony documents and bogus drivers' licenses, provided a ``jigsaw puzzle'' of damning evidence.

Defense attorney Daniel J. Ollen blasted the government for using terrorists and con men as their witnesses against Haouari. He charged that Ressam and Meskini were guilty of ``tailoring testimony to fit the facts.''

Haouari became so enraged during Meskini's testimony that he smashed his head against the wooden defense table, knocking himself woozy. Earlier in the trial, Haouari cursed a prosecutor.

-------- activists

Italy to Use Border Control Security

New York Times
July 13, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Italy-G8-Security.html

ROME (AP) -- Italy will reintroduce passport checks Sunday to control the flow of people entering the country for next week's Group of Eight summit, at which thousands of protesters are expected to hold demonstrations.

The controls will run through July 21, the Interior Ministry said Friday. Italy normally allows passport-free travel to citizens of any of the 11 European countries in the Schengen Treaty.

The organization that oversees civilian aviation, ENAC, said it expects delays while the controls are in effect because of longer lines at airports.

The G-8 summit will be in the port city of Genoa from July 20-22. Anti-globalization protesters have announced they will hold demonstrations before and during the meeting, with thousands expected from abroad.

Nearly every international summit in the last three years has been marred by violence, including last month's European Union summit in Goteborg, Sweden, where more than 70 people were injured during street fighting and looting.

Italy has been stepping up security in Genoa, where it will deploy up to 16,000 police and soldiers. The Schengen Treaty allows members to suspend open borders temporarily for security reasons.

The port and airport will be closed during the summit, while a short-range, anti-aircraft battery has been installed to protect the leaders of United States, Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Canada and Russia.

--------

Russian Police Detain Protesters

New York Times
July 13, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Olympic-Protest.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- Russian police quickly broke up a protest Friday by two groups opposed to Beijing's bid to stage the 2008 Summer Games, hours before the International Olympic Committee voted on the site.

Six people, including a Frenchman from the international Reporters Without Borders media freedom organization, were seen being taken away by police. But another anti-bid activist said at least 12 were detained.

The demonstrators tried to unfurl three banners across from the World Trade Center on the Moscow River embankment, where the IOC was meeting. About two dozen policemen, including officers in riot gear, overpowered the protesters, and after a minute of struggle led six to a waiting bus.

The demonstration was organized by Reporters Without Borders and Russia's Transnational Radical Party. The detainees included Vincent Brossel, a French representative of Reporters Without Borders; Alexander Levy, a Russian representative of the same group; and two Russians affiliated with the Tibetan Buddhist Center in Moscow. The identities and affiliations of the two others were not known.

Police officers ripped IOC accreditations from around the necks of two television operators, but they were later returned.

Nina Betnarz, a producer for Germany's ARD-TV, said that a police lieutenant threatened to put ARD soundman Vinyamin Sakharov in jail if he got into a confrontation with police. His got his accreditation back only after two hours, she said.

Four other protesters tried to approach the conference center, but were stopped and questioned by police and told not to return.

The protesters included John Hocevar of New York and Ann Callaghan, a British citizen, who had both been briefly detained on Thursday for passing out leaflets opposing Beijing's bid. After being released, the two resumed their campaign outside the IOC's opening ceremony at the Bolshoi Theater on Thursday evening, waving at President Vladimir Putin's motorcade as it arrived.

Moscow police officers also harshly broke up a tiny demonstration Wednesday, detaining six demonstrators and two journalists, including an Associated Press photographer.

A photo of a weeping female demonstrator being carried toward a police bus was splashed Thursday across the front page of The Moscow Times, an English-language newspaper distributed widely at the IOC's meeting site. The incident sparked a flurry of questions to IOC officials by journalists.

Five cities are in the running to host the 2008 Olympics. Beijing is widely seen as the front-runner despite opponents' concerns that winning the games would be seen by the Chinese government as tacit endorsement of its harsh policies against dissent.

The protesters say China's actions in Tibet -- including repression of protest and discrimination against ethnic Tibetans -- should disqualify Beijing from hosting the prestigious event.

The IOC meeting is being held under tight security, and some opponents of the Beijing bid claim that Russia is taking exceptionally strict measures under pressure from China.

Advocates of the bid say having the games in Beijing would encourage China to liberalize because of the intense attention that the Olympics would focus on the country.

----

Talk Radio Spurred Anti-Tax Protest

Washington Post
By Karin Miller
Associated Press Writer
Friday, July 13, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010713/aponline215227_000.htm

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Unruly anti-tax protesters who broke statehouse windows and disrupted the legislative session were apparently spurred on by talk radio programs, lawmakers said Friday.

Hundreds of chanting demonstrators who banged on the locked doors of the Senate chamber were demonstrating against a rumored attempt to resurrect a state income tax Thursday night.

Talk radio show hosts in Nashville encouraged the protest, which bordered on violent but resulted in no serious injuries and no arrests.

Lawmakers, who ultimately passed a no-new-tax budget, said the income tax plan was dead before the protesters arrived. But talk radio listeners who hurried to form the protest took credit for keeping Tennessee free of the tax.

"It was a victory for poor people," Carl Melton, a Nashville radiation therapist, told The Tennessean of Nashville. "This is an issue that brings people together."

Steve Gill, one of the talk show hosts, said descriptions of the protest as "a near riot" were inaccurate and the windows were broken accidentally after dozens of state troopers started pushing people out of the Capitol.

He said citizens are passionately against a state income tax, and the protest was "the greatest display of liberty Nashville has ever seen."

Paul McMasters, First Amendment Center ombudsman, said the protest was "a great example of the power of words" taken to the extreme.

"People should be mindful that in some cases words are like dynamite," he said.

Gov. Don Sundquist, who was critical of the anti-tax radio hosts and a state senator who tipped them to the income tax talks, gave an interview Friday to WAMB's Teddy Bart, saying "it's good to be on a reasonable talk show whose goal is not to incite chaos."

"We need to sit down and figure out a way to solve the problems of Tennessee and not throw posters or sticks through windows," Sundquist said.

Phil Valentine, another anti-tax broadcaster, said no one advocated violence and all the protests in the past have been peaceful.

"The governor is just trying to deflect the attention from himself," he said.

Lawmakers finally agreed on a budget that included no new taxes and uses nearly $750 million of the state's current and future tobacco settlement money to balance the books.

----

INTERNATIONAL ACTION CAMP-AUGUST 18-24 2001

From: "Bill Smirnow" <smirnowb@ix.netcom.com>
Fri, 13 Jul 2001

BE THERE: The Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS)/WISE-Amsterdam and Nuclear Free Great Lakes Campaign are sponsoring The International Conference for a Sustainable Energy Future: Confronting Nuclear Power with People Power. The event will begin with two days of workshops and speakers at DePaul University in Chicago (August 18-19) and then move to a campsite in Yorkville, Illinois, about 13 miles from the Dresden nuclear power complex, from August 20-24. The location is convenient to O'Hare International Airport.

LEARN, TEACH: The Action Camp will combine issues seminars, strategy sessions, organizational and tools development workshops, non-violence training, and actions. Key focus areas will be on radioactive waste transportation, globalization of the nuclear power industry, global climate change and nuclear power, sustainable energy, and the attempted resurgence of the atomic industry. We need to strategize and cooperate internationally if we are to stop new nuclear reactors and move toward a sustainable energy future. Non-violence and direct action trainings will be offered daily.

GATHER, GROW: We plan to bring the best and most active minds from across the U.S. and throughout the world to gather, plan, strategize, grow stronger. Our goal is to inspire and empower people with the tools and resolve to return to their communities and build a nuclear-free world. We invite activists, students, whistleblowers, and researchers from everywhere to join us. Confirmed participants will arrive from all across the U.S., Russia, Germany, Holland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Ukraine, Spain and Slovakia. Participants are also expected from Korea, Japan, South Africa and elsewhere.

ACT! On August 23, we will target the Exelon-owned Dresden nuclear complex with a legal rally and non-violent action. Exelon-the largest nuclear utility in the United States--is a multi-national conglomerate owned by Unicom (formerly Commonwealth Edison), PECO Energy and British Energy; it is a symbol of the increasing globalization and consolidation of the nuclear industry. Exelon currently is the only U.S. utility that says it wants to build new atomic reactors.

CAMP INFO: The camp will provide three vegetarian/vegan meals daily. Full sanitiation facilities also will be provided. You should bring a sleeping bag and ground pad, a tent (unless you have pre-reserved room in a cabin) and other camping gear and eating utensils (note: no camp stoves please), a rainsuit or poncho, other personal items, some warm clothing (it can get cool on summer evenings), and a flashlight. Please do not bring, or expect to use, any alcohol or drugs (except by prescription) at the camp. Don't forget to bring a willingness to learn, to network, to organize and to participate. Expect to be challenged, expect to learn, expect to make a difference...

Check the NIRS' website www.nirs.org for schedule information, speakers lists and other updated news.

NOTE: NIRS has a very limited amount of funds available for scholarships for U.S. and Canadian activists. These can be used for transportation and/or to defray registration/food costs. If you want to come to the camp, and absolutely need some financial assistance, please contact Michael Mariotte at nirsnet@nirs.org. Please include your name, organization, how much money you would need and what it would be used for. Conference fees are $30 and $7/day for food.

Nuclear Information and Resource Service, 1424 16th Street NW, Washington, DC 20036. 202.328.0002; f: 202.462.2183; nirsnet@nirs.org; www.nirs.org

---------

Ukraine Opposition Plans Independence Day Protests

New York Times
July 13, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-ukraine.html

KIEV, Ukraine (Reuters) - Ukraine's opposition parties said Friday they would stage mass protests against President Leonid Kuchma during Independence Day celebrations in the capital next month.

The Aug. 24 festivities, which will be attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin and other foreign dignitaries, are intended to mark 10 years of independence from the former Soviet Union and celebrate Ukraine's achievements.

Organizers from the ``Ukraine without Kuchma'' movement, a loose alliance of opposition parties, students and rights groups which was behind demonstrations against Kuchma earlier this year, said marches would be held in Kiev and regional towns.

At their peak, the earlier protest demonstrations attracted some 15,000 people, but numbers have since dwindled.

``Authoritarianism and the Kuchma dictatorship are still in place and have even strengthened their hand. There has been no let-up of pressure and that means our protests will continue,'' said Yuri Lutsenko, one of the movement's leaders.

The movement was formed late last year to demand that Kuchma resign over the mysterious death of a reporter critical of the president, Georgiy Gongadze.

The scandal erupted when an opposition politician played tapes on which a voice similar to Kuchma's was heard ordering officials to ``get rid'' of Gongadze, an Internet reporter whose headless corpse was discovered in November.

Kuchma denies involvement and says external forces are trying to destabilize Ukraine. He has likened the marchers, some of whom come from hardline nationalist groups, to Nazis.

The president says the tapes, which according to a former presidential bodyguard now in exile in the United States were recorded in Kuchma's office, were doctored to put words into his mouth.

During the crisis, reformist Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko was ousted in a no-confidence vote but Kuchma weathered the storm and analysts say he has bolstered his position ahead of parliamentary elections in 2002.

----

EU adopts new citizens agenda

Friday, 13 July 2001
By CHRIS WHITE
http://www.vny.com/cf/News/upidetail.cfm?QID=202216

BRUSSELS. Belgium, July 12 (UPI) -- European Union Justice and Home Affairs ministers, scheduled to meet Friday, have had their agenda honed to deal with only two issues: the right of citizens to stage protest demonstrations and the right of the authorities to crack down on violence and disorder.

The move is part of a new tact by the EU to make its efforts look less like mega-state building and more like the 15-member union is working with its citizens in mind. While many of the changes in agenda will be low-key, the EU can expect to see and hear less of the normally very high-profile President Romano Prodi.

The discussions follow the shock to the EU's governmental system that resulted from the violent street battles in Gothenberg, Sweden, where European heads of state and governments met last month.

Although Friday's meeting will deal only with security and the right to demonstrate peacefully, it follows a much more significant crack-down behind the scenes on the role of the European Commission, the EU executive, blamed for alienating public opinion.

United Press International has learned that Prodi has been told by European leaders to stop his high-profile campaign to "build Europe" and to get his directors-general, who head-up the commission departments, working on policies that will ease public concerns about the EU.

A result has been that people across Europe woke Thursday to learn that national trade inspectors had raided mobile phone company offices in Britain and Germany on behalf of the commission in Brussels.

The aim of the investigation behind the raids ordered by the commissions Competition Directorate is to cut charges for using mobile phones across internal frontiers and to prosecute if evidence is found that cartels have been fixing prices.

British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown signaled the new direction at a meeting of EU finance ministers earlier this week when he castigated the commission for its failure to ensure that the single internal market was working for "all European citizens."

"Prodi has been told that the member state governments do not want to hear about plans for a European super-state but rather that what has already been set in motion is working properly and benefiting the people. The idea is to win over hearts and minds," a senior source told UPI.

A second source confirmed that commission spokesmen have been ordered to lower Prodi's personal profile. "You can come and see me but I do not want to talk about the president," Prodi's second in command Jean Christophe Filori told UPI.

A source said: "Following the debacle of the Irish referendum that rejected the Nice enlargement treaty, Prodi has been told to keep a lower profile. The member state governments have been shocked by recent events and demonstrations of public disquiet about the European Union reflected across the Continent. We are now in a tidying up phase, which will include enlargement. But governments are under pressure everywhere to return power to their own parliaments. The are much more sensitive to public opinion than the un-elected commissioners.

Also behind the scenes, commission officials have been focusing on how to announce a Europe-wide survey revealing that opposition to the EU is rife in almost every country. Prodi was due to make a speech distancing the commission from the results after being told this week that the survey conclusions could not be edited "because they were run on the U.S. wire agency UPI at the time of the Gothenberg summit."

The European Parliament, the EU's 626-member elected assembly, can be expected to watch Friday's events carefully. "The right to peaceful protest is one that we should defend but that does not mean the right to destroy peoples' shops and businesses," said Robert Evans MEP, a British Socialist on the parliament's Citizens' Freedoms Committee.

Agreeing with Evans Edward McMillan-Scott, leader of the Conservatives in the parliament, added that parliament will be watching carefully that individual freedoms are not lost in any new approach to dealing with demonstrations and public protest.

However, a spokesman for the EU Council of Ministers said that apart from ensuring citizens' right to protest peacefully ministers would on Friday debate an extension of state powers to exchange information on known troublemakers.


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