------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
RADIOACTIVE SCRAP RECYCLING REEXAMINED
Report: No Ill - Effects From Exposure
French Prosecutor Orders Chernobyl Sickness Probe
Developments in U.S. missile defense efforts since 1983
Russia and China condemn missile policy
US Missile Test
Missile Defense Still Faces Challenges
Amid Applause, Caution Urged on Missile Defense
Taiwan calls for a joint missile defense
Missile defense has 'long way to go';
Missile test boosts Bush plan
Russia Denounces U.S. Missile Defense Test
Missile Defense Rush
Jiang and Putin unite to block US supremacy
Russia, China Sign Pact on 'Strategic Partnership'
Russia and China sign alliance
U.S. Review on Russia Urges Keeping Most Arms Controls
Raising the 'Kursk' risks disaster waiting to happen
China's Leader in Moscow to Sign Pact
Turkey to try barring nuclear waste from straits
TWO PENNSYLVANIA NUCLEAR PLANTS TO INCREASE POWER OUTPUT
George Bush Sr. vouches for son's support of Israel to the Saudis

MILITARY
Joint Chiefs Chairman to Visit India
Russia and China Sign Friendship Agreement
US, Vietnamese Collaborate on Agent Orange Studies
U.S. Promised Subs to Taiwan It Doesn't Have
Guns secret set to haunt US
Bush to Suspend Cuba Sanctions
California offers rehab, not jail
Legal weed? Maybe if they donīt inhale
India, Pakistan Can't Reach Deal
Pakistan's Leader Hopeful on Relations
Leaders of India, Pakistan Meet Again
Japan snubs U.S. in deal with Iran
U.S. Reassures Iraqi Kurds on Protection From Baghdad
Bomb Explodes Near Stadium
EU tells Turkey it can't hold up defense plan
Vieques health risks questioned
US Committee Told Congo Needs 100,000 Troops
Focusing on Military Issues
The New Pentagon War Strategy

OTHER
HONDA OPENS HYDROGEN PRODUCTION, FUELING STATION
Environmental impact of ethanol fuels debate
G8 report sees renewables as key energy for poor
German sea winds may be answer to energy woes
Cheney, Team Fan Out for Energy Plan
Toxic Chemical Review Process Faulted
U.N. Talks on Global Warming Open
Frustrated Europeans Set to Battle U.S. on Climate
Climate Talks Start But Hopes of Deal Fade
Japan to be squeezed at climate conference
Stem Cell Genie
Joint Effort to Investigate Gene Functions
Radiation Can Be Used to Treat Some Eye Cancers
Ericsson to Begin Including Info on Phone Radiation
China, WTO Negotiators Meet
Ashcroft: Trust in FBI Is Eroded

ACTIVISTS
PROTESTERS TRAIL BUSH OFFICIALS ON ENERGY TOUR
Greenpeace says US poses new Pacific risk
Green campaigners shun Genoa amid violence fears
Thousands of protesters await G8 leaders in Genoa
Summit protesters - rebels with or without a cause?
Canada Activists Make Steep Climb
Activists held in failed attempt to halt missile launch
Abortion Opponents Protest in Kan.

-------- NUCLEAR

RADIOACTIVE SCRAP RECYCLING REEXAMINED

July 16, 2001
ENS
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jul2001/2001L-07-16-09.html

WASHINGTON, DC, The Department of Energy (DOE) plans to review the current ban on sales of radioactive scrap metals for recycling into consumer products.

The nuclear power industry and the DOE are saddled with tens of thousands of tons of solid materials contaminated with low levels of radioactivity, which they once disposed of in specially designed nuclear waste disposal facilities.

That practice changed beginning in the 1970s, when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), its licensees, and the DOE began searching for a more cost effective method of disposing of the enormous volume of steel girders, pallets, machinery and other solid materials tainted with tiny amounts of radioactivity.

Last year, the DOE put a halt to releases of radioactive, or even potentially radioactive scrap metal, citing public opposition and safety concerns. But in January 2001, Dr. Richard Meserve, chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), asked the National Academy of Sciences to examine the practice of releasing radioactively contaminated solid waste materials, with an eye to finding ways to deal with the growing stockpiles of such materials.

Last week, the DOE announced its intent to prepare a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) on the disposition of scrap metals across all DOE facilities. The PEIS will address policy options for managing those metals located in radiological areas on DOE sites, and any other scrap metals at DOE sites that might have some potential for residual surface radioactivity.

The DOE is proposing to examine four alternatives for disposing of the metals:

1.continuing the existing ban on the release of scrap metals from DOE radiological areas for unrestricted use in recycling (the No Action Alternative); 2.release of scrap metals for recycling under existing DOE requirements; 3.release of scrap metals for recycling under alternative requirements; and 4.no release for recycling of scrap metals with any potential for residual surface radioactivity.

The department will conduct public scoping meetings to assist in defining the scope of the PEIS during July and August. The meetings are expected to be held in North Augusta, South Carolina; Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Oakland, California; Richland, Washington; Cincinnati, Ohio; and Arlington, Virginia.

-------- australia

Report: No Ill - Effects From Exposure

New York Times
July 16, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-New-Zealand-Nuclear-Tests.html?searchpv=aponline

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) -- Troops taking part in British nuclear tests in Australia in 1956 weren't guinea pigs and suffered no ill health from exposure to radiation, a government report said Monday.

While five of the 11 New Zealand officers involved in the experiments have died, nothing linked their deaths to their activities in the nuclear test areas, Defense Minister Mark Burton said.

``The Ministry of Health advises that it is extremely unlikely that any of the recorded causes of death could be linked to the observation of nuclear tests,'' Burton said.

``Similarly, there is no suggestion of links with any specific existing medical conditions,'' he added.

Survivors have said they walked, crawled and ran through the blast zone at the Maralinga bomb site in South Australia within minutes of the nuclear bombs' detonation during tests in remote desert areas.

-------- france

French Prosecutor Orders Chernobyl Sickness Probe

Mon, Jul 16 5:19 PM EDT
Reuters
http://news.excite.com/printstory/news/r/010716/17/health-french

PARIS - The Paris public prosecutor's office ordered an investigation on Monday into whether French citizens fell sick because of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, judicial sources said.

The decision follows legal moves begun by a group of 51 plaintiffs with thyroid ailments who allege French authorities failed to warn the public of the dangers of radioactive fallout from the world's worst nuclear disaster.

The sources said the prosecutor's office had determined there were sufficient grounds to launch an inquiry into the complaint, which the group filed against persons unknown for unintentional injury and associated counts.

An investigating magistrate will conduct the probe. Such a move under French law does not necessarily lead to charges.

The plaintiffs, backed by two pressure groups, allege the French authorities did nothing to alert people to the potential dangers from a radioactive cloud that drifted west from Chernobyl when a reactor exploded in April 1986.

The plant in Ukraine shut down for good last December.

Last year, a 31-year-old Frenchman suffering from thyroid cancer, Yohann van Waeyenberghe, failed in an attempt to have criminal proceedings launched against French officials for alleged bodily harm in the Chernobyl affair.

A court ruled Waeyenberghe could not demonstrate a scientific link between his illness and the accident.

Radioactivity from the Chernobyl explosion drifted across France between April 27 and May 5, 1986.

West Germany, Austria and Italy took various precautions, including restrictions on the consumption of milk and dairy products, but French authorities said there was no need for special measures to protect against any health risks.

An official French scientific study published last December estimated the incidence of thyroid cancer in France had risen fivefold among men and more than doubled among women between 1975 and 1995.

The study, however, said the rise had been noted before the Chernobyl disaster and that the causes had not been established. It criticised the authorities for failing to monitor the population for evidence of cancer risks after the accident

-------- missile defense

Developments in U.S. missile defense efforts since 1983

By Times staff writer
St. Petersburg Times,
July 16, 2001
http://www.sptimes.com/News/071601/Worldandnation/Developments_in_US_mi.shtml

MARCH 23, 1983: President Ronald Reagan announces plans for an extensive program to examine the feasibility of a missile defense program. The concept -- derided as "Star Wars" by opponents in Congress -- revises the nation's 35-year-old nuclear strategy by focusing on missile defense rather than the ability to retaliate against nuclear attack.

JUNE 10, 1984: An Army interceptor destroys a target missile over the Pacific Ocean.

SEPT. 6, 1985: A Titan rocket is destroyed by an infrared advanced chemical laser.

JANUARY 1991: The first operational engagement between ballistic missiles and ballistic missile defenses occurs during the Gulf War.

APRIL 1, 1997: The Ballistic Missile Defense Organization establishes the Joint Program office to design and develop a system by 2003.

APRIL 30, 1998: Boeing gets a $1.6-billion contract to be the lead systems integrator for the program.

JULY 23, 1999: President Clinton signs the National Missile Defense Act. He says threat, cost, technological status and adherence to a renegotiated Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty are the four criteria in making his decision to deploy such a system.

AUG. 17, 1999: The United States and Russia resume strategic arms talks that include modification of the ABM Treaty.

OCT. 2, 1999: The first integrated flight test successfully intercepts its target.

JAN. 18, 2000: The second integrated flight test fails because of moisture inside the "kill vehicle" -- the weapon section of the interceptor -- which prevented it from using heat-seeking devices to detect its target.

JULY 7, 2000: The third integrated flight test fails when the kill vehicle fails to separate from its booster rocket.

SEPT. 1, 2000: Clinton decides not to authorize work to begin on deploying national missile defense, on grounds that the reliability of the technology had not been proven.

DEC. 28, 2000: Boeing is awarded a new, six-year, $6-billion contract for national missile defense.

APRIL 10, 2001: Russia, China and North Korea tell the U.N. Disarmament Commission that a U.S. missile defense system would threaten international security, trigger a new arms race and undermine the ABM Treaty.

MAY 1, 2001: President Bush declares, "We need a new framework that allows us to build missile defenses to counter the different threats of today's world."

JUNE 27, 2001: The proposed 2002 defense budget is submitted to Congress, allotting $7-billion -- later amended to $8.3-billion -- for missile defense, a $3-billion increase over this year.

SATURDAY NIGHT: The fourth integrated flight test, the first since Bush took office, is a success. Each test costs about $100-million.

-- Sources: Center for Defense Information, Ballistic Missile Defense Organization and Facts on File.

----

Russia and China condemn missile policy

Monday, July 16, 2001
Irish Times
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/world/2001/0716/wor7.htm

THE US: Washington's successful test of its missile defence system met with unbridled hostility from Russia and China yesterday, with both countries issuing stark warnings that the plan would upset disarmament treaties and provoke a new arms race.

Despite a subtle softening of Russia's opposition to US plans for an anti-missile shield in recent weeks, the immediate response from Moscow to the test result was terse and firm. Chief foreign ministry spokesman, Mr Alexander Yakovenko, demanded to know why "the entire architecture of nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation agreements, based on the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, [should] be placed under threat".

Russia maintains that the ABM treaty has been the cornerstone of global stability for decades and has warned that if America persists in pursuing its missile defence project, Russia could consider all existing bilateral arms controls pacts as void.

President Vladimir Putin has threatened that Russia could respond by placing multiple warheads on its intercontinental missiles. China said the US plan would "not only spark a new arms race . . . but stimulate nuclear proliferation".

President Jiang Zemin, who left Beijing yesterday for a visit to five European countries beginning in Russia, is expected to discuss the test with Mr Putin. China has been more outspoken than Russia in its criticism of the test, although Beijing arms specialists say they still hope that Washington will engage in dialogue on the issue.

The "son of star wars" project is to be discussed by the Russian and US leaders when they meet this week at the G8 summit in Italy. - (Guardian Service)

----

US Missile Test

Monday, July 16, 2001
Irish Times
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/opinion/2001/0716/edi2.htm

The successful testing of a "kill vehicle" which destroyed a dummy missile in space over the Pacific has been a major publicity coup for President Bush and supporters of his controversial missile defence system. Opponents had pointed to previous failures as one of many reasons why work on the extremely expensive programme should not continue.

That argument, while now diminished in value, still carries weight but is now less likely to make a public impact. In the latest test the dummy missile presented a solitary target. In a genuine attack each incoming missile would be equipped with multiple warheads and multiple decoys. The missile defence programme is, therefore, at an early stage of its development.

Of more immediate concern are the political results of the test. Russia and China have been vociferously opposed to the US programme because they regard the 1972 Anti Ballistic Missile treaty (ABM), with its ban on such programmes, as being of vital importance. If ABM were removed, they argue, a fragile web of international arms control pacts would begin to unravel.

The ultimate result would be a new arms race and the militarisation of space. Many of these views are shared by America's western allies within NATO. Russia still has the technological know-how but is badly strapped for cash. China has the financial wherewithal but is less technologically advanced than Russia in the area of ballistic missiles.

In this respect the American rocket test will concentrate the minds of Presidents Vladimir Putin and Jiang Zemin when they meet in Moscow today. A combined response from Moscow and Beijing could threaten a major nuclear arms build-up.

editor@irish-times.ie

----

Missile Defense Still Faces Challenges

New York Times
July 16, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/news/AP-Missile-Defense-Test.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The missile defense shield championed by President Bush got a major boost with a successful weekend test, but the plan still must overcome challenges -- scientific and political, at home and abroad -- if it is to be built by 2004.

The destruction of a mock warhead in space by a missile interceptor launched from Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific was an important step for the Pentagon's missile defense effort, but must be followed by more successes in more frequent and more realistic tests, officials said.

Russia, meanwhile, renewed its warning that the program would harm global security rather than improve it.

And one domestic skeptic, Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, cautioned that ``it's not a real-world test yet. And we have a long way to go, and we should continue to pursue it.''

The success Saturday night followed two dramatic test failures during the Clinton administration.

``This test is just one on a journey, one stop on a journey,'' Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, head of missile defense programs, told Pentagon reporters soon after the test. ``We will press on to the next test.''

That one, scheduled for October, may include some additional complexities, such as extra decoys aboard the target missile. In Saturday's test, just one decoy was used.

The White House said the president was pleased with the test result.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko warned, however, that the missile defense plan ``threatens all international treaties in the sphere of nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation.''

Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin are expected to discuss missile defense and existing arms control pacts when they meet next weekend in Italy at a gathering of leaders of the world's industrial powers.

Some congressional Democrats believe the project risks upsetting relations with Russia and China, and has the potential to create a new arms race. Even the United States' closest European allies have declined to support setting aside the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to make way for Bush's missile defense system.

But congressional supporters were enthusiastic Sunday.

``I hope we can convince the Russians what is the truth, which is that we are developing a national missile defense to protect our people, our kids, our grandkids, not against Russian attack but against attack from rogue nations,'' Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., said on CNN's ``Late Edition.'' ``They're as much potential targets of those kinds of attacks as we are.''

``They hit a bullet with a bullet, and it does work. We can develop that capability,'' Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., told ``Fox News Sunday.'' ``We should put this right at the top of the agenda.''

Bush has asked Congress for $8.3 billion to finance missile defense research and testing in 2002, a $3 billion increase over this year. Saturday's test cost about $100 million, Kadish said.

The intercept was the administration's first test of the ``hit-to-kill'' technology it hopes will become a key element of a missile defense network. Of three previous tests in 1999 and 2000, two failed and one succeeded.

The failure of the most recent previous test, in July 2000, sealed a decision by President Clinton not to move forward with deployment of a national missile defense. Clinton said the failure showed that the technology was not yet sufficiently proven.

Contractors, led by Boeing Co., have improved their test preparations since then, Kadish said.

At 11:09 p.m. EDT Saturday, exactly the scheduled moment of collision between the interceptor and the warhead, an enormous white flash appeared at the planned impact point 144 miles above the earth's surface.

The interceptor missile was launched from Kwajalein 21 minutes after its target, a modified Minuteman II intercontinental-range missile equipped with a mock warhead, roared off a launch pad 4,800 miles away at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif.

Navigating by the stars and information transmitted from a ground station on Kwajalein, the interceptor's weapon, known as a ``kill vehicle,'' rammed the mock warhead, obliterating it.

On the Net:
Ballistic Missile Defense Organization: http://www.acq.osd.mil/bmdo/bmdolink/html/bmdolink.html

--------

Amid Applause, Caution Urged on Missile Defense

New York Times
July 16, 2001
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/16/politics/16MISS.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, July 15 - The United States military has succeeded for only the second time in shooting down an intercontinental ballistic missile, but Pentagon officials warned today that much more development would be needed before the technology could reliably destroy real weapons.

A prototype interceptor fired from Kwajalein atoll in the Marshall Islands demolished a dummy warhead 140 miles above the Pacific late Saturday night, scoring the first hit for the Pentagon's missile defense program since October 1999. In between, there were two failed tests that raised doubts about the costly program's future.

The technical feat is expected to encourage Republicans in Congress who want the Bush administration to abrogate the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty and deploy national missile defenses soon. It is also likely to complicate the efforts of Democrats who want to cut the Pentagon's proposed $8.3 billion missile defense budget for 2002.

Michael O'Hanlon, a military analyst with the Brookings Institution, a policy organization, said many Democrats are trying to argue that "the technology is immature, the cost too high and the threat not imminent, so let's slow it down or even not build it."

"This test," he added, "will make it harder to make that argument."

But senior Pentagon officials tried to play down the significance of the $100 million test, saying that it was the first in a long line of increasingly challenging tests.

"We've got a long road ahead," said Lt. Gen. Ronald T. Kadish, director of the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization.

In one sign of the Pentagon's efforts to appear low key, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld stayed home in Washington on Saturday night rather than watch the test from his Pentagon office. He also did not release a statement after the intercept.

"It's just a test," his spokeswoman, Victoria Clarke, explained.

On Capitol Hill, missile defense enthusiasts hailed the test as reason to push ahead quickly with the program. "We're going to do it," the Senate minority leader, Trent Lott, Republican of Mississippi, said on "Fox News Sunday." "We should put this right at the top of the agenda, not allow it to be pushed aside by Democrats."

But Democrats urged the administration to go slow, both in deploying the new technology and in negotiating with Russia to amend or replace the ABM Treaty. Moving too quickly, they argued, could lead to an unreliable system or incite an arms race with Russia or China.

"If you put this on a fast-track testing regime, it could hamper it's ability to move forward," said Representative Ellen Tauscher, Democrat of California, who supports building a limited missile shield. "This is a good thing for the program, but we are nowhere near deployment."

Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said, "We're a long way from something that is routine and deployable."

The test was denounced by Moscow this morning.

"Why take matters to the point of placing under threat the entire internationally agreed structure of nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation, including its core, the 1972 ABM treaty?" said a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Alexander Yakovenko, in a statement.

At a news conference in Washington this morning, General Kadish said the test was intended to "build confidence" in hit-to-kill technology and was similar to the last intercept attempt, in July 2000, which failed. Both tests were supposed to check whether basic elements of the complex system, including communications networks, infrared sensors, radar equipment and battle-management controls, could work together.

General Kadish, standing beside a life-size model of the $25 million kill vehicle, cautioned that scientists could need months to finish analyzing the test results. "We do not know for certain that every objective was met," he said. "In all probability, some of them were not."

His caution may be based in recent experience. In October 1999, the Pentagon hailed its first intercept effort as a success after the kill vehicle collided with the mock warhead. But analysis showed that the kill vehicle had drifted off course and had initially homed in on a decoy balloon instead of the warhead.

Critics of the program have asserted that the decoy, which happened to be drifting near the warhead, actually drew the kill vehicle toward the target.

Pentagon officials have rejected that assertion.

The latest test began at 10:40 p.m. Saturday when a Minuteman II intercontinental missile carrying the mock warhead and a decoy balloon made of a highly reflective synthetic material lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base north of Los Angeles. Twenty-one minutes later and 4,800 miles away, an interceptor rocket shouldering the 120-pound kill vehicle blasted off from Kwajalein.

In the next eight minutes, the kill vehicle separated from its booster, oriented itself in space with help from the stars, used sensors to distinguish the decoy balloon and home in on the target, and finally maneuvered to smash into the warhead at 16,200 miles an hour.

Closed-circuit monitors at the Pentagon showed a bright flash when the two projectiles apparently collided at 11:09 p.m. The screen immediately switched to a view of the Kwajalein control room, where Boeing, the lead contractor, and military workers could be heard cheering. Maj. Gen. Willie Nance, the program's executive director, could be seen shaking hands and receiving backslaps from aides.

Even before the test, critics had said that it would be flawed because its lone decoy balloon was round and therefore easily distinguishable from the cone-shaped target. In a real attack, those critics argued, an adversary would use multiple decoys shaped like real warheads. The Pentagon has said it intends to use those kinds of more sophisticated countermeasures in future tests.

The test came just two days after senior Pentagon officials outlined to Congress the most detailed vision yet of the Bush administration's plans to accelerate testing on an array of antimissile technologies, including land-based missiles, sea-launched interceptors and airborne lasers.

That aggressive schedule, for which the Pentagon has requested a $3 billion increase in missile defense spending for 2002, is likely to clash with the ABM Treaty within months, the officials told senators. Under that plan, the Pentagon says it intends to conduct up to 17 flight tests involving ground- and sea-launched missiles in the next 18 months.

--------

Taiwan calls for a joint missile defense

July 16, 2001
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010716-98993463.htm

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- President Chen Shui-bian compares China's missile threats against the island to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, and says the United States, Japan and Taiwan should jointly develop missile defenses.

"Recently there was a very famous American movie called 'Thirteen Days,'" he said, referring to last year's historical drama about the Kennedy-era showdown between the Soviet Union and the United States. That crisis ended when the Soviet Union agreed to remove its missiles from Cuba.

"But for the 23 million Taiwanese people, our missile threat is not only a 13-day threat. Rather we have lived for a very long time under a missile threat on a daily basis," Mr. Chen said.

Asked about Taiwan's plans for missile defenses, Mr. Chen said increasing missile deployments by the communist Peoples Republic of China (PRC) are the reason the United States and Japan are conducting research and development on missile defense systems.

"Asia Pacific peace and stability is in Taiwan's interest; it is also the common interest of the United States and Japan," Mr. Chen said. "I believe that peace in the Taiwan Strait is key to the overall stability of the Asia Pacific region. So maintaining peace in the Taiwan Strait and avoiding a PRC threat against Taiwan is something that the U.S., Japan and Taiwan must jointly deal with in a manner of division responsibilities and cooperation."

Taiwan's defense agencies are "actively studying and evaluating the possibility of taking part or investing in the [theater missile defense] project," he said. "But so far we don't have a conclusion" about whether the program will move ahead.

Mr. Chen was elected last year as Taiwan's first opposition political leader since 1949.

In an interview focusing on national security topics, Mr. Chen also said the United States and Taiwan should increase military cooperation and exchanges to secure peace and stability in Asia.

"The U.S. and Taiwan do not have official diplomatic relations," Mr. Chen said. "As such it would be difficult to achieve a military alliance. However, in terms of military exchange and cooperation there is still much more room for improvement. Currently, relations are much better than in the past and have made significant progress, but they can still be upgraded."

Mr. Chen said he was encouraged by the Bush administration's decision in May to sell advanced U.S. arms to the island. But he said hardware transfers are "only one part" of Taiwan's military buildup, which is needed to create a military balance with the mainland.

"What is more important are the personal exchanges and cooperation," he said. "The uplifting of battlefield management training capabilities, as well as joint training exercises between the different divisions of the military, are also important."

China's military budget has been increasing annually at "double-digit" rates since 1989, a rate far greater than its economic growth rate, he said. The economic boom has helped Beijing to add more resources to its "military expansion and missile deployment."

"The PRC threat is directed not only against Taiwan. It is at the same time also a threat to the United States and Japan," Mr. Chen said. China is opposing U.S. development of theater missile defenses [TMD] as well as natiional missile defenses [NMD] against long-range missiles, he said.

But Beijing's Communist leaders "never look to the source" of the problem, he said. "Why is there an issue of TMD and NMD? The key is that the PRC is increasing its missile deployment by 50 to 70 missiles a year at this growth rate, and it is a significant threat to the peace and stability of the Asia Pacific region. It is because of this threat that there is an issue of developing TMD and NMD."

China has deployed about 300 M-9 and M-11 short-range ballistic missiles in Fujian province, directly across the Taiwan Strait from Taiwan. The missile buildup, which began several years ago, is viewed by the Pentagon with alarm because the missiles are destabilizing the already tense region.

Mr. Chen, 51, spoke Friday during an interview inside the sprawling presidential office building here built by the Japanese in the 1900s. The interview took place hours before China was awarded the controversial bid to host the 2008 Olympic Games.

"My greatest concern is not in which city will gain the sponsorship but rather the spirit of the Olympic Games," Mr. Chen said. "I think the spirit of the Olympics is in peace. It is against war and it is against missile deployment."

China has refused to renounce the use of force to reunite Taiwan, which it views as a breakaway province, with the mainland. China last year added a new condition for the use of force, threatening to take military action if Taipei failed to engaged in negotiations for reunification.

Mr. Chen said he believes it will be very difficult for China to give up on its threats to use force for the foreseeable future because "this is the fundamental substance of their regime."

Mr. Chen said he hopes leaders from both China and Taiwan can resume the dialogue that was suspended several years ago after then-President Lee Teng-hui called for "state-to-state" relations with Beijing. The remarks angered Beijing's Communist leaders and triggered a crisis between China and Taiwan for several months.

"I believe that as long as we can sit down and resume the dialogue across the strait, we can discuss any issue," Mr. Chen said. "We would not rule out discussion of any issue, including the so-called one China question."

"And of course this may also include a cross-strait peace resolution."

Mr. Chen said Beijing's formula for "one-China, two systems" is unacceptable to a large majority of Taiwan's 23 million people.

The president noted that a recent Pentagon report to Congress on the military balance across the Taiwan Strait stated that by 2005 the military balance could shift in Beijing's favor.

The U.S. government considered Taiwan's defense needs "in accordance with the Taiwan Relations Act" and offered an arms sale package that would significantly increase Taiwan's air defense, anti-submarine and underwater and surface defense capabilities," Mr. Chen said.

The arms sale will "greatly strengthen Taiwan's overall self-defense as well as elevate the confidence of the Taiwanese people, and we welcome this decision with great appreciation," he said.

The arms package also will give Taiwan's people the confidence to go forward with a dialogue with China and "to protect Taiwan's hard-won democracy," he said.

Asked if Taiwan might develop its own ballistic missile forces or land-attack cruise missiles in addition to missile defense, Mr. Chen said no.

"Taiwan's broader defense strategy is effective deterrence to defend ourselves," he said. "As such we will not initiate war, neither will we initiate the first strike."

----

Missile defense has 'long way to go';
opponents offer measured applause

Monday, July 16, 2001
Seattle Times
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis/web/vortex/display?slug=missile16&date=20010716

WASHINGTON - The brilliant flash in the sky above the Pacific signified not just a hit by the Pentagon's prototype missile interceptor but an opening shot in President Bush's long political, diplomatic and technical battle over national missile defense.

While Russia condemned the test, U.S. officials gave tempered congratulations yesterday to the successful interception Saturday night of a dummy missile fired over the Pacific from California.

It is agreed the Pentagon has engineered an important technical achievement, essentially hitting a bullet with a bullet 144 miles above the Earth's surface, but some officials cautioned that there is much work to be done before the U.S. has a reliable missile defense.

"I congratulate the military on a successful test, but it's not a real-world test yet," Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on "Fox News Sunday."

Biden, who has argued that deploying a missile defense could do more harm than good if it sparks an arms race with Russia, said, "We have a long way to go, and we should continue to pursue it."

The Pentagon plans to do just that with the help of a major infusion of money from Bush's first defense-budget request. The White House wants Congress to approve $8.3 billion for missile-defense development and testing. The success Saturday night and Biden's reaction suggest there may be little stomach even among Democrats opposed to missile defense to stop a weapons program that shows promise.

Air Force. Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, who runs the missile-defense program, said the Pentagon hopes to conduct six to 12 interceptor tests per year at $100 million per test. The next test is scheduled for October.

If development of the current interceptor progresses, the Bush administration could push to deploy a limited missile-defense base in Alaska by 2005.

President Bush's accelerated schedule for deploying a missile defense raises the stakes for his summit meeting in Genoa, Italy, next weekend with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Yesterday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said the test created a situation that "threatens all international treaties in the sphere of nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation," including the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty.

The Russians regard the U.S. missile-defense effort as a thinly veiled bid to neutralize Russia's nuclear deterrent.

Bush denies this, saying the system he envisions would be effective only against states that may try to develop small missile arsenals, such as North Korea, Iran or Iraq. Russia's thousands of nuclear warheads would overwhelm the missile shield envisioned by Bush, the administration says.

In technical terms, Saturday night's success was important to the Pentagon after two previous failures, but the test system differs in hardware and in capability from what the Pentagon hopes to deploy.

The target rocket, launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in Southern California, carried one dummy warhead and only one inflatable decoy. Later tests, beginning with the one scheduled for October, will involve more decoys, posing a greater challenge to the interceptor.

Boeing is the prime contractor in the effort that involves just about every major defense contractor.

----

Missile test boosts Bush plan

July 16, 2001
By Joyce Howard Price
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010716-20021404.htm

The Senate's top Republican yesterday hailed the Pentagon's successful missile-defense test and predicted President Bush will win his political battle to implement a defense against ballistic missile attacks on the United States and its allies.

"They hit a bullet with a bullet, and it does work. We can develop that capability," Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott said on "Fox News Sunday" the morning after a missile interceptor launched from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands destroyed a mock warhead in space.

But while Republicans and even some Democrats lauded the U.S. test launch, Russia condemned it as an exercise that jeopardizes all previous nuclear disarmament agreements.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said the test created a situation "which threatens all international treaties in the sphere of nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation which are based on the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty."

Missile-defense systems are banned under the ABM Treaty. The United States has vowed to abrogate that treaty unless Russia agrees to amend it. But Moscow and other ABM Treaty proponents view the pact as the cornerstone of global strategic stability.

Proponents of national missile-defense feel the test results boost Mr. Bush's hopes for building such a system by 2004, as a shield against attack by so-called "rogue" nations such as Iran, Iraq and North Korea.

Two out of three prior flight tests failed. The most recent failure occurred a year ago, prompting President Clinton to let his successor decide whether to proceed with the proposed system.

Asked yesterday what will happen in the Senate to Mr. Bush's plan to develop a multilayered defense shield, Mr. Lott said: "He's going to do it. We're going to do it we're going to put this right at the top of the agenda, not allowed to be pushed aside by Democrats, who really don't want to put the money into defense that's needed for the future security of our children."

But on talk shows yesterday some leading Senate Democrats congratulated the Bush administration on the successful test of its anti-ballistic missile defense, which occurred over the Pacific Ocean late Saturday night.

"The test last night was good news and very encouraging news," said Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, Connecticut Democrat, on CNN's "Late Edition."

Mr. Lieberman, the unsuccessful Democratic nominee for vice president in 2000, congratulated Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, head of the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, plus "all the folks" in that unit and at the Pentagon, for a "very significant step forward."

Unlike many Democrats, Mr. Lieberman has supported plans to develop a system to defend against what he calls a "limited missile attack." "There is a missile threat, and we need to be developing a defense to it," he said on CNN.

Yesterday on "Fox News Sunday," Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., Delaware Democrat, who has been a critic of the missile-defense strategy, offered more restrained congratulations.

"I congratulate the military on the successful test, but it's not a real-world test yet. We have a long way to go, and we should continue to pursue it," said Mr. Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

He described the test results as a "first step, a positive step." He also said they indicate the "60 billion [dollars] that I voted for over the last 20 years for missile-defense research is starting to pay off."

But Mr. Biden argued the test "doesn't in any way simulate a genuine kind of threat that we would face," and he said he finds some of the details of the Bush program incomprehensible.

The Delaware Democrat also said he's puzzled by Mr. Bush's plans for a new test range in Alaska. Mr. Biden said he questions the need for such a facility and wonders if testing is designed to give the administration "an excuse to break out of the ABM Treaty."

"If you do real-world testing, there's no reasonable prospect we have to break out of the ABM Treaty for up to 10 years," Mr. Biden told Fox News.

Asked if he would give the president the full $8 billion he's requested for the missile-defense program this year, Mr. Biden said: "It depends on what he's going to use it for. The answer is maybe." That amount would represent 3 percent of the defense budget in fiscal 2002

Opponents of Mr. Bush's plan to deploy a multilayered shield, including missiles launched from ships and lasers fired from modified Boeing 747 aircraft, believe it would spark nuclear proliferation.

"It has to be technologically feasible, and it has to be something that brings down, doesn't increase, the number of more offensive weapons around the world," said Mr. Biden.

In Seoul yesterday, about 1,000 protesters scuffled with riot police at a U.S. bombing range. They demanded that South Korea not participate in the planned system and that U.S. forces shut down the bombing range at Maehyangri, about 50 miles southwest of Seoul.

The environmental, anti-nuclear group Greenpeace, whose protests delayed the launch of the missile defense test for several minutes, said yesterday: "The 'star wars' program threatens to start a new nuclear arms race." The group charged that Mr. Bush is "risking the lives of millions of people around the world" with his plan.

----

Russia Denounces U.S. Missile Defense Test

By Helen Dewar
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 16, 2001; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A1266-2001Jul15?language=printer

The successful U.S. test of a prototype missile interceptor over the Pacific Ocean was denounced yesterday by Russia's Foreign Ministry as a threat to the global system of arms control.

Reacting to the Saturday night test, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said it contributes to a situation "which threatens all international treaties in the sphere of nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation which are based on the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty."

The test, in which a dummy warhead launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California was intercepted by a projectile fired from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, followed two failures and a success in previous tests.

A White House spokeswoman said President Bush was pleased with the results.

But U.S. officials also cautioned against reading too much into the results, noting that more complicated tests lie ahead. "This test is just one step on a journey," Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald T. Kadish, director of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, told reporters at the Pentagon shortly after the successful intercept.

Russian criticism of the test comes after Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed last month during a meeting in Slovenia to consult on missile defenses. They are expected to discuss the issue again when they meet next Sunday at the G-8 summit of industrialized nations in Genoa, Italy.

While Moscow defends the ABM treaty as a cornerstone of global stability, the Bush administration wants to revise or replace it with an arrangement allowing testing and deployment of a defense system to protect against missiles from nations such as North Korea, Iraq and Iran.

In his statement yesterday, Yakovenko said Russia was open to an early dialogue on the ABM and strategic arms reduction treaties and "other Russian-American actions on the basis of understandings" reached during the Bush-Putin talks in Slovenia.

On "Fox News Sunday," Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said the test shows that missile defenses will work. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) said it was "a first step, . . . a positive step" but not a "real-world test" based on genuine threats.

----

Missile Defense Rush

Monday, July 16, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A1417-2001Jul15?language=printer

THE BUSH administration's announced plan for missile defense lacks clarity in several important respects. The administration says it intends to build a new facility for ground-based missiles in Alaska that it would use for testing. But it also suggests that going ahead with this construction could amount to deployment, because the facility could be used to field a preliminary defense system within three or four years. The administration also says its testing will conflict with the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty within months. But it won't say what activity will trigger the violation, when it will happen or whether it will occur following an amendment of the treaty or a unilateral U.S. abrogation of it. Some of this ambiguity may be justified by logistical or legal problems. But within the muddiness lies the possibility that the administration will build and deploy a missile defense without meeting two of the most important conditions for success: that it prove the technology before deployment and that it reach agreements with Russia and other nations that ensure that the defenses will increase rather than detract from global stability.

A missile defense system that meets those conditions would be an important addition to U.S. security and likely would attract broad bipartisan support in Congress. But meeting them also could require considerably more time, expense and diplomatic effort than the administration appears to have built into its plans -- and several senior officials have expressed impatience with such requirements. Deployment of a partially effective system, they say, would be better than nothing. Russia, they think, should be given a few months to choose between accepting amendment of the ABM Treaty and a unilateral U.S. withdrawal. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, among others, talks about missile defense in tones of great urgency. The suggestion is that the threat from nations developing ballistic missiles is so great as to override the usual practice of thoroughly testing a weapon before its deployment and to invert the usual notion that the construction of a new security framework governing nuclear weapons should precede the destruction of the old one.

Mr. Rumsfeld's concerns are not to be dismissed; it is true that several nations hostile to the United States are working on ballistic missile technology. Still, North Korea's sporadic tinkering with long-range boosters and the active but less-advanced programs of Iran or Syria hardly seem to add up to the equivalent of a wartime emergency. Moreover, the problems the Pentagon would skip over are serious ones. Many experts, including a panel commissioned by the Pentagon last year, say that fundamental technical problems remain with all of the various missile defense systems. Even the ground-based system, which passed a preliminary test Saturday and for which the administration would begin clearing ground as early as next month, has not yet overcome the problem of how to discriminate between incoming missiles and decoys.

Similarly, the administration has advanced bold, if somewhat sketchy, ideas about forging a new strategic understanding with Russia that would cover both offensive and defensive nuclear weapons as well as cooperation on proliferation. It's an ambitious and worthy initiative. But it will be a formidable challenge for the administration to negotiate such a dramatic shift in the global security framework with the prickly Russian government -- and to sell it to skeptical European allies and other key parties such as China -- in the "months" it says are left before the ABM Treaty is violated by its planned tests. The danger is that the administration's haste to ready a system -- and, perhaps, satisfy those in the Republican Party who have made missile defense an article of ideology -- will lead to unilateral action that will antagonize allies, inspire a weapons buildup by Russia or China and end by worsening U.S. security. At the moment, such haste looks like more of a threat than any ballistic missile.

--------

Jiang and Putin unite to block US supremacy

MONDAY JULY 16 2001
FROM GILES WHITTELL IN MOSCOW
The Times (UK)
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,3-2001241967,00.html

PRESIDENT Jiang Zemin of China flew to Moscow last night to cement a strategic pact with Russia designed to boost trade between the two countries and co-ordinate their opposition to American dominance of world affairs.

The accord falls short of a military alliance, but provides for swift joint action "in case of extraordinary situations or a threat to each other's security", Aleksandr Losyukov, Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister, said in a clear reference to the quick development by the Pentagon of a "son of Star Wars" anti-missile shield.

The Good Neighbourly Treaty of Friendship and Co-operation, to be signed this morning, attaches more importance to economics than politics and is expected to come with agreements for Russia to help to build a 3,000-mile gas pipeline across China and to sell Beijing ten Tupolev-204 airliners.

Mr Losyukov insisted that the treaty was not "directed against somebody in the West", but there is little doubt that the Bush Administration's determination to press ahead with the missile defence scheme has helped to drive Asia's two big nuclear powers back into each other's arms for the first time since the Soviet collapse.

China has much to lose financially by alienating Washington, but it is already one of the biggest buyers from Russia of oil, gas, aircraft, weapons and nuclear power-generating technology.

A key question during Mr Jiang's two-day visit will be whether he and President Putin can agree to join Russian military expertise with Chinese money in a combined response to the US missile shield, instead of merely criticising it.

Missile-tracking radar of the kind used in a test by the United States on Saturday would violate the 1972 AntiBallistic Missile Treaty if it was installed permanently in Alaska. A senior Chinese diplomat said that if the treaty was destroyed "strategic stability is destroyed and (this)could lead to a new arms race".

-------- russia

Russia, China Sign Pact on 'Strategic Partnership'

By Susan B. Glasser
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, July 16, 2001; 12:47 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3905-2001Jul16?language=printer

MOSCOW, July 16 - Russian President Vladimir Putin and visiting Chinese President Jiang Zemin today signed their countries' first friendship treaty since the Cold War, vowing to create a "new international order" to counter U.S. dominance and reaffirming their opposition to the Bush administration's proposed national missile defense system.

As they sealed what Putin called their "strategic partnership" during a Kremlin signing ceremony, the two leaders smiled broadly, then embraced. Zemin called their treaty - the first since the Sino-Soviet military pact of 1950 - a "milestone in the development of Russia-Chinese relations."

But the treaty, and a separate joint statement issued by the two leaders today, offered little more than general principles for a "just and rational new international order" and the notion that the world's largest nation and its most populous should live together as "forever friends, never foes."

Although Russia has emerged as a leading supplier of arms to China, the documents did not spell out any new military alliance between them and took pains to insist it was not "directed against third countries," such as the United States. Even so, the joint statement issued after today's cordial summit - the eighth between Putin and Jiang - took aim at Washington's missile defense plan, warning of a threat to international arms control.

"The treaty has one purpose, and that is to show the United States that there are two countries that can be together against the United States," said Vilya Gelbras, a professor at the Institute of Asian and African Studies at Moscow State University. "They will be playing the anti-American card for their own purposes."

The last time Russia and China signed such a document was at the height of the Cold War, when Soviet dictator Josef Stalin and his Chinese counterpart Mao Tse-tung sealed an alliance that later collapsed into open hostility by the 1960s. After the fall of the Soviet Union a decade ago, relations warmed considerably.

But in practical terms, the new alliance has translated mostly to a burgeoning arms trade bringing an estimated $1.4 billion to cash-strapped Russia this year and a joint willingness to raise questions about the United States's preeminent position in the post-Soviet world. The two leaders have made common cause against the U.S. missile defense system, opposed continued sanctions against Iraq and repeatedly spoken out, as they did again today, against a "unipolar" world dominated by U.S. interests.

But in many respects, the Russia-Chinese partnership has been far less important to either country than their separate ties to the West. Overall trade between the two countries was just $8 billion last year - far less than the $20 billion they hoped for just a few years ago, and insignificant when compared with China's $115 billion worth of annual trade with the United States.

And while concerned at the prospect of new Moscow-Beijing strategic axis, Western diplomats here say they are more focused for now about specific arms sales or technology transfers to China at a time of Chinese military buildup. Russia has already sold China sophisticated Su-30 MKK and Su-27 fighter-bombers, four diesel submarines and two Sovremenny-class destroyers armed with Moskit anti-ship missiles, the kind of weapons that alarm Washington because of their potential for use in the Taiwan Strait.

Staff writer Peter Baker contributed to this report.

----

Russia and China sign alliance

July 16, 2001
http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/07/16/missile.treaty/index.html

MOSCOW, Russia -- Chinese President Jiang Zemin and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin have signed a new "friendship agreement," the Itar-Tass agency reports.

The so-called Good Neighbourly Treaty of Friendship and Co-operation replaces a 50-year old agreement intended to defend both countries' mutual interests and boost economic and cultur al trade.

But some observers say the treaty is a move to strengthen their mutual opposition to the U.S.' plans for a global missile defence system. Both countries want to preserve the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) pact between Moscow and Washington as a basis for international stability.

Washington argues that the ABM pact is a relic of the Cold War and wants the treaty amended or scrapped. U.S. President George W. Bush has made clear he will not allow the pact to stand in the way of a new missile defence system.

China and Russia fear the proposals could spark a global arms race and prompt the renewed production of nuclear weapons. They say scrapping the ABM treaty would undermine a whole series of arms reduction treaties reached over the past 30 years and eliminate an effective instrument of maintaining international stability without offering any alternative.

"Russia and China stress the basic importance of the ABM treaty, which is a cornerstone of the strategic stability and the basis for reducing offensive weapons, and speak out for maintaining the treaty in its current form," Tass quoted a joint declaration by Putin and Jiang Zemin as saying.

The leaders also called for further reductions in strategic arms and for the creation of a "global nuclear non-proliferation mechanism," Reuters news agency said.

"Russia and China will step up their co-operation in nuclear non-proliferation including efforts to encourage all members of the international community to join the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty," the declaration said.

Both Moscow and Beijing have stressed the new friendship agreement poses no military threat to the U.S. or any other countries.

Jiang's pre-planned visit comes after the U.S.' successful test of a missile interceptor over the weekend.

Russia's nuclear arsenal dwarfs that of China, which analysts say is keen to speed up military expansion through an alliance with Moscow.

Russia's defence industry is rich in expertise and advanced weapon design but short on orders from the country's own impoverished military.

During the 90s China has been the biggest customer at Russian defence factories, buying billions of dollars worth of Russian jets, submarines, missiles and destroyers.

But despite this, some have pointed to inconsistency in the Russian-Chinese alliance -- who this year have only traded $3.8 billion compared to $115 billion with the U.S.

There has also been concern in Russia about Chinese migrants taking over the sparsely populated Far Eastern and Siberian regions of the country, Reuters said.

The new treaty replaces the Soviet-Chinese alliance of the 1950s.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, both countries have put aside their differences and forged what they call " a strategic partnership."

----

U.S. Review on Russia Urges Keeping Most Arms Controls

New York Times
July 16, 2001
By JUDITH MILLER with MICHAEL R. GORDON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/16/international/europe/16RUSS.html?searchpv=nytToday

Bush administration review of American assistance to Russia has concluded that most of the programs aimed at helping Russia stop the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons are vital to American security and should be continued, a senior administration official says. Some may even be expanded.

But the White House wants to restructure or end two programs: a $2.1 billion effort to dispose of hundreds of tons of military plutonium and a program to shrink Russian cities that were devoted to nuclear weapons development, and to provide alternative jobs for nuclear scientists, the official said in an interview on Friday. Both these programs have been criticized in Congress.

The review also calls for a shift in philosophy from "assistance to partnership" with Russia.

To do that, the official said, Russia would have to demonstrate a willingness to make a financial and political commitment to stop the spread of advanced conventional weapons and to end its sale of nuclear and other military-related expertise and technology to Iran and other nations unfriendly to the United States.

One administration official said the issue of how to handle Russia's sales of sensitive technology and expertise not only to Iran, Iraq, Libya and others hostile to America was being considered separately by the White House. No decisions have been made yet.

But on those issues, it would be "hard to create a partnership if we think that Russia is proliferating," this official added. "It's not a condition; it's a fact of life."

Administration officials said the recommendation to extend most nonproliferation programs was not conditioned upon Russian acquiescence to the administration's determination to build a nuclear missile shield.

The review covered 30 programs with an annual outlay of some $800 million. They are a cornerstone of America's scientific and military relationship with Russia. The programs, involving mostly the Pentagon, the Energy Department and the State Department, pay for the dismantling of weapons facilities and the strengthening of security at sites where nuclear, chemical and biological weapons are stored.

President Bush is expected to discuss some of these programs when he meets with President Vladimir V. Putin next weekend. That meeting, in Genoa, Italy, is expected to focus on American plans to build the missile shield, which the Americans admit would violate a longstanding treaty between the two nations.

The administration's endorsement of most of the nonproliferation programs begun by the Clinton administration will not surprise most legislators, given that the administration is now trying to avoid being portrayed as single-minded on national security matters in its pursuit of a missile shield, and as unresponsive to European support for arms control.

Officials said that although cabinet officials had discussed the review's findings, no final decisions on the recommendations would be made until Congress reacted to the proposals. The administration has begun arranging to brief key legislators on the results of its review, which began in April and was conducted by an expert on Russia on loan from the State Department to the National Security Council office that deals with nonproliferation strategy. That office is headed by Bob Joseph.

In interviews, administration officials said the White House would not overlook Russian efforts to weaken the programs by restricting access to weapons plants or by erecting obstacles to meeting nonproliferation commitments. "We have a high standard for Russian behavior," one official said.

The review has concluded that most of the $420 million worth of the Pentagon's programs - called Cooperative Threat Reduction - are "effectively managed" and advance American interests.

The White House also intends to expand State Department programs that help Russian scientists engage in peaceful work through the Moscow-based International Science and Technology Center, which the European Union and Japan also support, and other institutions.

But some big-ticket programs whose budgets have already been slashed or criticized on Capitol Hill are likely to be shut down or "refocused," the official said.

Though it is no longer very expensive, another program, the Nuclear Cities Initiative, has already been scaled back by Congress. It was begun in 1998 to help create nonmilitary work for Russia's 122,000 nuclear scientists and to help Russia downsize geographically and economically isolated nuclear cities, where 760,000 people live.

Unhappy with both the cost and the Russian reluctance to open these cities fully to Western visitors, Congress has repeatedly slashed money for the program. Under the Bush review, the undefined "positive aspects" would be merged into other programs, and most of the program closed.

The Clinton administration had begun the program to provide civilian work for Russia's closed nuclear cities. The aim was to prevent nuclear scientists there from leaving for Iraq, Iran and other aspiring nuclear powers. Under the program, the Russians would also have to expedite the closure of two warhead-assembly plants and their conversion to civilian production.

"The administration will be missing an opportunity to shut down two warhead production plants if it abandons the Nuclear Cities Initiative," said Rose Gottemoeller, a senior Energy Department official during the Clinton administration. The administration says Russia plans to close those two facilities in any event.

The White House also intends to overhaul a hugely expensive effort to enable Russia and the United States each to destroy 34 tons of stored plutonium by building facilities in Russia and the United States. The program, as currently structured, will cost Russia $2.1 billion and the United States $6.5 billion, at a minimum. The administration has pledged $400 million and has already appropriated $240 million.

In February 2000, the Clinton administration wrested a promise from Russia to stop making plutonium out of fuel from its civilian power reactors as part of a research and aid package. While Russia was supposed to stop adding to its estimated stockpile of 160 tons of military plutonium by shutting down three military reactors last December, Moscow was unable to do so because the reactors, near Tomsk and Krasnoyarsk, provide heat and electricity to those cities.

Critics said the original program was too costly and was not moving forward. But supporters say the Bush administration should try harder to solicit funds from European and other governments before shelving the effort and walking away from the accord.

The administration insists it is still exploring less expensive options.

The administration has also deferred a decision on a commitment to help Russia build facilities to destroy 40,000 tons of chemical weapons, the world's such stockpile. The first plant has been completed at Gorny, 660 miles southeast of Moscow, but American assistance to build a second plant at Shchuchye, 1,000 miles southeast of Moscow, has been frozen by Congress.

Many legislators have complained that the Russians have not fully declared the total and type of chemical weapons they made, and that they have put up too little of their own money for the project.

In February, however, Russia announced that it had increased its annual budget for destroying the weapons sixfold, to $105 million, and presented a plan to begin operating the first of three destruction plants. The administration official said this reflected a "significant change" in Russia's attitude towards commitments that "could have an impact on our thinking" about the program.

The Russians hope to destroy their vast chemical stocks by 2012, a deadline that will require that they obtain a five-year extension. But Moscow will not be able to meet even that deferred deadline unless construction begins soon for a destruction installation at Shchuchye.

The Clinton administration, after Congress slashed funds for the project, lined up support from several foreign governments.

Elisa Harris, a research fellow at the University of Maryland and a former specialist on chemical weapons for President Clinton's National Security Council, said the destruction effort could falter unless the Bush administration persuaded Congress to rescind the ban and finally support the program.

Commenting on the review, Leon Fuerth, a visiting professor of international affairs at George Washington University and the national security adviser to former Vice President Al Gore, said, "By and large they are going to sustain what they inherited, which is good for the country."

But the senior Bush administration official said the review did not endorse the Clinton approach. This administration, he said, is determined to "establish better and more cost-efficient ways" of achieving its nonproliferation goals and integrating such programs into a comprehensive strategy toward Russia. He said the White House planned to form a White House steering group "to assure that the programs are well managed and better coordinated."

----

Raising the 'Kursk' risks disaster waiting to happen

Tuesday, July 17, 2001
Irish Times
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/world/2001/0717/wor22.htm

With 24 cruise missiles and two unstable reactors on board, hauling the Kursk off the seabed will be risky, Francis Wheen reports from Murmansk

NORWAY: Along the bay from the main naval shipyard at Murmansk is a huge, specially constructed pontoon known as ``The Giant''. If all goes according to plan, by mid-September this monster will have hauled the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk up from the depths of the Barents Sea, where it sank last August with 118 crewmen.

A team of British, Norwegian and Russian divers were expected to begin work this week end, 300ft below the Arctic waves. Their first task is to saw off the submarine's badly dam aged bow, which is to remain on the ocean floor, and cut 26 holes in the main hull.

Lifting cables, each capable of carrying 900 tonnes, will subsequently be lowered from the pontoon and secured in the holes with steel plugs. The Kursk will then be towed into the port of Murmansk and hoisted into a dry dock to yield up its corpses. But we are unlikely to learn why disaster struck this supposedly un sinkable submarine.

``The secrecy regime will be observed in full,'' said a spokesman for the Northern Fleet. ``This is a military operation, not a civilian one, and security will be a prime concern.'' It is also an operation fraught with danger. There are 18 torpe does and 24 cruise missiles packed into the bow end: what if they are disturbed by vibrations from the massive robot chain saw?

The sub carries two unstable nuclear reactors: what if it falls on its side while being winched to the surface? Mr Alexei Yablokov, president of Russia's Centre for Environ mental Policy, has warned that ``the reactors' emergency systems could stop functioning. An uncontrolled atomic reaction cannot be ruled out''.

His misgivings are shared by the government of Norway, whose trawlers fish in the area where the Kursk lies _ and by the three international salvage firms which were originally hired to retrieve the wreck. In May they asked the Russian government to postpone the work until next summer, to allow more time for safety preparations. Moscow promptly sacked the consortium and hired two Dutch companies willing to start at once. Why the haste? It is hard to avoid the conclusion that President Vladimir Putin hopes to redeem his reputation from the battering it suffered at the time of the sinking.

While his grief-stricken citizens gazed at their TV screens, desperate for any sign that the sailors might be alive, the president continued to improve his suntan at the Black Sea resort of Sochi for almost a week before flying to Murmansk and offering belated condolences. To make up for his earlier nonchalance, he pledged to raise the Kursk and its crew as soon as weather permitted, regardless of cost.

According to recent opinion polls, many Russians believe that salvaging Mr Putin's pride is the main purpose of the exercise. Some also accuse him of neglecting the old tradition of allowing drowned mariners to remain in a common grave under the sea. One leading journalist declared on television this month that the money invested in recovering the Kursk _ estimated at US $84 million _ would be better spent on compensating the victims' families. Nevertheless, unless there is a nuclear accident, the Kremlin may yet turn the event into a PR triumph.

Regional officials, who are rather less excited by the imminent TV extravaganza, hope that at least a few visiting journalists will ask a question that has hardly been mentioned in the past year: if the Russian navy's most advanced atomic-powered attack submarine was not immune from disaster, how safe are its more primitive pre decessors?

While attention turns once again to the Kursk, the governor of Murmansk, Mr Yuri Yevdokimov, accuses the West of ignoring a far greater potential catastrophe which would threaten the whole of northern Europe. He presides over the most radioactive region in the northern hemisphere, per haps even the most dangerous place on the planet.

In this Arctic peninsula, which includes the gigantic Kola power station, there are no fewer than 200 nuclear reactors _ some of them still aboard the 100 decommissioned sub marines which are laid up awaiting the removal of their spent nuclear fuel. Only eight will be dismantled this year, and the figure is unlikely to rise by much until extra money can be found.

According to Mr Alexander Ruzankin, a former nuclear sub marine commander who now leads the Murmansk committee for nuclear conversion and radiation safety, the total cost of dealing with radiation problems in the peninsula will be $1.5 billion.

``Although state financing is up, foreign assistance has actually fallen since 1999,'' he told me. ``About 75 per cent of our financing is lacking. So we need help. But the international community has lost interest.''

Meanwhile, dozens of decrepit submarines from the Northern Fleet are moored in the waters off Murmansk, looking like dead whales. They are in an alarmingly poor state of repair, but the spent nuclear fuel is still loaded in their reactors.

Some locals call them ``floating Chernobyls''. Mr Pavel Steblin, director of the Nerpa shipyard, prefers a different analogy. ``With each of these subs, we're talking about 200 Hiroshimas,'' he says. ``And then there's the danger of radio active waste leakage, which could turn into an ecological disaster. If a tragedy occurs here, God forbid, the whole world will be affected.''

-------- treaties

China's Leader in Moscow to Sign Pact
Treaty Reflects Two Nations' Opposition to U.S. Supremacy

By Peter Baker and John Pomfret
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, July 16, 2001; Page A09
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A1013-2001Jul15?language=printer

MOSCOW, July 15 -- Chinese President Jiang Zemin arrived here today to meet with his Russian counterpart and sign a treaty reflecting their shared opposition to U.S. supremacy and a mutual desire to secure border regions that have been the source of instability for centuries.

The accord, officially called the Sino-Russian Treaty of Good-Neighborly and Friendly Cooperation, is scheduled to be signed Monday by Jiang and Russian President Vladimir Putin during the Chinese leader's four-day visit to Russia -- the second of four planned summits between the two this year.

The treaty "opens a new page in the development of Russian-Chinese relations in the new century," Jiang said in a statement distributed to reporters after he arrived at Moscow's Vnukovo Airport.

But while timing and showmanship make this pact important, a wide array of analysts said the accord appears to lack substance. Trade between Moscow and Beijing is relatively low. Arms sales, already the basis of the relationship, are not covered in the treaty, nor does it include a substantial security component.

For the past six months, Chinese and Russian officials have attempted to assuage concern in the West that the treaty marks the resumption of the failed military alliance that helped kick off the Cold War and expired in 1979. "I can put you at ease," a Chinese official told reporters in Beijing. "The treaty will not touch upon military cooperation."

In today's remarks, Jiang emphasized that stronger Chinese-Russian relations would create "an atmosphere of stability and development that would be beneficial for peace in the region and the whole world."

Likewise, the Russians denied any anti-U.S. tilt. Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov said it was "absolutely groundless to say that our partnership with China is directed against somebody in the West."

Russian and Chinese officials said the treaty is unusual and reflects an increasingly significant arms trade. The two countries have also drawn closer because of joint opposition to President Bush's missile defense program, which staged a successful test of an interceptor missile on Saturday, although the issue is not expected to be mentioned explicitly in the treaty. The timing of the signing is especially delicate, coming just before Putin's second meeting with Bush at this week's summit meeting of the Group of Eight industrialized countries in Genoa, Italy.

Few analysts in Moscow expect the Russia-China agreement to contain much in the way of concrete provisions. Officials said the accord, modeled on the one Russia signed last year with North Korea, will pledge "eternal friendship" and express mutual opposition to a "unipolar world," a common code phrase for American hegemony. The treaty will commit Russia and China to refrain from hostile actions against one another and to consult in cases of threats to the security of either side -- a section that U.S. military analysts said would be of concern to Washington. It will also restate Russia's support for Beijing's position that Taiwan remains an inseparable part of China.

"There's something childish in it. We want to demonstrate to the West that we can be friendly with other boys," said Andrei Piontkovsky of the Center for Strategic Studies in Moscow. "The paper is needed for psychological comfort of Russian political leaders."

Sources in Beijing said China and Russia decided earlier this year not to include a section about military cooperation. "The defense ministries of both countries have ample agreements on that issue," said a Chinese official.

China constitutes Russia's biggest arms market. Last year alone it is believed to have signed an estimated $1.5 billion worth of weapons contracts, accounting for about 40 percent of Russian arms exports. The dependence of the Chinese army on Russian weapons exports is growing. Already China relies on Russia for fighter aircraft, submarines, naval destroyers and air-defense systems. Russia is believed to have delivered in December the first group of state-of-the-art anti-ship missiles to go with two destroyers that it previously sold to China.

Sino-Russian cooperation has also moved beyond the borders of the two countries. A shared opposition to Islamic fundamentalism -- and U.S. influence -- has been the driving force in the creation of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, spearheaded by Moscow and Beijing. Started in 1996 as the Shanghai Five, it now includes Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

In the latest summit meeting of the Shanghai group in June, defense ministers criticized the proposed U.S. missile defense system. They also pledged to study holding joint military exercises and operations to combat separatist activities. Russian officials say they face terrorist threats from Afghanistan. Chinese officials say separatist activities in the northwestern province of Xinjiang are supported by Islamic groups in Central Asia.

For China, joint exercises and military operations would be unprecedented and reflect a fundamental change from its policy of eschewing multilateral organizations.

Lu Nanquan, deputy director of the Center of Russian Studies for the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the new treaty marks an important change in China's perception about its security. For decades, China's land borders were its least secure. Now, China's 2,500-mile border with Russia is peaceful and, except for two small parts, undisputed. It is improving ties with India. And, ironically, China's long-placid eastern coast has become its biggest concern because of worry about Taiwan.

For China, the treaty also "reflects Beijing's desire to codify its relationship with Russia in a way that would transcend changes in Russia's leadership," said David M. Finkelstein, an expert on Chinese security at the Center for Naval Analyses, an Alexandria-based research organization.

China remains concerned that, as with the withdrawal of thousands of Russian experts working on China's economic construction in 1960, Moscow will again "abandon" Beijing and cut a separate deal with the West -- this time over national missile defense and other issues.

"The government genuinely believed that Russia would oppose missile defense to the end," one Chinese military expert said. "But now we see Putin softening on this issue."

Russians have tried to assuage these fears. "Our positions coincide and we are not going to betray them," Russia's ambassador to China, Igor Rogachev, told the Russian Tass news agency in June.

Nonetheless, many experts said that despite friendly talk, the potential for Beijing's relationship with Moscow remains limited.

History plays a role. Chinese officials still quote China's late leader Deng Xiaoping as saying the two countries that bullied China the most were Russia and Japan. Chinese still smart over what they perceive to be the unequal way the Soviet Union treated China during the heyday of Moscow's relations with Beijing.

"To be frank," Lu said, "it would be easier for China and the United States to improve relations than for China and Russia. After all, Beijing and Washington don't have a huge border."

Trade between the two countries was just $8 billion last year and is expected to reach $10 billion this year -- compared with $120 billion between China and the United States. There is very limited Russian investment in China and vice versa.

Even the much-vaunted security ties could be overstated. Western diplomats said military relations are strained over the Russia's slowness in allowing its weapons systems to be incorporated into China's armed forces.

As a matter of symbolism, the treaty is "very significant. The language all sounds to me like the old Soviet-Chinese alliance," said Michael McFaul, a Russia scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "But I think it is more tactical than grand strategy because in the long run the Russians know they've got more to fear from the Chinese. Both countries need their connections to the West more than they need each other."

Pomfret reported from Beijing.

-------- turkey

Turkey to try barring nuclear waste from straits

TURKEY: July 16, 2001
Story by Elif Unal
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11586

ANKARA - Turkey said on Friday it would pursue all legal measures to stop nuclear waste shipments to Russia via busy Turkish waterways, fearing the cargo could wreak an environmental disaster in Istanbul, a city of 10 million.

Russian President Vladimir Putin approved bills on Wednesday opening Russia to imports of spent nuclear fuel, sparking fears that unusable nuclear waste, rather then recyclable fuel, might also find its way into the country.

Ankara objects to more traffic in the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits - the only link between Russia's Black Sea region and the world's oceans, arguing that they are already overcrowded and ships with risky cargo menace the environment.

"The Environment Ministry will apply all legal methods in order to prevent the passage of nuclear waste through Turkish territorial waters," Minister Fevzi Aytekin said in a statement.

The ministry statement did not say what measures Turkey would take. The 1936 Montreux Convention bars the country from stopping ships from using its waterways in peacetime.

Turkey's stance will probably compound a dispute with Russia over Ankara's wish to limit the number of Russian tankers carrying Caspian Sea oil to Western markets through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles.

Critics have said Turkey uses the argument that its waterways have limited capacity as a way to win control of the lucrative Caspian Sea oil trade. Russia and Iran are also involved in projects to import the crude to world markets.

But collisions are frequent in the Turkish straits. In 1994, 30 seamen were killed and 20,000 tonnes of oil spilled into the Bosphorus after two vessels collided.

Aytekin said he did not want to be a "prophet of doom", but a possible collision between oil tankers and vessels carrying nuclear waste or a crash on the coast could cause "a disaster".

"That would negatively impact people living in Istanbul as well as the historical and cultural relics of the city and it could exterminate the sea's eco-system and cause pollution in the air, in the sea and on the coasts," Aytekin said.

He said many international agreements to which Turkey is a signatory prevent exporting or importing nuclear waste.

"The Environment Ministry is totally against the use of the Aegean-Black Sea route to transport nuclear waste to Russia's Siberia from Europe for reasons of human and environment safety."

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

-------- pennsylvania

TWO PENNSYLVANIA NUCLEAR PLANTS TO INCREASE POWER OUTPUT

July 16, 2001
ENS
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jul2001/2001L-07-16-09.html

BERWICK, Pennsylvania, The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has approved a request by Pennsylvania Power & Light Company to increase the generating capacity of its two Susquehanna nuclear power plants.

Pennsylvania Power & Light plans to boost the plants output by 1.4 percent, or about 14 megawatts of electricity per unit.

The power uprate at the Susquehanna Steam Electric Station, located near Berwick, Pennsylvania, will increase the generating capacity of each unit to about 1,100 megawatts of electricity. The facility intends to implement the power increase for Unit 2 this month, and Unit 1 following the spring 2002 refueling outage.

The application for the increase in power was submitted to the NRC on October 30, 2000.

The NRC's safety evaluation of the requested power uprate for the units focused on several areas, including nuclear steam supply systems, instrumentation and control systems, electrical systems, accident evaluations, radiological consequences, operations and technical specification changes.

The NRC staff determined that the licensee could safely increase the power output of the two reactors with minor modifications to plant equipment and because of technical refinements that permit more precise measurements of reactor operating conditions.

-------- us nuc politics

George Bush Sr. vouches for son's support of Israel to the Saudis

By Natan Guttman
Ha'aretz Correspondent,
July 16, 2001
http://www3.haaretz.co.il/eng/scripts/article.asp?mador=14&datee=7/16/01&id=124423

WASHINGTON - Former U.S. President George Bush recently phoned Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah to assure him his son's heart "is in the right place" in the Middle East. The New York Times reported that President George W. Bush was in the room while his father phoned the prince.

The phone call followed criticism being aired in Saudia Arabia of President George W. Bush leaning too heavily in Israel's favor in his Middle East policy.

It was the former president's second intervention in foreign policy issues managed by his son. In the previous instance a month ago, the former President sent his son a memorandum written by a Korean expert, Donald P. Gregg, arguing that the United States should re-engage with the Communist regime, The New York Times reported.

The phone call with Abdullah, who has complained the new American president is too friendly with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, was held before to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's departure late last month to the Middle East.

According to sources cites in The New York Times report, the former President phoned "to vouch for his son" and to promise the crown prince that any passing strains in U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict "do not represent a permanent breach."

The former President invited Abdullah to Washington for a visit, but the crown prince declined the offer. Former President Bush has made efforts to keep abreast of foreign affairs, partly by exercising his right to be briefed by CIA personnel about developments around the globe.

-------- MILITARY

-------- asia

Joint Chiefs Chairman to Visit India

New York Times
July 16, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/news/AP-Shelton-India.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Army Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will visit India on Thursday for talks with his counterpart and with other senior Indian government officials.

Shelton had scheduled a trip to India in late May but canceled at the last moment in order to attend Pentagon meetings with the service chiefs and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on reshaping the U.S. military.

Thursday's visit will mark Shelton's first trip to India as joint chiefs chairman. He will be the highest-ranking U.S. military officer to visit since India's nuclear test in 1998, which prompted the Clinton administration to scale back military-to-military contacts.

The visit comes amid hopeful signs for improved relations between India and Pakistan, which have fought two wars over the Himalayan province of Kashmir. The two countries' leaders held a second day of talks Monday in Agra, India -- the first India-Pakistan summit meeting in two years.

Shelton is scheduled to meet in New Delhi with Adm. Sushil Kumar, chairman of the Indian Chiefs of Staff committee and chief of the naval staff. Shelton also will participate in a wreath-laying ceremony at the World War I and World War II Memorial, followed by an honor guard ceremony, according to Shelton's office.

Shelton has no plans to visit Pakistan. Previous U.S. administrations have been closer to Pakistan than India, but that tilt began to change at the end of former President Clinton's term after Gen. Pervez Musharraf came to power in Islamabad in a military coup.

Shelton was leaving Monday for visits to Qatar and Oman before going to India. He is due to return to Washington on Friday.

--------

Russia and China Sign Friendship Agreement

New York Times
July 16, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/world/china-russia.html?searchpv=reuters

MOSCOW, July 16 - Russia and China revived their strategic friendship on Monday, throwing down a challenge to America's domination of the post Cold War world and its controversial plans for a missile defence shield.

The presidents of the two former communist powers, with a combined population of 1.4 billion people, signed a friendship pact to defend mutual interests and boost trade. They also reiterated their faith in the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) as a primary prop of international stability.

Russia's Vladimir Putin and his guest Jiang Zemin hugged and smiled broadly as they signed the pact which replaces a treaty that expired more than two decades ago.

Both leaders said the Good Neighbourly Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation was in no way a military alliance. They said it provided a legal framework for friendship now re-established after decades of mistrust over border and ideological disputes.

And they said the document, signed days before Putin attends the G8 summit of industrialised states in Italy, was not aimed at third parties. That was an allusion to the United States, though neither leader referred directly to Washington.

Both sides have had difficulty getting relations on track with the new administration of President George W. Bush and they called for creation of a ``multi-polar world'' to offset what they see as the unilateral exercise of U.S. superpower authority.

A separate statement upholding ABM was issued two days after the United States said it had successfully intercepted a missile in a test over the Pacific -- the latest test of the anti-missile shield it was to develop quickly.

``Russia and China stress the basic importance of the ABM treaty, which is a cornerstone of strategic stability and the basis for reducing offensive weapons, and speak out for maintaining the treaty in its current form,'' the statement said.

It said the countries were ``friends forever, never enemies.''

China and Russia both say changing or ignoring the terms of the ABM treaty would undermine decades of strategic arms reductions.

The United States says the ABM pact reflects Cold War realities and must be replaced or altered. It says the shield would parry missile strikes from ``rogue states, like Iran, Iraq and North Korea.

Russia's opposition to the scheme has been tempered by Bush's promise to consult other states on the scheme. It is expected to be discussed when Putin and Bush meet in Genoa.

U.S. MISSILE TEST RINGS ALARM BELLS

But Saturday's test in the Pacific Ocean on Saturday rang alarm bells in Moscow, where the Foreign Ministry denounced it as a threat to nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation.

Jiang, a fluent Russian speaker who studied in the Soviet Union, told a news conference after the signing ceremony that both sides believed cooperation would help safeguard peace.

``We believe that more active cooperation between our countries in discussing missile defences and disarmament will enhance our efforts in building a multi-polar world and establishing a fair, rational international order,'' he said.

Putin agreed. He said the idea of the pact had been Jiang's.

``We believe predictability in relations based on good neighbourliness and legal ties will influence international affairs in a considerable, positive way,'' he said.

Relations between Beijing and the new Bush administration have been overshadowed by the forced landing in April of a U.S. spy plane on the Chinese island of Hainan.

Russia's ties with the new administration got off to a bumpy start, mainly over anti-missile defences, though matters have improved as Washington has agreed to discuss the scheme.

After the alliance between Moscow and Beijing broke up in the mid-1960s, the two turned into bitter rivals for supremacy in the Communist world. There were border clashes in two decades of hostility before ties started improving in the late 1980s.

Both leaders said they would work hard to resolve two small remaining disputes over border demarcation. They also pledged to boost trade, expected to rise this year to $10 billion from last year's $8 billion but still far short of Beijing's annual trade with Japan or the United States.

--------

US, Vietnamese Collaborate on Agent Orange Studies

New York Times
July 16, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/health/health-orange.html

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The United States and Vietnam have scheduled a tentative date in 2002 for a joint scientific conference on the health and environmental effects of Agent Orange.

A team of US researchers visited Vietnam this month to discuss plans to study the dioxin-containing herbicide, which the US military used to defoliate forests and jungles during the Vietnam War. Researchers have previously identified ``hot spots'' where levels of Agent Orange are still elevated in soil and sediments, and where blood levels of dioxin among residents indicate continuing exposure. Dioxin has been linked to cancer, endocrine disturbances, diabetes, nerve damage and birth defects.

``The people involved were very congenial and cooperative,'' Dr. Sandra Lange, of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, told Reuters Health.

Lange accompanied a team led by Dr. Christopher Portier of the NIEHS, which included scientists from the US Environmental Protection Agency and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The American team met with the Vietnamese delegation, led by Dr. Nguyen Ngoc Sinh of the National Environmental Agency in Hanoi.

As a result of the meeting, a joint Vietnam-US scientific conference has been tentatively scheduled for April 2002.

Lange noted that new screening approaches and more economical and rapid testing methods have been developed recently, which will make studying Agent Orange easier. ``We hope to bring experts together from around the world to share information in plenary and topical sessions designed to look at critical issues,'' she said.

-------- arms sales

U.S. Promised Subs to Taiwan It Doesn't Have

Los Angeles Times
July 15, 2001
Jim Mann:
International Outlook
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-000057979jul15.column?coll=la-headlines-frontpage

WASHINGTON -- Barely three months after taking office, President Bush reversed three decades of American foreign policy in Asia by opening the way for Taiwan to buy eight diesel submarines.

It was an impressive action, the centerpiece of a huge package of new arms supplies that appeared to make good on Bush's campaign promise to help Taiwan defend itself.

There was one catch: There are no submarines to sell Taiwan. When the White House made the announcement, the Bush administration had little or no idea how it could carry through on its promise. Some of the information on which the administration relied turns out to have been wrong.

And ever since then, U.S. officials have been struggling to figure out where Taiwan's submarines will come from.

"I don't get any sense at all that in making this decision the administration gamed it out in advance," said Jonathan Pollack, chairman of strategic research at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, R.I.

At stake are not only billions of dollars in defense contracts but also the military balance between China and Taiwan. If Taiwan doesn't get new submarines, the United States may have to come up with some other way of helping the island nation to offset China's growing naval power--or else face the prospect that China might be able to impose a blockade on Taiwan's ports.

"The Department of Defense is looking at several different options" for helping Taiwan obtain its submarines, Mary Ellen Countryman, the White House spokeswoman for national security affairs, said Friday.

The story behind the nonexistent submarines shows what can happen when major foreign policy decisions are made in a crisis atmosphere and without careful planning.

The problem, in a nutshell, is this: The United States hasn't manufactured diesel submarines for decades--not since the 1950s, when the Navy, under the prodding of Adm. Hyman Rickover, decided to rely exclusively on nuclear submarines.

The United States produces nuclear subs but doesn't export them; the Navy doesn't want U.S. technology spread around the world.

But the two countries that are the world's principal exporters of diesel submarines, Germany and the Netherlands, refuse to build submarines or even sell sub designs that will go to Taiwan. They are unwilling to offend China, which considers Taiwan part of its own territory.

The Bush administration did not check with either the Germans or the Dutch before its decision.

"We read about it in the newspapers," said Henrik Schuwer, deputy chief of mission at the Dutch Embassy in Washington. "We went in [to the administration] and said, 'What is this?' "

Hans Dieter Lucas, a spokesman for the German Embassy in Washington, confirms that his government was left in the dark too. "There were no talks whatsoever."

In the weeks since Bush's decision, his administration has been exploring several scenarios to get Taiwan submarines, all of them problematic:

* Persuade the Europeans. In theory, at least, the German or Dutch government might reverse course and allow Taiwan to obtain their submarines, perhaps under pressure from the Bush administration. Yet that would require a major diplomatic campaign by the United States, one with a high risk of failure.

* All-American Sub. The United States might design and build a new diesel sub for Taiwan. But an American-designed sub would be considerably more expensive and take longer to build than obtaining the off-the-shelf European versions. Taiwan may balk at this more costly option.

* No Questions Asked. The U.S. government might simply contract with an American defense company to build the submarines and leave it up to the private company to obtain German or Dutch designs under the table. But doing that could be illegal if the European governments don't want the designs to go to Taiwan.

"My sense is that they [the Bush administration] thought that there was a chance the Dutch or the Germans might go along," said former U.S. Ambassador to China James Lilley, who served in the first Bush administration. "Or that maybe we could do it on our own. Or if that didn't work, maybe the problem would disappear."

"I have my doubts those submarines will ever be delivered," said Damon Bristow, an Asian defense specialist at the Royal United Services Institute in London.

The following account is based in part upon interviews with seven U.S. government officials who participated in the Bush administration's meetings regarding the submarines. The officials spoke to a reporter on condition they would not be identified by name.

Clandestine Submarines

In January, Bush and his new foreign policy team took office knowing that they confronted a major decision within months about arms sales to Taiwan.

Once a year, Taiwan military officials come to Washington with a shopping list of defense items, and each April, the U.S. government decides which weapons Taiwan will be allowed to buy. The United States is Taiwan's leading supporter and its most dependable arms supplier.

Taiwan's shopping list has included submarines since the 1970s. Year after year, the requests were rejected on grounds that submarines were offensive weapons and could fuel an arms race between Taiwan and China.

But after China launched military exercises and fired ballistic missiles into the waters near Taiwan on the eve of Taiwan's 1996 presidential election, the climate in Washington began to shift.

For the first time in decades, the Pentagon was forced to take seriously the prospect that it might have to help protect Taiwan against Chinese attack. Military leaders began to reexamine the old assumptions that China had neither the intent nor the ability to invade Taiwan.

A year ago, the Pentagon sent a survey team to study Taiwan's maritime defenses. The team concluded that Taiwan could use considerable help--including submarines.

Early this year, Chinese leaders seemed obsessed with the possibility that the new administration might sell destroyers equipped with the sophisticated Aegis radar system to Taiwan, a possible first step toward including Taiwan in an American missile defense system.

The issue of submarines largely escaped China's notice, to the relief of some Pentagon officials, who were eager to arrange for the sale of subs "in a clandestine manner, so as not to alert Beijing that this was an option," a Pentagon source said.

Then on April 1, just weeks before a decision on Taiwan's annual weapon request, China downed a U.S. reconnaissance plane, setting off Bush's first foreign policy crisis.

Amid the furor over the spy plane, approving the Aegis radar for Taiwan was sure to inflame America's tense relations with Beijing. But the administration also needed to show it was not caving in to China either. Increasingly, U.S. officials spoke of the need for a "robust" package of arms for Taiwan.

And so the administration settled on submarines as a middle ground. The Pentagon had said Taiwan needed them, and China hadn't raised the red flag about the subs as it had with the Aegis.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters that Bush had approved the submarines and other weapon systems because of "the threat that is posed to Taiwan by China."

As it turned out, it would have been easier for the U.S. to deliver on a promise to provide the high-tech Aegis systems than to provide a handful of diesel submarines.

The Aegis technology is owned by American companies. Not so with the diesel submarines. How would the United States arrange for Taiwan to obtain these eight submarines? The Bush administration didn't have a plan when the arms offer was presented to Taiwan in April. And it has no plan today.

Bad Information

The first and most obvious solution was to have Taiwan buy the submarines from Germany or the Netherlands.

But that approach has a stormy history. In 1981, Taiwan purchased two diesel submarines from the Netherlands. They remain, to this day, the only modern submarines Taiwan owns.

Furious, China retaliated by downgrading its diplomatic relations with the Netherlands. In 1984, the Dutch relented and signed a communique in which the government promised not to sell Taiwan any more weaponry. Germany now has a similar policy in effect.

Nonetheless, Bush administration officials still harbored hopes. They had been told by U.S. defense contractors that the German or Dutch companies might be able to turn around their governments.

According to one account that circulated through the administration, Dutch firms were claiming in Washington that the Dutch government couldn't control what they did.

Such claims were questionable. Schuwer, a senior Dutch diplomat, points out that RDM Holding Inc., Holland's main submarine builder, is 50% owned by the Dutch government.

"We [the Dutch government] are part-owner of the plant," Schuwer asserted in a recent interview. "So RDM can never give or sell the [submarine] plans to the United States because the Dutch government would have to give its consent, and the government won't do that."

Within days after Bush's decision, Germany and the Netherlands both reaffirmed in public that they would not permit their companies to build Taiwan's submarines.

Buy American

The second possible solution was to have Taiwan's submarines built in the United States.

Such an approach has weighty political support--above all from Sens. Trent Lott and Thad Cochran of Mississippi, both Republicans, whose state includes the Litton Ingalls Shipbuilding yards in Pascagoula.

"Ingalls is one of the best [shipbuilding firms] in the country," Cochran said. ". . . I think we can build [submarines] for Taiwan if they need them. I hope if they choose to buy some ships, I hope they'll buy them from us."

However, this option faces two obstacles: the resistance of the U.S. Navy and the lack of U.S. submarine blueprints.

In the past, the Navy has been a powerful adversary blocking any attempt to produce diesel submarines in the United States, even for export.

Navy representatives argued that if diesel subs were exported, important secrets--such as the quieting technology that makes U.S. subs hard to detect--might be leaked and become available around the world.

But critics say the Navy has historically been motivated by another factor too: an unwillingness to let American leaders compare diesel subs, which cost about $300 million apiece, with the nuclear submarines the Navy buys for about $2 billion each.

Nuclear submarines can travel farther and stay under water longer than diesel subs. For that reason, diesel submarines are useful primarily for coastal defense and other short-range tasks. The Navy no longer operates any diesel submarines; its last one, stationed at Subic Bay in the Philippines, was taken out of service two decades ago.

"Their [the Navy's] real fear is that a member of Congress will go aboard one of these diesel submarines and say, 'Hey, this costs only $300 million, we should have a couple of these' " instead of a pricier nuclear vessel, said Norman Polmar, an independent submarine analyst. "They are afraid Congress will force the Navy to buy some diesel submarines and take the money out of the nuclear program."

Any attempt to build a new all-American diesel sub would mean either pulling out old blueprints that date to the 1950s or, more probably, coming up with a new U.S. design.

"It would be more costly," said retired Adm. Michael McDevitt of the Center for Naval Analyses. "God knows, we know how to build submarines. We just haven't built that kind."

An American-designed submarine also would take much longer to produce. By the administration's estimates, Taiwan would have to wait eight to 10 years to get a submarine newly designed in the United States. Taiwan could get submarines in as little as five years if existing Dutch or German blueprints are used.

And so administration officials have increasingly concentrated on this hybrid possibility: that a U.S. company could build Taiwan's submarines with designs licensed from the Germans or Dutch.

Recently, the United States arranged for two diesel submarines to be built at the Pascagoula shipyard using a Dutch design. But these subs are for Egypt, a country that doesn't carry nearly as much diplomatic baggage as Taiwan. Neither Germany nor the Netherlands will allow its sub designs to be used to build vessels for Taiwan.

"Any applications for issuing licenses to allow submarine sales to Taiwan will be rejected based upon Holland's 'one China' policy," Dutch Foreign Minister Jozias van Aartsen told the Dutch parliament May 29. Van Aartsen said this policy applies to either "direct or indirect" submarine sales to Taiwan.

License to Steal?

That raises the third possible solution--that somehow an American company can find a roundabout way to build a diesel submarine based on the Dutch or German designs, even though these European governments haven't licensed the plans for use in Taiwan.

In other words, the U.S. government might simply ask an American company to build Taiwan a submarine and not ask any questions about where the design came from.

Getting Taiwan a submarine "is going to involve some sleight of hand," said Larry M. Wortzel, director of the Asian studies center at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington.

This option has been under serious consideration within the U.S. government.

"Maybe industry could just do this. We could leave it in their hands, and Berlin and Amsterdam wouldn't be involved at all," said a U.S. official who has taken part in the intragovernment discussions.

Under this scenario, an American company might get blueprints from a third country--that is, one of the many other nations that have bought German or Dutch diesel submarines.

In such a transaction, whoever gives those designs to the United States might not even know that the submarines would go to Taiwan. That way, said one U.S. official, the Germans or Dutch and the third country "would have plausible deniability."

Such an arrangement could prove to be of questionable legality.

In cases involving blueprints or other proprietary technology, "the options are that you own it, you license it or you steal it--and we have laws against stealing," noted Lucinda Low, a Washington lawyer who is a former chairman of the American Bar Assn.'s section on international law.

There are two U.S. companies likely to be involved in building submarines for Taiwan.

One is Northrop Grumman Corp., which recently purchased the Litton Ingalls shipyards in Pascagoula. The other is Lockheed Martin Corp., which sells advanced electronics systems used on submarines.

Both companies make clear they would be eager to work on submarines for Taiwan. Spokesmen for both companies emphasize, though, that the decision is in the hands of the Bush administration.

"Lockheed Martin would certainly welcome the opportunity to be the systems integrator for any diesel-powered submarine the Taiwan government may decide to buy," said Tom Jurkowsky, the company's vice president for communications.

"We stand prepared to help in any way we can," said Randy Belote, a spokesman for Northrop Grumman.

In a statement about the possibility of a Taiwan sale, Northrop Grumman pointedly noted that its Litton Ingalls shipyard "has, in the past, had business relationships with both the Dutch and German submarine designers."

When reminded that the Dutch and Germans have said again this year they will not let their designs be used for Taiwan, Northrop Grumman's Belote questioned whether the European opposition is the final word. "They [the Dutch and Germans] have said that," Belote answered. "But how serious is that?"

The Bush administration consulted with Northrop Grumman executives in the weeks leading up to its submarine decision, Belote said.

Asked whether Northrop Grumman might go along with a scenario in which the Dutch or German designs might be used without any license, Belote sidestepped the question: "I really don't know. . . . I can't imagine the U.S. government would get involved in a situation where it would bypass the will of another government."

Jurkowsky said this licensing issue won't arise with Lockheed Martin because it won't serve as the prime American contractor for Taiwan's submarines. It will merely supply the electronics systems put on submarines that some other company will build.

Some within the U.S. government make it clear they would be eager to help out American industry and to please Mississippi's two powerful senators, if they can.

"Whatever option [for building Taiwan's submarines] is decided upon, something's going to happen in Mississippi--I feel certain about that," quipped a Pentagon official.

Slow Going

Bush's decision has so far had one tangible result.

Bowing to the Bush administration's desire to help Taiwan and to the political and commercial pressures, the Navy has shifted ground. In public statements, the Navy now says it is willing to countenance the possibility that diesel submarines will be made in this country for export.

"While the U.S. Navy does not have a requirement for diesel submarines, we do not object to U.S. industry participation in the diesel submarine market," said Lt. Cmdr. Cate Mueller, a Navy spokeswoman.

The change is not just one of public relations. Inside the U.S. government too, the Navy has changed its tune.

"The Navy is on board now," asserted one surprised U.S. official a few weeks after Bush's announcement. "It seems a decision has been made to be supportive."

During the nearly three months since Bush approved the submarine sale, his administration has held a flurry of meetings to work out where and how they will be produced. But there is no solution yet.

"This is going very slowly," admitted one administration participant. "I can tell you the ball hasn't moved very far since April."

Already, there are signs Taiwan and some of its Washington supporters are becoming impatient.

"It seems apparent that while the offer [of submarines] was made in April, there's been insufficient follow-through," said Gerald Warburg, a lobbyist for Taiwan from Cassidy & Associates Inc.

The obstacles remain so formidable that some skeptics have wondered whether Bush's April announcement was a political ploy--an action that would dramatize American support for Taiwan but would never be put into effect.

"I hope this was not a cynical operation [by the Bush administration]. It's not clear how this whole thing is going to happen," said William S. Triplett, a conservative Republican Senate aide who identifies himself as a member of a "blue team" of congressional staff members who favor tougher policies toward China.

Those who favor a strong U.S. relationship with Beijing similarly voice doubt about the prospects for Taiwan's submarines.

"I just right now don't see how that's going to occur," said former U.S. Ambassador to China Joseph Prueher, who resigned in April.

"What we did was to please both Taipei and Beijing," asserted Eric McVadon, a former U.S. military attache in China. "We promised the submarines to Taipei, and Beijing knows they will never be built."

The Bush administration insists that such claims are off base--that Taiwan's submarines will eventually be delivered.

"We didn't intend for this to be a cosmic joke," said one State Department official. "We intend for this to happen--but how, that hasn't been decided yet."

-------- balkans

Guns secret set to haunt US
War crimes hunt turns heat on Croatia's ally

Peter Beaumont and Ed Vulliamy
Sunday July 8, 2001
The Observer
http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,518424,00.html

The Croatian government met in emergency session yesterday to decide how to respond to sealed indictments issued by the international war crimes tribunal this weekend against two former generals accused of murdering Serb civilians, threatening a new political crisis in a country still struggling to recover from war.

The indictments of the generals - for the massacres of hundreds of Serb civilians between 1993 and 1995 - is also threatening to lift the lid on one of the murkiest episodes of the Balkan wars: the secret arming of the Croats by the United States.

While neither Carla Del Ponte, the chief prosecutor of the Hague tribunal nor Croat Prime Minister Ivica Racan has disclosed the names of those charged, the likely suspects are Ante Gotovina, a commander during the 1995 offensive, and Rahim Ademi, who is of Kosovo Albanian origin. Both men have now retired.

Ademi is likely to be charged with responsibility for the killings of dozens of Serbs during a 1993 offensive in central Croatia against the Serb rebels.

While the crimes allegedly committed by Ademi predate the period of US military assistance, those allegedly committed by Gotovina fall squarely into it. They came during a time of stunning military successes for the Croats on the battlefields of the Serb occupied Krajina and eastern Slavonia, in which US personnel were heavily implicated. The history of US assistance to the nationalist regime of former President Franjo Tudjman dated back to March 1994 when the Croatian Defence Minister, Joko Susak, approached the Pentagon to ask for help with military training.

While the Pentagon turned down the request it directed the Croats to a Virginia-based military consultancy firm, Military Professional Resource Inc (MPRI), staffed by former generals whose main client was the US army. A contract licensed by the Pentagon was signed with the Croatian army.

While MPRI denied that its advisers were involved on the ground during the Croatian offensives, UN officials in the Balkans at the time refused to believe it.

At the same time that US advisers were training Croat soldiers for Operation Storm - the drive to retake Krajina - in how to conduct large-scale operations, both the American Defense Intelligence Service and the CIA were building up their strength at the US embassy in Zagreb. Part of that operation, said sources at the time, was to provide the intelligence for the Croat assaults.

In 1995 The Observer reported claims by United Nations officials that American intelligence and forces were deeply involved in Bosnia and Croatia, and that the US breached the UN arms embargo with flights carrying arms to both the Bosnian and Croat forces.

The new indictments have come as as the war crimes tribunal has accelerated its efforts to bring to justice all those it believes responsible for directing atrocities in the wars of the former Yugoslavia.

Last week Bosnian Serb Prime Minister Mladen Ivanic led a delegation to The Hague saying his government, which has hitherto refused all co-operation with the tribunal, was 'ready to extradite' the former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and General Ratko Mladic, now the Hague's most wanted fugitives. Ivanic was given short shrift from Del Ponte, who promptly lambasted the Bosnian Serbs, saying: 'At any given time, the authorities of the Bosnian Serb Republic know, or are in a position to know, the whereabouts of our most wanted fugitives.'

She added: 'It is a well-known fact that at any time, Ratko Mladic has been enjoying the protection of the Bosnian Serb military.'

The potential for embarrassment from the UN war crimes process is not limited to Del Ponte's accusations against the Bosnian Serbs, it also threatens to lay bare the conduct of the international community during a decade of Balkan crises.

Already Slobodan Milosevic has threatened to embarrass at his trial international negotiators he says 'rehabilitated him' in secret deals. And the hunt for Karadzic is threatening to expose French complicity in his evasion of arrest.

The pressure to deliver him falls not only on the Bosnian Serbs but on the French peacekeepers in whose zone he has moved freely for six years since the war's end. Indeed a last-minute French tip-off to Karadzic is alleged to have stymied an attempt by the British SAS to grab him in 1997.

The tribunal regards the capture of Karadzic and Mladic as crucial to the cases it is building, with some officials concerned that a trial of Karazdic and Mladic should precede that of Milosevic.

Karadzic is regarded as the crucial bridge connecting the captive Milosevic to three and a half years of bloodshed in Bosnia.

-------- cuba

Bush to Suspend Cuba Sanctions

New York Times
July 16, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/news/AP-Bush-Cuba.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush said Monday he intends to suspend for another six months a law that would let Americans sue people using U.S. property confiscated after Fidel Castro took power in 1959.

The legislation, enacted in 1996, gave the president authority to waive or enforce the provision at six-month intervals.

Former President Clinton exercised the waiver authority since the law was approved, and Bush's action follows the same pattern.

Bush was asked at a picture-taking session if he intended to issue the waiver. ``I do,'' he said simply, without elaboration. The deadline for him to act is Tuesday.

Bush's decision suspends for six more months the Title III provision in the 1996 Helms-Burton law that allows any American whose property was seized in Cuba after Castro took power in 1959 to sue anyone who uses the property.

Letting that provision take effect would have angered European allies whose citizens and companies could face lawsuits.

Bush announced his decision in advance of a trip to Europe later this week.

Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and an author of the law, had been sharply critical of Clinton's past use of the waivers.

Many analysts were looking to Bush's move to see if it signaled any change in the U.S. stance toward Cuba.

The State Department lists 5,911 U.S. firms and citizens whose property was nationalized without compensation by the Cuban government, mostly in the 1960s.

-------- drug war

California offers rehab, not jail

July 16, 2001
By Thomas D. Elias
SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010716-666035.htm

LOS ANGELES -- About 50,000 or more nonviolent drug offenders will not be going to jail every year as a result of a voters' initiative Californians passed last fall.

Proposition 36 took effect July 1, amid warnings from prosecutors and drug-treatment programs that the nation's largest state doesn't have sufficient facilities or personnel to handle a flood of new drug rehabilitation patients who would formerly have done prison time for their offenses.

Meanwhile, the mega-millionaire backers who funded the campaign for Proposition 36 are not deterred: They are pushing on with drives for similar laws in several other states. The money men -- New York financier George Soros, Cleveland insurance mogul Peter Lewis and University of Phoenix founder John Sperling -- spent more than $3.5 million pushing Proposition 36. Before that, they spent more than $5 million backing California's 1996 Proposition 215, which has led to enormous confusion by attempting to legalize medical marijuana. They plan to spend millions more to repeat their success in Florida, Michigan and Ohio.

In each state, says campaign manager Bill Zimmerman, the Santa Monica consultant who ran the Proposition 36 campaign in California, the rehab-not-prison propositions led by at least 20 points in recent private polls.

"We're going to rub this in the noses of Congress and the administration," said Mr. Sperling. "The American people realize the drug war is a failure and something has to be done about it. We're going to keep going to the initiative process until the politicians start listening."

Opponents claim the three are simply furthering their personal agendas.

"It's dangerous for our democracy when very wealthy people from out of state can put measures on the ballot, run very misleading ads and succeed in getting the laws changed," said Calvina Fay, executive director of Drug-Free America Foundation, a Florida group that helped fight the California proposition.

So far, it appears the toughest battle over next year's round of drug-treatment propositions may come in Florida, where Republican Gov. Jeb Bush opposes the measure and it is likely potential Democratic opponent Janet Reno, the former attorney general, also will.

Mr. Bush's drug policy director, James McDonough, has already begun campaigning against his state's version of the measure, calling it "a hoax on the citizens of Florida."

While campaigns take shape elsewhere, the California justice system may soon find itself flooded with convicted offenders who cannot go to prison, but can't find spots in accredited residential rehab programs, either. Many will likely end up either as outpatients or simply on probation.

The first prominent figure to exploit this situation is former Oakland Raider quarterback Todd Marinovich, now the signal caller of the Los Angeles Avengers arena football team. Mr. Marinovich on Monday requested that a judge convict him of felony heroin possession.

Exact terms of his rehab won't be determined until August.

Previously, he had fought the charges in an effort to avoid jail time.

"There are a lot of profound problems," said Bob Mimura, director of the Criminal Justice Coordinating Committee of Los Angeles County. His county has nowhere near enough treatment centers or counseling centers to handle the estimated 20,000 nonviolent offenders who will emerge from the local court system this year.

"I hate to say the sky is falling, but there are going to be problems, big problems," he said.

"The biggest problem is that the number of people involved in Proposition 36 as defendants was grossly underestimated and the money is just not going to be there," said Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael Tynan.

State officials earmarked at least $175 million for handling Proposition 36 cases, with much of the money going for additional courtrooms, prosecutors and public defenders.

That's not enough and it may be at least partially misdirected, warn some administrators.

They note that even before Proposition 36 passed, California was severely short of drug counselors. They also warn that the state has no drug testing system in place for handling urine samples from convicted offenders in nonresidential rehab programs.

State Senate President John Burton, San Francisco Democrat, says legislators will shortly pass a bill to provide as much as $18 million for testing, but no one knows when that money will arrive or how soon a testing system will be in place.

Meanwhile, an independent study last week concluded that California's largest counties are not ready for the new treatment-first sentencing regimen.

The Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy Foundation said counties like San Diego, San Bernardino and Sacramento are refusing to budget enough money for rehabilitation.

"They have designed plans that are likely to fail," said the report. "In these places, there is no commitment to quality treatment."

But San Bernardino County, for one, insists it has a good plan in place.

"The people who wrote this don't think the courts or law enforcement should be involved in the drug problem anymore," said county spokesman David Wert. "But we have found that treatment is only successful if defendants know they will face legal consequences if they don't cooperate."

None of this fazes the original financial backers of Proposition 36. "California will work out the rough spots, and then we'll see less recidivism due to the treatment," said a spokesman for Mr. Zimmerman. "This is necessary change that will eventually come everywhere."

--------

Legal weed? Maybe if they donīt inhale

July 16, 2001
By Valerie Richardson
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010716-49813675.htm

DENVER - In Colorado, it's now legal to use marijuana for some medicinal purposes. Of course, if you do so, you could be arrested.

State law allows Coloradans suffering from glaucoma and other diseases to possess 2 ounces of marijuana or six plants. If federal authorities find them, however, they'll be destroyed.

Such are the mixed signals being sent in Colorado and eight other states where medical marijuana has been sort of legalized. The reason for the confusion is that while those states have declared marijuana legal under specific medical conditions, the federal government still regards it as a controlled substance, the possession of which is punishable by fines, prison or both.

Since the Supreme Court ruling in May that struck down a California effort to distribute medical marijuana, the nine states have been trying to decide whether their laws are still valid. The consensus is that, yes, states may register patients as authorized medical-marijuana users but, no, they cannot assist them in obtaining the drug.

So states like Colorado are moving forward with laws that allow patients with certain conditions to register with the state as licensed medical-marijuana users. After that, however, the message to patients and doctors is: Partake at your own risk.

"For many people, including my boss, there are so many loopholes that you have to scratch your head and say, 'Why? What good is this doing?' It's almost like a feel-good law," said Ken Lane, Colorado deputy district attorney.

In Colorado, voters approved a medical-marijuana ballot measure in November that took effect June 1. The day before, a clearly exasperated Colorado Gov. Bill Owens and Attorney General Ken Salazar issued a statement saying that they would uphold the medical-marijuana law as "the will of the majority," but warned that any doctor who recommends it to patients could face federal prosecution.

"On balance, the court's ruling appears to leave at least some room for Colorado to implement its marijuana program - as absurd and wasteful as that result may be," said the joint statement.

The governor and attorney general also sent letters to the U.S. attorney for Colorado, encouraging the "criminal prosecution of anyone who attempts to use this state program to circumvent federal anti-drug laws," a move that left medical-marijuana advocates sputtering with outrage.

"Colorado's governor and attorney general have been trying to scare everyone," said Keith Stroup, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

So far, medical-marijuana laws have been a largely Western phenomenon. California and Arizona approved the nation's first medical-marijuana laws in 1996, followed by Alaska, Oregon and Washington in 1998. A year later, Maine became the first and only Eastern state to pass such a law. Last year, Colorado and Nevada voters approved medical-marijuana statutes by voter initiative, while Hawaii did the same via the legislature.

Under the Colorado law, which mirrors the Oregon statute, a patient must get a letter from a doctor certifying that he has glaucoma, AIDS or one of the other medical conditions listed under the statute. The patient can then send in an application for a medical-marijuana registration card with a processing fee of $140.

With that card, a patient is permitted under state law to possess 2 ounces of marijuana or six plants, three of which may be flowering. So far, the state Department of Health and the Environment has processed 28 applications for identification cards out of 200 requests for applications, according to state registrar of vital records Carol Garrett.

But Dr. Frank Sargent, a Denver urologist who opposed the initiative, predicts that most physicians will be too leery of the federal consequences to take advantage of the new state law.

"Physicians don't want to face the potential of losing their licenses," Dr. Sargent said. "Say one of your patients took marijuana and then got into a car accident. Where would that end up? Doctors are going to say, 'Hey, we're going to think twice about getting involved in a possible lawsuit.'"

-------- india / pakistan

India, Pakistan Can't Reach Deal
Talks Appeared to Have Fatally Snagged on the Sensitive Issue of Kashmir

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, July 16, 2001; 6:05 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3703-2001Jul16?language=printer

AGRA, India, July 16 - Talks between the leaders of India and Pakistan collapsed tonight in a tense and confusing end to two days of meetings that both leaders had said they hoped would result in reduced tensions between the longtime neighboring adversaries and nuclear rivals.

The negotiations between Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, appeared to have fatally snagged on the sensitive issue of Kashmir, the turbulent Himalayan border region that is claimed by both countries.

No joint agreement was signed by the two leaders, as had been widely expected here, and neither Vajpayee nor Musharraf issued any statements. The Pakistani leader rushed to the airport at midnight in a heavily guarded convoy after holding what was described as a private farewell meeting with Vajpayee that lasted an hour.

Aides to Musharraf said tonight that three drafts of a joint statement had been approved by both sides but vetoed by Vajpayee's cabinet, which is required to approve any international pact. But Indian sources said Indian officials had been angered by public comments Musharraf made this morning, expressing his exasperation that the two sides could not agree on how to characterize the dispute over Kashmir.

"I am disappointed to inform you that although the . . . beginning of a journey has taken place, the destination of an agreed joint statement has not been reached," Nirupama Rao, the Indian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, told journalists shortly after Musharraf left for Pakistan. She declined to give any details of why the talks had collapsed.

A Pakistani spokesman, reached by mobile telephone as Musharraf's convoy raced to the airport, said, "We are going back disappointed, but there is always hope." He noted that Vajpayee had accepted Musharraf's invitation Sunday to visit Pakistan, but added that his delegation had not agreed "to their own revised draft" of a prepared joint statement.

The breakdown of the talks appeared likely to result in increased violence in Indian Kashmir, where Pakistani-backed separatists have been fighting Indian troops since 1989. Insurgent attacks have already increased in the past week, with more than 80 people killed. This weekend, guerrilla suicide squads attacked two army posts, and firing was reported across the militarized Line of Control that separates the Indian and Pakistani portions of Kashmir.

[In Islamabad, Pakistan's capital, leaders of militant groups fighting Indian rule in Kashmir responded to the breakdown in talks by saying armed struggle was the only way left to settle the 53-year-old Kashmir dispute, the Reuters news agency reported. "Our armed struggle will continue as long as Indian forces are in Kashmir," said Sayed Salahuddin, commander of the Hizbul Mujahideen group. Another militant group, Harkat-ul Mujahideen, said in a statement that Kashmir would now only be "liberated" through jihad holy war.]

According to official Pakistani sources here, a draft agreement prepared today after Musharraf and Vajpayee met repeatedly over two days said that "the settlement of Kashmir will pave the way to normalized relations" between the two countries. The sources said it also called for annual summits between the two leaders and bi-annual meetings between their aides.

Earlier in the day, sources said the talks had bogged down over several aspects of the Kashmir issue: whether India would agree to characterize it as a "dispute," as Pakistan has insisted, and whether Pakistan would agree to control "cross-border terrorism," as India calls Pakistan's support for the Kashmir insurgents.

Nevertheless, sources close to both delegations said repeatedly during the day that a joint statement was close to being agreed upon, and Musharraf canceled his plans to travel to a Muslim shrine in the afternoon so that he could continue the talks.

At 7 p.m., the talks were said to have concluded, and officials said a joint statement would be ready soon. But by 11 p.m., there was still no word, and officials said Musharraf had gone to pay a farewell call on Vajpayee at his hotel. The meeting lasted an hour, while several hundred journalists outside the gate clamored for information.

After Musharraf's convoy left for the airport and the Indian spokeswoman gave her statement in an Agra hotel, she was reportedly harassed and shoved by a group of angry Pakistani journalists who accused Indian officials of holding Musharraf "hostage" in Vajpayee's hotel and not allowing him to speak to them.

But earlier today, the Pakistani general spoke at length to a group of Indian journalists, making a number of comments that reportedly angered Indian officials. His remarks were broadcast almost immediately on Indian TV, and shortly afterward were shown on Pakistani TV.

Musharraf expressed frustration that the two sides could not agree on what to call the Kashmir dispute, saying, "If we can't even agree that this is a dispute, how can we move forward?"

He also said that if India insisted he "ignore" the Kashmir issue, he might as well move to New Delhi and live in the house where he was born. Musharraf, who moved to Pakistan with his family as a young child, was given a warm welcome to his birthplace Saturday.

Although he wore civilian clothes during his visit to India, Musharraf said this morning that he was a soldier who had fought in two wars against India and that Pakistanis had suffered "hurts" at Indian hands in the past. He also compared the Kashmir "freedom struggle" to the popular uprising by Palestinians.

The collapse of the talks, and the tense atmosphere that prevailed here tonight, stood in stark contrast to the cordial mood and comments that both Musharraf and Vajpayee had made earlier in the summit. In a statesmanlike dinner speech Saturday, Musharraf spoke of the need to bury the past and work together with India for friendly relations in the future.

In turn, Vajpayee welcomed the Pakistani delegation with magnanimous comments that stressed his eagerness to address the Kashmir problem and "move forward," building a "durable road map" for future bilateral relations. "We cannot deny there are vast differences between us," he said in the statement, which was released today. "We are willing to address those differences and move forward."

----

Pakistan's Leader Hopeful on Relations

New York Times
July 16, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-India-Pakistan-Musharraf.html?searchpv=aponline

NEW DELHI, India (AP) -- in an unusual news conference Monday, Pakistan's president expressed sorrow over soldiers' deaths, pain at being mistrusted and hope that Indians and Pakistanis can stop killing each other,.

Gen. Pervez Musharraf's comments to Indian journalists illustrated the many differences between the two nations.

Before starting a third day of meetings with Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the Pakistani leader laid out for the Indian public his steps for resolving 53 years of conflict and war over Kashmir, the Himalayan region claimed by both nations.

He also defended his seizure of power in Pakistan in a 1999 coup, saying his country didn't need him at the helm but needed to be rid of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the man he ousted.

``I didn't take over, I was thrust into this position because of my predecessor,'' Musharraf said. ``I was not required for Pakistan, but his going was required for the (good of) the people of Pakistan.''

With Indians and Pakistanis watching by television, Musharraf refused to respond to the main Indian accusation against him.

``There have been hurts and pains caused by both sides,'' he said, dodging the question of whether he had masterminded an intrusion into Indian-held Kashmir while Vajpayee and Sharif were engaged in the last summit between the two nations, in February 1999.

He called on Indians to imagine ``how much hurt was caused'' when rebels allegedly trained in India fought in a war that led to the 1971 creation of Bangladesh out of a divided Pakistan. He also noted India's ``incursion'' into the icy peaks of the Siachen region in 1984.

``It would be in fitness to forget the past and move forward, with the understanding that all these pains and hurts have been caused through Kashmir,'' said Musharraf.

When an editor asked Musharraf about Indians' mistrust of him, he paused several times in his reply, indicating he was insulted.

``In our culture, in the culture of India and Pakistan, we talk to our guest with respect,'' Musharraf said. ``It really hurt me.''

Musharraf said the meeting is an important step toward resolution of the two nations' problems. He repeatedly complimented Vajpayee's ``statesmanship'' for inviting him to the talks, the first in two years.

After the 1999 incursion in Kashmir led to an 11-week conflict that the Indian's call the Kargil War, Vajpayee had sworn never to speak to Musharraf.

``I certainly come here with this idea that we need to convert our relations, turn the corner,'' Musharraf said. ``We need to certainly improve our relations for the sake of the region.

India has insisted that Kashmir, which has ignited two of the three wars between the nuclear rivals, must be discussed inside a wider dialogue.

Musharraf, a decorated soldier who has fought in two wars with India, said he was ``sorry'' when he heard that an Indian father believed his son was still being held as a war prisoner since the two countries' last war in 1971.

``I'm a soldier and can sympathize with parents whose sons have died,'' Musharraf said. He said Pakistan would be ``crazy'' to be holding any war prisoner so long, and promised to go back and look into the matter personally.

--------

Leaders of India, Pakistan Meet Again

New York Times
July 16, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-India-Pakistan.html?searchpv=aponline

AGRA, India (AP) -- The leader of Pakistan insisted Monday that the disputed Himalayan province of Kashmir must be resolved before it could fully restore relations with nuclear rival India.

Before his second day of formal talks with Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf surprised journalists with a long statement on Kashmir -- where Muslim guerrillas are fighting for independence -- and dreams of better ties with his longtime South Asian foe.

``The public should be told that the main issue between Pakistan and India is Kashmir,'' Musharraf told senior editors from the Indian media. ``I have never said that I would not talk on other issues. All I have said is that Kashmir is the main issue ... and I will carry on saying it because this is what we have killed each other for.''

The 57-year-old military ruler, who fought in two wars against India, said: ``I have fought the two wars. I know.''

Even as he spoke, the violence in Kashmir continued. Fourteen people were killed in confrontations between soldiers and militants on Monday, raising the death toll during the three-day summit to 72.

Rebels had threatened to step up attacks in Kashmir during the summit, which they oppose, and the casualty figures were higher than normal.

For the first time in six months, Indian and Pakistani forces also fired at one another across the border of Kashmir on Saturday and Sunday.

The two countries and nuclear rivals -- India and Pakistan conducted nuclear tests in 1998, provoking U.S. sanctions -- are holding their first summit in two years. After the first round on Sunday, Indian officials insisted the wide-ranging talks were ``frank and constructive.''

``A number of issues were thrashed out. These included the issue of nuclear risk reduction,'' said Sushma Swaraj, India's information minister. She said the two touched on trade, cross-border terrorism and the return of Indian war prisoners. Kashmir has ignited two of their three wars -- the last in 1971.

Pakistan denies holding any Indian war prisoners, but Musharraf told the editors he would ``personally look into it,'' aiming to set the matter to rest.

Another Indian official said that confidence-building measures to prevent an accident with nuclear weapons and to build a proposed natural gas pipeline between Iran and India, via Pakistan, were also discussed.

But Musharraf's comments Monday indicated otherwise.

``I keep talking about Kashmir, and you keep talking about cross-border terrorism and confidence-building measures,'' or CBMs, Musharraf told the Indian editors. ``Is a CBM possible if you are shooting across the border, killing each other?

``I can't live in this make-believe world,'' he added.

Still, Musharraf appeared hopeful that the stage had been set for improved relations and continued dialogue.

``I personally feel that at this stage, we shouldn't get bogged down in solutions,'' Musharraf said. ``Step one was the initiation of dialogue, and I would like to give all the credit to Prime Minister Vajpayee for his statesmanship.''

Acceptance of Kashmir as the No. 1 issue dividing the two countries, he said, was step two.

``Certain things have to be ironed out and I believe they can be ironed out by me and the prime minister,'' he said. ``I am an optimist. Let's hope for the best.''

On Sunday, with the white marble domes of the Taj Mahal a symbolic backdrop to their landmark summit, Vajpayee accepted an invitation by Musharraf to visit Islamabad.

The two leaders resumed talks Monday morning.

In the afternoon, Musharraf and his wife, Sehba, were scheduled to fly to Ajmer to visit the shrine of a Sufi saint before heading home.

Both leaders must appease hard-liners at home, and neither can appear to give away too much. Vajpayee heads up a powerful Hindu nationalist party that is part of his governing coalition, while Musharraf needs the backing of Pakistan's army to retain power.

In a possible show of goodwill, India pulled out 20,000 troops from Kashmir ahead of the summit, according to media reports. A defense ministry spokesman refused to confirm or deny the report in the Indian Express daily newspaper on Sunday.

India has between 300,000 and 600,000 forces in the northern state of Jammu-Kashmir along the Pakistan border.

Since Muslim Pakistan was carved out of Hindu-majority India following independence from Britain, both have claimed the entire Jammu-Kashmir region. A cease-fire line from the 1971 war divides it between them, with two-thirds in India and the remainder under Pakistan's control.

India accuses Pakistan of arming and aiding Islamic militants who have fought since 1989 for an independent Kashmir or merger with Pakistan. Islamabad says it gives only moral support. As many as 60,000 people have died.

-------- iran

Japan snubs U.S. in deal with Iran
Plans for huge oil field fly in face of ineffective sanctions

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=23660

Editor's note: In partnership with Stratfor, the global intelligence company, WorldNetDaily publishes daily updates on international affairs provided by the respected private research and analysis firm. Look for fresh updates each afternoon, Monday through Friday. In addition, WorldNetDaily invites you to consider STRATFOR membership, entitling you to a wealth of international intelligence reports usually available only to top executives, scholars, academic institutions and press agencies.

Japan recently signed a letter of intent to develop a 26 billion barrel oil field in Iran, landing a fatal blow to the U.S. government's Iran and Libya Sanctions Act of 1996. Favorable economic and political considerations will lead Washington to begin changing its policies toward Iran within the next few years.

Japanese Trade Minister Takeo Hiranuma announced on June 8 his country will begin a $10 million seismic study on Iran's 26 billion barrel Azadegan oil field. The study will lead to enormous Japanese investment in Iran and sound the death knell for the U.S. government's Iran and Libya Sanctions Act.

"Japan is not affected by U.S. pressure,'' Hiranuma told reporters during a signing ceremony in Tehran, the Associated Press reported.

Japan's decision, following similar violations of the act by Asian and European countries, did not bring about any retaliation from the U.S. government. The muted response indicates Washington realizes the sanctions have outlived their usefulness and are only harming U.S. interests.

Following a brief renewal, the act, which seeks to penalize non-U.S. energy firms that invest more than $20 million in Iran's petroleum sector, will likely be ended after two years, allowing Washington to begin the process of normalizing ties with Iran and letting U.S. companies back into the country.

The sanctions act, which former U.S. President Bill Clinton signed into law, came on top of a series of laws and executive orders barring U.S. firms from investing in Iran. The 1996 sanctions immediately drew criticism from every major economic power, all charging that the act couldn't be applied because it was intended to affect events beyond America's shores.

As the years have passed, fear of U.S. retribution has slowly evaporated, leaving the sanctions act virtually without merit. The first major violation occurred in 1997, when France's Total, now TotalFinaElf, Malaysia's Petronas and Russia's Gazprom jumped into a $2 billion natural gas project. Italy's ENI just last week penned a $1 billion deal to develop Iran's Darkhovin oil field. Other companies are currently negotiating contracts or are involved in smaller deals.

Washington has yet to enact sanctions on any company investing in Iran. Now Japan, one of America's closest allies, feels confident enough to go solo in developing the largest field in Iran.

U.S. companies increasingly oppose the sanctions over losing a number of lucrative deals. Despite helping analyze the first round of seismic information from Azadegan - something that raised a number of eyebrows at the U.S. Treasury Department - Conoco is missing out on Azadegan's projected $100 billion in revenues, according to Bloomberg News.

The act is even harming the investments of U.S. firms beyond Iran. ExxonMobil lost its bid to manage the massive Kashagan oil project in the Caspian Sea because the sanctions prevented an Iranian export route, the most economically viable option. Therefore, ExxonMobil has undertaken a furious lobbying effort to convince the Bush administration to end the sanctions act.

U.S. firms would also love to delve into Iran's natural gas deposits, the most lucrative of which is the 8 trillion cubic meter South Pars field. All told, Iran holds 9 percent of the world's oil and 15 percent of its natural gas.

There are political as well as economic reasons to re-engage Iran. Despite moves toward "smart sanctions" that would allow more civilian goods into Iraq, Washington is seeking tighter controls on arms and military transfers to Baghdad. Iran, being the largest regional power, is the logical partner to help contain Iraq.

Despite the reasons in favor of lifting the sanctions, such an action is not likely in the short term. Domestic anger with Iran continues over the 1979 embassy seizure and the regime's support of the Hezbollah terrorist group.

And U.S. special interests such as the Israeli lobby and isolationist politicians such as Sen. Jesse Helms continue to maintain that the Iran-Libya sanctions act is the bedrock of American foreign policy in the Middle East.

Despite the opposition, all of the international economic and political factors argue for the act's dissolution. Most importantly, in Washington there are now individuals in power who quietly support such a decision.

Both U.S. President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are former oil industry executives who are sympathetic to the concerns of energy companies. Cheney even lobbied the Clinton administration to suspend the sanctions act during his term as CEO of Halliburton.

Bush has indicated his position by floating the idea of renewing the act for two years instead of its standard five. The likely elimination of the Iran-Libya sanctions act after that term will set the stage for an end to the measures preventing U.S. companies from doing business in Iran, leading to an eventual rapprochement between the two countries.

-------- iraq

U.S. Reassures Iraqi Kurds on Protection From Baghdad

New York Times
July 16, 2001
By THOM SHANKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/16/international/middleeast/16IRAQ.html

WASHINGTON, July 15 - The Pentagon has assured Iraqi opposition leaders that it will not let Saddam Hussein use Iraqi airspace to attack the Kurds or to threaten Baghdad's neighbors, a Defense Department official said.

But a review of Iraqi policy is still under way, officials said, and the administration might decide that the two no-flight zones over southern and northern Iraq could be enforced with fewer jet-fighter patrols.

President Bush ordered the review of American strategy to isolate and disarm Iraq, a strategy that includes economic sanctions and support of opposition groups.

The review of the no-flight zone policy was driven by escalating dangers to American and British pilots. Iraqi air defense stations are increasingly skilled at zeroing in on the patrols and Pentagon officials wanted to measure the threat against the benefits of continuing the low-grade war.

Senior Pentagon officials met on Friday with four members of the Iraqi National Congress, an opposition group based in London, to discuss the no-flight policy.

"We regard the no-fly policy as extremely important," Sharif Ali bin al-Hussein, a member of the leadership council of the Iraqi National Congress, said in an interview. Sharif Ali and a Pentagon official said that the Iraqis were reassured that the policy would be maintained but the methods may be revised.

"The principle of maintaining the no-flight zones is not in question," said an administration official. "The question is how you do that: the number of flights; how you respond; rules of engagement. Those are still being reviewed. And they are the guts of the issue."

Military commanders have listed four proposals. One would leave the operation unchanged. Another would eliminate enforcement of the no- flight zones entirely - which is not under consideration. Another proposal would step up American and British attacks on Iraqi radars and antiaircraft positions. The fourth proposal would sharply reduce patrols.

The opposition leaders also lobbied this week for an increase in financial assistance for the Iraqi National Congress from Washington.

Sharif Ali said his organization wants to gather information and make contact with opposition forces within Iraq - but would mount no armed attacks to topple Mr. Hussein.

-------- israel

Bomb Explodes Near Stadium

WORLD In Brief
Monday, July 16, 2001; Page A12
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A1453-2001Jul15?language=printer

JERUSALEM -- Two Palestinians were killed in an explosion in Jerusalem early today while preparing a bomb near a stadium where Israel's Maccabiah Games are scheduled to open later in the day, police said.

The explosion occurred about a half mile from West Jerusalem's Teddy Stadium, where the 16th Maccabiah Games, the Jewish Olympics, are to open in a nighttime ceremony attended by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Israel has mounted a heavy security operation for the Games, which were almost canceled after numerous Jewish foreign delegations said a Palestinian uprising, now in its 10th month, had frightened away many athletes.

Meanwhile, Israeli tanks moved into the West Bank town of Hebron from three directions destroying Palestinian police posts during a fierce exchange of fire, witnesses said.

The Israeli military said soldiers returned Palestinian fire from several locations in Hebron. The tanks destroyed five posts belonging to Force 17, an elite unit of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's police. Palestinian officials said nine people were wounded, none seriously.

Yesterday, Israel's cabinet approved a proposal to build new communities near the Gaza Strip on territory that the previous government had considered giving to the Palestinians in a land-swap deal, an official said. The decision drew criticism from the Israeli opposition and environmental groups.

-------- nato

EU tells Turkey it can't hold up defense plan

USA TODAY
07/16/2001 - Updated 11:08 PM ET
The Associated Press
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001/07/17/turkey.htm

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - The European Union on Monday warned it would not allow Turkey to permanently block its plans to set up an EU defense force that would use NATO's military facilities.

"The foreign and security policy of the European Union cannot be dependent on an outside country," said Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel, who spoke for the 15-nation bloc after a meeting.

"We hope Turkey will understand that the European Union will not give in to such pressure."

A member of NATO, but not the EU, Turkey has been holding up EU plans to set up a 60,000 person rapid reaction force by refusing to allow the proposed force automatic access to NATO's planning facilities and other assets such as intelligence, communications and transport.

Turkey maintains it should have say over how and when the European Union can use NATO assets.

European Union officials warned that the impasse could harm Turkey's ambitions to open membership negotiations in an effort to join the European bloc in the future.

Last month, Germany said European help to Turkey's troubled economy could also be dependent on progress on the NATO issue.

The EU hopes to field the force by 2003 for use in peacekeeping or humanitarian crises in which NATO does not want to get involved. To avoid expensive duplication, the Europeans want to use NATO facilities.

Turkey is adamant that it must have a strong voice in any European Union decision to mount a military operation using NATO assets, or any operation that would affect what Turkey considers its sphere of interest.

Negotiations have been under way since last year. Because NATO operates by consensus, Turkey has an effective veto over any decision. European officials have said that the Turkish government has come close to an understanding, but the country's powerful military continues oppose a settlement.

The EU agreed in 1999 that Turkey could be considered a candidate for membership, but unlike Cyprus, Malta and 10 eastern European nations, it has not opened membership talks.

The EU wants to see more progress on human rights and a willingness to help end the division of Cyprus, where Turkey troops help support a breakaway government in the north.

-------- puerto rico

Vieques health risks questioned

July 16, 2001
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010716-20037832.htm

A series of studies this year cast doubt on charges that the Navy's practice bombing on Vieques island causes health problems for residents.

The studies concluded that the Puerto Rican island's water supply was not contaminated by the live-fire exercises, nor were there ill-health effects from the use of depleted uranium ammunition in 1999. Meanwhile, the U.S. Public Health Service continues to study cancer rates on Vieques, after a limited analysis found a slightly higher rate among the island's 9,000 residents compared with Puerto Rico's 3.8 million citizens.

Congressional proponents of keeping the range open are citing the studies to refute Democratic Party claims that the 60-year-old range poses a health hazard to the residents of Vieques.

On the other hand, range opponents cite homegrown studies in Puerto Rico that concluded the bombing practices cause a variety of health problems.

President Bush last month overruled the Navy brass and handed a victory to protesters by deciding that the Navy must leave the island by May 2003. His policy shift leaves in limbo a federal law that mandates a Nov. 6 referendum that would allow Vieques' 6,400 registered voters to decide whether to keep or evict the Navy.

Mr. Bush wants the law repealed, but range backers such as Sen. James M. Inhofe, Oklahoma Republican, vow to retain the legislation. Mr. Inhofe and Navy admirals view Vieques as a crucial training ground for Atlantic Fleet carrier battle groups before they leave on dangerous deployments to the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf.

Liberal Democrats have led the protests to kick the Navy out. Despite Mr. Bush's compromise, Democratic Party Chairman Terry McAuliffe issued a statement last week linking the range to health problems.

"Many experts believe that the military exercises that take place on Vieques may be the reason that the island's residents suffer from higher illness and mortality rates than the rest of Puerto Rico," Mr. McAuliffe said. "The bombing of Vieques has gone on too long and done too much damage. The time for it to end is now, and the Democratic Party will not stop until it does."

Studies to date have looked at four issues:

Water contamination. The U.S. Public Health Service's Agency for Toxic Substance and Disease Registry (ATSDR) tested the island's public drinking water supply and private wells.

"The public drinking water supply is not being impacted by the bombing range activities and is safe to drink," the agency reported.

The agency also found that water from virtually all wells was safe. The small exception was one private well that contained high levels of nitrates. The contamination, the report said, "is probably a result of agricultural or septic systems in the area," and not from the bombing range.

Radiation. Some protesters claim that the Navy's one-time use of depleted uranium anti-armor rounds from an attack jet resulted in higher than normal levels of radiation.

But a Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) investigation found that "the levels of radiation detected in soil, vegetation and water by the NRC investigators are consistent with normal radiation background levels and do not represent a public health hazard."

Heart disease. Range critics claimed the noise from periodic bombings caused thickening of the heart muscle, or vibroacoustic disease. A local Puerto Rican medical school did a study that backed that claim.

But a follow-up study by the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health and School of Medicine rebutted those findings.

"Within the constraints of the data available, no inference can be made as to the role of noise from naval gunfire in producing echocardiographic abnormalities," the university concluded.

* Cancer rates. Based only on raw data complied by the Puerto Rican government's cancer registry, Vieques has a slightly higher rate of the disease per 100,000 people per year than Puerto Rico's average.

But Bill Johnson, legislative director for Rep. James V. Hansen, Utah Republican, says no conclusion can be drawn from that fact. He said the data compare the cancer rate of a 9,000-person island with rates for the entire 3.8 million-person territory, a process that can produce skewed numbers.

The raw data also show that both the Puerto Rican and Vieques cancer rates are well below the U.S. average.

The U.S. Public Health Service is now reviewing the information and will file a report later this summer.

-------- u.n.

US Committee Told Congo Needs 100,000 Troops
UN Integrated Regional Information Network

July 16, 2001
http://allafrica.com/stories/200107160325.html

The number of international troops needed for effective peacekeeping in Africa is much larger than anything being considered now, the US House of Representatives' Subcommittee on Africa was told on Thursday. "A serious mission in Congo could easily require 100,000 troops itself," Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution was quoted as saying. Studies of past counterinsurgency efforts indicate that in "difficult missions", military intervention requires at least several troops, "and possibly even 10 or more for every 1,000 members of a country's civilian population," O'Hanlon said during a hearing on the African Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI). Using this criterion, a "tenfold expansion" of the ACRI was needed, according to O'Hanlon. "Possible operations in Angola and Sudan, to say nothing of a more effective mission in Sierra Leone, could push the total up further. Counting ongoing missions as well as hypothetical ones, total deployed troops could again quite easily reach 200,000."

The subcommittee was convened by its chairman, congressman Ed Royce of California, to seek "clarification" of press accounts suggesting that the Bush Administration wants to move away from ACRI, which has trained about 8,000 soldiers from eight African nations. "This would be an inexplicable pullback," said Royce. "Let's stay engaged with the realisation that mistakes may be made."

[O'Hanlon's complete report can be found at http://www.brook.edu/views/testimony/ohanlon/20010712.htm]

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

Focusing on Military Issues

By Paul Volpe
Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, July 16, 2001; 9:29 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3106-2001Jul16?language=printer

Editorial pages around the nation today take up the two main defense priorities of the Bush administration: Military reform and national missile defense.

The Houston Chronicle lauds the comprehensive military review led by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "Rumsfeld might not reach the correct conclusions on how to reform the military, but the task is necessary, and the secretary deserves more support from the Pentagon brass and members of Congress than he has received to date." • Guns and Pork (The Houston Chronicle, July 16, 2001)

Newsday applauds the Pentagon's decision to scrap its outdated "two-war strategy" but warns that military reform still faces challenges, primarily a lack of funding. "...[T]o the extent that Rumsfeld believes the new policy can save enough money to pay for a very expensive missile defense system he is fooling himself. . . ." • Scrapping U.S.'s Two-War Strategy is Prudent, But... (Newsday, July 16, 2001)

The New York Times is also supportive of the new defense strategy but says that "crucial details" still need to be addressed. "Mr. Rumsfeld must be tough-minded about reining in costs and eliminating forces and weapons that have outlived their military relevance." • The New Pentagon War Strategy (The New York Times, July 16, 2001)

The Washington Post calls on the Bush administration to clarify its plans for missile defense and advocates a restrained approach to development. "The danger is that the administration's haste to ready a system -- and, perhaps, satisfy those in the Republican Party who have made missile defense an article of ideology -- will lead to unilateral action that will antagonize allies, inspire a weapons buildup by Russia or China and end by worsening U.S. security." • Missile Defense Rush (The Washington Post, July 16, 2001)

The San Jose Mercury News argues for further testing of a missile defense system, but maintains that the United States should not yet abrogate 1972 Antiballistic Missile (ABM) treaty. "Congress can preserve the ABM agreement by refusing to provide money to build an alternative "star wars" defense in Alaska. And at least for the moment, it should refuse." • 'Star wars' wary (The San Jose Mercury News, July 16, 2001)

On Today's Pages. . . .

• The Chicago Tribune on the International Olympic Committee's selection of Beijing to host the 2008 Summer Games: ". . . .[T]he Beijing government will have a rare opportunity to showcase the vast transformation that has taken place across China. But it should also understand that it's inviting changes it can't necessarily control."

• The Wall Street Journal on stalled campaign finance reform legislation in the House of Representatives: "We'll admit to having underestimated House Speaker Dennis Hastert. Who'd have thought he could induce the supporters of campaign-finance reform to kill their own bill?"

• The Seattle Post-Intelligencer on campaign finance reform: "House members killed campaign finance reform without leaving a fingerprint on the corpse."

• The Boston Globe on U.S. foreign policy toward Burma: "If [Secretary of State Colin] Powell fails to place America four-square on the side of the oppressed people of Burma and of that country's anxious neighbors, he will inevitably raise doubts about Washington's reliability as a defender of stable development and the rule of law.

• The Dallas Morning News on U.S. immigration policy: ". . . .[O]ne of the best ways to show courtesy to both those immigrants who are already here and those yet to arrive is to make our nation's policy for admitting and naturalizing them clear, fair and in sync with the times."

• USA Today on airline industry resistance to "federal efforts to ensure pilots are adequately rested": "Instead of wasting time with court challenges, the airlines should put rested pilots in their cockpits and heed their No. 1 duty: getting passengers to their destinations safely."

• The Los Angeles Times on the decision by a Chilean court of appeals to suspend proceedings against Gen. Augusto Pinochet: "Prosecutors should drop any further appeals, not for the sake of a despised old man but to bring some finality to the Chilean nation.

----

The New Pentagon War Strategy

New York Times
July 16, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/16/opinion/16MON2.html?searchpv=nytToday

It is heartening to learn that the Pentagon is ready to set aside its outdated plan to fight two major wars simultaneously. The purpose of such broad strategies is to determine the size, shape and weaponry of the Army, Navy and Air Force. The two-war requirement, in place since 1993, was straining the Pentagon budget and distorting the three services. It took insufficient account of the weakening of the conventional military threat from Iraq in recent years and ignored the most common military operations Washington has actually had to face, like Balkan peacekeeping.

The new strategy, as reported by Thom Shanker in The Times on Friday, expects American forces to be prepared to win one major conflict "decisively," while deterring aggression elsewhere, conducting small holding actions and peacekeeping operations, and defending the American homeland against terrorism and missile attack. But at this point the new plan is little more than a vague blueprint. Crucial details will be filled in later this summer as the Pentagon completes its in-depth review of likely military contingencies and reshapes its future budget requests to meet them.

Two of the most important issues are the appropriate overall size of America's armed forces and the most likely battlefield conditions they will face. The answers will determine the kind of weaponry and training that will be needed. The Pentagon must then figure out how to pay for the forces and weapons needed without resorting to politically unrealistic and fiscally unaffordable budget increases. With the demise of the two-war strategy, the current level of military strength - 10 Army divisions, 12 active-duty air wings and 12 naval carrier groups - can and should be reduced. The money saved can help pay for some of the expensive new weapons programs the administration is expected to approve in coming years.

There must also be a careful delineation of the role military forces will play in responding to biological and chemical attacks inside the United States. The Pentagon has many useful assets to contribute in such emergencies. It has professional expertise, appropriate trained personnel, vaccines, gas masks and tents for emergency housing. But it is essential that authority over civilian populations remain with local elected officials.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has stressed the need to modernize America's military and its missions. That will require making room for new needs by cutting back on obsolete plans and programs, many of them dear to influential members of Congress and senior military officers. In working out the details of the new strategy, Mr. Rumsfeld must be tough-minded about reining in costs and eliminating forces and weapons that have outlived their military relevance.

-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

HONDA OPENS HYDROGEN PRODUCTION, FUELING STATION

July 16, 2001
ENS
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jul2001/2001L-07-16-09.html

TORRANCE, California, The first hydrogen production and fueling station in the Los Angeles area has started operation at Honda's research and development center in Torrance.

The state of the art station is part of Honda Motor Company's ongoing research into renewable energy. It will support the company's fuel cell vehicle development program and will be used for hydrogen production, storage and fueling.

The station uses solar power to extract hydrogen from water, and also has backup electrical power to increase the hydrogen production capacity. A compressor pressurizes the extracted hydrogen and it is stored in tanks at the station.

Available solar power can produce enough hydrogen to drive a single fuel cell vehicle for a year.

"Fuel cell vehicles and hydrogen fuel have tremendous potential to contribute to the goals of sustainable transportation systems and the use of renewable energy," said Ben Knight, Honda R&D Americas, Inc. vice president. "The development of a hydrogen fuel infrastructure is as important as the development of the vehicles themselves. This is the first hydrogen station established by an automaker to use solar energy to extract hydrogen from water and it will help verify more efficient hydrogen production methods as well as help us solve the challenges involved with hydrogen production and fueling stations for the future."

Honda's hydrogen station is a unique design, with features designed to provide safe, efficient and convenient refueling for fuel cell vehicles. An infrared camera monitors operations at all times and the system is designed to shut down in the event of an earthquake.

Hydrogen powered Honda fuel cell vehicles have been operational since 1999 and have been participating in the California Fuel Cell Partnership program near Sacramento since November 2000. The Honda FCX V3 running on hydrogen was used as the pace vehicle for this year's Los Angeles Marathon.

----

Environmental impact of ethanol fuels debate

Monday, July 16, 2001
By Reuters
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2001/07/07162001/reu_ethanol_44320.asp

WASHINGTON - Supporters of ethanol like to describe it as a cleaner-burning fuel additive that helps keep the air clearer, but critics say its environmental drawbacks may outweigh some of the benefits.

While ethanol made from corn gives a boost to the incomes of American farmers, the alternative fuel poses complex trade-offs for U.S. oil refiners, environmental groups and federal regulators trying to find cleaner gasoline to curb pollution.

"The short answer is ethanol is both good and bad for the environment," said Daniel Becker, director of the Sierra Club's global warming and energy program.

Ethanol is in the spotlight because Congress and the administration of President Bush are grappling with U.S. energy problems, and supporters of ethanol tout the fuel as one of the solutions.

Unlike other fuel additives, ethanol does not contaminate ground water supplies but it produces more smog in some circumstances and tiny amounts of sulfur result when it is blended into gasoline.

"The benefits are that ethanol does reduce carbon monoxide when used in the winter time, but it increases smog when used in the summer," Becker said.

That's because a key drawback to ethanol is that it evaporates more quickly in certain conditions, which results in higher emissions of smog-forming compounds, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

When compared to conventional gasoline, ethanol yielded lower emissions of carbon monoxide than motor gasoline but higher emissions of nitrogen oxide that causes smog, EIA said.

"We are more concerned about solving the smog problem than about solving the carbon monoxide problem," Becker said.

Ethanol is a renewable resource that the Bush administration wants to help reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil imports. It also can raise octane in gasoline and prevent annoying engine "pings."

Ethanol is one of the main so-called "oxygenates" or oxygen booster added to reformulated gasoline to meet federal clean air requirements. The extra oxygen helps the fuel burn cleaner.

The Environmental Protection Agency requires most major U.S. cities to use the cleaner-burning gasoline with more oxygen by weight during the hot summer months to reduce smog and air pollution.

Ethanol is the second most popular oxygen booster for fuel among refiners - ranking only behind MTBE, which is now used in almost 9 out of every 10 gallons of reformulated gasoline.

However, Ethanol use will soon soar now that a dozen states have decided to ban MTBE because that fuel additive can leak from underground storage tanks into drinking water supplies.

ETHANOL AND SULFUR PROBLEMS?

Separately, finished fuel-grade ethanol contains small amounts of sulfur, between 2 and 8 parts per million, to help distinguish it from drinkable alcohol, according to EIA.

This could become a problem for refiners when they begin meeting new federal low-sulfur requirements in a few years, EIA said. Beginning in 2006, the sulfur content of gasoline must be reduced to an average 30 parts per million.

In addition to environmental concerns, ethanol blended gasoline is more complicated to transport to markets.

The additive poses logistical problems because gasoline containing ethanol cannot be shipped in the nation's vast network of multi-fuel pipelines.

Moisture in pipelines and storage tanks causes ethanol to separate from gasoline.

As result, the petroleum-based gasoline components must be shipped separately to a terminal and then blended with the ethanol when the product is loaded into trucks.

Those higher shipping costs, which would likely be passed on to consumers, are a major reason California sought a federal waiver from having to use ethanol after the state banned MTBE.

The Bush administration denied the request last month, even though environmentalists insisted the White House decision would spew additional smog-forming pollution into the state's air.

"This will mean dirtier air and price hikes at the pumps in California," said Frank O'Donnell, executive director of the Clean Air Trust.

The ethanol industry defends the environmental benefits of its product.

The Renewable Fuels Association, the industry's trade group, acknowledged that when ethanol is blended with gasoline it slightly raises the volatility of the fuel that can lead to increased evaporation of smog-forming emissions.

However, blending ethanol reduces carbon monoxide tailpipe emissions that are responsible for 20 percent of smog formation, the renewable fuels group said.

TRADE GROUP SAYS ETHANOL CUTS OZONE

In addition, ethanol-blended fuel cuts tailpipe emissions of volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, that form ozone in the atmosphere, according to the trade group.

"Thus, the use of ethanol plays an important role in smog reduction," the association said.

However, some of ethanol's VOC reduction benefits have been scaled back.

Last week, the EPA finalized a rule allowing ethanol-blended gasoline sold in Chicago and Milwaukee to contain larger amounts of VOC pollutants.

The VOC standard was raised to 0.3 pounds per square inch Reid vapor pressure - a measurement of the volatility of fuel - from the previous 0.2 pounds. The EPA move was intended to reduce the cost of gasoline in the two cities, which depend almost exclusively on ethanol-blended motor fuel.

Environmentalists are also concerned over the amount of energy, and therefore the pollution, needed to make ethanol from processing corn.

The industry's trade group said ethanol generates more energy that used during production, and cites an 1996 Agriculture Department report that found ethanol contains 34 percent more energy that is used in the production process.

----

G8 report sees renewables as key energy for poor

BELGIUM: July 16, 2001
Story by Robin Pomeroy
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11581

BRUSSELS - Green energies like wind and solar power could play a major role in improving the lives of millions of the world's poorest people, says a report to be handed to world leaders at a summit in Genoa, Italy next weekend.

The report, co-written by Mark Moody-Stuart, the chairman Anglo-Dutch oil giant Royal Dutch/Shell, says the G8 countries should aim to ensure renewable energies reach one billion people by the end of the decade, according to a draft seen by Reuters on Friday.

"Such an outcome of serving up to a billion people in the next decade with renewables should be our goal and aspiration," the report says.

The report comes at a sensitive time for international energy and environmental policy. The G8 summit coincides with United Nations talks in Bonn, Germany aimed at salvaging the Kyoto deal on cutting greenhouse gases that US President George W. Bush rejected in March.

Green technologies - which do not produce the emissions blamed for global warming - could help get power to the two billion people who have no access to modern forms of energy without adding to problems of climate change and air pollution, the report says.

The conclusions follow a year's work by a renewable energy task force that was set up by the Group of Eight top industrialised countries and Russia at their summit in Okinawa, Japan.

Developing countries already get 36 percent of their energy from biomass, mostly firewood. The report says there is great potential for these countries to develop affordable electricity from renewable sources.

"In certain remote location where the electricity and/or fossil fuel infrastructure does not reach, renewable energy systems can be the only cost-effective option," it says.

Up to 300 million poor people living in remote rural areas could be served with electricity from renewable sources by the end of the decade if richer nations played the right role, the report said.

Developed countries should ensure their development aid schemes and export credit agencies back renewables and ensure that such technologies can flourish in their own energy markets, requiring a removal of subsidies to "environmentally harmful energy technologies", the report says.

Environmental campaigners welcomed the leaked draft, but voiced concerns that G8 leaders would not put the words into action.

A press release from a coalition of green groups said they had evidence the United States was opposed to endorsing the one billion people target and that Canada opposed what appeared to be a commitment to phase out nuclear power.

----

German sea winds may be answer to energy woes

GERMANY: July 16, 2001
Story by Clifford Coonan
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11592

LUEBKE-KOOG, Germany - How do you meet the energy needs of Europe's largest economy without exceeding pollution limits set out in the Kyoto treaty, just months after you abandoned nuclear power?

The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind, says German pig farmer Hans-Detlef Feddersen.

Just off the North Sea coast of Germany in fact.

Feddersen and other farmers in his community have installed 32 wind turbines behind the dikes on Germany's northern coast, producing a hefty 55 million kilowatt hours of electricity a year, enough to supply power for around 16,000 households.

As the three blades of a turbine drone 60 metres (197 feet) overhead, Feddersen points out to the grey waves near the popular German holiday resort island of Sylt.

"That's where we want to go next. Offshore."

Germany leads the world in using clean or renewable energy. Half of all the wind power in Europe is produced in Germany, which is around a third of the world total.

Feddersen and those like him have transformed wind power from the crackpot dreams of a few ex-hippies into a serious option for supplying a large chunk of world energy needs.

Now the big power companies are starting to take notice and wind power will be a major talking point at the Bonn climate conference which starts on July 16, where countries will try to reach a deal on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, many of which are produced in coal, gas or oil-burning power stations.

About 2.5 percent of Germany's energy needs come from wind turbines but that could increase dramatically once the latest stage of wind power generation moves from drawing board to reality.

"We've got a lot of wind up here, but we never knew what to do with it. All the cheap energy today is going to cause problems for the next generation. But wind power doesn't leave a trace," says Feddersen.

OFFSHORE DREAMS

Environment Minister Juergen Trittin, a member of the Greens who was largely responsible for coordinating Germany's decision to abandon nuclear power over the coming years, shares Feddersen's vision of offshore wind farms.

"The boom in wind power is a sign that Germany is taking the issue of renewable energy seriously, despite difficulties at an international level," Trittin said as he launched a position paper setting out the government's goals for wind energy.

Germany's roughly 9,400 existing land-based wind turbines produce around 6,100 megawatts of power a year.

"But we can only reach our goal of doubling the share of renewable energy use in Germany by 2010 if we begin wind energy generation at sea," Trittin said.

European countries want to boost sea wind energy because the supply of land-based sites is rapidly running out. The increasing efficiency of turbines means that wind energy could be the answer to the continent's electricity needs.

One of the main reasons for the success of wind energy in Germany is that since April 2000 the country has had a new renewable energy law with fixed guaranteed prices - a model hailed widely in the industry as a basis for growth.

Feddersen and other farmers in the area have set up a shareholding fund to allow people to buy shares in their offshore wind project, with hundreds of concrete windmills producing millions of kilowatt hours of energy.

Other groups examining offshore wind farms include Energiekontor AG, a Bremen-based renewable energy firm and one of a number of alternative energy companies in Germany who have gone to the stock exchange for funding for such projects.

"We've seen a dramatic rise in the use of wind power in recent years, a real explosion since we set up in 1990. We are looking at four sites, three off the German coast and one off Britain," says Energiekontor spokeswoman Cerstin Lange.

Lange says one of Energiekontor's North Sea projects would have 450 turbines, producing 1.8 million kilowatts of power with an estimated investment of five billion marks ($2.18 billion). They hope to have the offshore farms operational by 2004.

And the big multinational energy firms are listening too, particularly as growing numbers of activist shareholders demand more investment in environmentally-friendly power.

"We're working on it," runs an advertisement by the north German energy company Schleswag, showing a picture of a woman drying her hair with a hair dryer plugged into a potted plant.

The Anglo-Dutch oil and gas giant Royal Dutch/Shell said last month that it would renew its billion-dollar renewable energy investment programme for the next five years.

While Shell Renewables concentrates mainly on solar power, it is currently participating in two trial projects totalling eight megawatts of wind generating capacity.

SHREDDING BIRDS?

Not everyone is happy about offshore wind farms.

There have been complaints about the environmental effects of wind turbines, particularly noise, and concerns that they spoil areas of natural beauty in seaside areas.

Ornithologists fear the blades could act as bird-shredders, or they could throw songbirds off course. Others are worried that sea mammals might become disoriented by wind turbines, while fishermen fear their fishing grounds may be affected.

On top of this there are uncertainties about the authorisation procedures and the lengthy consultation process involved in getting permission for an offshore wind farm.

Feddersen says the first tranche of funding for his group's offshore wind farm will be used to investigate the environmental impact but says it's important to try this new approach.

"There's a lot of idealism in this. It could be that in 20 years time my daughter turns around to me and laughs at our misguided efforts," he says.

"But then we'll just turn the windmills into ships' masts and that's it. Unlike the other forms of energy production we have today, there will be no harm done."

-------- energy

Cheney, Team Fan Out for Energy Plan

New York Times
July 16, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/news/AP-Cheney-Energy.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Vice President Dick Cheney, Cabinet members and a squad of sympathetic lawmakers are scattering across the nation to drum up support for the Bush administration's energy strategy. The White House cautioned against complacency over falling prices.

``Because there's been downward movement today doesn't preclude there from being upward movement tomorrow,'' White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Monday as administration officials took their case directly to voters. President Bush's plan seeks to boost U.S. production of oil, gas and nuclear power.

The Lundberg Survey of about 8,000 gasoline stations said the average price of all grades of gas, including taxes, was $1.51 Friday, a drop of 12.8 cents since June 22 and 25 cents below the May 18 peak of $1.76. But prices varied widely -- from a high average of $1.91 a gallon in Honolulu to $1.16 in Tulsa, Okla.

The House and Senate are beginning to consider many of the recommendations Bush outlined when he released the plan in May. Rather than argue for their plan from Washington, Cheney and the others were employing a forum favored by former President Clinton: the town hall meeting.

Cheney was moderating such a gathering on energy in Monroeville, Pa., east of Pittsburgh, Monday evening, after addressing a convention of county officials in Philadelphia. Three Republican lawmakers from Pennsylvania -- Sens. Rick Santorum and Arlen Specter and Rep. Melissa Hart -- were with him.

Tickets to the event were distributed by another Republican, Gov. Tom Ridge. But aides to the governor and to the vice president said a broad array of interest groups would be on hand to question Cheney.

Bush has visited Pennsylvania, a key electoral state, four times in his six months as president.

Ahead of Cheney's trip, Fleischer displayed an oil-price chart at a White House briefing. He cited ``wild price spikes and fluctuations'' back to 1997.

Fleischer told reporters that the administration's energy package would help smooth out the graph's jagged line by making energy prices and supplies ``steady, reliable and stable.''

While ``politicians alternate between cries of despair and 'why are you even doing anything,' the president thinks it's important to focus on the long term, to keep your eye on the ball,'' Fleischer told reporters.

Five Cabinet members were also convening town hall meetings for Bush's plan, which calls for a blend of new coal and oil production; increased reliance on nuclear power; increased energy conservation; and research into such renewable power sources as wind and solar.

Interior Secretary Gale Norton was heading Monday to Sioux Falls, S.D., with Rep. John Thune, R-S.D., to promote the plan.

Commerce Secretary Don Evans was flying to Monroe, N.C., with GOP Reps. Robin Hayes and Sue Myrick, R-N.C.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Whitman was going to Old Lyme, Conn. with Rep. Rob Simmons, R-Conn.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham was traveling to Argonne, Ill., with Rep. Judy Biggert, R-Ill.

Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta was appearing in Euclid, Ohio.

Notably absent from the administration's target list was California, where an electricity crisis has threatened to cripple the most populous state and where gasoline prices have surged in recent months. Bush visited California in late May to discuss energy with Democratic Gov. Gray Davis.

``The districts we're going to were planned where Congress members believe that a drop-by by a Cabinet official or the vice president would provide a great deal of information about the plan,'' said Juleanna Glover Weiss, a spokeswoman for Cheney. ``The belief is the more people know about this, the more they like it.''

Anticipating the town hall meetings, the Natural Resources Defense Council renewed its criticism of the Bush plan, contending it would ``increase pollution, despoil the environment, threaten public health and accelerate global warming.''

``Moreover, it would have no impact on energy prices, and no practical effect on U.S. dependence on foreign sources of oil,'' the environmental group said.

-------- environment

Toxic Chemical Review Process Faulted
Scientists on EPA Advisory Panels Often Have Conflicts of Interest, GAO Says

By Eric Pianin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 16, 2001; Page A02
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59494-2001Jul13?language=printer

Scientists and experts who advise the Environmental Protection Agency on a broad range of regulations governing toxic chemicals and air and water quality frequently have ties to the affected industries or other conflicts of interest, according to a new government study.

The General Accounting Office report found serious deficiencies in the EPA's procedures for preventing conflicts of interest and ensuring a proper balance of views among members of Science Advisory Board panels.

For example, four of the 13 panel members who studied the cancer risks of the toxic chemical 1,3-butadiene in 1998 had worked for chemical companies or industry-affiliated research organizations -- including one who had worked for a company that manufactured 1,3-butadiene, according to the report.

The GAO found similar problems on three other cancer-risk assessment panels in recent years. In one case, seven of 17 advisory board members worked for chemical companies or for industry-affiliated research organizations. Five other panelists had received consulting or other fees from chemical manufacturers.

"The regulatory process benefits from scientific and technical knowledge, expertise and competencies of panel members," the report stated. "However, the work of fully competent peer review panels can be undermined by allegations of conflict of interest and bias."

The study, requested by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (Calif.), ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, is scheduled to be released today. The GAO review comes at a time of growing concern about industry's influence over government rule-making and regulations.

"The American people expect decisions that affect environmental and public health regulations to be based on unbiased science," Waxman said, "but this GAO study reveals polluting industries are in a position to influence panel findings."

The director of the EPA's Science Advisory Board staff "generally agreed with the report's findings and recommendations" and pledged to improve operations and procedures, according to the GAO report. A spokesman for EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman said late Friday she had not seen the report and declined to comment.

The Science Advisory Board was established by Congress in 1978 to provide independent scientific and engineering advice to EPA administrators on the technical basis for EPA regulations. The board often convenes peer review panels to assess the scientific and technical rationales underlying current or proposed EPA regulations and policies.

By law, the panels must be "fairly balanced" in terms of the points of view represented, and the advice should reflect members' independent judgment, without improper influences from special interests.

Earlier this year, Greenpeace and the Center for Health, Environment and Justice, two environmental groups, complained about the makeup of a subcommittee of an EPA scientific advisory panel assessing the health threats of the chemical dioxin. About one-third of the 21 panel members were scientists and scholars who have worked as paid consultants to the chemical industry.

According to the GAO report, EPA officials have failed to provide for adequate determinations of conflicts of interest when panels are formed and do not obtain sufficient information to evaluate conflicts of interest. The report said the EPA also fails to obtain appropriate information on financial disclosure forms, fails to review disclosure forms in a timely fashion and fails to adequately disclose potential conflicts of interest to the public.

Although the GAO did not assess whether the makeup of the panels affected the deliberations, the 1,3-butadiene panel recommended downgrading the significance of exposure to the synthetic chemical compound that is used in manufacturing synthetic rubber and nylon.

Based on studies that show high rates of leukemia in exposed workers, an EPA senior staff scientist had recommended that 1,3-butadiene be classified as a "known" human carcinogen. Although the panel did not reach a consensus, a majority of the panelists recommended that the chemical be classified as a "probable" human carcinogen.

A federal financial conflict-of-interest statute prohibits federal employees from acting personally and substantially in any "particular matter" that has a direct and predictable effect on their financial interests. However, an exemption allows special government employees serving on advisory panels to participate in matters that directly affect their employer's financial interest if the employer is not "singularly affected."

Routt Reigart, professor of pediatrics at the Medical University of South Carolina and a former member of a scientific advisory panel that evaluated the use of data from human experimentation, said he was troubled that some members had conflicts of interest that were not readily known. "There is not a tight method of disclosing conflicts of interest," Reigart said.

Erik Olson of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, said that what "we're seeing is advisory board panels -- stacked with industry mouthpieces -- acting like kangaroo courts to strike down important EPA initiatives."

----

U.N. Talks on Global Warming Open

New York Times
July 16, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Climate-Conference.html

BONN, Germany (AP) -- A U.N. conference on global warming opened Monday with its chairman pushing for progress in efforts to rescue a 1997 pact to curb pollution, abandoned by the United States as harmful to its economy.

Delegates from some 180 countries gathered for a new round of bargaining over a treaty meant to combat climate changes that many scientists fear will wreak havoc on Earth.

``It's crucial that we bring our four years of work to completion,'' said chairman Jan Pronk, the Dutch environment minister. ``We need to get good results for ourselves, for the ministers and the public.''

European nations have pledged to push ahead with the so-called Kyoto Protocol without the United States, saying it could join later. But recently Japan, which could sink the accord if it withdraws support, has also begun to waver.

Environmental groups urged international pressure on Japan.

``The protocol is clearly hanging by a thread, and that thread is only as strong as the Japanese government,'' Greenpeace climate expert Bill Hare told a news conference. ``Japan's indecision is casting a big cloud over the negotiations here.''

The accord calls for rich countries to cut emissions of so-called greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide from cars, factories and power stations. Contentious rules for achieving those goals, however, were left open at the Kyoto, Japan, meeting.

The last talks broke up last November. President Bush renounced the Kyoto pact in March, saying it was based on questionable science and unfair because it exempts big developing countries like China and India.

U.N. and European officials, as well as environmental groups, have reacted with frustration or outright anger.

``We can't let the country with the biggest emissions of greenhouse gases escape responsibility for protecting the global climate,'' German Environment Minister Juergen Trittin said recently.

Thousands of protesters were expected to converge on the quiet city on the Rhine for the two-week conference, and Bonn police say they are prepared for violence.

The situation was calm Monday, however, with a handful of activists dressed as polar bears handing out leaflets to delegates as they arrived at the Bonn hotel where the meeting was being held.

Government delegates will work on a 190-page draft by chairman Pronk that tries to offer solutions to complex disputes about the treaty's details. Following Monday's opening session, they were to work behind closed doors over the opening days.

To give the talks a push, environment ministers are due in Bonn from Thursday to Sunday. But the problems may well be kicked upstairs to a summit of leaders of the seven leading industrial countries and Russia starting Friday in Genoa, Italy.

``It's all about political courage,'' said Jennifer Morgan of the World Wide Fund for Nature, appealing to Japan to commit itself to the Kyoto accord.

Given the obstacles, even the 15-nation European Union is playing down hopes of a Bonn breakthrough.

``My expectations are not too high,'' EU Environment Commissioner Margot Wallstrom said in this week's issue of the German magazine Der Spiegel. ``There probably won't be any definitive decision.''

Yet this month brought more evidence that global warming is real. A new report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change, a group of scientists convened 13 years ago, said the Earth is warming faster than at any time in the previous 1,000 years.

Already, the blanket of heat-trapping gases has raised ground temperatures by 1.1 degree Fahrenheit in the last 100 years, and scientists say the pace could quicken dramatically over the next 100 unless pollution is limited.

More than 80 countries have signed the Kyoto pact, which requires industrialized countries to cut greenhouse gas emission an average 5.2 percent from 1990 levels by 2012.

But no major polluter has ratified the treaty and its fine print sometimes baffles even experts.

The last round of talks in The Hague, Netherlands, deadlocked over how to credit countries for managing forest and farms that absorb carbon from the air. The United States wants wide leeway, while the Europeans see a ploy to keep U.S. industry from cleaning up.

The Kyoto accord can only enter into force if it's backed by 55 countries, representing 55 percent of the industrialized world's emissions. If Japan pulls out, the second target can't be reached.

--------

Frustrated Europeans Set to Battle U.S. on Climate

New York Times
July 16, 2001
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/16/science/16CLIM.html?pagewanted=all

SCHWEILER, Germany, July 13 - This used to be a gritty and dirty little town, surrounded by coal mines and factories and overshadowed by a power plant that spewed soot everywhere.

But as representatives from more than 170 nations meet in Bonn Monday to begin last-ditch talks to save a treaty to combat global warming, this town provides one tiny slice of the anger and bewilderment that people across Europe now feel toward the United States, whose opposition has all but scuttled the accord.

Almost nobody here complains that environmental regulations are killing jobs. Instead, they point with relief to the elaborate filters that have cleaned up the power plant's exhaust. They hike beneath windmills that now provide the city with supplemental electricity.

And like almost all Germans today, they meticulously sort their garbage for recycling: paper, glass, plastic packaging, aluminum cans and plastic bottles.

But when it comes to the United States, which produces 25 percent of the world's greenhouse gases, they express incomprehension.

"It seems to me that the only thing American politicians care about is money," said Heinz Kutschker, a retired electrician, as he hiked through the woods here. "You have one country that is telling everybody else what to do, without any concern for what it means for our grandchildren."

For up to two weeks beginning Monday, the United States and the European Union face off as the principal antagonists over the climate treaty, called the Kyoto Protocol.

Saying it would place an unfair burden on the American economy and excuse developing countries from obligations, President Bush has flatly rejected the accord, which would require industrialized countries to sharply reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases.

The European Union, in an unusual display of solidarity among its 15 members, insists that the treaty is crucial to preventing catastrophe. And in what increasingly looks like a doomed effort, they are trying to save it.

To do that, they must persuade Japan to ratify the treaty. But Japanese leaders have almost explicitly said they will not do so if the United States is not on board.

And the United States has repeated that it has no intention of changing its mind. "We very much appreciate that others are reaching out to the United States and are thinking of ways of engaging us, but we do truly believe the protocol is fundamentally flawed," said Paula J. Dobriansky, the under secretary of state for global affairs and leader of the American delegation heading to Bonn. "We will not be coming back to the protocol."

European leaders are furious, charging that the United States has not only undermined the treaty by rejecting it but also tried to kill it by persuading others to back away.

"Why should we let the least ambitious countries define the pace and the content?" said Margot Wallstrom, the European Union's commissioner in charge of environmental issues. "It is important to show the public that we can reach an agreement, even without the United States."

That may be easier said than done. The treaty can come into force only if 55 countries ratify it, including a group responsible for at least 55 percent of the 1990 emissions from industrialized countries. But if the world's two biggest economies fail to ratify, the treaty is doomed.

For Europeans, that prospect has stoked frustration and anger in ordinary citizens as well as political leaders.

At a time when Europeans increasingly embrace American notions of open markets and shareholder capitalism, attitudes on environmental issues and energy by political leaders and the public appear starkly different from those in the United States.

And not just in Germany. Denmark imposes a staggering minimum registration tax of 105 percent on new cars. Most countries impose heavy taxes on gasoline, which make it three times as expensive as in the United States. Intense recycling is now common in most countries.

"We have in the European community a consensus in favor of climate protection," said Jürgen Trittin, Germany's minister of the environment and a member of the Green Party. "It is not just a Green position," he added. "It goes across the political spectrum, from conservative to liberals."

Mr. Trittin has evidence to back him up. In a recent survey by Emnid, a polling company, 86 percent of Germans said that Chancellor Gerhard Schröder should demand that President Bush adhere to the support for the Kyoto accord pledged three years ago by President Clinton.

But even in the United States, there appears to be a broad gap between Mr. Bush's position and that of the public. A recent New York Times/CBS News Poll found that 72 percent of the public believed that it was necessary to take immediate steps to counter global warming, with more than half saying that the United States should abide by the Kyoto accord.

But even as they are remarkably unified in their approach to fighting the United States, European leaders and industry groups are still wrestling among themselves over scores of internal issues.

The European Union under the Kyoto accord has pledged to reduce its emissions to 8 percent below the levels in 1990. To meet that target, the 15 member countries have hammered out a plan that leaves countries with different burdens, and not everyone is happy about it.

Germany, Europe's biggest economy by far, is expected to reduce its emissions by 21 percent. The Netherlands, by contrast, is supposed to cut its emissions by 6 percent. And Portugal, which is trying to catch up to its wealthier neighbors, is actually allowed to increase its emissions.

This has left German industry leaders fuming that they have to shoulder too much of Europe's overall burden. They also argue that their burden is disproportionate because the plan does not rely heavily enough on reductions in automobile traffic or household-generated emissions.

"Our problem is not with the Kyoto Protocol," said Joachim Hein, the top environmental policy expert at the German Federation of Industry. "What bothers us is that, within the European Union, German industry is being held responsible for so much of the reduction."

Mr. Trittin worries about that as well. "One thing we want to avoid is that European countries harshly criticize the `bad guys' on the other side of the Atlantic, the people in the White House, but then behind that criticism essentially behave the same way," he said. "That cannot be in Germany's interest, or in the interest of Great Britain."

There have also been fights within the European Union about the best way to accomplish reductions, like the use of "emissions trading" that would allow countries to acquire pollution credits from countries that have room to increase emissions.

The disagreements are such that last month the European Commission was forced to shelve a plan to start emissions-trading because European manufacturers and power companies opposed a part of the plan that would have imposed absolute limits on total emissions.

There is also argument over how much credit should be given for forest lands that can serve as carbon- absorbing "sinks." In particular, Russia, which is not a European Union member, is hoping to cash in these sinks by selling emission credits to Western companies.

But those battles are mainly within Europe. For all the uncertainties, European leaders have shown little disagreement about how to confront the United States.

In an interview at her office in Brussels last week, Ms. Wallstrom said Europe was ready to offer Japan sweeteners that would make its own targets easier to reach. She also suggested that the United States was trying to sabotage the treaty by persuading Japan not to sign it.

"They are putting pretty heavy pressure on their partners," Ms. Wallstrom said, but added that the United States had promised not to "obstruct" the Bonn negotiations.

Some European industrial companies are openly calling on the United States to support the Kyoto Protocol. Earlier this month, Germany's Federation of Chemical Industry, which includes conglomerates like BASF A.G. and Bayer A.G., urged the United States to rejoin the process.

Ms. Wallstrom, Europe's commissioner for the environment, who is Swedish, captured the difference between American and European attitudes toward tougher rules.

"Maybe it is too difficult for American politicians," she mused. "Is it possible for political leaders in the U.S. to say you can't have two or three cars or that you can't drive to the post office box?"

In Eschweiler, which is in the Ruhr Valley and the heart of heavy industry, Mayor Rudolf Bertram said he had seen a profound transformation during the past 20 years.

"Twenty years ago, this city didn't have anybody who dealt with environmental issues," he said. "Today, we have a whole department and they get involved in everything - construction, industrial development, noise abatement."

Recycling is mandatory, and residents have to sort their waste into at least four categories. Indeed, Germany's "green dot" program for recycling paper and plastic packaging has become a $2 billion enterprise.

"But what has changed even more intensively is the attitudes of the people," Mr. Bertram said. "They want something done for environmental protection, and they know environmental protection doesn't stop at the border."

Peter Hüllen, a retired coal-mine engineer, hardly considers himself a radical environmentalist. But as he hiked through the woods, he found it hard to hold back his bewilderment about the United States.

"How much do the Americans really know about climate problems?" he asked. "Do they know anything about these issues? Do they have any interest in them? What are they thinking?"

--------

Climate Talks Start But Hopes of Deal Fade

New York Times
July 16, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-environ.html

BONN, Germany (Reuters) - Talks opened in Germany on Monday to try to salvage the international Kyoto agreement, a pact many scientists believe may be the last chance to save the environment from the destructive impact of global warming.

With the United States and Europe at daggers drawn over the 1997 U.N.-sponsored Kyoto Protocol, which would force industrial powers to cut greenhouse gas emissions, chances seem slim of an accord during two weeks of meetings in Bonn.

Japan has emerged as a pivotal player between the other two polluting, industrial regions. But Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has said it will take more talks in Morocco in October to reach an overall deal.

Dutch Environment Minister Jan Pronk opened the Bonn talks, saying he had brought forward some elements of the negotiating process to try to speed up progress following the failure of a summit he hosted at The Hague last November.

``It's crucial that we bring our four years of work to completion,'' he told reporters.

President Bush has renounced the backing for the pact given by his predecessor, Bill Clinton. Washington says Kyoto was based on dubious science and would hurt the economy.

That has angered Europeans, some of whom accuse Bush, a former Texas oilman, of putting the business interests of the world's biggest polluter ahead of saving the planet.

JAPAN'S ``BLACK CLOUD''

Koizumi's cautious pessimism brought angry responses from environmental campaigners who say delay can only increase the threat that global warming will melt polar ice-caps and flood coastlines and islands.

``There is huge black cloud over the conference -- it's caused by Japan not willing to go ahead without the U.S.,'' Bill Hare, Greenpeace's climate change campaign head, told Reuters.

``All the issues are going to be held hostage by this.''

Some European officials and other observers said they were still hopeful that Japan could be persuaded to back European Union efforts to have the pact ratified by a majority of key states to try to increase pressure on Washington to back it.

``The negotiations will be very difficult and it could be that the whole enterprise collapses,'' German Environment Minister Juergen Trittin told German television.

``Japan helped with the birth of Kyoto but it also could contribute to burying Bonn...Now we have to make that leap...The main question is whether the United States will come around to being more efficient in their use of energy,'' he said.

Dismissing chances of changing Bush's mind any time soon, Trittin, a member of the environmentalist Greens party, said it was more important to get Japan and Russia to agree the pact: ''That's the aim of negotiations in Bonn. If we succeed, or if Japan buries the Kyoto protocol, remains to be seen,'' he said.

The talks in the former West German capital on the Rhine will focus on detailed issues like deadlines for cutting gas emissions, mechanisms for trading emissions allowances among countries and formulae for offsetting gas emissions against forests, which can turn carbon dioxide pollution back to oxygen.

Government ministers are not due to join civil servants at the meetings until Thursday. And much of the high-level political arm twisting -- as well as potentially violent protests -- is likely to be reserved for this weekend's Group of Eight (G8) summit of leading industrial powers at Genoa, Italy.

European leaders, including German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, French President Jacques Chirac and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, are likely to press Bush and Koizumi on the issue.

In order to be binding on those taking part, the pact must be ratified by at least 55 countries which also account for 55 percent of the industrialized world's greenhouse gas emissions.

That means that without the United States, which alone accounts for 36.1 percent of those emissions, most of the other big industrial nations must sign up together -- the EU's 15 states account for 24.2 percent and Japan 8.5 percent.

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Japan to be squeezed at climate conference

July 16, 2001
By Carter Dougherty
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010716-157520.htm

The two-week conference on global warming that begins today in Bonn will shine the spotlight on a nation not accustomed to the international hot seat: Japan.

Whether Japan signs the Kyoto Protocol, which was designed to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, chiefly carbon dioxide, will determine the future of the 1997 agreement.

President Bush, saying the pact is "fatally flawed," has rejected the treaty outright. Mr. Bush acknowledged the need for action on global warming but said the current state of science does not warrant the reductions called for under the Kyoto agreement.

"The real agenda [for Bonn] is to see whether most countries will agree to proceed without the United States," said Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.

The pact can take effect only if ratified by 55 countries or countries accounting for 55 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, the chief culprits in global warming. Hitting that 55 percent level will require the participation of Japan now that the United States, the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, has backed away from the agreement.

Environmental activists, descending on Bonn by the hundreds, hope to play on the pact's origin -- Kyoto was Japan's ancient capital -- to extract a sign of support from Japan.

"The Kyoto Protocol is as Japanese as apple pie is American," said Kalee Kreider, director of the global warming campaign at the National Environmental Trust.

European diplomats, for their part, have assiduously cultivated the Japanese.

Jan Pronk, the Dutch environment minister who will chair the talks in Bonn, has offered Japan the right to emit more greenhouse gases as a way to keep the Asian nation on board.

Japan so far has been ambivalent on the issue. It wants to see Kyoto succeed, but also wants to avoid a split with its close ally, the United States, observers said.

Biding her time, Japanese Environment Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi said last week that Japan "has not set a deadline" for making a decision on Kyoto.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said yesterday he wanted to keep the pact alive but saw no agreement coming from the two weeks of talks in Bonn.

"We will not be able to reach an agreement in Bonn, but there will be another meeting in Morocco in October. Japan will do its utmost so that the protocol can be enacted in 2002," he said.

"The United States, Europe and Japan are still in discussions, seeking ways in which we can cooperate, and no conclusion has been reached yet," Mr. Koizumi told TV Asahi.

"This will take until late October," he said. As a result of Mr. Koizumi's reluctance to conclude an agreement, negotiators in Bonn will take up the thorny issues of how to implement the Kyoto Protocol. Talks on these issues broke down in The Hague in November amid a bitter dispute between the United States and European nations.

At issue was how forests that absorb greenhouse gases would affect countries' permitted emission levels, and how a proposed emission-trading system would work.

The rest of the world will also be looking nervously at the United States' reaction to decisions made in Bonn. Mr. Bush promised in May that the United States would not stand in the way of a decision by other countries to move ahead with Kyoto.

All decisions in climate change negotiations are taken by consensus.

To get the Kyoto treaty up and running, the European Union will first and foremost need Japan's support.

Europe will also need at least some support from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Norway, traditional allies of the United States.

"We have been relying on their promise to us not to obstruct the Kyoto process," Margot Wallstrom, Europe's environment commissioner, said last week.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said last week that the United States "takes climate change seriously and will work constructively" to address the problem.

Supporters of immediate action had hoped the United States would put forward a full-fledged alternative to the Kyoto treaty in Bonn. But U.S. officials said that Mr. Bush, who will attend the Group of Eight summit of Russia and the top industrial nations in Genoa, Italy, later in the week, would instead promote several new initiatives he announced last week for studying and reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

Mr. Bush announced on Friday that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration will spend $120 million to study climate changes. He also outlined several other existing plans to soak up carbon dioxide, a process known as sequestration.

"We have a number of initiatives that he laid out before he left for Europe that are starting to move through the system," National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said in a White House briefing. "We will probably be able to say something about where some of those stand."

William Antholis, a former Clinton administration official who handled summit planning, said that having the Bonn meeting so close to the G-8 meeting could force Mr. Bush to discuss climate change in detail because European leaders are bound to raise the subject.

"It's a classic case of where the president of the United States will not be in charge of his own agenda," Mr. Antholis said.

Though the meetings begin today, Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs Paul Dobriansky, the chief U.S. official for climate change issues, will join the U.S. delegation to Bonn on Thursday, when high-level talks between ministers begin.

-------- genetics

Stem Cell Genie

New York Times
July 16, 2001
ESSAY
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/16/opinion/16SAFI.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON -- The stem-cell genie is out of the research bottle. If we command it sensibly, this unexpected servant will help us lead much healthier, longer lives. But if we fail to force the genie to conform to our ethical sense, this future regenerator of tissue and rebuilder of organs and brains could brutalize and demoralize mankind.

Sounds dramatic, but that is what is at stake in the stem-cell revolution. We face a decision that is literally a matter of life and death.

At first, the issue roiling the Bush White House was framed narrowly: Should the federal government sponsor scientific research using embryonic stem cells to cure diseases? Underlying that: Does the saving of today's human life - and alleviation of untold suffering and present pain - justify the sacrifice of the development of even the most remotely potential human life?

Most people's answer is yes. The principled minority that disagrees suggests we experiment with adult stem cells for the next few years, and - if they turn out to be not versatile enough to become the desired tissue - only then consider trying embryonic cells. Many scientists counter that such deliberate delay risks millions of lives.

The practical note that intrudes itself is the newly out-of-the-bottle nature of the genie. Whether driven by private funds here or by the investment of public money by foreign governments, embryonic cells will be used to achieve breakthroughs to cures.

The cells being used - from embryos no bigger than the period that ends this sentence - are not only frozen cells from fertility clinics destined to be discarded (the least objectionable to those who believe that life begins at the instant of conception). Private laboratories are already creating embryos for the purpose of harvesting their cells to fight disease. No White House refusal to finance with federal dollars can stop this.

The question becomes: How do we exert control of the genie?

The president has been meeting with ethicists to wrestle with this, but should not try to decide the huge issue alone or to address it piecemeal or hastily. He should listen to the national academies of science and medicine, soon to go public with recommendations. He should then address a joint session of Congress with stem-cell budget policy and legislative proposals to stimulate thoughtful hearings and attract wide support. A couple of suggestions:

Start a race among scientists. Finance both adult and embryonic stem- cell research equally and heavily. If cells from adults surprise scientists by creating the targeted regeneration, so much the less controversial; if not, no time or lives would be wasted.

Couple this with a permanent, rotating advisory commission on bioethics, members appointed by Congress and the president, to recommend guidelines on all facets of genetic research, not just stem cells. Launch this at a White House Conference on Genes; include enough dissidents to avert groupthink.

Ask this commission to assess "somatic cell nuclear transfer," in which the nucleus of an egg is activated with genetic material from the intended patient, creating cells to overcome the danger of rejection of foreign tissue. At the same time -

Outlaw cloning of humans. Ian Wilmot, Scotland's cloner of Dolly, is an informed opponent of human replication; he knows how many of his attempts to clone sheep failed, and believes similar attempts with humans would be horrifying.

Down that monstrous human-cloning road lies production of slaves for organs, demographic manipulation and notions of master races. Better to say no now and let future generations decide for themselves how far to let the genie go.

On the eve of this millennium, The Times asked its Op-Ed columnists to take a long, long look ahead. My contribution was headlined "Why Die?"

The title was a fanciful attention- getter for an optimistic thought: as science conquers disease and replaces worn-out organs, humans will be living much, much longer. Neuroscience will match biology's pace, enabling brains to regenerate so that humans can live productively even as we pass the century mark. The genius of our stem-cell genie bids fair to speed longevity's day.

The trick is for us to make certain we call the cadence on the march of progress. That means public support of, tied tightly to our ethical control of, embryonic stem-cell research.

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Joint Effort to Investigate Gene Functions

New York Times
July 16, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/16/business/16GENE.html

Celera Genomics and Isis Pharmaceuticals are expected to announce today that Isis will try to determine the functions of more than 200 genes supplied by Celera.

The collaboration is part of an effort by Celera, which sequenced the human genome, to expand beyond selling genetic information into developing drugs. To do that, it needs information on the biological roles of the genes it has discovered.

Isis, based in Carlsbad, Calif., is trying to move the other way. It is already developing drugs using its antisense technology, a way of turning off particular genes. But the company realizes that the same technology can also help determine the functions of genes - by turning off a gene and seeing how this affects cells or animals. It wants to sell subscriptions to a database of gene functions it is compiling.

Celera, based in Rockville, Md., will have the exclusive rights to information on a limited number of the 200 genes. The information on the functions of the rest of the genes will go into Isis's database, but patents on the functions of those genes will be jointly owned. Financial terms of the agreement are not being disclosed.

-------- health

Radiation Can Be Used to Treat Some Eye Cancers

New York Times
July 16, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/health/health-cancer-eye.html?searchpv=reuters

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Radiation therapy appears to be as effective a treatment for eye cancer as removing the eye, researchers report.

Their study of more than 1,300 patients with choroidal melanoma, a form of eye cancer, found that there were no significant differences in survival rates between the two treatments. After 5 years, 11% of patients who underwent eye removal and 9% of those given radiation therapy had died. There were no significant differences up to 12 years later.

``These findings are reassuring to patients with medium-sized eye tumors who have to choose between the option of radiation therapy versus removal of the eye,'' Dr. Paul A. Sieving, director of the National Eye Institute, said in a statement. ``Patients now know their choice will not impact their survival.''

In the past, patients with malignant eye tumors were thought to have a better chance of surviving if the doctor removed the entire eye. Treatments that conserve the eye and allow patients to retain at least some vision may result in a better quality of life, however.

In the current study, published in the July issue of the Archives of Ophthalmology, researchers report that most patients who underwent radiation therapy experienced some loss of vision. In some cases, regrowth of the tumor or a complication eventually led to the removal of the eye.

Still, the therapy remains an option for certain patients, they conclude.

``Our findings support advising patients who have choroidal melanoma of appropriate size and who meet other...criteria that the choice of (radiation therapy) is unlikely to compromise survival,'' write Dr. Barbara S. Hawkins and colleagues of the Collaborative Ocular Melanoma Study (COMS) Group.

Choroidal melanoma occurs in pigmented cells in tissue at the back of the eye. It is a rare form of cancer, but is the most common eye cancer in adults. Over time, tumors can grow and cause vision loss. They can also spread to other parts of the body, which usually leads to death within months.

According to the study, 1,600 to 2,400 new cases of eye cancer are diagnosed in the US and Canada each year.

SOURCE: Archives of Ophthalmology 2001;119;969-982.

--------

Ericsson to Begin Including Info on Phone Radiation

New York Times
July 16, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/technology/tech-tech-mobile-radi.html?searchpv=reuters

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - The world's major mobile phone makers will start in October to include information about the level of radiation emitted by their phones, a spokesman for Swedish telecoms equipment maker Ericsson (news/quote) said on Monday.

Mikael Westmark, responsible for health issues at Ericsson, said the move is the result of a recent agreement by the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization CENELEC on a common way to measure radiation absorption.

Westmark said the world's leading handset manufacturer Nokia (news/quote)

of Finland, the second-biggest Motorola (news/quote) of the United States and fourth-biggest Ericsson had cooperated with the committee to come up with a common standard.

``We have worked together with Nokia and Motorola on this. It will not be any kind of warning label, but specification information included in the phone package together with other technical measures,'' Westmark told Reuters.

Reports have alleged that radio waves from mobile phones affect the human brain.

U.S. neurologist Christopher Newman filed last year a lawsuit against leading U.S. phone companies, including Motorola, saying that the use of his mobile phone had caused a malignant brain tumor.

Neither Ericsson, nor Nokia were named in the Newman lawsuit. All three rejected allegations that their products caused health hazards.

The new measure, or Specific Absorption Rate (SAR), shows the absorption of energy by the human body in watts per kilogram. The maximum safety limit is 2.0, while most phones on the market now showing values between 0.5 and 1.0.

``The SAR value that will be included in the phone package will be the maximum value, rather than the average one. When you talk, you very seldom reach the maximum level in a properly constructed network,'' said Westmark.

He said the SAR value was highest when dialing and then dropped steeply off after the connection was made.

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

China, WTO Negotiators Meet

New York Times
July 16, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Trade-WTO-China.html

GENEVA (AP) -- Boosted by Beijing's selection as host of the 2008 Olympics, Chinese negotiators returned to the table Monday to try to wrap up another move onto the world stage -- membership in the World Trade Organization.

At a weeklong meeting of a working group at WTO headquarters in Geneva, negotiators will try to settle the outstanding issues holding up agreement on admitting China to the 141-nation group that sets international trade rules.

Talks that ended two weeks ago settled almost all aspects of the terms of membership, clearing the way for China to join the WTO after 15 years knocking at the door.

``The principle is established. China will be in,'' WTO Director-General Mike Moore told Associated Press Television News on Monday.

``There aren't many issues left over,'' China's chief negotiator, Long Yongtu, told reporters as he arrived for Monday's meeting. He had stayed in Geneva after the previous talks to negotiate with individual countries.

Like the Olympic bid -- which ended in success Friday -- China's attempt to join the WTO has provoked concern from human rights activists who say it must improve its record before it can join the trade organization.

The biggest remaining obstacle to finalizing the Chinese terms of entry into the WTO appears to be disagreement over what constitutes a ``branch'' of a company -- an issue linked to U.S. insurance giant AIG.

Under the membership agreement, new companies entering the life-insurance market in China must have 50 percent Chinese ownership. AIG claims it is exempt because it already operates in China, but it is not clear whether a new AIG office would be a branch of the head office or would constitute a new company subject to the ownership rule.

The issue has caused strife between the United States and the European Union, which insists that the same rules must apply to all insurance companies. EU companies operating in China are joint ventures, with a high level of Chinese ownership.

Another dispute involves quotas and duties on imports to China.

Alongside the WTO talks, China is still trying to settle a bilateral deal with Mexico. That also may hold up the WTO entry process as other nations wait to see the details of the Mexican agreement.

Last week, as part of the move toward WTO membership, Beijing announced it would let foreign companies sell shares in China and would also abandon price controls on 128 goods and services.

China began liberalizing prices in the 1980s as it gradually shifted from central planning to a market-driven economy, and reforms have accelerated as China draws closer to WTO membership.

The economy has grown powerfully in the last two decades. It continued to expand in the first half of this year, growing by 8 percent, the state-run Xinhua News Agency said.

Strong domestic demand was one of the main factors boosting the growth rate, which was in line with official forecasts and bucked the world trend of slowing economies.

This week's meeting is the last before the WTO summer break. A final deal would have to be struck by mid-September if WTO members want to meet their stated goal of formally admitting China during their ministerial meeting in November in Qatar.

Moore said meeting that deadline could be ``extremely tight.''

``Even when Beijing, Brussels, Washington, Tokyo, Mexico City and everybody else agrees, we still need three months here to do the technical work,'' he said. ``I don't want to lose a week or a day.''

-------- police / prisoners

Ashcroft: Trust in FBI Is Eroded

New York Times
July 16, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/news/AP-Ashcroft-FBI.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Attorney General John Ashcroft said Monday that a string of mishaps at the FBI has injured the public's trust in the FBI.

Citing some of the FBI's most embarrassing bungles in a speech at FBI headquarters here Monday, Ashcroft issued ``a call to values'' at the bureau, according to his prepared remarks.

``Our challenge is not that we have problems,'' Ashcroft said,``Our challenge is how we respond to these problems.''

Ashcroft said revelations that Robert Hanssen, a 25-year veteran agent, spied for Moscow for 15 years, was but one of a string of difficulties that has beset the FBI.

``The problem of the Hanssen case joins the difficulty with the files in the McVeigh case in injuring the public trust,'' said Ashcroft.

``And these cases harken back to earlier tragedies in Texas and Idaho,'' said Ashcroft, making reference to the standoffs at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, and with white separatist at Ruby Ridge, Idaho.

The Bush administration has chosen veteran federal prosecutor Robert Mueller to replace former director Louis Freeh, who resigned last month two years short of his 10-year term.

Mueller, currently U.S. attorney in San Francisco and former head of the Justice Department's criminal division, has never worked at the FBI.

Ashcroft said Mueller ``is a principled and dedicated public servant.

``I know that under his direction we will triumph over the challenges ahead,'' said Ashcroft.

Ashcroft praised the FBI for a long history of fighting bank robbers and terrorists, including the role FBI agents played in the investigation of the Pan Am 103 bombing and the conviction of five Cuban spies in Miami last month.

``You have served America well,'' said Ashcroft.

But he said new challenges have arisen and told agents to remember that ``when people lose faith in their institutions they trust to enforce the law, justice is no longer possible.''

Ashcroft speech comes in the wake of a string of embarrassing bungles at the FBI, including revelations of an FBI and the mishandling of Oklahoma City bombing documents. The documents mishap forced Ashcroft to postpone the execution of Timothy McVeigh.

Ashcroft told agents that ``the call of duy beckons us.''

``It is a call to values,'' he said.

-------- activists

PROTESTERS TRAIL BUSH OFFICIALS ON ENERGY TOUR

July 16, 2001
ENS
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jul2001/2001L-07-16-09.html

WASHINGTON, DC, An inflatable oil derrick will follow Bush administration officials as they tour the country promoting President George W. Bush's energy plan.

A coalition of environmental groups announced Sunday that it will conduct a nationwide tour with two 12 foot by 12 foot inflated models of oil derricks to emphasize their opposition to any energy proposals that would roll back environmental safeguards like the Clean Air Act or open pristine wilderness areas to oil and gas drilling. The message on the inflatable props reads: "Clean Energy Solutions, Not More Pollution."

The coalition, which includes the State Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs), the National Environmental Trust, Sierra Club and national environmental and public health groups, announced that the props would be at rallies outside the town meetings held today by Vice President Richard Cheney in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.

"America needs clean energy solutions, not more pollution," said U.S. PIRG legislative director Anna Aurilio. "We will take these props to events across the country to dramatize the fact that Americans want an energy plan that delivers energy to consumers without polluting our environment or destroying our last unspoiled places."

As part of the tour, Interior Secretary Gale Norton and Representative John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, joined community members today in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Meanwhile, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Whitman held an Energy Town Meeting in Old Lyme, Connecticut with Representative Rob Simmons, a Connecticut Republican.

According to the Bush administration, of the 105 specific recommendations in President Bush's energy plan, more than half will help modernize and increase conservation, protect the environment and help diversify the nation's supplies of clean, affordable energy.

But environmental groups and many Democratic critics say the plan will increase air pollution, despoil wilderness areas and contribute to the release of greenhouse gases linked to global warming.

"The Bush plan doesn't work. It makes the wrong choices," said Daniel Becker, director of the Sierra Club's global warming and energy program. "We need a balanced approach that gives us quicker, cleaner, cheaper and safer energy solutions."

More information is available at: http://www.saveourenvironment.org

----

Greenpeace says US poses new Pacific risk

AUSTRALIA: July 16, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11569

SYDNEY - Environmental group Greenpeace on Sunday accused the United States of posing a new nuclear arms risk in the Pacific after it shot down a mock warhead over the Pacific Ocean in a successful anti-ballistic missile test.

"The Star Wars program threatens to start a new nuclear arms race," Greenpeace Pacific spokeswoman Samantha Magick said in a statement after the test.

"Pacific island states who are still waiting for compensation for nuclear tests carried out decades ago are being put at risk again, as the missile tests involve launching intercept missiles from Kwajelein atoll in the Marshall Islands," she said.

The Pacific has been used for many years for nuclear tests by colonial powers, sparking deep concern in the region.

France conducted extensive atom bomb tests in its Pacific atolls until 1996, while the US carried out tests on the Bikini atoll in the Marshall Islands until 1958.

The US Defense Department's latest $100 million test involved a Minuteman 2 intercontinental ballistic missile launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and an interceptor fired from the atoll, 4,800 miles (7,725 km) away.

Two out of the three previous tests had failed, but US President George W. Bush has stepped up the testing program as part of his bid to deploy a new missile defence system.

Australia, the largest country in the South Pacific, is one of the few nations to publicly back plans for the system, which is opposed by Russia and China.

Greenpeace protesters briefly delayed the launch of the test, with four activists arrested in waters off Vandenberg base.

Magick accused the US Defense Department of going ahead with the launch despite knowing the Greenpeace activists who had breached a military exclusion zone were still vulnerable.

"The US base commander risked the lives of our activists today, but President Bush is risking the lives of millions of people around the world," she said.

"As countries race to counter the Bush proposed shield with weapons of mass destruction, the US will be responsible for destroying treaties of peace and arms control, putting us all at great risk," she said.

Greenpeace Australia also criticised Australian Prime Minister John Howard for his support for Bush's planned system.

"Australia should reject the role of sheriff to the US bully," it said.

----

Green campaigners shun Genoa amid violence fears

EU: July 16, 2001
Story by Robin Pomeroy
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11582

BRUSSELS - The environmentalist group Friends of the Earth (FoE) said on Friday it had decided not to join protests at the G8 summit in Genoa next weekend because it fears the event will descend into mindless violence.

"Friends of the Earth has decided not to go to Genoa at all," Martin Rocholl, director of FoE Europe, told a news conference in Brussels. "We see the situation getting out of control at the moment. We cannot do anything there."

FoE, a network of campaign groups in 61 countries, is usually a high-profile presence at global summits to voice concerns on issues such as nuclear power, genetic modification and Third World debt.

Rocholl said there was a serious risk of violent, anarchic demonstrations breaking out around the Group of Eight summit that starts in Genoa on July 20, meaning that any peaceful protest would be overshadowed.

"It's a very serious development for us. It's a meeting we would go to and lobby at, but we have had to withdraw for the time being," Rocholl said.

Police in the northern Italian port city have established a massive security force to protect the leaders who will attend the meeting, including US President George W. Bush.

Surface-to-air missiles at the airport, patrol boats in the harbour and at least 15,000 well-armed personnel are on stand-by to prevent violence from hard-core violent activists.

"The build-up of the police is scary," Rocholl said. "Both sides are gearing up for a fight...We don't see a chance in Genoa for peaceful protest."

He said he was aware of smaller protest groups gearing up for violent clashes in Genoa.

The Friends, who combines mass-membership grassroots protesting with well-informed lobbying of governments and global institutions, launched on Friday a campaign to encourage peaceful protest and stigmatise violent trouble-makers.

The group will ask its members attending future demonstrations to wear badges with the slogan "Protest is a right - violence is wrong - no violence".

These badges will first be seen outside a United Nations conference on climate change in Bonn, Germany which coincides with the G8 summit. "Bonn will show a very stark contrast (to Genoa). It will be a peaceful and colourful event," Duncan McLaren of FoE's British arm said.

FoE plans to build a 30-metre-long lifeboat - symbolising the threat of rising sea levels posed by global warming - in the centre of Bonn and parade it to the conference centre where countries will be discussing the future of the Kyoto pact on cutting greenhouse gases.

"We are 99.9 percent sure that the Bonn protest will not be violent," Rocholl said.

----

Thousands of protesters await G8 leaders in Genoa

ITALY: July 16, 2001
Story by Steve Pagani
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11568

ROME - When eight of the world's most powerful leaders gather in Genoa for their annual summit this week, thousands of protesters will be waiting for them.

Group of Eight leaders, with President George W. Bush making his G8 debut, will for the first time face the now familiar sight of mass protests marking summits across the globe.

Anti-globalisation demonstrations took off with a vengeance at a World Trade Organisation summit in Seattle in December 1999. Not even environmentalists Greenpeace could get near last year's G8 meeting on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa.

This year will be very different.

Host nation Italy is mounting one of the biggest security operations the country has seen for years, pouring in 15,000 armed police and troops to ensure leaders from the United States, Russia, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Britain and Canada can discuss global issues in safety on July 20-22.

It will be impossible for the rich nations club not to react to the presence of the expected 120,000 protesters purporting to speak for the "have-nots" around the world.

Organisations representing the environment or animal and plant preservation, or fighting debt relief, poverty, hunger, the spread of AIDS, cultural and sexual equality, have been making preparations for months to make their voice heard.

"The concerns of quite a lot of these people are serious," U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who will attend the summit, told Germany's Suddeutsche Zeitung daily. "The politicians must explain globalisation better."

But as at other summits since Seattle - in Prague, Nice, Quebec City and Gothenburg - police are expecting a hard core of activists to light the tinderbox. Past protests have seen clashes with police, the destruction of property and injury.

CAN EIGHT MEN CHANGE THE WORLD?

As witnessed at the European Union summit in Gothenburg, Sweden, last month, violence can almost totally overshadow the main event, shifting the media focus and grabbing the headlines.

Will it matter? Critics argue over whether annual summits of the top industrialised nations can spur any change anyway.

"They are reactive on the political level, but pro-active on the economic and financial level," said Franco Pavoncello, professor of political science at John Cabot University in Rome. "Any system where all the major currencies and economies can get together to discuss coordination is extremely important."

According to the Japanese government, talks on the global economic slowdown and how to boost growth will figure large on the first day of the summit on Friday.

The seven major economic powers were expected to exchange views on a new round of global trade talks to start at a WTO meeting in Qatar in November, and review progress on reducing Third World debt, a Japanese official said.

A German official in Berlin said there would be no mention of exchange rates in the G7 communique.

After issuing the statement, the G7 will become eight when it is joined by Russian President Vladimir Putin to review such key issues as the Kyoto pact on climate change and combating AIDS. The G8 was expected to make a statement on regional conflicts, perhaps on the Middle East peace process or Macedonia on Saturday, and then issue a final communique on Sunday.

CLIMATE, DEBT, POVERTY

The 1997 Kyoto protocol has assumed centre stage at key encounters since Bush rejected it, a decision which has added fuel to environmentalist fires.

"Japan will try to come up with some kind of effort not to kill the Kyoto accord," Japanese Professor of Political Science Kuniko Inoguchi told Reuters Television in Tokyo.

To come away with a foreign policy feather in his cap at his first G8, Bush may prefer to focus on areas where common ground is more likely, such as on AIDS or debt relief.

Lobbied by the Vatican, Italy's new centre-right government led by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi wants progress on debt cancellation. Foreign Minister Renato Ruggiero intends to focus on improving access to Western markets as a way to alleviate poverty in less developed countries.

To show its commitment, Rome has invited South African President Thabo Mbeki, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and other leaders of developing nations to Genoa. Meanwhile, Ruggiero has kept dialogue open with the protest groups, but some are angry few of their demands have been met.

Unauthorised protests will go ahead, they say - the biggest planned for Friday, when some groups will try to breach the top security "Red Zone" around the historic port, which includes the main summit venue, the 13th century Palazzo Ducale.

Italy has hired a luxury liner to accommodate all the leaders apart from Bush, so they can be kept under tight guard in one spot when they rest, and far away from any street battles. No details of where Bush is staying have yet been released.

To safeguard against any attack, the steel cordon around the city has been reinforced with surface-to-air missiles, air force surveillance of the skies and navy monitoring of the waters.

One Italian activist said the authorities were creating a climate of fear to try to keep protesters away.

"After Gothenburg the situation has changed. Police shot protesters. We are getting ready to defend ourselves," Riccardo Germani told Reuters Television.

Additional reporting by Reuters Television Rome and Tokyo.

----

Summit protesters - rebels with or without a cause?

SWEDEN: July 16, 2001
Story by Will Hardie
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11587

STOCKHOLM - No summit these days is complete without hordes of protesters roaring at ranks of riot police.

They brandish banners of Che Guevara and Chairman Mao, from Greenpeace to the black flags of anarchy. Depending on who you ask, the travelling circus of anti-globalisation is a rabble without a cause or the fresh new face of democracy.

Either way, the pitched battles that have made cities like Seattle and Gothenburg synonymous with mayhem and destruction pose a riddle for summit organisers like the G8 group of rich nations, who meet in the Italian port city of Genoa next week.

Faith in dialogue is fading, leaving two options: tougher security or more remote summit locations.

Both strategies confirm the diverse groups' one rallying call: "They are not listening". And each will either exacerbate or just shift the disruption, protesters say.

"This wave of militancy is not going to subside because it is a result of pent-up anger that is not going to go away," said Walden Bello, sociology professor and director of Bangkok-based anti-globalisation pressure group Focus on the Global South.

"Protests are just beginning in terms of size and impact."

MANY FACES OF ANTI-GLOBALISATION

Keith Dowding, professor of political science at the London School of Economics, compared today's protests with those of the revolutionary days of the 1960s.

"Protests in the 1960s were sparked by one international event - Vietnam. Now they are also sparked by an international event - globalisation," he told Reuters.

"Another similarity with the 60s is that today's protestors are middle class. That must be worrying for governments who rely on their middle classes to put them in power and keep their economies running."

Anti-globalisation now has so many faces and agendas, and internal strife, that its label is something of a mirage.

Most want to defend the environment and write down Third World debt. Some champion nation states over transnational bodies, others want to tear down border controls. Most defend cultural diversity and some like strong welfare systems, many with a stiff dose of socialism. Others want anarchy.

A common thread is the idea that democracy is crumbling.

"There is a widespread perception that the normal processes of representative democracy have failed and become very responsive to the needs of corporations rather than the needs of people," Bello said.

"Globalisation was pushed so hard as a panacea for the world's ills that, when it created the exact opposite, people feel that they have been run over by this process," he said.

Many see international bodies such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) and groups of rich nations like the G8 and the European Union (EU) as doubly unaccountable.

"Most governments don't have any parliamentary debates on the positions they take into these meetings," Friends of the Earth campaign director Duncan McLaren told Reuters.

"They certainly aren't encouraging public debate, and the issues very rarely get media attention. So in this sense there are two levels of divorce."

INDUSTRY UNIMPRESSED

That argument gets short shrift from industry.

"I profoundly believe that democratic processes have not failed. Those who are not lazy, physically or intellectually, will find ways to use democratic processes to get things done," International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) Secretary General Maria Livanos Cattaui told Reuters.

"There are some very good issues to protest. Easy ways to do that are by looting and smashing cars. The hard way is to work in the proper democratic processes," Cattaui said.

Anti-globalisation activists argue that protest is both a time-honoured pillar of democracy and also the best way to influence politics in the post-communist, neo-liberal era.

"People don't see the conflicts in society as being between left and right but between the people and the establishment," said America Vera-Zavala of protest movement ATTAC.

"People are really frustrated that they go and vote and the politics never changes. People are very fed up with listening."

A high-profile meeting between Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson and activists including Vera-Zavala on the eve of the EU summit in Gothenburg in June failed to prevent riots in which police shot and injured three protesters.

FROM DIALOGUE TO DEFENCE AND AVOIDANCE

As the smoke cleared, faith in dialogue faded.

"People want real measures and real efforts to listen, to correct and seriously re-examine policies rather than token meetings," protest sociologist Bello said.

"Those that are really interested in dialogue are already in dialogue," the ICC's Cattaui said. "(The rest) are not interested in discussion, so they can be ignored as long as they play within the limits of non-violence."

Summit organisers are anxious to prevent demonstrations or violence eclipsing their own agendas or undermining their institutions. But aside from dialogue, only two strategies remain: huge security blockades or distant locations.

The WTO next meets in November in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar, and there is talk of eventually holding summits in virtual locations on the Internet, where protest is impossible.

Activists say preventing protests backfires. A huge police operation at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in the Swiss resort of Davos quashed demonstrations there, but others flared up instead in Zurich and Berne nearby.

"If they try to put a can on reasonable protests it will spill over in some other way," said McLaren of Friends of the Earth. "I hope and pray that they will not be violent."

--------

Canada Activists Make Steep Climb

New York Times
July 16, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Canada-Tower-Climbers.html

TORONTO (AP) -- Two Greenpeace activists climbed the world's tallest freestanding structure -- the CN Tower in downtown Toronto -- on Monday to hang a banner protesting environmental policies.

The banner, placed 1,140 feet above the ground, below an observation deck, says: ``Canada and Bush -- Climate Killers.''

It refers to the U.S. government's opposition to the Kyoto Protocol that sets limits on greenhouse gas emissions. Canada has said it supports the pact, but wants credits for emission reductions opposed by European nations.

Steven Guilbeault, 31, of Montreal and Chris Holden, 23, of England began climbing before dawn and needed four hours to reach the observation deck. A few dozen activists, police officers and firefighters watched from the base as the activists made their way up the 1,815-foot, five-inch tower, using safety harnesses and cables.

``The view from here is great; you can already see the smog,'' Guilbeault said while suspended beneath the deck. He said he wants Canadians to know that ``droughts in the Prairies, fires in Alberta, high temperatures around the world are all linked to greenhouse-gas emissions and global warming.''

Guilbeault and Holden could face trespassing and mischief charges when they come back down, police spokesman Rob Knapper said.

``Whether or not charges are laid depends on how the owners of the tower want to proceed,'' he said.

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Activists held in failed attempt to halt missile launch

USA Today
7/16/2001 - Updated 12:04 AM ET
The Associated Press
http://usatoday.com/news/nation/2001/07/16/greenpeace.htm

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AP) - Sixteen protesters were in custody Sunday after an unsuccessful attempt to halt a test of the proposed missile defense system, officials said.

The protesters, members of the environmental group Greenpeace, were on rafts moored off the central California coast, authorities said. Four swam to shore.

The arrests delayed the test launch by two minutes, Air Force Sgt. Rebecca Bonilla said.

The protesters sought to halt the test and show opposition to President Bush's planned missile defense system, said Greenpeace spokeswoman Carol Gregory.

In the test, an unarmed Minuteman II intercontinental ballistic missile, equipped with a mock nuclear warhead, was shot down Saturday evening by an interceptor rocket launched from a tiny Pacific island.

The activists were being held on suspicion of domestic terrorism, but it was not immediately clear what they would be charged with, said FBI spokeswoman Cheryl Mimura.

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Abortion Opponents Protest in Kan.

The Washington Times
JULY 16, 15:53 EST
By CARL MANNING
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/?SLUG=SUMMER%2dOF%2dMERCY

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) - Hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets Monday to demand an end to abortions, reading Bible verses over a loudspeaker as they marched through downtown with a police escort.

The activists, in town for a renewal of the Summer of Mercy anti-abortion protests that crippled Wichita a decade ago, also started a court fight against the city's refusal to let them parade outside an abortion clinic.

Police put the number of marchers at between 500 and 1,000.

Organizers of the protests filed a federal lawsuit alleging the city improperly denied them a permit for marches near the clinic of Dr. George Tiller, one of the few physicians in the country to perform late-term abortions. The clinic was bombed in 1985 and Tiller was shot and wounded in 1993, two years after the first Summer of Mercy in Wichita.

The group also challenged the constitutionality of a municipal court order imposing stiffer bail for any nonresidents arrested at the clinic this week.

City officials have said that the parade permit was denied for safety reasons, and that the higher bail should not matter to a group that has proclaimed it planned peaceful protests.

In 1991, the first Summer of Mercy - led by firebrand Randall Terry and Operation Rescue - ended with 2,700 people arrested in more than 45 days of protests. The group has since distanced itself from Terry and calls itself Operation Save America.


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