------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
China Leader: Security Is Treaty Goal
Czechs Won't Close Nuclear Plant
Soldiers' deaths blamed on X-rays
Details of G-8 Summit Participants
Germany Urges the Czechs to Close a Nuclear Plant
India and Pakistan Leaders Scamble to Explain Failed Talks
Kashmir and A-Arms Defeat Leaders of India and Pakistan
Star Wars: Rumsfeld's Darth Vader Strategy
A Missile Shield Road Map
Presidents Of China, Russia Sign Pact;
Bush Not Swayed by Russia-China Pact
Pentagon Revives Reagan - Era Proposal
Russia: U.S. Seeks to Make Russian Weapons Safe
Russian Sub Salvage Operation Begins
Doomsday
In the Treaty's Words: 'International Stability'
CH2M Hill needs tougher job, report says
Bush Not Swayed by Russia - China Pact
Cheney Pitches Conservation New Emphasis in Energy Plan

MILITARY
U.S. Trains Thai Unit to Block Methamphetamine Traffic
Senator would ban Iraqi oil
'Military Tools' Won't Work, Say Israeli Hawk
Adviser: Clinton Exasperated With Barak During Peace Talks
EU warns Turkey it can't block plans to use NATO facilities
Russian Radio Host Gets Shares
Russian Revises His Heritage
ARMY TRAINING CENTER EXPANDING INTO CALIFORNIA DESERT
For G.I.'s, a Balkan Road of Neither War Nor Peace
U.S. servicewomen question dress requirement
Rumsfeld says billions more needed to make up for shortfalls

OTHER
Air defence concerns a threat to UK wind power
Solar-powered NASA aircraft flies over Hawaii
Energy Policy, Gas Prices Garner Comment
House Members Debate Bush Energy Plan
Cheney Calls on Navy to Pay Bill to Light His Home
US Will Be Active in Climate Talks
Japan Urges US to Reconsider Treaty
EPA Releases Report on Biotech Corn
Report Supports Stem Cell Study
Mobile phones to give radiation levels soon
Bush mulls amnesty for illegals
Bush Calls for World Bank to Increase Grants
Bush Asks for More World Bank Grants
Moroccan Rights Groups Ask CIA to Open Files

ACTIVISTS
'Disobedients' Settle in for G8 Protest
15 Activists and 2 Press Men Could Face Jail for Star Wars Action


-------- NUCLEAR

-------- china

China Leader: Security Is Treaty Goal

By Vladimir Isachenkov
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, July 17, 2001; 4:15 a.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010717/aponline041542_000.htm

MOSCOW -- Visiting Chinese President Jiang Zemin told students at Moscow State University on Tuesday that the new 20-year friendship treaty between Russia and China was aimed at protecting global security.

Jiang and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the treaty on Monday, formalizing the burgeoning ties between the two nations following decades of Cold War rivalry.

"The goal of signing the treaty was to deepen mutual confidence," Jiang said, speaking Russian. "If we firmly and unfailingly implement this treaty, we will make Russian-Chinese relations an example of friendship."

Putin, who usually confines his formal meetings with foreign leaders in Moscow to the Kremlin, joined the Chinese president at the university for the speech.

"This very important treaty ... is aimed for the 21st century," Putin said.

He praised Jiang for delivering the 40-minute speech in Russian, a language the Chinese leader learned as a student in Moscow. Jiang said that each time he visits Russia, "I feel at home."

Putin and Jiang pledged in a joint statement Monday that their countries will "remain friends forever, and never become enemies." The treaty emphasized that the two nations were not forming a military pact.

"The military and military-technical cooperation between the two countries ... is not directed against third countries," they said.

China bought billions of dollars worth of Russian fighter jets, submarines, missiles and destroyers during the 1990s, becoming the biggest customer for Russia's ailing military industrial complex. In its military buildup, Beijing has concentrated on amassing tactical, not strategic, weapons.

The Bush administration's reaction was low-keyed, saying the pact poses no particular threat to the United States. "They have a long border in the region, and it's important for them to get along," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

The treaty also confirmed Russia's support for the Chinese claim on Taiwan, which Beijing views as a renegade province. The two territories split in the 1949 civil war.

"Russia opposes any kind of independence for Taiwan," the treaty said.

Jiang and Putin on Monday reiterated their nations' opposition to the U.S. plans to deploy a national missile defense system, but refrained from commenting on the successful test Saturday of a missile intercepter.

In his speech Tuesday, the Chinese president addressed the issue only indirectly.

"No country can build its security by abridging the security interests of other nations," he said.

Russia and China both warn that the proposed U.S. missile shield could tilt the strategic balance and trigger a new arms race. But China's concerns are even stronger, because its nuclear arsenal is tiny compared to Russia's and even a limited missile defense could erode its deterrent value.

-------- czech republic

Czechs Won't Close Nuclear Plant

New York Times
July 17, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Czech-Germany-Nuclear.html

PRAGUE, Czech Republic (AP) -- A Czech government official rejected a call from Germany on Tuesday to close the Temelin nuclear power plant near the border with Austria and Germany.

Czech Vice Prime Minister Vladimir Spidla told Czech radio that the Czech Republic, as ``a civilized country,'' is capable of guaranteeing all safety standards. ``Safety is a key issue for us,'' he said.

The German government joined Austrian calls for the closure of the plant, citing safety concerns.

Activated last October, the 2,000 megawatt Russian-designed plant is currently on standby due to technical problems with the main turbine generator and is expected to go back on line in August.

Karel Kriz, spokesman for the Czech state energy concern CEZ that owns the plant, estimated losses of $2.75 billion should Temelin be shut down.

``It would either mean the company would face liquidation, or its value would drop significantly before privatization,'' he said. The privatization is slated for the fall.

Meanwhile, opponents of the Temelin plant in Austria renewed their criticism of the facility, and government officials also repeated their concerns.

Austrian Foreign Minister Benita Ferrero-Waldner, currently on a visit in Warsaw, Poland, said she expected ``concrete steps'' for the safety of the Temelin reactor.

The plant, located some 30 miles from the border with Austria, has sparked angry protests from Austrian anti-nuclear activists, who demand that it be shut down.

The Czechs, however, maintain the plant meets all the international safety standards.

``As far as nuclear safety is concerned, there's no single reason to shut Temelin down,'' said Pavel Pittermann, spokesman for the State Office for Nuclear safety.

-------- depleted uranium

Soldiers' deaths blamed on X-rays

Wednesday, July 18, 2001
Irish Times
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/world/2001/0718/wor7.htm

The German Defence Ministry has denied media reports that up to 58 soldiers may have died from cancer due to prolonged exposure to X-rays from radar equipment, reports Derek Scally from Berlin.

GERMANY: Of the 600 to 800 German soldiers who served as radar technicians in the last 40 years, over 300 have been diagnosed with cancer, including 31 cases of leukaemia, 25 cases of testicular cancer and 22 with brain tumours, according to figures from a support group for former soldiers.

Last January the federal government established a commission to investigate the matter following media reports that peacekeepers had been harmed by exposure to radiation from the remnants of depleted-uranium ammunition.

The commission's report, published last month, said that the German army neglected to provide its soldiers with adequate protection from dangerous radiation in radar installations.

"In individual cases, members of the Bundeswehr, soldiers and civilians have without a doubt been harmed by X-rays from radar equipment," according to the report.

The defence ministry said it had received compensation applications from over 300 soldiers, but denied yesterday that any had died from cancer caused by radiation in radar.

-------- europe

Details of G-8 Summit Participants

The Associated Press
Tuesday, July 17, 2001; 1:06 p.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010717/aponline130654_000.htm

The world's seven richest nations, joined by Russia, will meet for their 27th annual economic summit beginning Friday in Genoa, Italy. The countries and their leaders:

-UNITED STATES:

President Bush, 55, is headed into his first economic summit and his second trip to Europe since becoming president.

Unlike President Clinton, who enjoyed supercharged U.S. growth rates during his last term, Bush will go to Genoa with the U.S. economy in the doldrums. But Bush will insist that his $1.35 trillion tax cut, his biggest achievement since taking office, and aggressive interest rate cuts from the Federal Reserve, will turn America's economic fortunes around in the second half of this year.

Bush is certain to come in for criticism for rejecting the global warming treaty, which Europe strongly supports, and his decision to push forward with a missile defense shield, a position that has angered Russia.

Anti-globalization protesters, whose signs call Bush the "toxic Texan," will add their voices to those objecting to the new administration's positions. At home, polls show that Bush's job approval ratings have slipped 6 to 8 percentage points since the spring and now hover around the 50 percent, still better than Clinton's 39 approval ratings at the same time in his presidency.

-RUSSIA:

Vladimir Putin, 48, attending his second economic summit, has retained the same high level of popularity that he has enjoyed since winning the Russian presidency last year, a 70 percent approval rating.

Putin has been helped by a Russian economy that has been doing better over the past year, bolstered by high world energy prices, which help Russia, a major oil exporter. Putin's government is pushing an ambitious reform agenda which includes overhauling the nation's convoluted tax system and its slow and inefficient judicial system.

Putin will be certain to raise anew his strong objections to Bush's missile defense shield.

-JAPAN:

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who took office in April vowing to attack Japan's worsening economic troubles and reform the political system, is the country's most popular leader in decades. Recent public opinion polls put his approval rating at 80 percent.

With his trademark flowing hairstyle and his love of rock 'n' roll, Koizumi, 59, plays up his role as a maverick. While he is pursuing economic policies long advocated by outside experts - unloading bad bank loans and deregulating the economy, he has acknowledged that his program could result in two to three years of lower economic growth at a time when Japan already appears to be slipping back into recession. Koizumi disappointed the Europeans when he declared during his first meeting with Bush last month that Japan will not go forward in implementing the Kyoto global warming treaty without the United States.

GERMANY:

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, 57, in office for nearly three years, remains highly popular despite Germany's growing economic problems, with two-thirds of Germans saying they are satisfied with his work according to one recent poll.

With elections due in the fall of 2002, Schroeder is banking on an economic upturn to lock away a second term. His opposition remains weak, reflecting the scandals that engulfed former Chancellor Helmut Kohl after he left office.

Forecasts for German economic growth this year keep getting revised lower as Europe's biggest economy suffers from the weakness in one of its major export markets, the United States. Schroeder has rejected demands to speed up planned tax cuts to boost Germany's sagging economy, arguing that it is more important to meet the goal of balancing the German budget by 2006, calling this the "policy of the steady hand." Proud of his role in pushing debt relief for the world's poorest countries at the 1999 Cologne summit, Schroeder is expected to seek further progress in this area in Genoa.

BRITAIN:

Prime Minister Tony Blair, 48, won a second landslide victory in June, giving him up to five more years in office with an unassailable majority in the House of Commons. However, Blair is feeling pressure to deliver on the unkept promises of his first term - to make improvements in education, the National Health Service and the country's railway system. One indication of growing impatience from the liberal wing of his party is the effort by some Labor members of parliament to attack Blair during the traditional question period in the House of Commons when the prime minister stands to answer questions from other members of Parliament.

Given that Britain is traditionally America's most loyal ally, Bush is certain to seek Blair's support during his stopover in Britain on his way to Genoa. However, Blair is expected to join with other European leaders in an effort to get Bush to moderate his opposition to the Kyoto global warming treaty.

FRANCE:

President Jacques Chirac, 68, is embroiled in escalating investigations at home. He declared on national television that he has "nothing to hide" from judges who are looking into cash payments for trips made when he was mayor of Paris.

The conservative president is expected to be opposed in next year's election by Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin although neither man has officially declared his candidacy.

During the summit, Chirac is expected to focus on the global health fund for AIDS and other infectious diseases. He will also be leading the opposition to Bush's rejection of the Kyoto global warming treaty.

ITALY:

Silvio Berlusconi, 64, won a second stint as premier in national elections in May, as head of a conservative coalition government. Berlusconi, Italy's richest man, has the support of 58 percent of Italians, but he faces pressures to resolve conflicts between his private holdings, which include the country's largest television network, and his government duties.

The conservative business executive has made no secret of his desire for a close relationship with the conservative Bush, seeing him as a natural ally. Bush will stop off in Rome after the summit for a personal visit with Berlusconi and a meeting with the pope. Berlusconi, who was at the head of the Italian government for the last economic summit hosted by his country in Naples in 1994, has expressed concerns that this year's meeting could be marred by violent clashes between police and the more militant demonstrators.

CANADA:

Prime Minister Jean Chretien, 67, is in the strongest position of his eight years in power, having won a third straight term as head of government in parliamentary elections last November.

Chretien said in a pre-summit interview that he saw the global battle against AIDS as the most important issue.

He said Canada will align itself with Europe in backing the Kyoto global warming treaty in opposition to the Bush position. Chretien will probably be watching how the authorities handle the demonstrators very closely given that Canada will be the host of next year's summit meeting.

----

Germany Urges the Czechs to Close a Nuclear Plant

New York Times
July 17, 2001
By PETER S. GREEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/17/business/worldbusiness/17NUKE.html?searchpv=nytToday

PRAGUE, July 16 - The German government confirmed today that it has called on its neighbor, the Czech Republic, to shut a nuclear power plant near the German and Austrian borders.

The news sent shares in the main Czech utility crashing and raised new questions about the Czech Republic's plans to join the European Union.

"The German federal government strongly urges the government of the Czech Republic to lift its decision to allow the Temelin nuclear plant to operate, and to close the plant," the German government said in a statement released Friday.

A German government spokesman said Berlin would not use the Temelin issue to block the Czechs' entry to the European Union, but Czech officials fear it will embolden politicians in neighboring Austria, who have threatened to block Czech membership in the 15-nation union unless the reactor is shut down.

Shares in CEZ, the company that owns Temelin, fell more than 20 percent to a two-year low before trading was suspended on the Prague Stock Exchange.

Temelin's two 1,000-megawatt units, designed more than 20 years ago by Soviet engineers and recently upgraded with Western safety systems by Westinghouse, now a unit of British Nuclear Fuels P.L.C., began operating last October, but have yet to go fully on line. They are now sidelined by a faulty turbine.

"This plant is not safe enough to be put into operation," said Michael Schroeren, a spokesman for Germany's environment ministry. "We do not believe this plant can be brought to Western standards of safety. Therefore the best thing one can do is to close down the plant."

Antinuclear sentiment is growing in Germany, and last month German utilities agreed to shut their 19 nuclear plants within 20 years.

Mr. Schroeren said closing the plant was not a condition for letting the Czechs join the European Union, but Czech officials insisted their country needed the electricity Temelin could generate and the cash it would bring in from selling excess electricity to Western Europe.

Temelin's two units, which are years behind schedule and way over budget, have faced fierce protests from local environmentalists as well as Austrians who have blocked border crossings to protest its operation. It opened last October only after an exhaustive safety review by Czech and Austrian scientists.

Further delays or the shutdown of Temelin would savage CEZ, one of the largest Czech companies, and tighten pressure on the Czech government, which is counting on the sale of a 64 percent stake in CEZ to help plug holes in the budget and cut the national debt, now estimated at 24 percent of the country's output.

"It would definitely be bad for CEZ and for the government itself," said Jindrich Svatek, an analyst at Raiffeisen Zentralbank in Prague.

-------- india / pakistan

India and Pakistan Leaders Scamble to Explain Failed Talks

New York Times
July 17, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-India-Pakistan.html?searchpv=aponline

AGRA, India -- The leaders of India and Pakistan tried Tuesday to explain their failure to reach an accord on their half-century dispute over Kashmir, but analysts were predicting more violence in the Himalayan province.

Late Monday, Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf met for an hour with Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in one final attempt to salvage the three-day summit.

As midnight approached, neither side was willing to budge and Musharraf departed for the airport and flew back to Pakistan without any agreement.

It appeared that the stumbling blocks involved language over how to describe the dispute over Kashmir and the militants, called terrorists by India and freedom fighters by Pakistan.

Musharraf was ``very disappointed and hurt that he and Vajpayee had agreed to everything, they had settled on an agreement and six hours later it was in tatters. How can this happen?'' said Pakistan's Information Secretary Anwar Mahmood.

Neither government has been specific about the final obstacle.

India's foreign and defense minister Jaswant Singh said Vajpayee had ``firmly tried to raise the question of terrorism. ... If such an understanding by Pakistan existed on terrorism, this situation (of no agreement) wouldn't have arisen.''

Summit delegates from both South Asian countries had earlier been told to prepare for a declaration by the two leaders covering new ground on Kashmir, security and narcotics.

Now, analysts expect relations to worsen between the longtime nuclear rivals.

``The failure of the peace talks might lead Pakistan to step up support to insurgency in Kashmir,'' said defense analyst C. Raja Mohan.

Several militants groups based in Pakistan said the collapse of the talks would give new impetus to their efforts to end Indian control of part of Kashmir, where 90 people died in fighting between guerrillas and Indian soldiers during the three-day summit.

``The Kashmir issue cannot be solved through talks. Only jehad will settle Kashmir, and we will prove it,'' Mohammed Hamza, a spokesman for Al-Badr Mujahedeen, said in a telephone interview.

Since Muslim Pakistan was carved out of Hindu-majority India following independence from Britain, both have claimed the entire Jammu-Kashmir region.

Stephen Cohen, a senior analyst at Washington's Brookings Institution and South Asia specialist, said the talks were at least a first step, which should lead to careful preparation for the next summit.

``You can't change 50 years of hostility in one meeting. ``The TV coverage gave both countries a very intensive lesson in the concerns of the other.''

In Washington, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said: ``It's a promising sign that the two parties are talking.''

--------

Kashmir and A-Arms Defeat Leaders of India and Pakistan

New York Times
July 17, 2001
By CELIA W. DUGGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/17/international/17INDI.html?searchpv=nytToday

AGRA, India, Tuesday, July 17 - The leaders of India and Pakistan, nuclear-armed adversaries, abruptly broke off two days of marathon negotiations on Monday night. They failed to make any substantive progress on their intractable conflict over Kashmir, a land claimed by both nations, or on reducing the risks of a nuclear exchange.

There were also ominous signs that the summit meeting may have deepened the Pakistanis' already deep mistrust of the Indians.

The talks between Pakistan's military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, and India's prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, ended without any joint statement after repeated extensions of the talks through Monday. The general canceled a visit to a famed Sufi shrine in Ajmer to make time for more negotiations, but left empty-handed at midnight.

Two Pakistani journalists, interviewed separately, said General Musharraf's chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Ghulam Ahmed, had told them on the record, insisting that he be quoted, that the Indians had backed away three times from agreed joint statements.

Nasim Zehra, a columnist for an English-language newspaper in Islamabad, The News, said General Ahmed had asked her to pass on his account to the rest of the press corps. And Hamid Mir, editor of an Urdu daily in Islamabad, Ausaf, said, "There was a sense of betrayal that a number of times things were agreed to and gone back on."

The Indians and Pakistanis did not answer questions on Monday night or this morning about the summit meeting or give any official explanations of what went wrong. They said they would hold separate news conferences later today.

The sudden breakdown of the talks was a sharp contrast to the festive and hopeful conclusion of the last summit meeting, in February 1999, when Mr. Vajpayee and Nawaz Sharif, then prime minister of Pakistan, announced at a jam-packed news conference in Lahore that they had agreed to hold further discussions on Kashmir, on reducing nuclear risk and terrorism and on many other issues.

But those talks never happened. Mr. Sharif was toppled in a coup by General Musharraf in October 1999. Many Indians blame the general for a Pakistani incursion into the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir that brought the two nations to the brink of full-scale war in the summer of 1999 and ruptured high-level talks between them until this weekend.

Despite the lack of progress, the general and the prime minister are expected to keep talking: Mr. Vajpayee accepted the general's invitation to visit Pakistan.

In a brief statement, India's spokeswoman, Nirupama Rao, said this morning, "I am disappointed to inform all of you that although the commencement of the process and the beginning of a journey has taken place, the destination of an agreed joint statement has not been reached."

The two sides' longstanding conflicting views on Kashmir bedeviled their attempts at compromise. In blunt remarks Monday morning at a breakfast for senior Indian journalists, General Musharraf insisted that there could be no real progress until the conflict over Kashmir was openly acknowledged - a statement he has made many times before.

"This is what we've killed each other for," he said. "I know it much more. I've fought in the two wars."

The Indians were riled that he publicly suggested that they were not ready to face reality on Kashmir while negotiations were still going on.

Several hours after his lengthy comments were broadcast on a private television channel, Indian officials took the highly unusual step of releasing a statement the prime minister had made privately when the talks with Pakistan began. In it, Mr. Vajpayee said any negotiations on Kashmir would have to include what India refers to as cross-border terrorism.

India maintains that the militant groups supported by Pakistan and based there and fighting a protracted anti-India insurgency in Kashmir are terrorists who are crossing the border into India.

Pakistan calls these same militants freedom fighters.

India defines Kashmir as an inalienable part of its nation of a billion people, while Pakistan, with a population of 150 million, has long taken the position that the Kashmiris should be allowed to vote to join Pakistan - a stance the general hinted he might soften if ever talks really got under way.

Kashmir's status has been debated since British India was divided in 1947, when mostly Muslim Kashmir was assigned to mostly Hindu India.

Pakistani journalists said the general needed to keep his focus on Kashmir to avoid angering hard-line elements of the military, as well as Islamic fundamentalists who believe that Kashmir should be part of Islamic Pakistan.

General Musharraf himself said today that he might as well settle down in the big house in Old Delhi where he lived as a child rather than go home to Pakistan, where his family moved in 1947, if he were seen as selling out on Kashmir. "There are definitely compulsions on my part that I must talk about it," he said.

The scene of the blunt-talking general breaking the diplomatic china was just part of a day full of surprises, the most troubling of which occurred after the talks broke off.

More than a hundred journalists rushed to the hotel where General Musharraf had gone to bid Mr. Vajpayee farewell. For an hour and a half, they waited outside the gates.

The Islamabad journalist, Ms. Zehra, who had come to the meeting as a guest commentator for the state television station, spoke intensely on a mobile phone to the general's chief of staff, who was inside the gates, then circulated with his account of what he called the Indians' inconstancy.

She said the chief of staff had also told her that the general had wanted to hold a news conference, but that the Indians had refused on security grounds - which left some Pakistani journalists simmering with anger at the insult.

Just before midnight, the general's entourage of 33 vehicles, illuminated by flashing red and blue lights, streaked past the waiting journalists, who then crammed into cars to return to the hotel where they were based to wait for an Indian statement.

After Ms. Rao read out the single paragraph, outraged Pakistani journalists began shouting out questions about why democratic India had denied the general a place to hold a news conference. She refused to answer any questions, but they chased her and four members of her staff into the lobby.

An Indian official who witnessed the incident said India's press team literally ran away. One journalist hit Ms. Rao on the shoulder, while others pushed and shoved the staff. "How can they do that to a lady?" Sanjay Verma, a member of Ms. Rao's staff, asked.

The shouting was still going on when more journalists poured out of the Indians' news conference. Khalid Hanif, chief reporter for the Daily Jang in Islamabad, was emotionally and loudly demanding to know why the general had not been allowed to hold a news conference.

It was a rancorous ending to a meeting that was supposed to bring India and Pakistan together.

As she left the hotel where the reporters had been waiting for the general, Ms. Zehra sighed and said: "What a pity. It's finished. Let's go home."

-------- missile defense

Star Wars: Rumsfeld's Darth Vader Strategy

Editorial
Tuesday, July 17, 2001
Minneapolis Star Tribune
http://commondreams.org/views01/0717-06.htm

You've got to wonder just why the Bush administration has its knickers in such a twist over national missile defense -- to the point that it is now threatening unilateral withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia. Some of the very best minds in this nation agree that the threat missile defense is designed to counter remains only a future possibility. It is true that two national commissions have found otherwise, but both were headed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and to reach their alarmist conclusions they recast critical assumptions in ways designed to maximize the threat.

The most plausible explanation critics give for Rumsfeld's missile-defense hawkishness is that it isn't really about missiles and rogue states, but about getting the ABM treaty out of the way so Rumsfeld can press ahead with plans to put anti-satellite and anti-missile weapons in space. If this is true, Rumsfeld and Bush are not serious about a limited missile defense, but are bringing back President Ronald Reagan's Star Wars concept in its full glory.

That ought to worry everyone, for the militarization of space is a step with potentially enormous consequences. It ought not be undertaken by stealth.

Grant the Bush administration its arguments that the ABM treaty and the concept of mutually assured destruction (MAD) are immoral relics of the Cold War. But accepting those propositions inexorably drives an intellectually honest discussion to a far more basic truth: The real immoral anachronism -- and the real danger to the United States -- is the continued existence of thousands of intercontinental ballistic missiles on hair-trigger alert in both Russia and the United States. Only they have made the ABM and MAD necessary. Get rid of those obsolete weapons and you will have eliminated more than 90 percent of the nuclear material threatening the world today.

Moreover, you can start that elimination in ways that are cheap -- a necessity given the size of the Bush tax cut -- and do not violate unilaterally the ABM treaty. Bush could start tomorrow by taking all American missiles off their quick-launch alert. He could follow by announcing that the United States will henceforth embrace a no-first-use policy on nuclear weapons. Then would come the hard work of joining with Russia to reduce remaining arsenals to their absolute minimum.

That process essentially says to the world that the United States no longer sees great value in nuclear weapons. Such leadership by example would have a profound effect on the world's would-be nuclear powers. China, India and Pakistan would come under great pressure to reverse their nuclear buildups. In that context, too, missile defense might become a stabilizing rather than destabilizing concept.

The reverse -- getting rid of the ABM treaty without getting rid of the missiles -- heightens the very danger the Bush administration says makes missile defense necessary. That appears to be by design. The Bush administration is full of people who distrust arms control, reject multilateralism, have a blind faith in American technology and want to propel the United States to the ultimate top-dog status: in unilateral military control of everything from outposts in space linking land, sea and air forces on Earth. If that doesn't scare people, it should.

----

A Missile Shield Road Map

New York Times
July 17, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/17/opinion/17TUE2.html?searchpv=nytToday

The flight data must still be fully evaluated, but the Pentagon reports that last weekend's missile defense test was a success, giving a modest but timely advance to a troubled program. For the second time in four tries, the Pentagon said, a prototype interceptor hit and destroyed a dummy warhead far above the Pacific. Many more tests will be needed before a reliable ground-based system is ready for use. These must include tests under more realistic conditions, with the dummy warhead surrounded by multiple decoys designed to draw the interceptor away from the target. Saturday's test used a single decoy.

This extended testing period should be used to try to negotiate a new understanding with Russia that would modify or supersede the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty to allow fielding of a limited defensive shield designed to thwart attack by unpredictable nations. That is the course suggested by Secretary of State Colin Powell in a recent interview with The Washington Post.

Ideally, other defensive technologies should be tested as well, including boost-phase systems, which target enemy rockets soon after launch, when they are most vulnerable. Only ground-based systems can be tested under the current language of the ABM treaty. Russia and China called for maintaining the treaty "in its current form" in an accord the two nations signed in Moscow yesterday. But President Vladimir Putin of Russia has spoken favorably of boost-phase systems and might be willing to alter the treaty to allow testing of this technology. The Bush administration should explore that possibility in high-level meetings with Russian officials scheduled over the next few months.

Boost-phase systems have some clear technological and diplomatic advantages. They home in on an enemy missile when it is still moving relatively slowly, is unlikely to be surrounded by decoys and is trailed by a hot and bright plume of rocket exhaust. The interceptor rockets, whether based on land or sea, would need to be situated very close to the specific countries being defended against and would pose no threat to the missile forces of other countries, like Russia or China.

But these systems also have important drawbacks. The order to fire interceptors would have to be issued almost immediately by field commanders after an enemy missile launch, leaving little time for consultation with Washington. Design and testing of a boost-phase system would take many years.

Even if Moscow agrees to permit boost-phase testing, Washington should continue its efforts to perfect a ground-based system. It will be years before either technology yields a system reliable enough to protect American cities against nuclear missile attack. Because of this, the administration should not be in any rush to break out of the treaty.

This weekend President Bush will see Mr. Putin at the summit meeting of industrial nations in Genoa, Italy. Tomorrow Secretary Powell will meet Russia's foreign minister, Igor Ivanov. Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, travels to Moscow next week, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld expects to meet with his Russian counterpart in the near future. These meetings should be used to explore ways to expand testing options without throwing away the benefits of an arms control treaty that has helped restrain nuclear weapons dangers for decades.

----

Presidents Of China, Russia Sign Pact;
Joint Statement Aims At U.S. Missile Shield

By Susan B. Glasser
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, July 17, 2001; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A5145-2001Jul16?language=printer

MOSCOW, July 16 -- President Vladimir Putin and visiting President Jiang Zemin of China 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. Jiang 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 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."

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, commenting on the treaty in Washington, said Russia and China "have a long border in the region, and it's important for them to get along."

Although Russia has emerged as a leading arms supplier to China, the documents did not spell out any new military alliance and took pains to insist that their partnership 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 it could undermine international arms control agreements.

The last time Russia and China signed such a document was at the height of the Cold War, when Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and his Chinese counterpart Mao Zedong forged an alliance that collapsed into open hostility by the 1960s. After the fall of the Soviet Union a decade ago, relations between the two countries warmed considerably.

But in practical terms, the new alliance has translated mostly to a burgeoning arms trade bringing an estimated $1.5 billion to cash-strapped Russia this year and a joint willingness to raise questions about the United States' preeminent position in the post-Soviet world. The two leaders have made common cause against the U.S. missile defense plans, most recently condemning Saturday's successful test of an interceptor missile.

"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."

Yet in many respects, the Russia-China 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 annual trade with the United States.

And while concerned about the prospect of a new Moscow-Beijing strategic axis, Western diplomats here said they are more focused for now on specific arms sales or technology transfers to China at a time of military buildup there. 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, weapons that alarm Washington because of their potential for use in the Taiwan Strait.

At a news conference after the signing, Putin acknowledged the importance of such ties to Russia. "The choice made by Russia and China in the mid-1990s in favor of strategic partnership has fully justified itself," he said.

The treaty -- officially dubbed the Sino-Russian Treaty of Good-Neighborly and Friendly Cooperation -- officially extends for 20 years and includes sections advocating increased trade in areas ranging from nuclear energy to timber-cutting, as well as pushing for joint action against terrorism in an apparent reference to conflicts with Islamic militants in former Soviet republics in Central Asia.

"We proceed from the fact that predictable relations between such large world powers as China and Russia will have a substantive and beneficial influence on world affairs," Putin said. "The treaty will objectively encourage stability and peace in the whole world."

For his part, Jiang referred to their mutual complaint about a "unipolar" world of U.S. dominance. "We believe that more active cooperation between our countries in discussing missile defenses and disarmament will enhance our efforts in building a multi-polar world and establishing a fair, rational international order," he said. Both leaders also said they would work to resolve a few minor disputes over their 2,500-mile border.

Jiang's visit came just days after the International Olympic Committee, meeting here, decided to award the 2008 Summer Olympics to Beijing, and he happily accepted congratulations from Putin, who said, "We rejoiced together with you" at the decision.

For Putin, the summit came at a sensitive time, right before his second meeting with President Bush, scheduled for later this week in Genoa, Italy, at the Group of Eight summit.

Correspondent Peter Baker contributed to this report.

----

Bush Not Swayed by Russia-China Pact

By Barry Schweid
AP Diplomatic Writer
Tuesday, July 17, 2001; 4:12 p.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010717/aponline161217_000.htm

WASHINGTON -- A new friendship pact between Russia and China will not deter the United States from pursuing a missile defense system, a State Department spokesman said Tuesday.

Continuing a low-keyed U.S. assessment of the first pact between Moscow and Beijing in a half-century, spokesman Philip Reeker said the two countries "obviously have interests in maintaining a solid bilateral relationship, and that's important for us, too."

At the same time, he said, "we'll continue to pursue our own relationships, we'll continue to pursue our own interest in a missile defense system. That doesn't change anything in terms of our policies and what the administration is pursuing."

The treaty, signed Monday by Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and Ziang Jemin of China affirmed strategic friendship and cooperation between the two countries.

The two leaders said the treaty was not aimed at any other country. They also reaffirmed their faith in the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972 as the cornerstone of international stability.

Putin, in an interview Monday with Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, said the North Atlantic Treaty Organization should be dissolved.

He is due to meet with President Bush at an economic summit conference on Sunday in Genoa, Italy.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, meanwhile, is due in Beijing for talks with Chinese officials July 28.

Bush has called the 1972 U.S. treaty with Moscow a relic of the Cold War. Senior administration officials have vowed to violate its terms if the treaty stands in the way of tests outlawed by the accord but part of Bush's quest for an anti-missile defense.

Constantine Menges, who advised former President Ronald Reagan on Latin America and worked for the Central Intelligence Agency, said Tuesday the administration's reaction reflected "wishful assumptions."

He said the State Department was ignoring a pledge by the two sides to consult to eliminate any threat of aggression as well as the Shanghai Pact between Russia and China signed last month that calls for mutual defense.

Menges, who is with the Hudson Institute, a private research group, said the accord Monday in Moscow and the one in June mark a complete turnabout from the situation in 1992 and 1993, when former Russian President Boris Yeltsin spoke of a strategic partnership with the United States and kept China at a distance.

----

Pentagon Revives Reagan - Era Proposal

July 17, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/news/AP-Missile-Defense.html

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (AP) -- The Pentagon's blueprint for expanding missile defense research includes the first-ever test of a space-based interceptor by 2005-06, a senior defense official said Tuesday.

Details of the test are not yet worked out, and space-based weaponry -- though a long-range possibility -- is not the Pentagon's first priority for missile defense, said Robert Snyder, executive director of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, which manages the Pentagon missile defense research.

Speaking to reporters at an Army-sponsored briefing on missile defense, Snyder said the experiment would be designed to prove the concept of hitting a ballistic missile early in its flight with a projectile launched from space.

This is a concept first pursued in the 1980s as part of President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, which aimed to create an impenetrable shield against attack on the United States by thousands of Soviet missiles. It never progressed to an actual test in space and was shelved in the early 1990s.

The Bush administration has not publicly emphasized the space-based weapon concept because it recalls the ``Star Wars'' tag that Reagan's critics attached to his Strategic Defense Initiative. The administration is focusing most of its missile defense efforts on antimissile weapons based on land, at sea and in the air.

Snyder said that although the space-based concept is unproven, it has certain attractive aspects.

``There's an advantage to global satellites and global interceptors in the sense that they're always there'' in orbit, he said.

During the administration of President Bush's father, the Pentagon briefly pursued a version of space-based missile defense that it called Brilliant Pebbles. It was based on the notion of building a constellation of 3,600 to 4,000 orbiting satellites from which antimissile projectiles could be launched.

In the experiment planned for 2005-06, the projectile would not be based on a satellite because it would be intended only to prove the basic concept; instead it would be launched into space aboard a rocket, oriented as if it had been stationed in space and then released to chase down its target, Snyder said.

-------- russia

Russia: U.S. Seeks to Make Russian Weapons Safe

By Frank T. Csongos,
July 17, 2001
Radio Free Europe
http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2001/07/17072001104613.asp

The administration of U.S. President George W. Bush has concluded a review of American military assistance to Russia. The study says most of the U.S.-paid programs aimed at helping Russia to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction are vital to American security. Our correspondent Frank T. Csongos reports from Washington.

Washington, 17 July 2001 (RFE/RL) -- The United States says it is in America's national security interest to continue to help Russia in preventing the spread of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.

The assessment is contained in a review by the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush of a decade-old non-proliferation program. It is designed to prevent cash-strapped Russian research facilities, or individual scientists, from selling weapons technologies abroad.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher summed up the U.S. position at the department's daily briefing on 16 July. He said:

"We continue to believe that it's in the U.S. national interest to assist Russia in preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction, the material and the know-how for weapons of mass destruction as well as ballistic technology. So that point remains pretty firm. "

One of the programs involved is a U.S. taxpayer-funded effort to help Russia dispose of hundreds of tons of military plutonium.

The review calls for a shift in philosophy from assistance to partnership with Moscow.

To do that, U.S. officials say the Kremlin would have to demonstrate a greater willingness to make a financial and political commitment to stop the spread of sophisticated conventional weapons and to end Russian sale of nuclear and other military-related technologies to Iran and other nations unfriendly to the United States.

The U.S. review covered 30 programs with an annual outlay of some $800 million.

These programs represent a cornerstone of U.S. scientific and military relationship with Russia.

Bush is expected to discuss some of these programs when he meets Russian President Vladimir Putin this coming weekend in Genoa, Italy. The meeting, U.S. officials say, is expected to focus on American plans to build a nuclear missile shield.

The United States reiterated on 16 July that it intends to proceed with developing the missile defense system despite new objections from Russia and China. A joint statement signed 15 July by the presidents of Russia and China in Moscow called the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) the "cornerstone of international security."

At the State Department, Boucher said:

"Ultimately, the United States intends to go forward, and we've made clear that we have the right to withdraw from the treaty, if necessary. But we'd like to work this out, and the goal is try to work with the Russians, and then the exact form of that could be a variety of things."

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said in an interview with a U.S. newspaper that the administration was trying to reach some sort of written understanding with Moscow that would allow development of the system, prohibited by the ABM Treaty. Powell told "The Washington Post" that such an arrangement could take a variety of forms and could be something as informal as a joint communiqué rather than a new treaty to replace the ABM.

----

Russian Sub Salvage Operation Begins

New York Times
July 17, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-Nuclear-Submarine.html?searchpv=aponline

ABOARD THE S.S. KLAVDIYA YELANSKAYA (AP) -- Naval engineers using a remote-control, deep-sea vessel conducted exploratory work Tuesday at the site where the Kursk nuclear submarine sank, laying the groundwork for a two-month operation to raise the shattered ship.

Seven ships including the Mayo, a Norwegian dive support ship, were at the site in the Barents Sea, about 93 miles away from the Russian Arctic port of Murmansk. They were joined Tuesday by an eighth ship, the Klavdiya Yelanskaya, carrying scores of journalists.

The exploration vessel from the Mayo began radiation checks Sunday, taking samples from the water and sea bed, to make sure the area is safe for divers to begin the operation to raise the Kursk.

The submarine exploded and sank on Aug. 12, 2000, during a training exercise in the Arctic waters off northern Russia, killing all 118 crewmen aboard.

The operation to raise the submarine, which has two nuclear reactors and is believed to have unexploded torpedoes aboard, is scheduled to last through mid-September.

Russia has maintained that no radiation has leaked from the wreck and says it is raising it to ensure it poses no future danger. But nuclear safety officials in nearby Norway have said the operation's tight schedule increases the risk of a nuclear accident in the Arctic.

In Moscow, Russian Navy spokesman Igor Dygalo said that regular monitoring over the past year had shown no increased levels of radioactivity.

``We have seriously addressed the ecological aspect in the technical project of the operation,'' he said in an interview on NTV television.

Dygalo said that the unmanned vessel had mapped out the site where the Kursk lies.

``The maps show in detail the situation 50 meters (100 feet) around the submarine,'' he said. ``Naturally, water and soil samples have been taken to check for radioactivity.''

Meanwhile, Russian naval aviation chief Ivan Fedin said Tuesday that his pilots had spotted several foreign ``underwater objects'' trying to approach the Kursk and pointed them out to Russian Navy ships, which drove them out, the Interfax news agency reported.

Fedin wouldn't identify the objects or their countries of origin.

Russian officials hope raising the Kursk will enable them to learn more about the cause of the explosions and recover the remains of more of the crewmen. Only 12 were recovered during a salvage operation last fall.

-------- treaties

Doomsday
Bush has been ditching treaties since he came to power. He must be stopped before it's too late

Rebecca Johnson,
Guardian,
Tuesday July 17, 2001
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4222863,00.html

They pulled out of the Kyoto treaty, and I did not speak out, because I thought global warming wouldn't affect me personally. Then they trashed the anti-ballistic-missile treaty, but I did not speak out, because it was an old, bilateral agreement from 30 years ago.

Then they put private, commercial interests above implementing and verifying the treaties banning chemical, biological and toxin weapons, but I did not speak out because such weapons are too complicated for media coverage. Then they threatened the nuclear test ban treaty, and I did not speak out, because the United States is a major ally that I did not want to offend.

Then the international arms control and non-proliferation regimes collapsed. Americans weren't bothered at first, for hadn't the government promised a super-sophisticated force field round the whole nation that no terrorist or missile would ever penetrate? So nuclear testing resumed in Nevada for new warheads to improve the kill prospects of missile interceptors and to penetrate deep into enemies' bunkers.

India had been waiting for just such a go-ahead, and Pakistan soon followed; both raced to test warheads to fit on to missiles, upping the tension in Kashmir and along the borders with China. Free now to resume its own testing, China boosted its programme to modernise and increase the size of its small nuclear arsenal. Somewhat reluctantly, Russia followed. Moscow suspended all further reductions and cooperative security and safety programmes for its still-large nuclear arsenal and facilities.

Within a few short years, the nuclear non-proliferation treaty was just another discarded agreement. Many governments with nuclear power programmes developed nuclear weapons as well, while others fitted anthrax or sarin on to weapons, just in case. Most hadn't wanted to, but fearful that their neighbours would, all felt compelled.

Regional rivalries grew quickly into major international problems. Alliances collapsed amid suspicion and recriminations. The burgeoning arms races even spread into outer space, threatening military surveillance, as well as public communication, entertainment and navigation. No one knew who had what.

Deterrence was empty, as defence analysts calculated the advantages of the pre-emptive strike. In that terrified atmosphere of insecurity and mistrust, someone launched first. And then it was too late to speak out. The Republicans hadn't yet managed to get missile defence to work.

Such a doomsday scenario is not so fanciful. On July 7, the New York Times announced that President Bush wants to ditch the comprehensive test ban treaty. A week before, the administration asked nuclear laboratories to work out how quickly the US could resume testing after its nine-year moratorium.

If Bush were to back out of the test ban treaty or break the moratorium on nuclear testing - undertaken with China, Russia, Britain and France - he would also explicitly breach agreements made last May, when 187 countries negotiated measures to strengthen and implement the non- proliferation treaty.

The test ban is no outdated cold war instrument, but a fundamental tool to prevent new, destabilising developments in nuclear weapons. Over several decades, from the Arctic to the Pacific, from the capitals of Europe to the deserts of Nevada, people have marched, petitioned, demonstrated and even sailed or hiked into test sites. Many have been imprisoned, and some even lost their lives trying to stop the nuclear weapons governments from polluting our oceans and earth with radioactivity from nuclear explosions, conducted for one purpose only - to make "better" nuclear bombs.

It took three arduous years to complete negotiations on the comprehensive test ban treaty. It isn't perfect. No product of compromise ever is. The verification system is very thorough, but it also had to be affordable, financially and politically.

The treaty stopped short of closing and dismantling the known test sites or banning laboratory testing, which the weapon states said they needed to assure the safety and reliability of weapons in the stockpiles (pending achievement of their other treaty obligations to eliminate the nuclear arsenals com pletely). But it does ban all nuclear test explosions in all environments.

India panicked, because the treaty would close off its nuclear options. It refused to sign, and then let off a string of nuclear explosions in May 1998. Pakistan followed, to prove it could. Even so, the treaty held. Neither government has felt able to keep testing, which means their options for further developments were curbed.

Bush has embarked on a very slippery slope that could potentially put at risk the future of the citizens of even the most advanced military nation. Mumbling and grumbling won't keep us safe. It is time to speak out.

Rebecca Johnson is executive director of the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy

----

In the Treaty's Words: 'International Stability'

New York Times
July 17, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/17/international/17RTEX.html?searchpv=nytToday

MOSCOW, July 16 - Following are excerpts from the Treaty on Good Neighborly Friendship and Cooperation Between the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China, as translated from the official Russian text by The New York Times:

[II]

The agreeing sides shall not use force or the threat of force in their relations, shall not use economic or other means of pressure against each other and shall resolve disputes between themselves exclusively by peaceful means according to provisions of the United Nations Charter, other generally recognized principles and the norms of international law.

The agreeing sides affirm the obligations to refrain from the first use of nuclear weapons against each other and from aiming strategic nuclear missiles at each other.

[V]

The Russian side affirms the inalterability of its principled position on the Taiwan issue as presented in the political documents signed and adopted by the heads of both states from 1992 to 2000. The Russian side recognizes that there is only one China in the world. The government of the People's Republic of China is the only legitimate government representing the whole of China, and Taiwan is an integral part of China. The Russian side opposes the independence of Taiwan in any form.

[VII]

The agreeing sides will carry out measures aimed at strengthening trust in the military sphere and the mutual reduction of armed forces in the border area on the basis of existing agreements.

The agreeing sides will expand and deepen confidence-building measures in the military sphere in order to strengthen mutual security, and to strengthen regional and international stability.

The agreeing sides will make efforts to provide for their own security based on the principle of reasonable sufficiency of armaments and armed forces.

Military and military technical cooperation between the agreeing sides, carried out on the basis of the corresponding agreements, is not aimed against third countries.

[VIII]

The agreeing sides will not participate in any unions or blocs, or take any actions, including signing of agreements with third countries, that would threaten the sovereignty, security or territorial integrity of the other agreeing side. Neither of the agreeing sides will allow the use of its territory by third countries in way that may threaten state sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of the other agreeing side.

Neither agreeing side will allow the creation or activity on its territory of organizations and groups that threaten the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of the other agreeing side.

[IX]

If a situation emerges which, according to one of the agreeing sides, poses a danger to peace, violates peace or infringes on interests of its security and if a threat of aggression arises against one of the agreeing sides, the agreeing sides will immediately make contact with each other and hold consultations in order to eliminate the emerging threat.

[XI]

The agreeing sides uphold the strict observance of generally recognized principles and norms of international law against any actions aimed at exerting pressure or interfering, under any pretext, with the internal affairs of the sovereign states and will make active efforts in order to strengthen world peace, stability, development and cooperation.

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

-------- washington

CH2M Hill needs tougher job, report says

July 17, 2001
By John Stang,
Tri-City Herald
http://www.hanfordnews.com/2001/0717.html

The Department of Energy needs to tighten up CH2M Hill Hanford Group's incentives to improve its work at Hanford's tank farms, a recent federal report concluded.

DOE's Inspector General's Office believes some contract goals -- which CH2M Hill must achieve to be paid -- are not well defined or are too easy.

For example, CH2M Hill filled part of its fiscal 2000 contractual requirements and got paid just for turning in paperwork -- without any consideration to the quality of that paperwork, said the report released last week.

DOE's Office of River Protection agrees with the findings and recommendations to address the situation.

"We're adopting all ... recommendations," said Michael Barrett, lead contracting officer for the Office of River Protection.

The DOE Inspector General's Office report concluded that CH2M Hill's contract in 2000:

-- Had some goals that were too easy to reach, which downplayed incentives for CH2M Hill to improve its performance. Some goals merely required reports and plans to be turned in without any incentives targeting quality of those reports. Also, some contract deadlines were set a few weeks to a few months later than deadlines that CH2M Hill was already working toward.

-- Did not record justification in some cases on why achieving certain goals was worth certain fees.

-- Paid performance fees for low-priority work when CH2M Hill could have focused on higher priorities.

DOE has been switching to incentive-based contracts with its prime contractors at Hanford -- meaning their profits are directly tied to meeting specific goals.

The current incentive-based contract between DOE and CH2M Hill runs through Sept. 30, 2006. It contains incentives for CH2M Hill to do $2.5 billion worth of work by 2006 with $2.2 billion in expenditures.

DOE's Inspector General looked at CH2M Hill's since-replaced incentive-based contract for fiscal 2000, in which the company earned $15.1 million out of a possible $19.4 million.

The report noted that the Office of River Protection was already putting the report's recommendations into action.

-------- us nuc politics

Bush Not Swayed by Russia - China Pact

New York Times
July 17, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/news/AP-US-Russia.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A new friendship pact between Russia and China will not deter the United States from pursuing a missile defense system, a State Department spokesman said Tuesday.

Continuing a low-keyed U.S. assessment of the first pact between Moscow and Beijing in a half-century, spokesman Philip Reeker said the two countries ``obviously have interests in maintaining a solid bilateral relationship, and that's important for us, too.''

At the same time, he said, ``we'll continue to pursue our own relationships, we'll continue to pursue our own interest in a missile defense system. That doesn't change anything in terms of our policies and what the administration is pursuing.''

The treaty, signed Monday by Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and Ziang Jemin of China affirmed strategic friendship and cooperation between the two countries.

The two leaders said the treaty was not aimed at any other country. They also reaffirmed their faith in the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972 as the cornerstone of international stability.

Putin, in an interview Monday with Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, said the North Atlantic Treaty Organization should be dissolved.

He is due to meet with President Bush at an economic summit conference on Sunday in Genoa, Italy.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, meanwhile, is due in Beijing for talks with Chinese officials July 28.

Bush has called the 1972 U.S. treaty with Moscow a relic of the Cold War. Senior administration officials have vowed to violate its terms if the treaty stands in the way of tests outlawed by the accord but part of Bush's quest for an anti-missile defense.

Constantine Menges, who advised former President Ronald Reagan on Latin America and worked for the Central Intelligence Agency, said Tuesday the administration's reaction reflected ``wishful assumptions.''

He said the State Department was ignoring a pledge by the two sides to consult to eliminate any threat of aggression as well as the Shanghai Pact between Russia and China signed last month that calls for mutual defense.

Menges, who is with the Hudson Institute, a private research group, said the accord Monday in Moscow and the one in June mark a complete turnabout from the situation in 1992 and 1993, when former Russian President Boris Yeltsin spoke of a strategic partnership with the United States and kept China at a distance.

----

Cheney Pitches Conservation New Emphasis in Energy Plan

By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 17, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A5144-2001Jul16?language=printer

MONROEVILLE, Pa., July 16 -- Vice President Cheney, who launched the Bush administration's energy initiative with a speech dismissing conservation as a "personal virtue," today tried a new, greener pitch for the embattled proposal.

"Conservation is a must," Cheney pronounced in a speech in Philadelphia delivered by his wife, Lynne, while the vice president, suffering from laryngitis, sat nearby. "We must become much more efficient in energy use. . . . For the country, efficiency helps us make the most of our resources, softens the impact of high prices, and reduces pollution."

As Congress considers scaling back Bush's ambitious plans to boost domestic energy production, and falling fuel prices ease the short-term energy crunch, members of the Bush Cabinet fanned out across the country today to host a series of town hall meetings in hopes of reviving the energy initiative's prospects. The vice president took to the road to sell the administration's energy policy here and in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

His words today capped a shift in emphasis -- though not a change in policy -- from the administration on the topic of energy and the environment. In April, Cheney, who led the committee that drafted the administration's energy plan, traveled to Canada to outline an energy policy dominated by expanded production, labeling conservation a "sign of personal virtue" but not the basis for a "sound, comprehensive energy policy."

Since then, however, the climate has changed dramatically. Cheney's appearances today were part of a Bush administration bid to boost its image on the topic of energy and the environment, which has been battered in recent months. According to last month's Washington Post/ABC News Poll, Americans disapproved of Bush's handling of energy issues by a margin of 58 percent to 37 percent, the president's worst showing on a major issue.

Today, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman went to Old Lyme, Conn., in her native Northeast. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham and Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta worked the Midwest, while Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans made the case in his native South. Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton headed West to Sioux Falls, S.D., where her support for private property rights is more popular.

Bush has offered a diverse collection of proposals to stimulate energy production and encourage efficiency. These include drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, incentives for nuclear power, help for low-income households' energy costs and encouraging renewable and alternative fuels and conservation.

But little is happening so far in Congress on these plans, and even the administration's GOP allies say the proposal to drill in the wildlife refuge is a nonstarter. The Senate has been slow to act on the energy package; Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) demanded today that the Senate consider the initiative "in a full-blown way" or he would "consider other options," such as a filibuster.

This spring, when the administration unveiled its energy proposal to approval from energy producers and criticism from environmental groups, Bush officials spoke of a nation in an energy crisis. On the horizon were $2 a gallon gas and blackouts on both coasts, they argued.

Instead, the average price of gasoline had fallen to $1.51 as of Friday from $1.76 in mid-May, according to the Lundberg Survey of 8,000 gasoline stations. Natural gas prices have fallen even more sharply. In California, a 10 percent drop in usage, new supplies and federal price controls initially opposed by Bush have prevented blackouts.

Bush today acknowledged the challenge to the proposal from the changing situation. "I think any time there's not an immediate problem that's apparent to people, it's tough to convince people to think long term," Bush told reporters. "But it's clear there are warning signs."

The green lobby was ready for Cheney's visit today. At Cheney's first stop, to address a national gathering of county administrators in Philadelphia, Brett Hulsey, a county supervisor from Wisconsin, was waiting to present Cheney with a petition signed by 120 county officials objecting to the Bush energy plan. "Power plant pollution causes 30,000 deaths every year, twice as many as are killed by guns," Hulsey said, passing out fliers from "Local Officials for Clean Energy." Along Cheney's motorcade route, a woman held a handmade sign proclaiming "Re-regulate now: keep prices affordable."

Still, the administration may have a chance to persuade the public. A Gallup poll conducted two weeks ago found that 38 percent of respondents support Bush's energy policy, while 32 percent oppose it -- largely on grounds that it isn't environmentally friendly enough.

Today, Cheney exuded green. Though he spoke of a need to upgrade and expand the nation's power grid, this was put into a mix that included "diverse sources" of energy, a "balanced approach," and a dismissal of a "false choice between more energy and a safer environment."

After the Philadelphia speech, Cheney flew to western Pennsylvania for a town hall meeting in the Pittsburgh suburb of Monroeville to promote the energy plan before an audience selected by Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge (R).

Cheney called for construction of more refineries and said "nuclear energy makes all the sense in the world" to ease global warming. But he also made a plug for fuel-efficient, hybrid-fuel vehicles and spoke of the need to "protect and enhance the environment."

-------- MILITARY

-------- drug war

U.S. Trains Thai Unit to Block Methamphetamine Traffic
'Crazy Medicine' Flows Out of Burma

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, July 17, 2001; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A5134-2001Jul16?language=printer

DOI KIU HUNG, Thailand -- In Southeast Asia's infamous poppy-growing heartland known as the Golden Triangle, drug warlords have begun producing large quantities of a methamphetamine -- known as "crazy medicine" -- that is rivaling the traditional trade in heroin and prompting the U.S. military to quietly train an anti-drug commando unit in Thailand.

Most of the drug production is occurring in Burma, also known as Myanmar, where Thai military officials and Western drug-control specialists estimate as many as 50 large factories are synthesizing the substance. Thai officials estimate as many as 800 million tablets of the drug -- about 80 tons -- will be smuggled into their country from Burma this year, a figure one drug expert described as "unprecedented for a country the size of Thailand."

Some of those pills are then shipped on to other Asian countries, Europe and the United States, but most remain in Thailand, where methamphetamine use has skyrocketed among teenagers and young adults. The abundance of crazy medicine, a form of speed called yaba in Thai, has provided people who never could afford heroin with a quick, cheap high.

The Thai Health Ministry estimates that 3 million people, or about 5 percent of the population, regularly use yaba, making Thailand the world's largest per capita consumer of methamphetamines, a level of drug abuse comparable to the cocaine epidemic in the United States during the mid-1980s.

Thai military officials contend that most of the yaba from Burma is produced by the United Wa State Army, a contingent of 15,000 ethnic tribespeople in Shan state, Burma's easternmost province. Western anti-drug agents regard the United Wa force, which is allied with Burma's ruling junta, as one of the world's largest and best-armed drug-dealing organizations.

Members of the Wa used to live near Burma's border with China, but they have relocated to areas near the Thai border. Thai officials and Western analysts said Beijing pressured the Wa to move to stem the flow of drugs entering southwestern China.

"It was a very smart move," said a Thai military intelligence officer. "The Chinese got rid of the Wa problem and gave it to us."

Intelligence sources said China has provided the Wa -- who are fighting other ethnic groups in Shan state -- with weapons, including sophisticated surface-to-air missiles, in exchange for help in constructing a network of roads in areas they control. The Chinese are building the roads in an effort to use Burma's ports, which would provide China's navy with long-coveted access to the Indian Ocean, the sources said.

The Wa's move to Thai border regions has transformed once sleepy hillside villages into boomtowns with new schools, hospitals, homes, restaurants -- and large laboratories where methamphetamine is synthesized and opium is refined into heroin. From a fortified Thai border checkpoint here in Doi Kiu Hung, soldiers scan the largest such town, Mong Yawn, which is surrounded by several large buildings intelligence officials said are drug factories.

"All this stuff, it's new," said Maj. Gen. Anu Sumitra, the army intelligence chief for northeastern Thailand, where most of the smuggling has occurred. "It was built with drug money."

Drug experts said it costs the Wa about 5 cents to make a yaba pill. They sell it for about 30 cents to Thai intermediaries. When it reaches the streets of Bangkok, it goes for as much as $2.

"Some of their factories have such sophisticated pharmaceutical equipment that they can churn out more than a million pills a day," said one Western anti-drug agent.

The influx of yaba pills has so alarmed Thai authorities that they have asked the U.S. military to train an anti-drug task force of army commandos and border patrol officers. In a collaboration that is part of a new American effort to work with foreign armed forces to stem the global drug trade, U.S. Special Forces troops are training the Thai unit to interdict smugglers who traverse the rugged hills that separate Thailand and Burma.

Although the mission in Thailand is far smaller than the widely publicized American training program in Colombia -- which is receiving a $1.3 billion U.S. aid package to attack its drug trade -- both involve an emphasis on advanced combat and reconnaissance tactics. And just as in Colombia, the U.S. anti-drug program here will involve sharing satellite imagery and other intelligence information to help the military identify targets, officials said.

"We believe it will be a very valuable collaboration," said Gen. Anu. "The Americans can provide us with a much higher level of training and information."

U.S. officials here said the instruction, at an army base near the northern city of Chiang Mai, began in May and is scheduled to end in October. Much of the training will focus on using sophisticated night-vision technology and flying American-made Black Hawk combat helicopters, officials said.

U.S. and Thai officials said that 20 American soldiers will act only as instructors and will not participate in interdiction missions. The Thais plan to buy the Black Hawks.

One U.S. official said the Pentagon agreed to the Thai request because of concern about the volume of drugs believed to be inundating the country -- and fear among U.S. anti-drug officials that unfettered smuggling into Thailand could result in more yaba reaching U.S. soil. "The Thais see the drug problem as their number one security concern," the official said. "But it is also a concern for the United States."

Thai military officials contended that Burma's junta has ignored the Wa's drug production because the Wa army is helping government troops fight another ethnic force in the area, the Shan State Army.

The Wa fought Burma's government for years to establish a communist state, but signed a cease-fire in 1990. In return for ending the rebellion, Wa leader Wei Hsueh Kang has been given near-total control over Shan state.

Wei has been sentenced to death in absentia by a Thai court and has been indicted by a New York court, both on drug-trafficking charges. The State Department has offered a $2 million reward for information leading to Wei's arrest and conviction.

A spokesman for the Burmese government, Lt. Col. Hla Min, said in a written statement that some "low rank officials" from the Wa force have been arrested on drug charges, but that the United Wa State Army "as a whole is not involved" in methamphetamine production. He called Thai estimates of 800 million pills being smuggled across the border "overblown."

Hla Min accused the Thai military of failing to deal aggressively with drug producers in Thailand and doing little to stem the flow of chemicals used to make methamphetamine into Burma. The "Thai military has to grow up and understand the situation and find ways to solve the problem rather than pointing fingers," he wrote.

Burma's government also has objected to the presence of the U.S. Special Forces instructors in Thailand, calling them a threat to regional stability.

Thai officials said their reports of Wa involvement have been substantiated by Western intelligence agencies and drug specialists. Most of the crazy medicine tablets seized in Thailand are labeled "WY," which officials said is a logo of the United Wa force.

The pills, which are ground up and smoked but also can be swallowed or ground up and injected, are typically smuggled into Thailand in convoys of seven to 10 couriers, who often travel with heavily armed escorts and backpacks filled with 200,000 pills apiece. The packs are chained to their torsos to prevent them from ditching their valuable cargo if Thai forces pursue them and in the hopes they could escape with the contraband.

The mountainous border area between Shan state and northwestern Thailand has long been a point of friction between the two countries, with frequent disputes over the location of the border. Earlier this year, the two sides exchanged mortar and light-weapons fire on several occasions.

Thai military officials said some of the exchanges have been with the Burmese army and others with Wa forces. The officials said they believe some of the skirmishes were instigated to push the Thai military back from parts of the border that are frequented by smugglers and to protect drug factories and trafficking routes.

In addition to the booming methamphetamine trade, Burma's corner of the Golden Triangle produced more than 1,000 tons of raw opium last year, which was transformed into about 90 tons of refined heroin. In 1999, Southeast Asian heroin accounted for 40 percent of the world's supply and about 20 percent of U.S. consumption, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

Afghanistan has long been the world's largest opium producer, but with a recent announcement from the country's rulers, the Taliban, that it has almost eradicated its poppy crop, international drug control specialists said Burma likely will be the world's top producer this year.

Decades ago, Thailand was one of the largest opium producers and consumers. The nation banned opium smoking in the 1950s and has provided incentives to farmers to grow vegetables and coffee instead of poppies. From 1985 to 2000, the country reduced its poppy cultivation area from 33 square miles to only about four square miles.

But just as Thais were prepared to declare victory in the war on drugs, yaba burst on the scene. A recent survey showed that 12 percent of high school and college students are regularly using drugs -- largely methamphetamine -- and hospitals have reported that methamphetamine addiction cases have eclipsed those involving heroin.

"We are being flooded with yaba," said Chartchai Suthiklom, deputy director of the Office of Narcotics Control Board, "and it is having a devastating impact on our society."

Some addicts, particularly students and taxi drivers, said they are attracted to yaba because it is relatively cheap and it allows them to work for hours without sleeping -- an asset in a country still reeling from the Asian economic crisis and where many people must work two jobs to make ends meet.

And, they said, it is easy to come by.

"Everyone I know takes crazy medicine," said Teng Saelee, 39, a laborer who lives near Chiang Mai. "It's everywhere in our country. It's as easy to find as cigarettes or beer."

-------- iraq

Senator would ban Iraqi oil

By SAM BISHOP,
Fairbanks News-Miner Washington Bureau,
Tuesday, July 17, 2001 3:03 PM MST
http://www.news-miner.com/default.asp?puid=1316&spuid=1316&indx=978232&article=on

WASHINGTON--Sen. Frank Murkowski has said it so many times that reporters' pens fall still at news conferences when he starts again.

The United States imports up to 700,000 barrels of oil every day from Iraq, he says.

The U.S. military uses the fuel to power jets that bomb Iraq, he says.

Iraq uses the money to buy ammunition to shoot at those planes, he adds.

Now, after a few years of pounding on the irony of this situation as a way to promote oil drilling on the North Slope, Murkowski has filed separate legislation to simply ban all U.S. imports of Iraqi oil.

The money Iraq earns from oil sales is supposed to go for food, medical supplies or spare parts for oil fields, but Murkowski says Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his military continue to benefit.

"With our money he pays his Republican Guards to keep him safe and funds his international terrorist activities. This has got to stop," Murkowski said.

Murkowski's effort to ban Iraqi oil comes just as the Senate must consider whether to extend similar bans on Iranian and Libyan oil.

William Wanlund, spokesman for the State Department's economic and business affairs office, said the sanctions against Iran and Libya expire in early August. The House has passed legislation to extend them for five years, but the Bush administration is asking that the Senate cut that back to two.

"We think the sanctions can be better focused, better targeted," he said.

The administration had also been saying the same thing about the United Nations-run "oil-for-food" program in Iraq, though earlier this month it abandoned efforts to change the current system.

Wanlund said he wasn't aware of an administration position on Murkowski's oil ban proposal. The "entire sanction policy" is under review, he said.

Charles Freeman, Murkowski's counsel for international affairs, said the Alaska senator finds it difficult to understand why the United States would ban imports Iran and Libya, with which it is not at war, but allow them for Iraq, with which it is.

"It doesn't make any sense," Freeman said. "He finally said 'You know, let's separate it out from the ANWR debate."'

The war with Iraq, Murkowski notes frequently, has become almost routine to Americans. In the initial battle, 147 U.S. soldiers died and 415 were wounded, Murkowski notes repeatedly. In addition, "there are hundreds of thousands of Iraqis that have suffered," Freeman noted.

But the fighting continues to cost dollars and lives.

Since Hussein's forces were driven from Kuwait in 1991, U.S. aircraft have flown more than 250,000 sorties over Iraq to enforce "no-fly" zones, Murkowski said.

"We spend billions every year to keep him in check," he said.

In the latest encounter, American and British planes bombed several targets in southern Iraq on June 25. The Iraqi government said three people were killed.

The encounter warranted 86 words two days later in The New York Times.

Murkowski, in describing how American jets are flying on Iraqi oil and dodging bullets bought with the proceeds of the sale, often adds that his version is "a bit of a simplification."

That's because it's not easy to track exactly how much Iraqi oil ends up in the jets. It's also difficult to tell how much money Hussein's military picks up in the transaction.

Under a program set up after the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq applies to the United Nations to sell enough oil to pay for the food, medical supplies and oil field equipment it needs. The money from sales goes into a U.N.-controlled account.

The United Nations has received $28 billion in contract requests and has approved about $23 billion since the program started in December 1996, according to the United Nations' Web page on the program. About $13 billion of material has actually arrived in the country.

Initially, many major oil companies purchased the oil, according to Doug MacIntyre, senior oil market analyst with the U.S. Energy Information Administration. However, Iraq has reportedly been asking companies that buy the oil to make a separate deposit outside the U.N. account, in violation of the sanction. So now, MacIntyre said, most of the oil recently has been purchased by smaller, independent companies.

"What you have is a lot of smaller, Russian oil firms and a lot of companies that no one has ever heard of," he said. "They do have to get approved by U.N.

"The implication is that they then resell (the oil) to someone who can actually make use of it."

That would be the United States.

In 2000, the U.S. imported an average of 620,000 barrels per day of Iraqi oil, MacIntyre said. An average of 423,000 barrels of that flowed through "the Loop," an unloading facility whose name is an acronym for Louisiana Offshore Oil Platform. An additional 140,000 went to the West Coast.

"Then there's a whole big pipeline system where it can go to any refinery, especially from the Loop," MacIntyre said.

And it is from those refineries that the military buys its jet fuel, closing the odd circle that Murkowski seeks to disrupt.

------- israel

'Military Tools' Won't Work, Say Israeli Hawk
Israel's Ben-Eliezer Dismisses Calls to Attack Arafat

By Lee Hockstader
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, July 17, 2001; Page A11
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A4725-2001Jul16?language=printer

TEL AVIV, July 16 -- For a career soldier with impeccable hawkish credentials, Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer goes to great lengths to describe what Israel will not do, would hate to do and honestly prefers not to do to fight the Palestinians.

Ben-Eliezer, a pugnacious former general who spent three decades in uniform, insisted in an interview today that Israel will not eliminate the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, will not reoccupy Palestinian-controlled territory, and will not pulverize Arafat's security infrastructure, no matter how much pressure Israeli hard-liners apply.

"Why?" asked the minister, who represents a third of the decision-making triumvirate atop Israel's government, along with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres. "Although I served in the army for 30 years and now I am minister of defense, it might surprise you if I tell you that through military tools you cannot solve anything."

Not that Ben-Eliezer is sitting on his hands. In recent days he has overseen a reinvigorated Israeli policy of massive retaliation in response to Palestinian armed attacks. At least four times in the past four days, Israeli tanks have gone into action in major West Bank cities, blasting Palestinian security positions and making destructive forays into Palestinian-controlled territory. The severity of the assaults has shocked Palestinian civilians in the path of Israel's armored wrath.

"There will not be a Palestinian terror attack that is not met by an Israeli response," the 65-year-old defense minister, universally known by his nickname Fuad, told cabinet ministers Sunday. "This includes terrorist attacks that do not cause injuries. You have to view terrorist attacks in terms of their potential to do violence, and not their results."

Since the two sides endorsed a U.S.-brokered cease-fire a month ago, there have been nearly daily gunfights. Palestinians have attacked Israelis with grenades and mortars and carried out roadside ambushes. Israel has assassinated militants and opened fire on teenage stone-throwers and passenger vehicles that have run roadblocks.

This evening, a Palestinian suicide bomber detonated his charge at a bus stop in the central Israeli town of Binyamina, killing two Israeli soldiers and injuring six others. In apparent retaliation for the bombing, for which the radical Palestinian group Islamic Jihad took responsibility, Israeli tanks shelled Palestinian checkpoints near the town of Jenin in the northern West Bank.

Much earlier, around 1 a.m., two Palestinians were killed while preparing a bomb a half-mile from Jerusalem's main stadium, where Israel's Maccabiah Games, colloquially known as the Jewish Olympics, opened this evening, police said.

Sharon, who was attending the Games' opening ceremony at Jerusalem's Teddy Stadium this evening, condemned the bombing in Binyamina. "It was a cruel attack, an attack that testifies to the fact that the Palestinian Authority has not decided to act against terror," he said.

Also today, before dawn, Israeli tanks pushed into Palestinian-held parts of the West Bank city of Hebron, as they did early Friday, attacking security posts and wounding five people before withdrawing. Palestinian witnesses said an Israeli tank and four jeeps carried out a similar incursion in Tulkarm, thrusting some 100 yards into the Palestinian-ruled West Bank city. They said Palestinian police and civilian gunmen returned the fire. Both assaults followed fire from Palestinian gunmen in the areas.

Until recently, foreign journalists and governments were told that Israeli soldiers were holding their fire even in the face of Palestinian aggression -- an assertion that was often more categorical than the facts warranted. But as Palestinian attacks and Israeli retaliation have continued in recent weeks, Israel has gradually lost the diplomatic edge it enjoyed following a suicide bombing that killed 20 Israelis at a Tel Aviv nightclub June 1. So without great fanfare, and without declaring hopes for a truce officially dead, Israel has lately been talking less about restraint and more about retaliation.

"We cannot fight the same way that [the Palestinians] do," Ben-Eliezer said. "What we are trying to do is through conventional means, to convince Mr. Yasser Arafat to get back to the table."

A large part of the convincing should be done by the United States, said Ben-Eliezer, who is scheduled to travel to New York and Washington for top-level meetings later this week. Like many Israeli officials, he believes the Bush administration has failed to sufficiently press Arafat to crack down on violence.

At the same time, though, Ben-Eliezer said Arafat has proved by embracing the Palestinian uprising that he is not capable of being Israel's partner for peace. Arafat has so ruined Israelis' faith in negotiations, Ben-Eliezer contended, that his actions will have an irreversible impact on talks with the Palestinians.

"What [former prime minister] Ehud Barak has offered to them, no one in the future will dare to offer to them," Ben-Eliezer said. "I doubt that Arafat really wants to establish a Palestinian state. I think he's more worried about how he will be remembered in the history of the nation, as a leader of a revolution."

----

Adviser: Clinton Exasperated With Barak During Peace Talks
Account Disputes View that Arafat Caused Breakdown

By Alan Sipress
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 18, 2001; Page A20
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9673-2001Jul17?language=printer

Though President Clinton publicly blamed the Palestinians for the failure of the Camp David peace summit last July, in private he became exasperated with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak's negotiating tactics, according to a key White House adviser.

In an upcoming article in the New York Review of Books, Robert Malley, Clinton's special assistant for Arab-Israeli affairs, disputes the widespread view that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was the sole culprit behind the collapse of the Camp David talks, which was soon followed by a surge in Middle East violence.

Malley and co-author Hussein Agha, who often advises the Palestinian leadership, say Barak's mistakes contributed to the breakdown but that the American peace team ultimately put them aside because they believed Barak wanted to reach a historic final deal.

The authors say Barak helped set the stage for failure by refusing to carry out some earlier agreements with the Palestinians, including a commitment to turn over West Bank land, expanding Jewish settlements in the occupied territories and then pushing Arafat to reach an all-or-nothing peace deal. That fed Arafat's suspicions of Israeli motives, reinforcing his reluctance to clinch a permanent agreement, so he spent the summit trying to avoid a trap rather than seeking peace, according to the article in the Aug. 9 issue.

Clinton shared some of Arafat's aggravation over what they both saw as Israel's failure to keep its commitments, the authors say. When Barak reneged on a vow to transfer three villages in the Jerusalem area to Palestinian control, a commitment Clinton personally conveyed to Arafat, the president was "furious." The article quotes Clinton as saying that never before had he been made out to be "a false prophet" to a foreign leader.

Malley also recounts an "extraordinary moment" at Camp David when Clinton vented his accumulated frustrations after Barak retracted some negotiating positions. The article quotes Clinton as telling Barak: "I can't go see Arafat with a retrenchment! . . . This is not real. This is not serious." Clinton then chided the Israeli leader for failing to be forthcoming in earlier negotiations with the Syrians. Clinton said that for a meeting with Syrian President Hafez Assad, "I went to Geneva and felt like a wooden Indian doing your bidding. I will not let it happen here."

Clinton also counseled Barak to show some flexibility and take into account Palestinian sensitivities: "You are smarter and more experienced than I am in war. But I am older in politics, and I have learned from my mistakes."

At the same time, Malley reports that Clinton was troubled by Palestinian unwillingness to respond to some of the far-reaching ideas he and Barak put on the table. Clinton and his peace team were looking for Arafat to offer counterproposals so the Israeli desire for a deal could be tested. But Arafat and his advisers were paralyzed by their fear of being tricked, as well as by divisions and intrigue within their team, according to the article.

The article describes Clinton lashing out at Abu Alaa, a chief Palestinian negotiator, for refusing to bargain over a map proposed as a part of a solution: "Don't simply say to the Israelis that their map is no good. Give me something better!" When Abu Alaa demurred, Clinton stormed out. "I won't have the United States covering for negotiations in bad faith. Let's quit!"

Near the end of the summit, Clinton rebuked Arafat: "If the Israelis can make compromises and you can't, I should go home. You have been here 14 days and said no to everything. These things will have consequences. Failure will end the peace process. . . . Let's let hell break loose and live with the consequences."

At the close of Camp David, a frustrated Clinton blamed Arafat for missing a chance for a historic deal, breaking a pledge to the Palestinian leader that he would not be faulted if the summit failed.

Though Arafat in the weeks before the summit had been looking for the Israelis to carry out their interim agreements before taking up a permanent settlement, he had agreed to go to Camp David on several conditions. One was that he would not be blamed for the possible failure of what he believed was a premature summit. Malley and Agha say Clinton volunteered that the United States would remain neutral in the case of a failure.

Yet when the talks collapsed, Clinton put top priority on helping Barak, whose considerable concessions had undercut his political standing at home.

-------- nato

World: EU warns Turkey it can't block plans to use NATO facilities for European defense force

By PAUL AMES,
Associated Press,
July 17, 2001 6:43 a.m. EDT
http://www.nandotimes.com/world/story/44209p-685065c.html

BRUSSELS, Belgium (July 17, 2001 12:45 a.m. EDT) - The European Union warned Turkey on Monday that it would not allow that nation to permanently block EU plans to set up a 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.

-------- russia

Russian Radio Host Gets Shares

July 17, 2001
Washington Post
World in Brief
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6377-2001Jul16?language=printer

MOSCOW -- The government-controlled natural gas monopoly Gazprom has agreed to sell some of its shares in Ekho Moskvy to one of the radio station's commentators in a deal expected to limit state influence over the station, both sides said.

The sale of Gazprom's 9.5 percent stake would leave station journalists and the gas company with stakes of around 42.5 percent each, said Alexei Venediktov, Ekho Moskvy's chief editor. The journalists' package would be larger than Gazprom's by four shares, he said at a joint news conference with Gazprom's chief of media operations, Alfred Kokh.

However, the 9.5 percent stake will not be sold to station staff, as journalists originally wanted, but to Yevgeny Yasin, a former economics minister and liberal politician who is the host of a radio program.

----

[Shades of Hitler. Do malevolent spirits return? Can we collectively help them transmute? Is Zhironovsky changing? Why? et]

Russian Revises His Heritage
Anti-Semitic Politician Zhirinovsky Admits Father Was Jewish

By Susan B. Glasser
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, July 17, 2001; Page A13
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6435-2001Jul16?language=printer

MOSCOW -- A few months ago, Vladimir Zhirinovsky refused to stand for a moment of silence in Russia's parliament to honor Holocaust victims. He has also thrown flowerpots at Jewish protesters in Paris, ranted at "Zionists," demanded that Jews be segregated on reservations and bemoaned a future Russia in which a handful of Jews "seize power" over a country of 145 million.

At the same time, the flamboyant Russian ultranationalist was denying his own reported Jewish roots: "It's crazy," he once told reporters. "It's got nothing to do with reality."

Now, Zhirinovsky, 55, has made a dramatic revision in his biography, acknowledging that his father was Jewish and saying that many of his relatives perished in the Holocaust.

In an interview and a new book, Zhirinovsky confirmed that his father, Volf Isaakovich Eidelshtein, was a Polish Jew who fled the Nazis in 1939 and ended up in the Soviet republic of Kazakhstan. His father's parents and youngest brother were killed by the Germans during World War II, Zhirinovsky now says, while his father and uncle disappeared in 1946 after returning to Poland. When he turned 18, Zhirinovsky said, he legally changed his name from Eidelshtein.

"My father's family was all killed," he said in an interview last week. "That's why I never talked about them." He offered little by way of explanation for the abrupt change in his life story, except a complaint that he has always been "misunderstood" as anti-Jewish, and offered no apology for years of publicly lying. Rather than revise his politics to take account of his rewritten heritage, Zhirinovsky still described Jews as the reason for much of what is wrong with Russia today.

Despite having made anti-Semitic statements a staple of his Russia-for-the-Russians political rhetoric, Zhirinovsky said: "I have never been anti-Semitic. It's all in the imagination of journalists." Minutes later, he returned to his familiar lament about Jewish domination of the media, the banks, politics and just about every other institution of post-Soviet Russia.

The performance was vintage Zhirinovsky. At times clownish, at times vitriolic, invariably sensationalistic, he has used dark conspiracies about Jewish influence to help build a following in a country with a long history of violent anti-Semitism.

In 1993, his Liberal Democratic Party of Russia received more votes than any other party in parliamentary elections, and Zhirinovsky ran for president in 1996. Although he finished with a small percentage of the vote and his star has since waned further, he still controls 17 deputies in the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, where he is a deputy speaker, and his trademark rants are a fixture on Russian television.

Many prominent Jews suspect Zhirinovsky's newly acknowledged Jewish roots are a ploy for attention from a politician who craves the limelight and hasn't had much of it lately. But they also say his willingness to admit his Jewish heritage is a sign of changing times here, a reflection of a recent drop-off of public anti-Semitism.

"I think it's a big turnaround by Zhirinovsky," said Berl Lazar, Russia's chief rabbi, "but the question is why, and how long will it last. This is just a first step; he has to make many more. In the same way, Russia is starting off 100 steps behind other countries. We have to change the whole mentality of people here, not just the Zhirinovskys."

A few weeks ago, Lazar saw Zhirinovsky at a Kremlin reception and refused to shake his hand, still angry about Zhirinovsky's refusal to stand for the Holocaust commemoration. Then he received a letter in the mail from Zhirinovsky, professing his "love to the Jewish people," his mourning for Holocaust victims and concluding, "I fully repudiate all those statements which were misinterpreted by the mass media."

Last week, Zhirinovsky changed the story some more, giving an interview to a Russian-language radio station in Israel in which he finally admitted his father's Jewish origins but gave few details, saying he had "no connection" with that side of the family because they had died in the Holocaust.

As far back as 1994, reporters uncovered documents showing that Zhirinovsky was really Eidelshtein and that his father was listed in Soviet identity documents as Jewish. Zhirinovsky denounced the documents as forgeries. "My mother is Russian, my father is Russian," he told the Associated Press at the time in a typical denial. "All [my] family is Russian."

In last week's interview at his Duma office, however, Zhirinovsky made light of those years of dissembling. In between chain-smoking and bawling out a young aide, he bragged about the talent of Jewish people and complained that he was "on a blacklist" in the West because of his anti-Semitic reputation.

Flipping through pages in his new book, "Ivan, Close Your Soul," he stopped at the one picture he has of his father and said that written on the back was a note from him saying, "Believe in your star." A few pages later, he paused to look at a picture of his school class, jabbing his finger to point out girls who he said were Jewish. He poked particularly hard at the young girl in the first row. "I loved her very much," he said. "Jewish."

But in the book and the interview, Zhirinovsky was hardly repentant.

"Why," he laments in his book, "do I have to give up Russian blood, Russian culture, Russian land and to start loving all the Jewish people simply because of one drop of blood that my father left in the body of my mother?"

And yet Zhirinovsky nodded vigorously when asked if his attitude toward Jews had changed. And he, like many other Russian nationalists, has a new target that may prove to be more resonant with Russian voters today: the Chechens. With Russia fighting its second war against the breakaway region, Chechnya is widely branded as the home of "terrorists" by Russian politicians.

"There's much less anti-Semitism now," he concluded, nodding with the glint of a politician who has studied the numbers.

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

ARMY TRAINING CENTER EXPANDING INTO CALIFORNIA DESERT

July 17, 2001
ENS
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jul2001/2001L-07-17-09.html

FORT IRWIN, California, The Army and the Interior Department are proposing to expand maneuver training lands at the National Training Center (NTC) at Fort Irwin, California, while protecting endangered and threatened species and their critical habitats.

The Army says the NTC is the only training area in the world suitable for force on force and live maneuver training of heavy brigade sized military forces. The site provides essential training opportunities necessary to maintain and improve military readiness and promote national security, the Army says.

The proposed expansion plan submitted to Congress Friday could open up about 110,000 acres of new maneuver training areas next to existing NTC boundaries and release for training use about 22,000 acres of current Army owned land within the NTC.

"The proposed expansion plan renews the Army's commitment to provide our soldiers with the most realistic training possible - training that will no doubt save soldiers' lives in future conflicts," said Army Secretary Thomas White. "The plan also demonstrates our commitment to protect the natural resources on the land America entrusts to us."

Some of the lands proposed for the expansion are home to the desert tortoise and Lane Mountain milkvetch, which are protected under the Endangered Species Act. The draft legislation for the proposed expansion states that the Army will not conduct any ground disturbing activities prior to the completion of all necessary environmental reviews and consultations.

"The proposed expansion plan strikes a balance between our goal to preserve and recover endangered species and the need for America to meet modern standards for combat readiness," Interior Secretary Gale Norton said. "I feel that the process established in the plan and draft legislation will allow us to meet these goals as well as full compliance with all environmental laws."

The plan, entitled "Proposed Expansion Plan for Fort Irwin and the National Training Center," was submitted to Congress Friday and accompanied by a draft of proposed legislation providing for the withdrawal and reservation of public lands known as the Fort Irwin Military Lands Withdrawal Act of 2001.

----

For G.I.'s, a Balkan Road of Neither War Nor Peace

New York Times
July 17, 2001
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/17/international/europe/17MACE.html

CAMP ABLE SENTRY, Macedonia - When a column of American soldiers found their way blocked by a Macedonian mob last month, Col. Anthony J. Tata initially thought that it was too risky to turn back.

The column was trying to return to base after moving ethnic Albanian rebels away from Skopje, the Macedonian capital, in an action intended to reduce tensions in this small Balkan nation.

But rebels and Macedonian troops were skirmishing north of Skopje, and Colonel Tata did not relish the thought of leading his troops back through the fast-approaching night. "There was lots of ground fire," he said in an interview. "I did not think that turning around and going back was a good idea."

As the crowd grew more volatile, however, the column did just that. With the help of a United States Army reconnaissance drone and a small international team, the Americans spent the night finding another route back, as angry Macedonian Slavs kept trying to head them off.

The operation on June 25 illustrates the sort of mission in which American troops have increasingly found themselves since the cold war - in a nether world between war and peace, where the goal is to defuse a conflict between two warring sides, rather than to defeat a foe.

By all accounts, it accomplished its goal: The rebels were relocated, and without allied casualties. Peace negotiations between Macedonian and Albanian officials appear to be progressing. If they succeed, the improvised NATO operation will have played an important part in breaking the cycle of violence.

But the operation still is, in many respects, an untold story. And interviews with participants and a review of a videotape taken by the Army drone, or pilotless plane, show that it was considerably more complex and hazardous than commonly supposed.

The NATO mission began after a group of Albanian rebels entered the town of Aracinovo, a move that put them within mortar range of Skopje, as well as an airport and the nation's only oil refinery. After an uneasy standoff, Macedonian forces began shelling the town.

Anxious to head off another Balkan conflagration, NATO and European Union officials worked out an arrangement. With the approval of the Macedonian government, the rebels would be relocated, with their weapons, from Aracinovo to Nikustak, a rebel-controlled village seven miles to the north.

For two days, unarmed representatives from NATO, the European Union and the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe, as well as British officials, worked in and around Aracinovo to organize the operation.

To minimize NATO's involvement, the rebels were to be moved by a local bus company. But the bus drivers refused to go to Aracinovo. NATO found a new company in the heavily ethnic Albanian town of Tetovo, but it had only enough buses to move about 150 insurgents, less than half the rebel force. NATO would have to move the rest.

The call went out for NATO nations to help, but only the American troops at Camp Able Sentry, an American base in Macedonia that provides logistical support for the peacekeeping mission in neighboring Kosovo, was ready in time.

Colonel Tata led the 42-vehicle convoy of buses, trucks, ambulances and combat vehicles. It included 81 soldiers and 20 contractors from the base, who helped with the driving. Most of the soldiers were from the Third Battalion of the 502nd Infantry from Fort Campbell, Ky.

At it turned out, moving the rebels was the easy part. The 176 insurgents taken by the American force were generally cooperative. Two hundred civilians also left with the column.

With the seemingly difficult part of their mission completed and night coming, the Americans were eager to return to base. But as they approached the town of Umin Dol, they found the road blocked by hundreds of civilians milling around Macedonian Army and police positions.

"We were not strictly dealing with the crowd," Colonel Tata said. "We were dealing with armed reservists with AK-47's, with the army and special police from the area."

Allied officials now believe that the demonstration was encouraged by elements in the Macedonian government who were angry that NATO had provided safe passage to the insurgents and were exploiting the episode for political reasons. Rioting also broke out in Skopje. It was not hard to tap the resentment of ordinary Macedonian Slavs, who had been told their forces had been on the verge of defeating the rebels at Aracinovo when NATO intervened.

NATO's view, by contrast, was that the Macedonian siege of Aracinvo was not working and that by moving the rebels the West helped the Macedonian forces hold down their losses and avoid a potentially futile fight. Pieter Feith, the NATO representative who negotiated the cease-fire, and a small team of British, French and Hungarian officers accompanied the American column.

Hoping to move forward, Colonel Tata and Mr. Feith met with the Macedonian police and the local chief of anti-terrorist operations. They reminded them that the government had approved the operation and promised a police escort.

But the crowd would not budge and was getting angrier. At one point, a Macedonian police officer ran up to an American vehicle, brandished his pistol in the air and started firing. One NATO official said the police officer might have been trying to disperse the crowd. But the action was very close to the Americans, who prepared to defend the column and ushered the officer away.

At Camp Able Sentry, Company A had also swung into action. Part of the 15th Military Intelligence Battalion, the unit is based at Fort Hood, Tex. It is the only operational U.A.V. - unmanned aerial vehicle - unit in the Army.

Night after night, the company had been sending up unmanned Hunter drones equipped with infrared cameras to search the Kosovo-Macedonia border for arms smugglers. But this evening, it received an "ad hoc" - or unplanned - mission to monitor the American column.

"The adrenaline was definitely pumping," said Sgt. Donald Pezzatta, 29, the Hunter mission commander.

In addition to Cape Able Sentry, the video from the drone was also transmitted to the Pentagon, the Macedonian Defense Ministry and Camp Bondsteel, the main base for the American peacekeeping force in Kosovo.

Throughout the episode, Brig. Gen. William C. David, the commander of United States forces in Kosovo, directed the company where to fly the drone, monitored the video and advised Colonel Tata about his predicament.

As the drone flew overhead, Colonel Tata calculated that he had three choices: push ahead through the crowd and risk a confrontation with agitated and armed Macedonian Slavs, wait until the protests died down, or turn back.

Though he at first thought that turning back would be the most dangerous option, Colonel Tata concluded that it was the only solution.

"General David was flying the U.A.V. on the backside of the crowd and giving me estimates about the size of the crowd and obstacles," Colonel Tata recalled. "If I had not had this visibility, I may not have made the decision so soon to turn around."

After turning back, however, the Americans discovered that their troubles were not over. They drove back to Nikustak, passing a checkpoint of heavily armed rebels. Then, at midnight, they drove through Aracinovo, a ghost town full of dead cattle, blown-up buildings and unexploded bombs. Driving with lights off for security, the column stopped about a mile from the town of Sindelic. Watching the video from the Hunter drone, General David warned Colonel Tata that a crowd had assembled several hundred yards behind a line of Macedonian T-55 tanks and armored personnel carriers. The crowd had dragged debris onto the road and lit a bonfire.

Once again, the column looked for a way out. They found a detour on a map, and the Hunter drone flew over to confirm that the way was clear. Then the Americans waited for hours as British and other foreign troops inspected the road for mines and other threats. Mortar fire and gun battles between the rebels and Macedonian troops echoed in the distance.

As dawn broke, the column finally passed through the detour and onto a highway near the base. Once again, the drone captured a disturbing picture. People were clambering onto the road, making a final effort to harass and block the column.

This time, however, the crowd was too late. To the relief of the NATO and the United States command, the American soldiers arrived at their base at 5:49 a.m.

For all the risks and demonstrations and riots that followed, a NATO official said the operation removed a destabilizing factor in the tangled Macedonian equation - the rebel presence near Skopje - and helped pave the way for a cease-fire and renewed political negotiations.

Colonel Tata, for his part, said American intelligence had helped as did the allied team, who were made honorary members of the 502nd Infantry. But the main reason the operation succeeded, he said, was that his troops were disciplined and had kept their cool in the face of a highly charged situation.

"There were 50 things that could have gone wrong and lots of provocations," he said.

----

U.S. servicewomen question dress requirement

Washington Times
July 17, 2001
By Pamela White
SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010717-4503880.htm

The first time Senior Master Sgt. Beverly Holt put on an abaya, she looked in the mirror and laughed.

"I said, 'Somebody come here and get a picture of me in this getup,'" said Sgt. Holt, a 17-year Air Force veteran now stationed in Colorado Springs.

But to other U.S. servicewomen who, like Sgt. Holt, have been stationed in Saudi Arabia, the requirement to don the traditional black garb of Saudi women while off base was no laughing matter.

Now, five Republican senators, led by Robert C. Smith of New Hampshire, have called for a review of the policy, concerned it violates the rights of U.S. citizens.

The policy was brought to the senators' attention after Lt. Col. Mary McSally, the highest-ranking female pilot in the Air Force, complained publicly about the rule. Col. McSally said the policy violates her rights as a Christian and discriminates against women.

The requirement goes beyond Saudi law, which requires foreign women to dress modestly in long, loose-fitting pants or skirts and long-sleeved shirts. It also exceeds dress policy for female members of the U.S. State Department stationed in Saudi Arabia.

Men are allowed off base in long pants and long-sleeved shirts. Both sexes are allowed to dress however they wish while on base.

Air Force representatives said the abaya policy protects American women from harassment and violence at the hands of Saudi religious police, known as "mutawa." Members of the mutawa, who carry canes, have arrested and struck U.S. servicewomen they considered improperly dressed, they said.

"It is a force-protection issue," said Lt. Col. Rick Thomas, spokesman for U.S. Central Command. By adhering tightly to local custom, servicewomen are less likely to become terrorist targets, victims of mutawa harassment or objects of cultural conflict, he said.

Prior to the Gulf war in 1990, the Pentagon, concerned about Saudi religious laws prohibiting the public worship of religions other than Islam, ordered U.S. chaplains in Saudi Arabia to remove religious insignia such as crosses from their uniforms when off base.

The decision to leave base is a personal one, so no woman is actually required to wear an abaya, Col. Thomas said.

But Sgt. Holt, enamored of the local open-air markets and their exotic goods, often ventured from the self-contained community of the U.S. air base near Riyadh to the nearby town. Since women are prohibited by Saudi law from driving, Sgt. Holt was always accompanied by an American serviceman.

Women are required to be fully dressed beneath the abaya in long pants or skirts, socks to cover their ankles and long-sleeved shirts. According to the military briefing Sgt. Holt received when she arrived, any visible skin below the neck is considered pornography.

Sgt. Holt followed the rules to the letter but was confronted by the mutawa anyway, she said, after the U.S. military, in a short-lived attempt to soften its policy, temporarily allowed women to go with their hair uncovered in places such as shopping malls.

Hair uncovered, Sgt. Holt was talking with a merchant when she heard a loud banging immediately behind her. The shopkeeper nudged her, and she turned to find a member of the mutawa beating his cane against the wall directly beside her head.

"He pointed his cane at me and said, 'Cover your hair,'" Sgt. Holt said. "It scared me once I realized it was me he was doing that to. I had no doubt at that point that if I didn't do what he said, I would be arrested."

----

Rumsfeld says billions more needed to make up for shortfalls in military spending

Tuesday July 17, 2:28 AM
Agence France-Presse
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010716/1/19ckq.html

WASHINGTON, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Monday the biggest proposed defense budget increase since the Cold War will fall tens of billions of dollars short of making up for years of decline in the US military's combat readiness and strength.

Rumsfeld asked Congress to approve closures of more unneeded bases and give the Pentagon a freer hand to make efficiencies to turn "waste into weapons."

"The under-investment and overuse of the force went on far too long, the gap is too great, the hole we're in is too deep, there's no way to spend our way out of it in one year," Rumsfeld said in testimony before the House Appropriates subcommittee on defense.

President George W. Bush has submitted an amended 328.9 billion dollar defense budget for 2002 -- a 32.4 billion dollar increase over the previous year that the Pentagon says is the largest since the height of the military buildup under Ronald Reagan in the mid-1980s.

The amended request would add 18.4 billion dollars to an earlier administration 2002 budget blueprint.

But Bush, who campaigned on a promise to rebuild the US military, has come under attack from defense hawks in his own party, as well as Democrats, for holding back on even bigger defense increases that the Pentagon and some experts say are needed to modernize the armed forces.

Two conservative columnists -- Robert Kagan and William Kristol -- writing in the Weekly Standard called Monday on Rumsfeld to resign rather than permit "the impending evisceration of the American military."

They blamed the White House, which they said halved the Pentagon's request for a 35 billion dollar add-on to the defense budget. Some studies have said defense increases of 50 to 60 billion dollars a year are need to reverse a post-Cold War decline in weapons procurement and readiness.

Democrats also pounced on the issue, portraying Bush as going soft on defense.

"What I'm worried about is if you as secretary of defense and General (Henry) Shelton knows that the country is underfunding the defense budget then why can't we convince the president ... that we've got to have a significant increase or we're going to let America's military capability deteriorate," said Representative Norman Dicks, a Democrat from Washington state.

Rumsfeld defended the budget proposal and sought to shift the blame to "years and years of neglect" by the previous administration.

But, acknowledging that the proposed 2002 budget increase will not be enough, he said the Pentagon will need another 18 billion dollar increase next year just to stay even.

"To get well by 2007, that is, to meet current requirements in areas like readiness, proper flying time, training, maintenance and so forth, would cost the American taxpayers tens of billions of dollars more," he said.

"And that's before calculating the additional investment that would be needed for transformation," he added.

-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

Air defence concerns a threat to UK wind power

UK: July 17, 2001
Story by Stuart Penson
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11606

LONDON - Concerns over national security could blow off course Britain's plans to boost the use of green energy by building hundreds of offshore wind turbines.

Energy industry sources say the Ministry of Defence (MOD) has signalled it will object to plans for several key offshore wind projects on the grounds that towering turbines would foul up air-defence radar systems and get in the way of low flying jets.

Wind turbines show up on radar screens because they produce static electricity.

"We have been advised in a meeting with the MOD that they will be objecting to several offshore projects on the grounds of radar and/or low flying," said Nick Goodall, chief executive of the British Wind Energy Association (BWEA).

"Everybody in the industry has genuine concerns," he told Reuters.

The MOD, which has already scuppered one major onshore wind project on similar grounds, said it was too early to comment on individual offshore projects.

"There is no blanket policy on wind turbines, we are working with the industry and looking at projects on a case by case basis," said a spokeswoman for the MOD.

"So far we have only objected to one out of seven wind projects."

RENEWABLES TARGET UNDER THREAT

MOD objections to offshore wind power would threaten the government's target of generating 10 percent of electricity from renewable sources by 2010, part of its bid to curb emissions of greenhouse gases.

Renewable energy currently accounts for just 2.8 percent of Britain's electricity and the government is banking on wind power, especially offshore projects, to provide half the increase needed to take this up to 10 percent.

"If the MOD's attitude doesn't change then we will have a major problem," said Alan Moore, managing director of National Wind Power, a subsidiary of UK utility Innogy , which claims to be the UK's leading wind power company.

"Unless offshore wind power is allowed to develop very rapidly then it's difficult to see how the government will meet the 2010 target," he said.

He said the MOD could install software to stop wind turbines from interfering with radar systems.

Moore draws parallels with Germany which has already installed thousands of wind turbines without compromising defence systems.

Britain has installed 412 megawatts of wind power generating capacity, most of it onshore, according to the BWEA. This is only a fraction of Germany's total capacity of 6,900 megawatts.

National Wind Power is one of 18 companies granted leases on patches of seabed earlier this year by Royal property manager The Crown Estates in a move designed to boost windpower.

Companies have three years to gain permission to build windfarms on the seabed granted to them.

"Virtually all the sites (granted) fall within the range of radars, I'm sure (the MOD) will object to some of them," said Moore.

The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), which would have the final say on planning permission for offshore windfarms, denied MOD objections were a major obstable.

"The DTI is talking with the MOD on a number of different issues, that was always envisaged," said a DTI spokesman.

"There will be need for discussion on a project by project basis," he said.

He said permission to build wind turbines could be gained in a year to 18 months.

----

Solar-powered NASA aircraft flies over Hawaii

USA: July 17, 2001
Story by Joan Conrow
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11605

LIHUE, Hawaii - Some 200 onlookers cheered on Saturday when the Helios, NASA's 11 million pound solar-powered aircraft that is expected to shatter altitude records, began its first flight over Hawaii.

Powered by 62,000 solar cells, the unmanned, remote-controlled craft lifted off at 8:05 a.m. HST (1:05 p.m. EDT) (6:05 p.m. British time) at the Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility on the Hawaiian island of Kauai.

Travelling down the runway at about 20 mph, it briefly touched down before immediately taking off again, its 247-foot-long (75-metre-long) flexible wings bending upward as it rose.

The Helios is set to travel several hundred nautical miles (kms) on Saturday, spending most of its time over the Pacific Ocean to reduce the possibility of a crash in a populated area.

The experimental aircraft, which resembles a single, boomerang-shaped translucent wing, will perform manoeuvres at 10,000-foot intervals during its 14-to 16-hour flight, project manager John Hicks said.

It likely will reach an altitude of 70,000 feet, although it is believed capable of soaring to 100,000 feet, some 20,000 feet higher than the current altitude record for a propeller-drive airplane set by its project predecessor, Pathfinder Plus, in 1998.

AeroVironment, which has contracted with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to develop the craft, had planned to fly the Helios on July 5. But gusty high-altitude winds and a computer glitch pushed back the date.

ISLAND CONDITIONS SAID BETTER

The Helios has flown once before, in 1999 at Edwards Air Force Base in California, when it reached an altitude of just 1,000 feet operating on battery power only.

The craft was then shipped to Kauai, where scientists say the sun and wind conditions are more favourable, and outfitted with individual solar cells that cover 2,000 square feet of surface.

The solar cells will generate about 40 kilowatts of power - which is about the amount used each day by four to six homes - to drive the craft's 14 propellers. The Helios requires just 10 kilowatts to operate.

When fuel cells are installed by summer of 2003, giving the craft the ability to store the excess solar power for use at night, the Helios will be able to stay aloft for months at a time, Hicks said.

The Helios can be brought down easily for routine maintenance and payload changes because it does not travel in orbit like a satellite. It also can remain in one spot over the Earth's surface for an extended period of time.

These capabilities will allow the Helios to function as a kind of "poor man's satellite," providing telecommunications and digital television service in remote regions, Hicks said. AeroVironment is interested in this type of commercial application.

Hicks said the government plans to use the Helios for a variety of earth science research programs such as remote-sensing and imaging of the atmosphere and water to study climate change and ozone depletion.

The craft also can be used to monitor the health of fisheries and forest resources, track hurricanes, tornadoes and volcanic eruptions, and determine the readiness of crops for harvest, Hicks said.

The military may use the Helios for surveillance because it is silent and cannot be detected by radar, he said. At maximum altitude, it can fly at about 200 mph.

-------- energy

Energy Policy, Gas Prices Garner Comment

By Paul Volpe
Special to washingtonpost.com
Tuesday, July 17, 2001; 9:51 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A8121-2001Jul17?language=printer

Even as electricity and gas prices stabilize and begin to fall, editorial pages around the nation today continue their assessment of the president's energy policy.

• Bush Sales Pitch Backfires, Jeopardizes Energy Needs (USA Today, July 17, 2001)

http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/2001-07-17-nceditf.htm

USA Today says that the Bush administration falsely proclaimed an energy crisis to garner support for its policy based on increased supply, and maintains that long-term solutions will require federal involvement.

• Bush Blunders Again on Energy (The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 17, 2001)

http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/opinion/31511_renwed.shtml

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer criticizes the Bush administration for opposing an "international effort" aimed at reducing government subsidies for fossil fuels while increasing funding for "non-polluting renewable energy sources. . . ." "If the market alone -- and not a greater social good -- should determine which energy sources are to prevail, then renewables must enjoy the same embedded government subsidies as fossil fuels."

• If Energy Sources Are Clean, Bush team Isn't Interested (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, July 17, 2001)

http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/epaper/editions/today/opinion_b3353e96f0bf01600015.html

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution also calls on Bush to support the clean energy effort. "The United States ought to be leading the world, not only in forward-thinking policies, but in developing --- and selling --- clean energy technology."

• Energy Stumbles (The Dallas Morning News, July 17, 2001)

http://www.dallasnews.com/editorial/420086_energystumbles.html

The Dallas Morning News calls for the administration to adopt a more balanced energy policy. "Conservation, alternative fuels and renewable technologies fuels must be a more prominent part of America's energy future lest the United States fall behind the rest of the world in cutting-edge energy research and development."

• Balance Our Energy Policy (The Dallas Morning News, July 17, 2001)

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1002,417%257E69217,00.html

The Denver Post argues that while environmental concerns are important, there should be a renewed focus on increasing the domestic energy supply. "While we don't endorse all of Bush's proposals, we nonetheless think it's time to adopt a long-range national energy policy to make the United States less vulnerable to energy price spikes."

On Today's Pages. . . .

• The New York Times on the perceived success of last weekend's missile defense test: "It will be years before either technology [boost-phase or ground-based] yields a system reliable enough to protect American cities against nuclear missile attack."

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/17/opinion/17TUE2.html

• The Los Angeles Times on missile defense: "[T]he [Bush] administration has yet to make a coherent case that the comprehensive missile defense system it favors, involving land, sea and airborne weapons and breakthrough technology, would make the nation any more secure than the threat of nuclear retaliation does today."

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-000058528jul17.story?coll=la%2Dnews%2Dcomment

• The Wall Street Journal on the Chinese arrest, "conviction and imminent deportation of U.S. academic Li Shaomin": "The arrest of Mr. Li and his colleagues must be recognized as part of a larger plan to silence dissent within and outside of China."

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/

• The San Francisco Chronicle on this weekend's failed India-Pakistan summit: "After three wars and 49 summits, India and Pakistan should be bruised and beaten enough to make peace over troublesome, bloody Kashmir."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2001/07/17/ED144467.DTL

• Newsday on U.S. immigration policy and the amnesty proposal being considered by the Bush administration: "U.S. policy, administration and policing -- as it applies to Mexican immigrants and many other immigrant groups -- is not just broken, it is in shards."

http://www.newsday.com/nd1/edits.htm

• The Chicago Tribune on a recent visit by Mexican President Vincente Fox and the future of U.S.-Mexico relations: "There ought to be no doubt. . . .that the relationship between the two countries is entering a new phase of cooperation and integration."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/article/0,2669,SAV-0107170028,FF.html

----

House Members Debate Bush Energy Plan

By H. Josef Hebert
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, July 17, 2001; 2:52 p.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010717/aponline145218_000.htm

WASHINGTON -- President Bush's energy plan started down a rocky path in Congress Tuesday as House members wrangled over requiring more efficient automobiles and sport utility vehicles and whether to allow drilling in an Arctic wildlife refuge in Alaska.

Republicans said they had the votes to advance the Arctic refuge drilling provision from committee as part of a broader energy package, but even its supporters say the issue faces an uphill battle beyond that.

Democrats and moderate Republicans oppose lifting a congressional prohibition against developing large oil reserves in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern Alaska, although President Bush early on made drilling there a cornerstone of his campaign to spur domestic energy production.

Democrats planned a string of amendments during deliberations by the House Resources Committee to scuttle the drilling mandate as the panel began crafting what would be part of a broader energy package expected to be considered by the full House before lawmakers depart for their summer recess in August.

Another committee began work on a separate energy bill that focuses on cutting energy use. But Democrats in the Energy and Commerce Committee complained that the GOP measure doesn't go far enough to promote conservation.

"It's a lost opportunity," complained Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif. Democrats planned to press for changes in the bill calling on automakers to increase fleet average fuel economy to 40 miles per gallon by 2017.

Currently, new automobiles are required to meet a fleet average of 27.5 mpg and SUVs and minivans 20.7 mpg.

Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., the committee chairman, dismissed the Democrats' criticism. While he said the bill is only the first of several energy bills that will be acted upon in the coming week - the next involving electricity industry restructuring - he would resist any broader automobile fuel economy requirements than already in the legislation.

The bill contains a compromise calling for a modest 1 mpg increase in fuel economy for SUVs and minivans.

Critics of that proposal cited a draft report by the National Academy of Sciences that surfaced Tuesday reportedly concluding that fuel economy for automobiles and SUVs can be increased 8 to 11 miles per gallon using new technology without hindering safety. The contents of the draft were reported by The New York Times.

President Bush has said he plans to wait until the release of the academy's findings in September before pursuing any changes in federal vehicle fuel economy, or CAFE, standards.

As House leaders vow to press for approval of broad-ranging energy legislation before the end of month, some GOP congressional leaders and senior administration officials have expressed concern about a loss of momentum as gasoline prices decline and as high electricity prices and the threat of blackouts in California ease.

"Anytime there's not an immediate problem that's apparent to people it's tough to convince people to think long-term," acknowledged Bush as he dispatched Vice President Dick Cheney and Cabinet members across the country on Monday to spur interest in energy policy.

The administration frequently has spoken in terms of a crisis when trying to rally support for developing more oil, natural gas and coal as well as building more power plants and nuclear reactors.

But gasoline prices have declined on a national average by 30 cents a gallon since their high in mid-May to a national average of $1.41 a gallon, 13 cents lower than last summer at this time, says the Energy Department. Natural gas prices, after hitting $10 a thousand cubic feet last December, have dropped to the $3 range.

Even in California, the crisis environment over energy has eased. Dire warnings of countless days of blackouts this summer have not materialized and electricity prices have declined dramatically. There have been no blackouts since early May in California with more power expected to come on line from several new plants in the coming weeks.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham emphasized that the administration's energy strategy always has sought to focus on long-term solutions. He said there remains a need, along with reducing demand, to increase domestic energy production "so that we don't find ourselves in an energy supply challenge in the future."

----

Cheney Calls on Navy to Pay Bill to Light His Home

New York Times
July 17, 2001
By PHILIP SHENON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/17/politics/17MANS.html

WASHINGTON, July 16 - Millions of Americans are struggling to cope with sky-high electricity bills for their homes. Among them, it turns out, is Vice President Dick Cheney, the Bush administration's point man on energy policy, whose home is a 33- room mansion on the leafy grounds of the Washington Naval Observatory.

Now, the White House has cited the large and unpredictable energy bills of the vice president's official residence in urging Congress to relieve him of using any of his official budget to pay for electricity. The entire electric bill - an estimated $186,000 this year - would be shifted to the Navy, which owns the house.

Mr. Cheney's personal encounter with energy costs came as the White House stepped up efforts today to sell its energy strategy, which has so far not stirred the public as oil prices have fallen from their peaks in the spring. Mr. Cheney and cabinet members fanned out across the country to appeal for support for the strategy in town hall meetings.

Mr. Cheney supports the move to spare his official budget the electric bills. Language to transfer the cost is contained in an appropriations bill that is expected to be debated and approved on Tuesday by the House Appropriations Committee, which is controlled by Republicans.

Democrats denounced the budget transfer as hypocrisy on the part of Mr. Cheney, who has been accused along with President Bush of doing too little to help consumers cope with a sharp rise in electricity prices in much of the country. They are vowing to block the transfer when the Senate Appropriations Committee, which is controlled by Democrats, considers its version of the bill later this summer.

In a report to the appropriations committees, the White House said that "the rationale for the requested transfer of responsibility is based on the fluctuating and unpredictable nature of utility costs and the relative small annual appropriation" for the vice president's residence.

A spokesman for Republicans on the House committee, John Scofield, said that the shift was a "minor accounting change" that would simplify federal bookkeeping.

"This is a naval facility, so it's not unusual for them to cover the expense," Mr. Scofield said.

A Navy spokeswoman had no immediate comment on the issue.

The appropriations bill also includes a provision that allows the Navy - on Mr. Cheney's behalf - to accept from corporate donors or others "consumable items, or funds for them," for use at official functions at the residence. The White House is allowed to accept gifts like food or liquor, but such gifts are barred at the vice president's mansion and other official residences as potentially illegal gratuities.

The White House said in a letter to the House and Senate committees that the donations would "help relieve the taxpayers of the cost of providing such items." The statement listed "consumable items" as "food, beverage, table centerpieces, flowers or temporary outdoor shelter."

Electricity costs for the vice president's residence are now shared by Mr. Cheney's official budget and the Navy, which maintains the 72-acre observatory site that borders Washington's Embassy Row.

Electricity costs at the residence have jumped in recent years, more than doubling in the three years since a meter was installed on the property.

According to the White House, electricity costs rose from $83,800 in fiscal year 1999 to $136,500 last year to an estimated $186,000 this year. Last year, Congress appropriated $42,600 from the vice president's budget for electricity bills, leaving the Navy responsible for the other $93,900. Asked tonight about comparable figures for the White House, a spokeswoman was not immediately able to come up with them.

By transferring all of the vice president's costs to the Navy, the White House said, there would be no need for the administration to return to Congress to ask for emergency appropriations for Mr. Cheney in the event of "an exceptional cold winter or hot summer."

Mr. Cheney was traveling today in Pennsylvania to rally support for the administration's energy plan, which calls for a sharp increase in energy production.

A spokeswoman for the vice president, Margita Thompson, said plans for a transfer of the electricity bills to the Navy began during the Clinton administration. "This was not Mr. Cheney's idea," Ms. Thompson said.

She said it was unclear why electricity bills were rising so sharply this year at the mansion since Mr. Cheney and his wife, Lynne, had done their best to hold down energy use.

Electricity use in the mansion was down by about a third this year over the same period last year, when the residence was occupied by Vice President Al Gore. Regulated electricity prices in much of the Washington area have actually declined this year.

A spokesman for Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee, David Sirota, said that an effort to shift electrical costs from the vice president's office to the Navy was "a very neat solution" for Mr. Cheney.

"I think a lot of people would like to have their energy problems solved as painlessly as the vice president is trying to solve his own," Mr. Sirota said. "It would all be a lot easier to swallow if he expressed greater sympathy and more willingness to act on behalf of those on the brink because of high utility prices."

Some of Mr. Cheney's past comments on that issue could come back to haunt him.

Several weeks ago, Mr. Cheney said consumers should decide for themselves whether or not they wanted to conserve electricity, based on their ability to pay their utility bills.

"If you want to leave all the lights on in your house, you can," Mr. Cheney said. "There's no law against it. But you will pay for it."

He has also appeared to belittle conservation efforts at times, though he has recently softened that tone. "Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy," he said in the spring.

Democrats said that the move to allow Mr. Cheney to accept food and other gifts for the mansion would open the vice president to new accusations that he is too close to corporate donors and that he is allowing the official residence to be used for political purposes. Mr. Cheney was harshly criticized by Democrats when he allowed the mansion to be used in May for a reception for large Republican donors.

Ms. Thompson, the vice president's spokeswoman, said that the donations would be used only for official functions, like diplomatic receptions, and not for political fund- raisers.

"It's official use only, and the gifts would become the property of the Department of the Navy," she said. "It allows you the perfect opportunity to display American wares - Florida grapefruit, California raisins, Texas chili."

-------- environment

US Will Be Active in Climate Talks

New York Times
July 17, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Climate-US-Shadow.html

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) -- The United States says it wants no part of the Kyoto agreement on global warming, but it is nonetheless casting a long shadow over the negotiations resuming this week at the U.N climate conference.

Even though Washington already has rejected the outcome, American diplomats have made it clear they will protect U.S. interests as delegates from some 180 countries haggle over the complex details of an accord.

The aim of the conference, which opened Monday in the old German capital of Bonn, is to fill in details left open in the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 plan that would oblige industrial countries to reduce emissions of the greenhouse gases blamed for warming the Earth.

In contacts over the last month, U.S. officials have said they will be on guard against any developments in Bonn that could be a precedent for other international agreements to which the United States might object, said officials familiar with the closed-door meetings.

``I don't think the United States will abstain'' in the talks, said Michael Zammit Cutajar, the top U.N. official on climate policy. ``They will participate and make sure it's something they can live with as one of a system of international conventions,'' he said at a preparatory meeting in Amsterdam last week.

The protocol commits the United States to cut emissions of carbon dioxide, mainly from burning oil and gas, and other harmful gases by 7 percent from 1990 levels by 2012. Because emissions are growing rather than shrinking, that target gets harder to reach every day.

Last March, President Bush renounced the agreement signed by the Clinton administration, saying he would not send it to Congress for ratification because it was unfair and harmful to the U.S. economy.

While acknowledging that global warming is a genuine problem, Bush said the science of climate change is still inconclusive, and more research is needed. He also promised to put forward an alternative to the mandatory emissions controls outlined in the Kyoto agreement.

In Washington on Friday, Bush announced a series of multimillion-dollar studies. But Washington has informed other countries that no alternative policy will be ready by the end of this week, when the conference moves into high gear at the level of ministers.

Facing international outrage by some of America's closest friends over his climate stance, Bush assured a summit of the European Union in Sweden last month that his administration would not block an agreement on Kyoto, even though it would not endorse the outcome.

But at a closed meeting three weeks ago in the Dutch town of Scheveningen, a suburb of The Hague, U.S. delegates said they would step in to prevent the final Kyoto pact from enshrining principles that could have implications beyond the climate talks.

``They would not intervene extensively on a protocol on which they have no intention of signing,'' said Dutch negotiator Yvo de Boer. But the Americans would step in on issues ``it doesn't like because they could have a precedent for other international conventions,'' he said.

Asked if he thought that would happen at the Bonn conference, de Boer said, ``I wouldn't be surprised.''

Among the sensitive suggestions is a $1 billion annual fund to help the Third World adapt to new technologies; contributions would be mandatory. The United States also worries about the creation of monitoring bodies that could give developing countries too much say and could be applied to other treaties in the future. U.S. officials also object to what they view as ``punitive'' measures suggested for noncompliance.

The Europeans have said they will try to conclude the pact and ratify it by 2002. Japan, which now holds the key swing votes, has said it wants more time to bring Washington back into the fold, and that an agreement would probably not be obtainable in Bonn.

----

Japan Urges US to Reconsider Treaty

New York Times
July 17, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Climate-Talks.html

BONN, Germany (AP) -- Japan urged the United States on Tuesday to rethink its opposition to a treaty limiting emissions of ``greenhouse gases,'' saying much of the world is waiting for tough new standards to take effect.

``For all countries, participation of the United States is the best scenario,'' Japanese Environment Minister Yuriko Kawaguchi said as she arrived in Bonn for 180-nation talks on the pact, which would cut emissions of gases believed to be heating up the atmosphere.

Japan has been trying to play the role of mediator between the United States and treaty supporters in Europe, pledging to negotiate changes in the protocol in a bid to cajole the Americans to sign on.

``It is very important for all countries to deal with global warming under the same rules,'' Kawaguchi said. But she added Japan does not want to delay the negotiations and would ``do its utmost'' to help bring the treaty into force by next year.

President Bush abandoned the pact in March, saying it was flawed and would hurt the U.S. economy. Officials from some 180 nations are meeting in Bonn through next week to try to save it.

The top U.N. official dealing with climate change spoke for many countries Tuesday when he also expressed disappointment at the U.S. stand.

``Everybody wants the United States in,'' Michael Zammit Cutajar said in an interview. ``The U.S. administration still hasn't said what it wants. It has said what it doesn't like.''

``People are disappointed that the United States is not participating fully,'' Japanese negotiator Kazuo Asakai said.

Delegates are trying work out detailed rules for the accord, which pledges rich countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions -- notably carbon dioxide from cars, factories and power stations.

European governments and developing countries are incensed that the United States -- the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases -- refuses to commit to binding cuts.

With the United States standing aside, Japan's role is crucial. The accord can only enter into force if backed by 55 countries, representing 55 percent of the industrialized world's emissions. If Japan pulls out, the second target can't be reached.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi rattled European leaders last week by suggesting that, after the U.S. pullout, an agreement may not be possible before the fall.

His environment minister stressed Tuesday that Japan is seeking a compromise that might get the United States on board.

But at the bargaining table, Japan joined Canada and Australia in pressing demands that they get more credit for forests that absorb carbon dioxide than foreseen in a draft treaty being discussed at the meeting.

European Union countries want stricter limits on counting the beneficial effects of forests and soil than other countries, including the United States.

But Japan's leverage has made the 15-nation EU ready to bargain as it seeks to push ahead with the pact without the United States.

Germany's environment minister said the accord could be salvaged with a compromise to keep Japan on board.

The Japanese might be won over if it were accorded credits -- ``within very narrow limits'' -- against forests that absorb carbon dioxide for a limited period, up to 2012, Juergen Trittin said in an interview in Tuesday's Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.

More than 80 countries have signed the Kyoto pact, which requires industrialized countries to cut greenhouse emissions an average 5.2 percent from 1990 by 2012.

``The conference in Bonn is our last chance if we really want to achieve substantial progress,'' Trittin said. ``If it fails, climate protection will be put back by at least 10 years.''

-------- genetics

EPA Releases Report on Biotech Corn

New York Times
July 17, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/news/AP-Biotech-Corn.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The chances of consumers eating an unapproved variety of biotech corn are substantially less than the government thought last fall after the grain was discovered in food products, the Environmental Protection Agency says.

In a report to a panel of scientific advisers who meet Tuesday and Wednesday, EPA said testing by corn processors and seed companies have helped to dramatically reduce the amount of StarLink corn that could be in food.

Discovery of the corn in taco shells last fall led to nationwide recalls of corn products. More recalls may be necessary unless the EPA agrees to allow a minimal amounts of the corn in food, the corn's developer, Aventis CropScience, has said.

EPA's scientific advisers are deciding whether the agency should grant a request by Aventis to set a maximum level for the biotech grain of 20 parts per billion. That's the equivalent of one StarLink kernel in every 800 kernels of corn.

In its report, EPA says the actual levels of StarLink in U.S. corn supplies range from 0.34 to 8 parts per billion, depending on the method used to make the estimate. EPA says the corn ``will essentially be gone'' from grain supplies in two to three years.

StarLink corn was never approved for human consumption because of questions about whether it was an allergen.

Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cleared StarLink as the cause of allergic reactions in 17 people who thought they may have been sickened by the corn.

A special protein in the corn, called Cry9C, breaks down slowly in the digestive system, an indication that it might induce allergic reactions. However, scientists say people would have to be exposed to the protein repeatedly to become sensitive to it.

StarLink, which has been removed from the market, is one of several varieties of corn that have been genetically engineered to produce their own pesticides. StarLink corn was supposed to have been grown and handled separately from other grain, but farmers often failed to do so.

--------

Report Supports Stem Cell Study

New York Times
July 17, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Stem-Cells.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Scientists must be free to study stem cells from all sources -- including living human embryos -- to discover the full potential of the cells to treat disease, says a federal report requested by the Bush administration.

President Bush is weighing whether to allow federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, which is opposed by some because isolating the cells requires the death of a human embryo. Bush asked the federal researchers for more information on the issue, but the confidential report from the National Institutes of Health does not make a recommendation one way or the other on federal funding.

The report, to be released Wednesday at a congressional hearing, focuses on the science.

An executive summary, obtained by The Associated Press, says embryonic stem cells have the ability to develop into all types of cells and tissue, a flexibility that may be lacking in so-called ``adult'' stem cells taken from mature tissue. However, the report concludes, ``the answers clearly lie in conducting more research.''

The White House received a copy of the report Tuesday from federal officials, said presidential spokesman Scott McClellan.

``The report is one component of the scientific, ethical and legal issues involved,'' McClellan said. ``The president intends to look at it in that context.''

Both opponents and supporters of embryonic stem cell research held up the report as evidence of their arguments.

The study ``clearly presents adult stem cells as a legitimate alternative with great future potential,'' said Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., an abortion foe who opposes federal funding of embryonic stem cell research.

To Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, the report says that in some cases, ``embryonic stem cells are more promising than adult stem cells.''

Scientists believe they can learn to direct the development of embryonic stem cells in order to grow mature cells or tissues that could be used to treat disease. Some estimate that stem cells could benefit more than 100 million patients with such disorders as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, diabetes and spinal cord injuries.

Opponents of the research believe embryos should not be killed, even for the treatment of disease. Instead, they favor research using the adult stem cells, which are taken from mature organs and then manipulated in the lab.

The federal report made distinctions among the types of stem cells. For example, it discussed the differences between cells extracted from fetuses and from embryos. Embryonic germ cells, taken from the developing reproductive areas of a fetus, are described as being similar to the embryonic stem cells.

A consistent theme of the report is that more research is needed before any firm, scientific conclusion can be reached on the relative medical value of the stem cell types.

``During the next several years, it will be important to compare embryonic stem cells and adult stem cells in terms of their ability to proliferate, differentiate, survive and function after transplant, and avoid immune rejection,'' said the report.

The NIH prepared the report in June at the request of Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson. An HHS spokesman, Bill Pierce, said the report had not been released beyond the HHS, not even to the White House.

Some members of Congress, representing both political parties, discussed the report at a hearing on Tuesday and at a news event featuring families afflicted by deadly diseases.

``Life begins in the womb of a mother, not in a petri dish; pro-life means helping people live,'' Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., told the cheering crowd.

Daphne Thomas, a Sterling, Va., doctor, described how embryonic stem cells might help her daughter Alyssa, who suffers from Rett syndrome, a neurological disease.

``She walks with difficulty. She falls easily. She can't color with crayons like other 4-year-olds,'' said Thomas.

The event was the latest in a string of public events aimed at putting political pressure on the president. White House aides said Tuesday the president's decision is still pending. Bush is in Europe for an economic summit.

-------- health

Mobile phones to give radiation levels soon

Tuesday, July 17, 2001
By Reuters
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2001/07/07172001/reu_radiation_44339.asp

STOCKHOLM/HELSINKI - The world's leading mobile phone makers said Monday they will start publishing information next fall about the level of radiation emitted by their phones, in response to concerns from consumers.

The largest cellphone maker Nokia, the second-largest Motorola and the fourth-largest Ericsson, have agreed with the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardisation's (CENELEC) on a way to measure radiation absorption on phones.

"There have been requests by some consumers that this information should be readily available," said Nokia Mobile Phones spokesman Tapio Hedman. "We are providing them with information they feel is important for them."

The agreement comes after years of lobbying from consumer and other organisations for companies and regulators to agree on a global standard of measuring radiation emitted from handsets.

Reports have alleged that radio waves from mobile phones can affect the human brain. Last year, a UK government-sponsored scientific inquiry, chaired by Sir William Stewart, warned children to avoid excessive use of mobile phones because their thinner skulls make them prone to absorbing radiation.

"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," said Mikael Westmark, responsible for health issues at Ericsson.

At the end of March this year, there were 770 million mobile phone users globally and Nokia expects that figure to rise to one billion in the first six months of 2002.

U.S. neurologist Christopher Newman filed last year a lawsuit against leading U.S. phone companies, including Motorola Inc., 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 companies say research conducted over several years has found no evidence to link health problems with mobile phones.

RADIATION LEVEL TO FEATURE IN USER MANUAL

Manufacturers do not plan to label the phones with the actual level of radiation, called Specific Absorption Rate (SAR), nor put it on phone packages. The information would be included in user manuals.

SAR - the best way of measuring radiation - 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 are now showing values between 0.5 and 1.0.

Mobile phones are, in effect, tiny radio stations that send and receive. Hedman said one of the big challenges would be to explain to consumers what the new number actually means.

"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 dialling and then dropped steeply off after the connection was made.

Ericsson said it would include the SAR figure with its phones from October, and Nokia said it would do it roughly at the same time.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission already requires cellphons to meet radiation safety standards, and all manufacturers are required to inform the FCC of the SAR levels on their phones before they are approved for sale nationally.

Consumers can already get this information from the FCC, and Nokia has published them in the user manuals of its U.S. phones, Hedman said.

-------- human rights

Bush mulls amnesty for illegals

July 17, 2001
By August Gribbin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010717-59023628.htm

The White House is considering a grant of amnesty for the millions of Mexicans who have sneaked into the United States and live here illegally.

However, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer stressed yesterday that the amnesty plan is just part of a package of proposals being developed by top U.S. and Mexican officials to deal with the problem of Mexican immigration. Attorney General John Ashcroft and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell head the U.S. team studying the issue.

Mr. Fleischer said the proposals also include the possibility of creating a special "guest-worker program." The program would give legal status and a measure of protection to seasonal Mexican workers who routinely move back and forth across the border to harvest U.S. crops.

Both the amnesty and the guest-worker program have been high on the agenda of Mexican President Vicente Fox, and political analysts say his diplomatic corps has been pitching the ideas diligently since Mr. Fox and President Bush met last February.

The idea of granting amnesty -- or "regularizing the status" -- of what Mexico says is some 3 million people finds favor with certain Democrats and pro-immigration advocates. But it irks some Republican leaders and has students of Mexican affairs raising cautions.

For instance, Rep. Tom Tancredo, the Colorado Republican who heads the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus, said: "This is a kick in the teeth to the thousands of individuals across the world who are legally attempting to enter the United States. Instead, the U.S. is saying, 'Why wait? Sneak on in.'"

Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, Mississippi Republican, yesterday warned against making wholesale changes, telling reporters, "A mass amnesty is probably not the way to go.

"But what [the U.S. and Mexican administrations] are thinking about is trying to work with the new reform president of Mexico, Vicente Fox, and come up with a reasonable way to have movement back and forth across our border," he said. "I think we need to do it with some forethought not do it in such a way that rewards illegal activity."

House Democratic Leader Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri commended the Bush administration "for its reported review of the important issue of the immigration status of millions of Mexican immigrants living and working in the United States."

And the head of the National Immigration Forum, Frank Sharry, said, "This is a bold and smart move on the part of the Bush administration. If Mr. Bush plays this right, he will bring common sense to immigration policy and score a big foreign policy victory and stand with President Fox as a friend of Hispanic immigrants."

"It's not just smart, it's brilliant," says George Grayson, a College of William and Mary specialist in Mexican affairs.

He said moves toward amnesty can go far toward capturing for Mr. Bush the important Hispanic vote in 2004 while cementing favor with the popular and potentially powerful leader of Mexico.

Yet politics aside, Mr. Grayson and others say there are powerful arguments against amnesty.

"For one thing, this estimate of 3 million Mexican illegals is the Mexican administration's lowball estimate. It's more likely 6 million and could as easily be 9 million.

"Then too, amnesty rewards lawbreaking, and once done, it creates enormous pressure for future amnesties for those who are encouraged to pour across the border believing that they too will receive amnesty, permanent residency and eventual citizenship," Mr. Grayson said.

Mr. Grayson says a guest-worker program or immigration is not needed in the current tight job market, where largely uneducated and unskilled Mexican illegals are competing for the shrinking number of low-end jobs with America's own unskilled, high-school dropouts and people fighting to get off welfare.

A preliminary report containing the amnesty and guest-worker program proposals will be presented to Mr. Bush and Mr. Fox when the Mexican president completes a five-day visit to the United States this week.

Formal recommendations are expected by September, when Mr. Fox returns to the United States for a Washington meeting with Mr. Bush.

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

Bush Calls for World Bank to Increase Grants

New York Times
July 17, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/world/bush-worldbank.html

WASHINGTON, July 17 (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush on Tuesday called on the World Bank and other development banks to make up to 50 percent of its cash disbursements to the world's poorest countries in grants rather than loans.

``I ... propose the World Bank and other development banks dramatically increase the share of their funding provided as grants rather than loans to the poorest countries,'' Bush said in a speech at the World Bank.

``Specifically I propose that up to 50 percent of the funds provided by the development banks to the poorest countries be provided as grants for education, health, nutrition, water supply, sanitation and other human needs,'' he said.

``It would be a a major step forward. Debt relief is really a short-term fix. The proposal today doesn't merely drop the debt, it helps stop the debt.''

The idea that the World Bank provide more grants rather than loans has been mentioned often by U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, but Tuesday's speech marked the first time the administration named a specific figure -- 50 percent.

National Security Council spokeswoman Mary Ellen Countryman said after about 10 years of providing grants, donor countries like the United States and others would have to increase funding for the World Bank to pay for the proposal.

Bush's speech came ahead of a trip to Europe to attend the Group of Eight summit in Genoa, Italy. The theme of the summit is poverty alleviation.

---

Bush Asks for More World Bank Grants

By Lawrence L. Knutson
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, July 17, 2001; 10:28 a.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010717/aponline102821_001.htm

WASHINGTON -- President Bush proposed Tuesday that the World Bank and other international lending institutions dramatically increase the share of their resources provided as grants rather than loans.

In a speech at World Bank headquarters here, Bush also called on the world's lending institutions to make major increases in loans and grants aimed at boosting education in Africa and other poor and developing nations.

Many of those countries are burdened with huge accumulated debts. "The United States is and will continue to be a world leader on responsible debt relief," Bush said.

"I also propose the World Bank and other development banks dramatically increase their share of funding provided as grants rather than loans to the poorest countries," Bush said.

"Specifically, I propose that up to 50 percent of the funds provided by the developing banks to the poorest countries be provided as grants for education, health, nutrition, water supplies, sanitation and other human needs.

"It would be a major step forward," the president said.

Bush called his proposals "compassionate conservatism at an international level."

Bush's suggestion that the World Bank should substitute grants for many of the heavily subsidized loans it now makes is an effort to help the world's poorest nations, already struggling under mountains of old debt, from building up new debt burdens.

But critics say unless the administration offers to provide more money to the World Bank, the bank would end up with less money to help poor nations because the bank now uses the repayments of its old loans to make new loans.

World Bank officials estimate that if the United States ended up persuading other bank members to agree to convert half of the bank's loans to grants, the United States would have to double its current $803 million annual contribution just to keep the bank's pool of aid at current levels.

The idea of converting World Bank loans to grants is one of the recommendations made by a blue-ribbon panel chaired by Alan Meltzer, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and endorsed by conservative Republican leaders in Congress.

Many of the suggestions in Bush's speech have been pushed at the World Bank by Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who has made reform at both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund a top priority.

O'Neill has contended that the IMF and World Bank need to be much better focused on their core missions and cut back on supplementary programs. The administration wants the IMF to improve its ability to detect and prevent financial crises. It wants the World Bank to place a stronger focus on efforts to improve workers' productivity in poor nations as a way of fighting poverty.

Bush spoke on the eve of his second visit to Europe as president.

He said half the human race lives on less than $2 a day, a situation he said was neither just nor stable.

Bush also turned his attention to street demonstrations that have been threatened by anti-globalization protesters when he meets in Genoa, Italy, this weekend with Russian President Vladimir Putin and leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Italy and Canada.

Such protesters "seek to shut down meetings because they want to shut down free trade. ... Make no mistake, those who protest free trade are no friends of the poor" and "seek to deny them their best hope for escaping poverty."

He said one of the developing world's top priorities ought to be helping poorer nations free themselves from the crippling burden of massive debt.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office Monday, Bush made clear he'll also try anew to convince skeptical world leaders that an effective U.S. missile defense system can play a key role in a 21st century strategy for peace.

"I really look forward to making progress on key issues, such as missile defense and world trade," the president said.

His positions on missile defense and global warming are matters of principle and shouldn't be expected to change, he said.

"On both issues I have made my positions clear," Bush said. "People shouldn't doubt where the United States stands."

[Is that arrogant, or what? Last I heard, Bush has a very shaky claim on winning the U.S. election. Is he saying, like Caesar or the Pope, "My will is divine will"? Which people shouldn't doubt where the United States stands? Surely the U.S. people have reason to doubt the sanity of where Bush currently stands, Cowboy vs. The World. Editor.]

-------- spying

Moroccan Rights Groups Ask CIA to Open Files

Tuesday July 17 4:31 PM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010717/ts/morocco_barka_cia_dc_1.html

RABAT (Reuters) - Two Moroccan independent human rights groups asked the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (news - web sites) (CIA (news - web sites)) on Tuesday to release files related to Morocco's alleged repression of political dissidents over the past decades.

The groups AMDH and OMDH, in an open letter addressed to President Bush (news - web sites), said information revealed by a Moroccan former secret agent showed the CIA had a hand in what has become known in Morocco as the country's ``dark past.''

The agent, Ahmed Boukhari, told France's Le Monde newspaper and the Moroccan weekly Le Journal of the circumstances surrounding the death of Moroccan opposition leader Mehdi Ben Barka in Paris in 1965 and specifically mentioned the CIA.

``The information shows that CIA cadres were responsible from 1960 for drawing up plans and programs for the Moroccan secret services, their equipment and training,'' the two groups said in a letter faxed to the media.

These CIA officials were ``involved in, directed or were aware of extremely dangerous criminal acts systematically committed by the Moroccan services such as kidnappings, torture, abductions, killings and dissolving bodies,'' it added.

Ben Barka, a charismatic leftist leader who fled into exile during the early years of Morocco's independence from France, disappeared in October 1965.

Boukhari, like others in the past, said Ben Barka was seized in broad daylight in the Paris Latin Quarter and driven to a house on the outskirts of the city, where he died after being tortured by senior Moroccan military officials.

Ben Barka's body was then taken back to Rabat and disposed of in an acid vat, Boukhari said.

In an article based on his account, Le Monde and Le Journal wrote last month that three U.S. expatriates, identified as ''Colonel Martin, Steve and Scott'' worked for the CIA in the counter-insurgency department of the Moroccan secret services at the time of Ben Barka's reported death.

The two human rights groups said ``thousands of important documents related to this ugly period are in the hands of U.S. intelligence and are still under a lid of secrecy decades later.''

-------- activists

'Disobedients' Settle in for G8 Protest

New York Times
July 17, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-group-t.html

GENOA, Italy (Reuters) - ``Welcome Disobedients.''

Spelled out in half a dozen languages, the sign on Genoa's aging Carlini stadium greets visitors to one of four tent cities springing up for demonstrators in the northern port city ahead of the weekend's Group of Eight (G8) summit.

Inside the government-designated site, a few hundred anti-globalization protesters had already pitched their tents, the vanguard of what they say may be as many as 200,000 flooding the city to vent their rage at capitalism's grip on the world.

Revolutionary spirit is splashed across T-shirts bearing pictures of Cuban flags, Che Guevara, Chiapas guerrillas. A few dogs run loose among the tents that are pegged into dusty earth.

Eight model pig's heads, with the flags of the United States, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Canada, Japan and Russia in their mouths, look out at the tents as if executed and staked to the wall.

Parts of the stadium look like a cross between a refugee camp and a Punk Rock concert, with many of the early arrivals sporting colorful hair styles and body piercing.

The stadium is set up to house 3,000 camper-protesters but more are likely to arrive.

``We expect more than 5,000,'' said Andrea, an organizer from Rome who like others preferred not to give a last name.

A university researcher with a doctoral degree, Andrea said he was drawn to Genoa to protest both because of a left-wing family tradition and because of the damaging effect he says globalization has on his work.

``Issues like intellectual property (rights) are stopping the process of developing knowledge. They are putting up barriers,'' he said.

Nearby, Alberto, a computer sciences student from the Italian town of Lodi wearing a vegan T-shirt, said he wanted to raise the issue of animal rights but in general would protest at the way the G8 ran the world.

``I think it is really important to show all the world that there are some who think that it is possible to have a different world,'' he said.

VIOLENCE FEARED

Italian authorities have launched an unprecedented security operation to shield the G8 leaders from protesters and are bracing for violent street clashes like those that accompanied recent summits in Seattle, Prague, Gothenburg and elsewhere.

Andrea seemed resigned to the likelihood of clashes and said it was partly due to the nature of protests in the early 21st century. Unlike the 1980s and 1990s demonstrators did not just wave banners but had a goal, he said.

``It was like a 'show up' before,'' he said. ``Now we have an objective-- we want to stop the G8.''

A letter bomb at a police station on Monday injured a police officer and sent jitters through the city, which is fast taking on the appearance of an armed camp.

At Carlini stadium, protesters said the bomb was a provocation and was likely to increase the chances of violence.

``We are really scared,'' said Alberto. ``We think that there are some people who are trying to create high tension.''

Two German women from Hamburg, both called Katrin, said the bomb was likely to make Italian authorities respond quicker.

``They are more furious (after the bomb),'' said one, an 18-year old still in high school.

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15 Activists and 2 Press Men Could Face Jail for Star Wars Action

July 17, 2001
http://www.mothersalert.org/greenpeace.html

Los Angeles, California, Fifteen Greenpeace activists and two journalists have been hit with extremely serious charges after the Star Wars missile test was delayed on Saturday evening. The group faces jail terms of more than ten years if found guilty of conspiring to violate a safety zone and violating an order.1 The activists from all over the world appeared at the federal Court in Los Angeles late into the evening last night. The independent photographer and videographer were charged along side them.

"Our activists acted with honor and integrity in a courageous, selfless and non-violent protest against a dangerous program," said Gerd Leipold, Executive Director of Greenpeace International. "They¹re from across the world and reflect a growing global opposition to Star Wars. The photographer and videographer were present simply to do their jobs as independent witnesses. These incredibly harsh charges against a totally peaceful act of opposition are a clear indication of President Bush's single-minded and arrogant insistence on deploying a Star Wars missile system, and his need to silence all dissent to do it," Leipold added.

Those charged come from the U.S, UK, Germany, India, Sweden, Australia, Spain and Canada. The fifteen members of the boat crews and two members of the press were below the flight path of the missile. Swimmers on boogie boards went ashore at the base, while three boats and a press boat, chased by the Coast Guard and a helicopter entered the exclusion zone. Greenpeace divers went down underwater in the zone also. The test was delayed for forty minutes. Despite repeated warnings that activists where in the danger zone, along with at least one Coast Guard vessel, the base commander of Vandenberg ordered that the missile be fired.

"Everyone involved in this action has done an incredibly brave thing. They put themselves in the firing line of the launch to try to stop not just this test, but the whole Star Wars program," said Greenpeace U.S. Executive Director John Passacantando. "This is not about the future of nuclear weapons technology, it is about the future of our planet and the people on it. We want to see a nuclear free future. This legal process should not be about prosecuting a peaceful protest, it should be about putting George Bush and his Star Wars program on trial," he added.

Notes to editors:

1 Conspiracy to violate a safety zone is a Class D felony charge and carries a minimum five years jail term, and a maximum ten years jail. It could also carry a fine of up to $250,000. Either could be imposed singly or jointly. Failure to adhere to commander¹s instructions is a Class A misdemeanor and carries a maximum one-year jail term and a maximum $5,000 fine. Both sentences can run consecutively.

Contact: Carol Gregory (805) 291-1747 in California; Kymberly Escobar in Washington, D.C. office (202) 319-2494.



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