------- Index of Articles
NUCLEAR
Poll: Nuclear Power Too Dangerous
Edison Reports $102M Loss
More nuke experiments
Czech PM says has no doubts about Temelin safety
G8 Summit Marred by Protests
G8 Leaders Address Global Economy
Summit Economic Statement
The Struggle Over Kashmir
North Korea Faults U.S. on Missiles
N.Korea Vows Countermeasures in Reply to U.S. Test
Ex-Clinton Aide Criticizes Missile Plan
Russia Objects to U.S. Plan for Missile Test Site
Russia Says Alaska Test Site Violates ABM Treaty
Russians Move to Raise Nuclear Sub
Why Bush team is no fan of arms-control treaties
Among Neighbors of MX Missiles, Little Neutrality
Kidney cancer added to sick workers' coverage list
Downwinders' IOUs to Be Paid
Coalition assists sick workers
Senate OKs Hanford cleanup money
It's Official
Compromise Reached On Defense Legislation
Defiant Bush Defends Foreign Policy Skills
Bush, in Britain, Enjoys the Calm Before the Storm
Poll: Nuclear Power Too Dangerous
MILITARY
Pentagon confirms defense talks between Taiwan, U.S.
China Signs $2 Billion Deal To Buy Russian Fighter Jets
EU Monitors Die in Macedonia
Ecuador asks Colombia to halt aerial coca fumigation
Iraq, Iran Trade Accusations in UN
Pentagon: Iraq Fires at US Aircraft
West Bank Blast Levels Fatah Office
8 Leading Nations Are Urging 3rd-Party Monitors in Mideast
US intelligence: Israel will attack
Putin's Blast at NATO Gets Shrug
Solar - Sailing Test Rocket Launched
Iraq, Iran Trade Accusations in UN
Afghanistan Sanctions Questioned
Figures Say US Needs Bigger Military
For Military, 'Change Is Hard'
OTHER
Solar-Sailing Test Rocket Launched
AEP, TXU to expand West Texas wind project
DNA Tests May Help Idaho Inmate
Serial killer asks judge to clear way for execution
Justice Dept. Solicits Study Bids
As the World Warms: More Debate
8 Months Later, Talks on Climate Treaty Restart, Now in Bonn
NAFTA Panel Examines Air Pollution
Bush to promote biotechnology at Genoa G8
Genome Mappers Navigate the Tricky Terrain of Race
Bush to Decide on Stem Cell Funding
Debate Rages Over Ethics of Stem Cell Research
G8 Leaders Agree to Create AIDS Fund
Security Tightened As G7 Summit Set to Start
Ukraine to Free 35,000 Prisoners
Ex - UNSCOM Inspector: FBI Probing Me
ACTIVISTS
A Tense Silence Blankets Genoa
Greenpeace wraps "Statue of Liberty" in chains
G8 protests in Genoa start peacefully
US EPA seeks public comment for new arsenic standard
What the Protesters in Genoa Want
Police and Protesters Clash as Economic Summit Opens
G8 Protester Is Killed in Italy
Live Ammo Kills Sri Lanka Protester
Anniversary of China Sect Crackdown
Greenpeace Protester 'Buzzes' Blair And Bush
Reporters Caught in Summit Clashes
-------- NUCLEAR
Poll: Nuclear Power Too Dangerous
New York Times
July 20, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Nuclear-Energy-California.html
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- A poll released Thursday said 55 percent of Californians believe nuclear power is too dangerous, even if building more plants would help alleviate the country's energy problems.
The findings by the non-partisan Public Policy Institute of California conflicted with the results of another group's poll in May that found 59 percent of Californians favored nuclear power and 36 percent opposed it.
The May poll, conducted by the nonpartisan Field Institute, was taken at a time when energy shortages had forced rolling blackouts and state officials were predicting a summer of worse shortages. But unusually cool weather and increased supply in recent weeks have helped the state avoid blackouts.
The Public Policy Institute's poll found that 57 percent of Californians say they would oppose a proposal to build a nuclear plant in their region.
California has two nuclear power plants currently in operation -- the 2,254-megawatt San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in San Clemente owned by San Diego Gas and Electric Co., and the 2,212-megawatt Diablo Canyon power plant near San Luis Obispo, owned by Pacific Gas and Electric Co.
The Public Policy Institute polled 2,007 California adults from July 1-10. The margin of error was plus or minus 2 percentage points.
The poll by the Field Institute included 1,015 adults and was taken May 11-20. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points
-------- business
Edison Reports $102M Loss
By Gary Gentile
AP Business Writer
Friday, July 20, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010720/aponline173003_000.htm
LOS ANGELES -- Edison International Inc. acknowledged Friday its troubled utility Southern California Edison Co. collected more revenue in June than it spent on power. Officials insisted, however, the utility still needs state help to avoid bankruptcy.
Edison International reported a loss of $102 million in the second quarter, primarily due to unrecovered costs of buying power.
The loss amounts to 31 cents a share, including one-time costs of $117 million for discontinued operations.
Excluding the charge, Edison reported net income of $16 million, or 5 cents per share, compared with $137.2 million, or 41 cents per share, during the three months ended June 30 last year.
Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial/First Call had expected earnings of 30 cents per share.
Edison Enterprises, the company's retail unit, sold its home security business to ADT Securities for an undisclosed sum in June. The company said the money would be used to reduce debt.
Net income at SoCal Edison fell $128 million due to $63 million in unrecovered costs, an outage at its San Onofre nuclear power plant and reduced revenue from electricity sales, the company said.
Edison International's unregulated power generating subsidiary, Edison Mission Energy, reported income of $284,000 compared to a loss of $18 million for the same quarter last year. The turnaround was made possible by the higher prices the company was able to charge for electricity generated by its plants.
Edison officials said June's increased revenues were due to unusually mild weather, a decline in wholesale natural gas prices and a rate increase that went into effect in June.
But, the company said in a statement, those factors are temporary. In addition, state regulators have yet to decide how much the state's three utilities will ultimately owe the state for buying power on their behalf since the beginning of the year, the company said.
SoCal Edison still needs the state to buy the company's power lines for $2.76 billion and permission to issue bonds to pay its debt, officials said.
"When I look at the billions of dollars that have to be recovered, I don't see the problem fixing itself," Ted Craver, Edison International chief financial officer, said in a conference call with analysts. "The problems don't fix themselves. That kind of thinking is what got us here in the first place."
SoCal Edison owes $3.5 billion to generators and creditors.
"The question is can it (June revenues) be sustained?" asked Edward Jones Senior Utility Analyst Brian Youngberg. "If you get a heat spell here, pretty easily it could go the other way. The key thing in the near term is what the Legislature does."
For the first six months of the year, Edison International reported a loss of $719 million, compared with a profit of $247 million for the same period last year. The loss includes $724 million in unrecovered power costs.
Shares of Edison were down 46 cents, or 3 percent, at $14.24 at the end of trading Friday on the New York Stock Exchange.
-------- china
More nuke experiments
July 20, 2001
Inside the Ring
Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
Notes from the Pentagon.
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010720-15065185.htm
U.S. intelligence agencies have uncovered more evidence of Chinese nuclear weapons testing.
Officials tell us that Chinese nuclear testing officials carried out three nuclear weapons-related "experiments" over the past two months at Lop Nur, the remote test area in western Xinjiang province where China has conducted its underground nuclear blasts in the past. A fourth test is expected soon, intelligence officials said.
Satellite photographs taken within the past several weeks showed Chinese workers at Lop Nur filling in a test hole with concrete. "That's a sign this was a nuclear weapons-related test," one official told us.
U.S. intelligence agencies, however, still lack hard evidence that the Chinese set off an underground nuclear blast. Officials said no seismic shock waves have been detected from monitoring stations around the world. And special "sniffer" U.S. reconnaissance aircraft flying near China have not detected any signs of radioactivity venting from the tests.
Intelligence officials believe the tests are part of China's ongoing program to develop small nuclear warheads -- like the U.S. W-88 warhead. The CIA has concluded China obtained W-88 warhead secrets from the United States through espionage.
-------- czech republic
Czech PM says has no doubts about Temelin safety
July 20, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11690
CEJKOVICE, Czech Republic - The Czech government said on Wednesday it had no doubts about the safety of the Temelin nuclear power station and would not react to a German call to close the Soviet-designed plant.
Prime Minister Milos Zeman told a news conference after a cabinet meeting in Cejkovice, 250 km (150 miles) southeast of Prague, that a new study of the plant would soon be published and would form the basis for further action.
"We have no reason to doubt the safety of Temelin," Zeman said.
Zeman said he would hold talks with Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel about Temelin after the report was published. He gave no date for the release of the report, but said it had recently been completed.
Officials in Berlin and Vienna say Temelin's position 60 km (40 miles) from their borders is too close for comfort as the plant's design does not meet Western safety standards.
The Czech government has repeatedly said western designed safety upgrades have brought the plant's standards above those found at most stations.
In a strongly worded statement on Monday, the German government said it "urges the government of the Czech Republic to lift its decision to allow the Temelin nuclear plant to operate and to close the plant".
-------- europe
G8 Summit Marred by Protests
By Ron Fournier
AP White House Correspondent
Friday, July 20, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010720/aponline144257_000.htm
GENOA, Italy -- Club-wielding riot police and violent protesters clashed Friday with deadly consequences as leaders of the world's seven wealthiest nations vowed to fight AIDS and global economic woes. Safe inside their summit site, European heads also plotted against President Bush's environmental policies.
One protester was killed and dozens of others injured - along with many police - in bloody demonstrations against the policies being pursued by presidents and prime ministers inside the walls of a nearby palace.
With miles of fence-and-concrete barricades isolating them from tens of thousands of protesters, President Bush and six European leaders issued a joint statement saying the right policies were in place to avert a global recession - though the economy "has slowed more than expected."
They pressed forward with an agenda designed in part to show sympathy for causes espoused by demonstrators: A $1 billion AIDS relief plan, economic relief for Third World countries and a new round of global trade talks along with a unified bid to rally their sluggish economies, which the leaders say would help spread prosperity.
Bush and his counterparts took aim at the protesters' motives.
"Instead of addressing policies that represent the poor, you embrace policies that lock poor people into poverty," Bush said on the opening day of a three-day summit.
The protests revived memories of demonstrations that have marred international summits in Quebec and Seattle, but the death was apparently the first death connected to such clashes.
Anti-globalization protesters flooded this hilly, Mediterranean port city - with a few of them turning violent.
An unknown number hurled cobblestones and Molotov cocktails, smashed windows, set fires and looted storefronts. Computers and other office equipment were flung from one office building.
Police responded with water cannons, tear gas and nightsticks, clubbing some protesters into submission and arresting at least 39.
The dead person was not immediately identified and the circumstances surrounding his death were unclear.
Local hospitals said at least 46 protesters were injured, plus 31 police and two journalists.
In private meetings at a 13th century palace-turned-conference center, conversations wandered from economics to politics. French President Jacques Chirac led a lobbying effort against Bush's climate change policies.
"It is our duty to act vigorously and collectively to combat the principal threat to the future of the planet," Chirac told Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, according to officials in the French delegation.
Later, Chirac and Bush were seen engaged in animated conversation during a summit dinner that also included leaders from five poor countries.
Bush defied most of the industrialized world by denouncing a 1997 Kyoto global warming treaty aimed at reducing heat-trapping gases. His administration has quietly urged Canada, Australia and Japan to scuttle an effort by pro-treaty nations to implement the pact without the United States.
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi supports the treaty that bares the name of his country's ancient capital, but nonetheless assured Bush recently that he doesn't want to proceed without the United States.
In a private chat, Koizumi told German Prime Minister Gerhard Schroeder, a treaty backer, that Japan "will do our best" to see the pact take effect in 2002, according to the Japanese delegation. A German spokesman later said Bush's position will dominate summit talks.
The president himself has told his colleagues he won't bow to their pressure on Kyoto. He has promised to provide an alternative to the treaty.
Bush is also at odds with U.S. allies over his plans to develop a missile defense system. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has warned that the system could trigger a new arms race, attended the summit with leaders of the traditional Group of Seven - the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada.
Bush meets privately with Putin on Saturday.
Putin joined his seven colleagues and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to announce a new global health fund, with an initial contribution of $1.2 billion, to combat AIDS and other infectious diseases.
Bush has pledged $200 million, saying more money will come only if the fund proves a success.
Annan praised the effort, but said the leaders fell short of the $7 billion to $10 billion needed to fight diseases.
On the economy, the leaders' statement also:
-Predicted that Bush's tax-cut package will bolster economic growth in the United States. They also praised Koizumi's tough-minded reform package dealing with that country's decade-long economic slump.
-Pledged to get personally involved in the effort to launch a new global trade round, hoping to rebound from the failed effort to launch the talks in Seattle in December 1999. They said that the new talks should be aimed at providing poor nations with better access to world markets.
-Praised Turkey and Argentina for wrestling with financial crises.
----
G8 Leaders Address Global Economy
By Ron Fournier
AP White House Correspondent
Friday, July 20, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010720/aponline192859_000.htm
GENOA, Italy -- Club-wielding riot police and violent protesters clashed Friday with deadly consequences as leaders of the world's seven wealthiest nations vowed to fight AIDS and global economic woes. Safe inside their summit site, European heads also plotted against President Bush's environmental policies.
One protester was killed, shot apparently by police, and dozens of others injured in bloody demonstrations against the policies being pursued by presidents and prime ministers inside the walls of a nearby palace.
With miles of fence-and-concrete barricades isolating them from tens of thousands of protesters, President Bush and six European leaders issued a joint statement saying the right policies were in place to avert a global recession - though the economy "has slowed more than expected."
Their summit overshadowed, the frustrated leaders pressed forward with an agenda designed to show sympathy for causes espoused by some demonstrators: An AIDS plan for Third World countries that includes $1.2 billion in initial pledges, as well as economic relief for poor nations.
They also pledged to rally their sluggish economies and open a new round of global trade talks, even as anti-globalization forces stirred outside the security zone.
Bush told aides the death was tragic. Earlier, he questioned the protesters' motives.
"Instead of addressing policies that represent the poor, you embrace policies that lock poor people into poverty," Bush said on the opening day of a three-day summit.
In a joint statement, the leaders expressed regret for the death and condemned the violence, urging peaceful protesters to isolate lawbreakers by example.
The protests revived memories of demonstrations that have marred international summits in Quebec and Seattle, but the death apparently was the first connected to such clashes.
There was speculation that smaller cities might be better venues for future summits because they can be sealed off to protesters. Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, who hosts the next economic meeting, has not announced its location but he said fellow leaders "expressed frustration with the lack of attention to the substance of the summit."
Anti-globalization protesters flooded this hilly, Mediterranean port city - with many of them turning violent. An unknown number hurled cobblestones and Molotov cocktails, smashed windows, set fires to cars and trash bins and looted storefronts.
Computers and other office equipment were flung from one office building.
Police responded with water cannons, tear gas and nightsticks, clubbing some protesters into submission and arresting dozens.
The dead young man was not immediately identified by authorities, but Italy's top police official said he was shot, apparently by officers acting in self-defense. Several police were injured.
French President Jacques Chirac, who faces a socialist challenger in next year's election, was the only leader to express sympathy for protesters. "There is no demonstration drawing 100,000, 150,000 people without having a valid reason," he said.
Inside the 13th century palace-turned-conference center, Chirac led a lobbying effort against Bush's climate change policies.
"It is our duty to act vigorously and collectively to combat the principal threat to the future of the planet," he told Chretien, according to officials in the French delegation.
Later, Chirac and Bush were seen engaged in animated conversation during a summit dinner that also included leaders from five poor countries.
Bush has defied most of the industrialized world by denouncing a 1997 Kyoto global warming treaty aimed at reducing heat-trapping gases. His administration has quietly urged Canada, Australia and Japan to scuttle an effort by pro-treaty nations to implement the pact without the United States.
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi supports the treaty that bares the name of his country's ancient capital, but nonetheless assured Bush recently that he doesn't want to proceed without the United States.
In a private chat, Koizumi told German Prime Minister Gerhard Schroeder, a treaty backer, that Japan "will do our best" to see the pact take effect in 2002, according to the Japanese delegation.
The president himself has told his colleagues he won't bow to their pressure on Kyoto. He has promised to provide an alternative to the treaty.
Bush is also at odds with U.S. allies over his plans to develop a missile defense system. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has warned that the system could trigger a new arms race, attended the summit with leaders of the traditional Group of Seven - the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada.
Bush meets privately with Putin on Sunday.
Putin joined his seven colleagues and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to announce a new global health fund, with an initial contribution of $1.2 billion, to combat AIDS and other infectious diseases.
Annan praised the effort, but said the leaders fell short of the $7 billion to $10 billion needed to fight diseases.
On the economy, the leaders' statement also:
-Predicted that Bush's tax-cut package will bolster economic growth in the United States. They also praised Koizumi's tough-minded reform package dealing with that country's decade-long economic slump.
-Pledged to get personally involved in the effort to launch a new global trade round, hoping to rebound from the failed effort to launch the talks in Seattle in December 1999. They said that the new talks should be aimed at providing poor nations with better access to world markets.
-Praised Turkey and Argentina for wrestling with financial crises.
----
Summit Economic Statement
The Associated Press
Friday, July 20, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010720/aponline142141_000.htm
Text of the economic statement released Friday at a summit of the world's industrialized nations in Genoa, Italy:
Genova, 20 July 2001
1. We, the Heads of State and Government of the G7 countries and the Representatives of the European Union, met today in Genova to address current challenges in world macroeconomic trends and to bolster efforts aimed at promoting growth and stability, and at improving the efficiency of the international financial system.
World Economy
2. While the global economy has slowed more than expected over the past year, sound economic policies and fundamentals provide a solid foundation for stronger growth. We will remain vigilant and forward looking in implementing measures, as necessary, to ensure that our economies move towards a more sustained pattern of growth, in line with their potential. We pledge to pursue policies that will contribute to global growth by enhancing strong productivity growth in a sound macroeconomic environment, through structural reform, free trade and strengthened international economic cooperation.
-In the United States, while growth has slowed sharply, long-term trends remain favourable. Markets are dynamic and flexible, and both monetary and fiscal policies are being actively employed to support recovery, while maintaining price stability. The recently enacted tax cuts should bolster growth.
-In Canada, tax cuts and monetary conditions are supporting growth while structural policies should continue to be aimed at increasing productivity. In the United Kingdom, where the slowdown appears moderate, policies should continue to strengthen the foundations for sustained growth and employment over the medium term, and meet the inflation target.
-In the euro area, although economic activity has weakened, growth prospects remain favourable. Tax cuts, as well as structural reforms aimed at further increasing employment, should continue to support sustainable non-inflationary growth. The steady implementation of economic reforms will contribute, to further raising the potential for growth.
-In Japan, economic activity has further weakened, and prices continue to decline. Against this background, monetary policy should keep providing ample liquidity. Vigorous implementation of financial and corporate sector reforms is needed to lay the foundation for stronger economic growth over the medium term. We welcome the recently announced reform initiatives, which will contribute to this end.
3. Emerging market economies are unevenly affected by global economic developments. Growth rates in some countries have slowed towards a more sustainable rate, while in others they have decelerated sharply. We welcome the progress achieved in many countries in increasing their resilience against potential crises and the steps taken over the last year to strengthen the international financial system to better prevent crises. However, recent developments in emerging markets point to the need for further progress in reinforcing domestic financial systems and the underlying fiscal positions. Recent measures taken in Argentina and Turkey represent positive steps in this direction. We commend these efforts and encourage the continued implementation of their reform programs in close collaboration with the IMF and other relevant international financial institutions.
4. High and volatile oil prices are a concern for the world economy, in particular for the most vulnerable developing countries. Increased and diversified energy supplies, improved energy efficiency, expanded infrastructure and stable oil markets are important objectives. Oil producing and oil consuming countries should remain in close contact.
5. In addition to the policies we are pursuing in our own economies, we agreed today that co-operation on three further elements is important to a strengthened global economy:
-The launch of a new trade Round.
-Action to enhance the stability and integrity of the international financial system.
-Actions to ensure that the poorest countries are not left behind, including the implementation of the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (1-IIPC) Initiative.
Launching a New Trade Round
6. Sustained economic growth worldwide requires a renewed commitment to free trade. Opening markets globally and strengthening the World Trade Organisation (WTO) as the bedrock of the multilateral trading system is therefore an economic imperative. It is for this reason that we pledge today to engage personally and jointly in the launch of a new ambitious Round of global trade negotiations at the Fourth WTO Ministerial Conference in Doha, Qatar this November.
7. We are committed to working with developing countries, including the least developed, to ensure that the new Round addresses their priorities through improved market access and sounder, more transparent trade rules. We recognise that there are legitimate concerns in implementing the Uruguay Round Agreements. We welcome the steady progress made so far on implementation issues and are ready to examine ways to make further progress in connection with the launch of a new Round. Capacity building is essential to integrate developing countries into the trading system, and we are intensifying our efforts to assist in this area, including with international institutions.
8. In the interests of all, the new Round should be based on a balanced agenda, while clarifying, strengthening and extending multilateral rules. An improved dispute settlement mechanism is central to this effort. Increased transparency in the VETO itself is also important to strengthen confidence in the global trading system. The WTO should continue to respond to the legitimate expectations of civil society, and ensure that the new Round supports sustainable development.
9. We recognise the importance of expanding WTO membership on meaningful economic terms. We welcome the fact that negotiations with China are now almost completed and that progress is being made towards Russia's accession. We shall strongly support other applicants in their efforts to meet the conditions for an early membership, with a view to making the WTO a truly universal organisation.
Strengthening the International Financial System
10. Increasing global growth and prosperity depends crucially on a sound and stable international financial system. We are united in our determination to continue to strengthen it to prevent financial crises, to limit the impact of those that inevitably do occur, and to tackle financial abuses.
11. Since the Okinawa Summit a number of important steps have been taken, including: measures to increase the effectiveness of crisis prevention by reinforcing the International Monetary Fund (IMF) surveillance and encouraging the implementation of the key international codes and standards; involving the private sector in crisis prevention and resolution; streamlining and reforming IMF lending facilities; and enhancing IMF transparency and accountability. These efforts should be maintained.
12. Looking forward, we endorse our Finance Ministers' recommendations for action to further strengthen the international financial system and their commitment to foster international consensus in this endeavour. In particular, the international financial institutions and the G7 countries should stand ready to help countries adopt the policies required to ensure sustained access j to capital markets. We also support our Finance Ministers' suggestions to further develop the framework for private sector involvement.
13. The Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) have a central role to play in combating poverty by promoting productivity growth and supporting equitable and sustainable economic development, thus contributing to the achievement of the 2015 International Development Goals. To this end, we welcome and endorse our Finance Ministers' recommendations for reforming the MDBs and sharpening their focus on core social and human investments, in particular health and education. We encourage the MDBs to continue to evaluate their internal structure in order to enhance their operational effectiveness. We attach particular importance to:
-strengthening coordination among MDBs;
-enhancing their internal governance, accountability and transparency;
-reviewing their pricing policies with a view to enhancing the development impact of the resources available;
-promoting good governance in borrowing countries.
We call on MDBs to provide support for global public goods, such as fighting infectious diseases, facilitating trade, fostering financial stability and protecting the environment. We support a meaningful replenishment of IDA and, in that context, we will explore the increased use of grants for priority social investments, such as education and health.
14. We reaffirm our support for the multilateral effort against abuses of the global financial system and endorse our Finance Ministers' recommendations to address this challenge. We welcome the efforts several jurisdictions are making to address weaknesses in their anti money laundering regimes. We endorse the recent Financial Action Task Force decisions de-listing four jurisdictions and recommending the adoption of additional countermeasures against the most uncooperative ones if they do not take appropriate action by September 30, 2001. The International Financial Institutions have an important role in helping jurisdictions improve their anti money laundering regimes and we urge them to step up their efforts in this regard. We encourage progress in assessing adherence to supervisory and regulatory standards in Offshore Financial Centres. We look forward to the 2001 OECD progress report on harmful tax practices and support the work, as envisaged by our Finance Ministers, aimed at addressing such practices. We ask our Finance Ministers for further work in these areas.
HIPC
15. The Enhanced HIPC Initiative we launched in Cologne aims to increase growth, reduce poverty and provide a lasting exit from unsustainable debt, by reducing debt on the basis of strengthened policy reforms. We welcome the important progress that has been achieved in implementing the Initiative. At Okinawa nine countries had qualified for debt relief. Now, twenty-three countries (Benin, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, The Gambia, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Guyana, Honduras, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Niger, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia) are benefiting from the Initiative, with an overall amount of debt relief of over $53 billion, out of an initial stock of debt of $74 billion. This will significantly reduce their debt service, thus freeing resources for social sector expenditure, in particular education and health.
16. We have all agreed as a minimum to provide 100% debt reduction of official development assistance (ODA) and eligible commercial claims for qualifying HIPC countries. W e urge those countries that have not already done so to take similar steps, and we underline the need for the active and full participation of all bilateral creditors in providing timely debt relief to WPCs.
17. We encourage WPCs that have not yet reached their decision point to quickly undertake the necessary economic and social reforms, including the development of a strategy for overall poverty reduction in co-operation with the World Bank and the IMF. Economic, structural, and social reforms, improved governance, and a strengthened ability to track poverty-reducing expenditures are necessary to ensure the maximum benefit of debt relief. In particular, we call upon those countries involved in military conflicts to lay down their arms, and implement the necessary reforms. We confirm our willingness to help them take measures needed to come forward to debt relief We pledge to continue working together to ensure that the benefits of debt relief are targeted to assist the poor and most vulnerable.
Nuclear Safety
18. We welcome Ukraine's permanent closure of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant on 15 December 2000, which was a vital accomplishment in support of nuclear safety.
-------- india / pakistan
The Struggle Over Kashmir
Friday, July 20, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A24012-2001Jul19?language=printer
The roots of the persistent argument between India and Pakistan over Kashmir [front page, July 17] go back to Aug. 14, 1947, when the British carved out a bifurcated Muslim nation separated by more than 1,000 miles of Indian territory. The now infamous "line of control" cut houses in half and led to the birth of two nations marred by bloodshed.
While public sentiment rightly pleads with these two nuclear powers to resolve their dangerous conflict, we are witnessing what is perhaps the residue of a "divide and conquer" policy enacted by the dwindling British Empire. Thus, while disagreements range from the semantic characterization of the "disputed issue" to territorial autonomy, we must remember that young nations born into conflict cannot expect resolution in one summit. One positive that can be taken away from the summit is that India's prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, accepted an invitation to continue talks in Pakistan.
RISHI GARG
Washington
•William Jefferson Clinton once called Kashmir "the most dangerous place on earth." Pakistan and India have fought three wars over the valley in their half-century of existence.
A 1948 U.N. resolution promised the Kashmiris the right to self-determination. That has not yet occurred. According to Amnesty International, there is one Indian soldier for every six citizens, making it the most policed state in the world.
More than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict in the past 10 years. Tens of thousands have been raped, orphaned or maimed. Amnesty International said that the Indian government's role in Kashmir is "a regrettable disregard for the fundamental rights of people in Kashmir."
How do you stop two babies from fighting over the same lollipop? Take the candy away. Free Kashmir from both Pakistan and India.
ARSALAN TARIQ IFTIKHAR
Downers Grove, Ill.
-------- korea
North Korea Faults U.S. on Missiles
New York Times
July 20, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-NKorea-Missile-Defense.html?searchpv=aponline
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korea criticized the United States on Friday for a missile defense test and threatened to scrap all agreements with Washington.
The secretive communist state did not specify which agreements, but it has promised the United States not to test-fire its long-range missiles as long as the two sides continue talks on improving relations.
North Korea ``is compelled to take a counteraction for self-defense by the U.S. deliberate provocation made to it in a bid to attain its sinister aim,'' a North Korean Foreign Ministry official told the North's official KCNA news agency, monitored in Seoul.
``North Korea will have nothing to lose even if all the points agreed upon between North Korea and the U.S. are scrapped,'' said the official, who was not identified by name.
Last week, the United States successfully used a rocket-powered interceptor to destroy a dummy warhead over the Pacific. The Bush administration wants to eventually deploy a missile defense system capable of protecting the United States and its allies from nuclear attack by countries like North Korea and Iraq.
North Korea, along with Russia and China, vehemently opposes the U.S. project, which it says is aimed at dominating the world militarily.
North Korea rattled nerves in Asia and Washington in 1998 by firing a three-stage rocket that flew over Japan and landed in the Pacific. It is widely suspected of developing long-range missiles that could reach Hawaii.
After months of negotiations, North Korea agreed in 1999 to forgo missile tests for the duration of talks with Washington on improving ties.
There have been no high-level contacts between North Korea and the United States since October, when then-U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visited Pyongyang and met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.
Bush offered last month to resume talks to discuss security concerns, but North Korea has not responded.
The United States keeps 37,000 troops in South Korea as a deterrent against a possible North Korean invasion.
--------
N.Korea Vows Countermeasures in Reply to U.S. Test
New York Times
July 20, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-korea-n.html?searchpv=reuters
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea vowed on Friday to take countermeasures in response to last week's test by the Defense Department aimed at intercepting long-range missiles launched against the United States.
``The DPRK is compelled to take a counter-action for self-defense by the U.S. deliberate provocation,'' a North Korean foreign ministry spokesman was quoted as saying by Pyongyang's official Korea Central News Agency.
``A new global arms race has, therefore, become unavoidable. The DPRK will have nothing to lose even if all the points agreed upon between the DPRK and the U.S. are scrapped,'' the spokesman said.
The Defense Department will conduct about 20 missile intercept tests over the next five years as it tries to develop a missile shield to protect the continental United States against the threat of a long-range missile attack.
In a test last Saturday, the interceptor's ``kill vehicle'' launched from Kwajalein Atoll successfully destroyed a dummy warhead target on a Minuteman 2 intercontinental ballistic missile launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, 4,800 miles (7,725 km) away.
It was the second of four such $100 million intercept tests to succeed. Two have failed. The next is set for October.
The Bush administration announced last month after a lengthy policy review it is willing to resume talks with North Korea on a comprehensive package of issues, including its missile program.
Pyongyang has yet to deliver a definitive response to Bush's proposal, however, while a high-ranking North Korean official on Thursday canceled plans to attend a key Asian security meeting at which he had been expected to hold talks with Secretary of State Colin Powell.
-------- missile defense
Ex-Clinton Aide Criticizes Missile Plan
By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 20, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21964-2001Jul19?language=printer
The Bush administration has placed the nation on a "collision course" with Russia and NATO allies by designing a missile defense plan to violate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in a matter of months, former national security adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger said yesterday.
Berger, who was President Clinton's top foreign policy aide from 1997 to 2000, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the Bush administration's aggressive timetable for testing and emergency deployment of missile defenses makes negotiating a compromise with the Russians "virtually impossible."
"Indeed, it may be creating a self-fulfilling prophecy, leading almost inevitably to breach or unilateral abrogation which, at the very least, is premature," Berger said. "How can we expect to negotiate modifications of the ABM Treaty or a change in decades of strategic policy with the Russians in a matter of months?"
Congressional Democrats have advanced similar arguments. But Berger's position also drew unanticipated support from Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), the committee's ranking Republican, who urged the administration to seek amendments to the treaty before any decision is made to abrogate or withdraw from it.
President Bush, Warner said, should try to negotiate a new security framework that leaves "some vestiges of the ABM Treaty in place" because many countries view the treaty as a cornerstone of arms control.
The ABM Treaty was negotiated by Richard M. Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev in 1972 to prohibit nationwide defenses against long-range missiles -- and thereby to curb each side's efforts to build more and more missiles to overwhelm those defenses. It specifically prohibits testing of sea-, air- or space-based defenses against long-range missiles.
Throughout the hearing, Berger clashed with Richard Perle, who was assistant secretary of defense for national security policy during the Reagan administration and now serves as chairman of the Bush administration's Defense Policy Board.
While Berger urged the administration to scale back its missile defense plans to avoid violating the ABM Treaty, Perle said the United States should withdraw from the treaty and pursue whatever defenses are necessary to protect the nation against missile attacks.
"The whole idea of buying some time implies that this treaty is serving our interests, and therefore we should preserve it for as long as we can," Perle said. "I think it's no longer serving our interests. It's contrary to our interests, and the sooner we exercise the right that was agreed upon in 1972 that we can withdraw, the better."
Perle said Russian officials cannot justify objecting to missile defense plans aimed at protecting the United States against countries such as North Korea and Iraq. "And if they can't -- and I believe they can't -- then we should put this treaty behind us and without regret," he said.
Perle also argued that testing and deployment of effective missile defenses would slow, not accelerate, the proliferation of ballistic missiles by rogue states. "Sandy Berger is saying you can count on [Iraqi President] Saddam [Hussein] to be deterred by our deterrent," Perle said. "And I frankly don't want to count on the rational judgment of a man who used poison gas against his own people."
While the Berger-Perle debate was unfolding before the Senate panel, on the other side of Capitol Hill, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told the House Armed Services Committee that the administration would not simply violate or abrogate the ABM Treaty, but would withdraw from it if negotiations with the Russians failed to produce a new agreement.
Wolfowitz said he was optimistic that the administration would be able to negotiate a framework "that reflects the fact that the Cold War is over and the U.S. and Russia are not enemies."
Rep. Bob Stump (R-Ariz.), the committee's chairman, applauded the administration's "aggressive approach" to missile defense, as did other GOP members. But Rep. Ike Skelton (Mo.), the committee's ranking Democrat, accused the administration of shortchanging U.S. troops to pay for missile defense. "It's hard to support a program that says, 'Let's buy everything and throw it against the wall and see what sticks,' " he said.
----
Russia Objects to U.S. Plan for Missile Test Site
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, July 20, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21084-2001Jul19?language=printer
MOSCOW, July 19 - Russia declared today it will consider ground-breaking on a U.S. missile defense test site in Alaska to be a breach of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, posing a new challenge to Bush administration plans to speed up development of a nuclear shield.
The Russian statement could lead to a possible confrontation in the months ahead over the treaty unless Presidents Bush and Vladimir Putin compromise during their meeting this weekend in Genoa, Italy, or in subsequent discussions. The Bush administration announced last week that it intends to begin work on the site for a missile defense installation in Alaska next month.
"The start of construction of the firing range . . . will be the sign of a violation of the ABM Treaty," Igor Sergeyev, a Putin security adviser and former defense minister, told reporters today. During a television interview later, he added, "Pouring concrete is an irreversible operation, which signals that there is no return. When concrete is poured into the strengthening metal frameworks of a silo, it is already irrevocable."
If Putin sticks to this view, it could complicate Bush's hopes of accelerating his missile defense program to have at least a basic system in place by 2005. The State Department recently notified embassies around the world that upcoming tests "will come into conflict with the ABM Treaty in months, not years."
Precisely when that moment will arrive, however, has been a matter of debate. The ABM Treaty, signed in 1972, requires six months of notification before it can be abrogated unless the two sides agree. Opinions have varied widely about what would constitute an infringement of its provisions against testing a system for shooting down strategic missiles, but America's European allies and congressional Democrats are likely to give great weight to Russia's stance.
Under the ABM Treaty, each side is permitted one missile defense site as long as it does not protect a country's "entire territory". For Russia, the site is in Moscow; for the United States, it is in Grand Forks, N.D. When it comes to the planned test facility at Fort Greely, Alaska, this month's State Department memo said the treaty prohibits "construction of an ABM radar in Alaska."
But Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said the work at Fort Greely would not violate the ABM Treaty this year. And administration officials, including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, have made clear, they do not feel constrained by the need to come up with new treaty provisions if the Russians remain opposed to Bush's plans.
Sergeyev complained today that the United States wanted to make itself the only true nuclear superpower at the expense of the deterrence doctrine of mutual assured destruction that governed Cold War policy for decades. "To put it simply, the U.S. is seeking to realize unilateral advantages that they have - I can destroy you but you cannot [destroy] me."
He added that he has produced 30 different options for a Russian response if Washington proceeds without agreement from Moscow, but he did not list them.
Sergeyev's comments came a day after Putin offered a less provocative perspective on the issue heading into the Group of Eight summit of major industrial powers that opens on Friday. At his own news conference on Wednesday, Putin said he hoped that the "normal personal relationship" he is developing with Bush would help them overcome differences on the ABM Treaty.
"Needless to say, the main criteria . . . will be the national security interests of Russia," he said. But he added that Russia would put forward its own proposals "that would not upset international stability and would not undermine the system of international obligations in the sphere of strategic arms limitation." While he did not detail them, Putin has been pushing for deep cuts in the strategic warheads stockpiles of both sides.
The alternating tones on missile defense reflect the multiple voices speaking for Russia on the issue. While Sergeyev has become the most outspoken critic in the Kremlin of U.S. plans, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov has refrained from such language and stuck to more pragmatic rhetoric. Putin also recently fired the most prominent hawk in the military establishment, Col. Gen. Leonid Ivashov, who made a name for himself bashing Washington's hopes to build a nuclear shield.
Since his summit with Bush in Slovenia last month, Putin has sounded more amenable to compromise. In an interview with American correspondents after returning from Slovenia, he said for the first time that he was open to modifying the ABM Treaty, although he also recapitulated Russia's longstanding position that it would put multiple warheads on missiles if the United States unilaterally breaks the treaty.
The sometimes conflicting messages may give Putin the flexibility he wants heading into talks with Bush.
Even Sergeyev held out hope for compromise today, but he put the onus on Washington to propose it. "I am an optimist and believe it does exist," he said. "The most important thing is that the Americans should formulate it. Then we shall evaluate it."
-------- russia
Russia Says Alaska Test Site Violates ABM Treaty
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, July 20, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21084-2001Jul19?language=printer
MOSCOW, July 19 -- Russia declared today that ground-breaking on a U.S. missile defense test site in Alaska would be considered a breach of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, posing a new challenge to Bush administration plans to speed up development of a nuclear shield.
The Russian statement could lead to a possible confrontation in the months ahead over the treaty unless Presidents Bush and Vladimir Putin compromise during their meeting this weekend in Genoa, Italy, or in subsequent discussions. The Bush administration announced last week that it intends to begin work on the site for a missile defense installation in Alaska next month.
"The start of construction of the firing range . . . will be the sign of a violation of the ABM Treaty," Igor Sergeyev, a security adviser to Putin and a former Russian defense minister, told reporters today. During a television interview later, he added, "Pouring concrete is an irreversible operation, which signals that there is no return. When concrete is poured into the strengthening metal frameworks of a silo, it is already irrevocable."
If Putin sticks to this view, it could complicate Bush's hopes of accelerating his missile defense program to have at least a basic system in place by 2005. The State Department recently notified embassies around the world that upcoming tests "will come into conflict with the ABM Treaty in months, not years."
Precisely when that moment will arrive, however, has been a matter of debate. The ABM Treaty, signed in 1972, requires six months of notification before either side can abrogate it, unless the two sides agree. Opinions have varied widely about what would constitute an infringement of its provisions against testing a system for shooting down strategic missiles, but America's European allies and congressional Democrats are likely to give great weight to Russia's stance.
Under the ABM Treaty, each side is permitted one missile defense site as long as it does not protect a country's "entire territory". For Russia, the site is in Moscow; for the United States, it is in Grand Forks, N.D. When it comes to the planned test facility at Fort Greely, Alaska, this month's State Department memo said the treaty prohibits "construction of an ABM radar in Alaska."
But Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said the work at Fort Greely would not violate the ABM Treaty this year. And administration officials, including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, have made clear, they do not feel constrained by the need to come up with new treaty provisions if the Russians remain opposed to Bush's plans.
Sergeyev complained today that the United States wanted to make itself the only true nuclear superpower at the expense of the deterrence doctrine of mutual assured destruction that governed Cold War policy for decades. "To put it simply, the U.S. is seeking to realize unilateral advantages that they have -- I can destroy you but you cannot [destroy] me."
He added that he has produced 30 different options for a Russian response if Washington proceeds without agreement from Moscow, but he did not list them.
Sergeyev's comments came a day after Putin offered a less provocative perspective on the issue heading into the Group of Eight summit of major industrial powers that opens on Friday. At his own news conference on Wednesday, Putin said he hoped that the "normal personal relationship" he is developing with Bush would help them overcome differences on the ABM Treaty.
"Needless to say, the main criteria . . . will be the national security interests of Russia," he said. But he added that Russia would put forward its own proposals "that would not upset international stability and would not undermine the system of international obligations in the sphere of strategic arms limitation." While he did not detail them, Putin has been pushing for deep cuts in the strategic warheads stockpiles of both sides.
The alternating tones on missile defense reflect the multiple voices speaking for Russia on the issue. While Sergeyev has become the most outspoken critic in the Kremlin of U.S. plans, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov has refrained from such language and stuck to more pragmatic rhetoric. Putin also recently fired the most prominent hawk in the military establishment, Col. Gen. Leonid Ivashov, who made a name for himself bashing Washington's hopes to build a nuclear shield.
Since his summit with Bush in Slovenia last month, Putin has sounded more amenable to compromise. In an interview with American correspondents after returning from Slovenia, he said for the first time that he was open to modifying the ABM Treaty, although he also recapitulated Russia's longstanding position that it would put multiple warheads on missiles if the United States unilaterally breaks the treaty.
The sometimes conflicting messages may give Putin the flexibility he wants heading into talks with Bush.
----
Russians Move to Raise Nuclear Sub
New York Times
July 20, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-Kursk-Recovery.html?searchpv=aponline
MOSCOW (AP) -- Almost a year after it sank in the Arctic, killing all its 118 crewmen and dealing a sharp blow to Russia's prestige, the Kursk nuclear submarine is again in the global spotlight as a costly and daring effort to raise it to the surface gets under way.
Russian officials say one goal of the salvage operation is to recover the Kursk's two nuclear reactors, which haven't leaked radiation so far but remain a potential threat. Another, unspoken motive is to demonstrate the government's strength, resolve and openness -- all absent in the days following the catastrophe.
``One of our main problems in the last few years has been the lack of trust in the leadership,'' President Vladimir Putin told a news conference Wednesday. ``This trust can be restored only if we fulfill our promises.''
After communications with the Kursk were lost during naval maneuvers on Aug. 12, 2000, the bewildered Navy command waited hours before launching a search, wasting precious time to save survivors trapped in the sub's rear compartments.
The government refused offers of Western help and Russian mini-submarines spent several days in futile attempts to hook onto the submarine's escape hatch until Moscow finally invited foreign divers -- who took just a few hours to open it.
Putin remained at the balmy seaside resort of Sochi throughout the crisis. Only after harsh media criticism of his absence did Putin fly to the Kursk's home base to meet with the submariners' relatives. He promised to raise the submarine to recover all the bodies.
The recovery effort, which began this week and is estimated to cost about $70 million, is unprecedented in naval history. Some submarines have been raised before, but none has been comparable to the giant Kursk.
``No one has ever tried to recover an 18,000-ton submarine before, it's a huge task,'' said Capt. Richard Sharpe, the former editor of Jane's Fighting Ships, a widely recognized reference on the world's navies.
Five other nuclear submarines sank before the Kursk -- two of them American and the three others Russian. All remain buried at depths of up to 16,000 feet because of the enormous costs involved in efforts to lift them. In contrast, the Kursk sank to just 357 feet.
Sharpe said the Russian Navy needs to raise the Kursk because its location in shallow waters in the middle of the Russian Northern Fleet exercise area makes it a potential collision hazard.
``The last thing the Russian fleet needs is for another submarine to crash into it,'' said Sharpe, a former British nuclear submarine commander. ``For that reason alone, it's got to be moved.''
Russian Navy officials also say raising the Kursk could help shed light on the cause of the accident. Russian officials said the disaster was triggered by a practice torpedo, but they do not know if it was caused by an internal malfunction in the torpedo -- the theory favored by most outside experts -- or a collision.
Sharpe said the tightly sealed Kursk's reactors pose no real danger to the salvage effort. They shut down automatically when the vessel sank, and regular monitoring has shown no radiation leak.
``The dangers are much more the physical ones, of trying to maneuver the 18,000-ton weight of sunken submarine up way to the surface,'' he said.
The project, led by the Dutch firm Mammoet, envisages raising the Kursk using cables connected to 26 hydraulic jacks anchored to a giant barge. Mammoet says its technology allows precise control of every inch of lifting.
One previous submarine rescue operation, mounted in 1974 by Washington and involving the CIA and industrialist Howard Hughes, attempted to raise a Russian diesel sub that sank 750 miles northwest of Hawaii in 1968. The CIA later confirmed that the submarine split in two and that half of it slipped away as it was pulled to about 5,000 feet with a giant claw from the Glomar Explorer rescue ship.
Some of the Kursk's torpedoes are believed to remain unexploded in the sub's weapons bay. To avoid the danger of their detonation, the Kursk's first compartment is to be cut off and left at the bottom of the Barents Sea. Navy officials say they will consider lifting it separately next year.
As the recovery started this week, engineers used an unmanned, remote-controlled vessel to measure radiation levels and dig out the buried first compartment. After the bow is cut off around Aug. 8, Russian and foreign divers will drill holes in the hull and attach steel cables for lifting the sub. That operation is tentatively set for Sept. 15 and is expected to last about eight hours.
Compared to the bungled rescue effort, when the Navy released contradictory and often false information and kept journalists away from the scene, the current operation is a show of transparency, with the Kremlin organizing excursions to the site and real-time reports on the effort on a new Web page.
``By raising the submarine under close media scrutiny, the government is taking a bitter pill against the Soviet syndrome of lying,'' said Alexander Pikayev, an analyst with the Carnegie Endowment.
-------- treaties
Why Bush team is no fan of arms-control treaties
ABM pact is just one of several security-related treaties it would amend - or undo.
By Francine Kiefer (kieferf@csps.com)
The Christian Science Monitor
FRIDAY, JULY 20, 2001
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/07/20/p2s1.htm
WASHINGTON - When President Bush meets Russia's President Vladimir Putin in Rome this weekend, he will try to nudge Mr. Putin toward a new agreement between the two countries on missile defense.
But the Bush administration is indicating that any agreement will not take shape as a formal treaty - a position that breaks with past Republican presidents, who have relied on arms-control treaties as a way to build safety into the nuclear age.
Instead, "framework" and "agreement" are terms administration officials use to describe their aim, reflecting the Bush team's aversion to treaties in general and arms-control treaties, like the now-troublesome Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM), in particular.
"I do think this is a philosophical shift with Bush Jr., in that it dovetails with his conservative principles," says Michael McFaul, a Russia expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who helped brief Mr. Bush before his first meeting with Mr. Putin last month. "They don't like to constrain the individual in domestic politics, and here they don't want to constrain the United States."
Examples of this no-constraints philosophy, say Mr. McFaul and others, are the Bush administration's rejections of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming and a United Nations accord on the proliferation of small arms.
Wiggling out of treaties
But nowhere is it more evident than in the field of nuclear arms control. Specifically, the administration:
• Is going forward with plans to build a missile defense, which could violate the ABM Treaty as soon as February, according to the Defense Department. It hopes to reach a broad agreement with Moscow that reflects a post-Soviet era of friendship between the two countries.
"There's a good reason not to get into 15-year negotiations, which is what it has taken to create arms-control treaties," Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security adviser, said last week. "You're talking about trying to dot every 'i' and cross every 't,' because there was no reason to have any trust in this relationship. It was implacably hostile, and it was abnormal from the point of view of the way international relations is normally done."
• Is on record against the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which the GOP-controlled Senate refused in 1999 to ratify. The Bush administration has said it will voluntarily uphold a moratorium on nuclear testing, but it is also considering underground testing of a new class of smaller nuclear weapons that might be able to, say, blow up the underground bunker of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein but spare civilians nearby.
• Is willing to reduce, unilaterally, its nuclear-weapons arsenal - a departure from START, the strategic arms reduction talks that involved the US and the former Soviet Union in negotiations for three decades. Ms. Rice, however, indicated that Bush could include reductions as part of an overall new agreement with Russia on missile defense.
Ironically, Bush's steps could lead to the undermining of a carefully constructed, 50-year-old arms-control foundation built largely by his Republican predecessors. On the other hand, some experts say, arms-control efforts of the past decade have not been successful, and perhaps it's time to try a new approach.
Time for a change?
It's no surprise the administration is breaking out of the arms-control paradigm, says Bruce Blair, president of the Center for Defense Information. For the past decade, it hasn't worked, he says. Administration officials, too, note that not a single nuclear warhead was eliminated under the Clinton administration.
The two greatest arms-control measures of the '90s were not codified in treaties, says Mr. Blair. One was the joint decision of George Bush Sr. and Mikhail Gorbachev to bring back home tens of thousands of short-range, tactical nuclear weapons scattered around the world. The other was a program worked out by two US senators and the Department of Energy to help Russia dismantle nuclear weapons, secure weapons-making material, and employ Russian nuclear scientists in peacetime jobs.
'Go for it' - with caveats
With the test-ban treaty blocked by the Senate and START II still not in effect, "it's worth trying to reach an executive agreement between the two sides that is less than a full-blown treaty," says Blair. "As long as it is mutally agreeable and has measures for transparency and some monitoring, I say, go for it."
Other experts, though, are concerned that monitoring and "transparency" will not be adequately covered in a general agreement. They also worry that moving away from treaties sends negative signals to other countries, which may themselves feel free to break out of agreements the United States cares about. Indeed, Russia is threatening to build a new generation of multiple-warhead nuclear missiles if the US pulls out of the ABM Treaty.
"When you're the world's superpower and you're not willing to give up some of your sovereignty, that creates a lot of ill will around the world," says McFaul.
Even Blair, who favors experimenting with nontreaty formats for arms control, sees problems with the Bush approach. "They seem ready to plow ahead, to bulldoze the Russians, and to drop treaties and act unilaterally in ways that are not in the interests of Russian security and that are not agreed to by the Russians," he says. "That's a path to a breakdown in our relations."
Eyes on the goal, please
Henry Sokolski, an arms-control expert in the first Bush administration, says that people dealing with the nuclear-weapons issue need to keep focused on the goals of arms control, not on the means of achieving them. The goals, he says, are avoiding major war, cutting the cost of maintaining forces in peacetime, and reducing the harm to innocent people if a major war breaks out.
"We worry about what the Europeans think. We worry about what the Russians think, but we don't worry enough about these criteria," he says.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Among Neighbors of MX Missiles, Little Neutrality
New York Times
July 20, 2001
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/20/national/20WYOM.html?searchpv=nytToday
CHEYENNE, Wyo., July 17 - The small cement slab on Ed Weppner's ranch is surrounded by a barbed wire fence bearing a sign warning that deadly force will be used against intruders. Mr. Weppner's home is less than a mile away.
Fifty such slabs dot the prairies northeast of Cheyenne, each one sitting over a 195,000-pound MX - Peacekeeper missiles, as President Ronald Reagan called them - the he-men of the nation's nuclear arsenal, equipped with as many as 10 warheads, each vastly more destructive than any bomb dropped on Japan a half-century ago.
Here, where geology and isolation create an ideal site for missile installations, nuclear missiles have been part of residents' lives since the late 1950's. As an engineering student, Mr. Weppner, 60, helped build a launching complex for the Atlas, the country's first intercontinental missile, on another part of the family's 40,000-acre ranch, a spread about the size of the District of Columbia.
The Atlas program was phased out as hundreds of Minuteman Missiles were installed in 1962. In 1986, 50 Minutemen were replaced by MX's.
Now, the Defense Department is planning to retire the MX as a cost- saving effort and as fulfillment of President Bush's vow to make deep cuts in the nation's nuclear forces.
Some residents, ever mindful that an enemy strike could blow the whole area to smithereens, see removal of the missiles as long overdue. Others, for whom the missiles symbolize national security and a strong part of the area's economy, are not necessarily happy to see them go.
"In a real sense, our lifestyle, our way of life is predicated on a strong defense and a strong military that protects us," Mr. Weppner said, sitting on his front porch. "The best defense is a strong offense, whether it's football, the military or whatever."
Explaining how he felt, living beside such a powerful weapon, he added: "I don't know if it is a source of pride; it's just something I do."
And as for any sense of discomfort, knowing what an enemy strike might do, he said, "It's more uncomfortable to me walking down the streets of New York City."
David Nimmo, who lives about 15 miles away and less than two miles from another MX silo, discounted any feelings of pride or patriotism for having the missiles so close by. For him, they mean military might.
"I'd hate to see them take them out," said Mr. Nimmo, 58. "We need the leverage. Some of those places would come in and take us if they could. The missiles are our muscle."
He said it had barely crossed his mind that MX silos - or those for the Minuteman in Wyoming, Nebraska, Colorado, Montana and South Dakota - might ever become targets of enemy attack.
"Seems to me they would aim for big cities," Mr. Nimmo said. "If they hit the missile houses here, what are they going to accomplish? That's not going to paralyze the nation."
The demise of the MX program, if approved by Congress, could also have an economic impact, especially in Cheyenne, where the missile program is managed by Francis E. Warren Air Force Base. Capt. Stacy Vaughn said that eliminating the MX would affect the jobs of 600 people, several hundred of whom could be reassigned to another base.
Some residents of the area are happy to see the missiles leave, whatever the impact.
To people like Margaret Laybourn, who began protesting the missiles here in the early years of the cold war, the end of the MX program cannot come too soon.
"I'm happy to get them out," Ms. Laybourn said. "Living in Bull's-eye, Wyoming, is no fun."
Ms. Laybourn led many of the early efforts against nuclear weapons in Cheyenne, even with the town prospering. In one five-year stretch in the 1980's, she joined a small group of missile opponents in a prayer vigil every Friday outside the gates of the base, this at a time when Wyoming had powerful voices in Congress, like Senators Alan K. Simpson and Malcolm Wallop and Representative Dick Cheney, all strong supporters of the MX program.
Ms. Laybourn said she liked to think that her group's efforts helped scale back the original plans to install 250 MX missiles.
Still an active missile opponent at 78, Ms. Laybourn has become a hero to others, like Mae Kirkbride, whose 17,000-acre ranch is within several miles of four MX sites.
"We've been fighting these things tooth and nail," Ms. Kirkbride said. "I'm very happy they're going. I never thought they were the sort of thing that kept us safe from any oppressor or invader, anyway. We'd fire ours; then they'd fire theirs. So what's left? I don't think they have been the source of any useful function."
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Kidney cancer added to sick workers' coverage list
The Oak Ridger
Friday, July 20, 2001
by Nancy Zuckerbrod
The Associated Press
http://www.oakridger.com/ns-search/stories/072001/stt_0720010094.html?NS-search-set=/3b6b4/aaaa065346b4e97&NS-doc-offset=24&
WASHINGTON -- A House-Senate committee has agreed that nuclear weapons workers who worked at the country's uranium enrichment plants in Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee and have suffered from kidney cancer should be compensated.
Kidney cancer was inadvertently left off a list of diseases that automatically qualify sick workers at those sites as well as workers on Alaska's Amchitka Island for compensation under a new government program.
Congress passed a bill last year that specified the government should presume that particular kinds of cancer were work-related at those sites, which did a poor job of maintaining records.
Kidney cancer is linked to uranium exposure and should have been on the list, said Richard Miller, who followed the bill's progress for the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers union.
"It was a technical error in drafting in the legislation," Miller said.
Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., included a provision in a supplemental spending bill that added kidney cancer to that list. The House-Senate committee charged with ironing out differences on the spending legislation approved the McConnell measure Thursday.
"Frankly that's about as fast as you can turn around and solve a problem legislatively," Miller said.
The issue was brought to McConnell's attention by Charles Cornwell of Metropolis, Ill. He has suffered from kidney cancer and is a longtime employee of the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant.
The Supplemental Appropriations conference report is expected to be approved by the House on Friday and the Senate shortly thereafter. It then goes to President Bush, who is expected to sign it into law.
The compensation program is slated to begin on July 31. It provides for $150,000 and lifetime medical care to Cold War-era workers exposed to health-robbing levels of radiation, silica or beryllium.
--------
Downwinders' IOUs to Be Paid
Friday, July 20, 2001
BY ROBERT GEHRKE
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.sltrib.com/07202001/utah/115114.htm
WASHINGTON -- Uranium miners and residents exposed to radiation from Cold War-era nuclear weapons tests finally will see promised compensation for their illnesses.
In a deal struck Thursday as part of negotiations over a supplemental spending bill, those holding IOUs will be paid the amounts promised under a 1990 act. The Senate had estimated outstanding IOUs for those exposed to radiation at $84 million.
According to the Justice Department, which administers the program, there are 191 claimants -- either miners, Downwinders or their survivors -- holding IOUs worth $10 million in Utah.
The government had been issuing IOUs to the radiation victims since the compensation program ran out of money more than a year ago.
The compromise budget bill must be approved by the House and Senate and signed by President Bush. Funding for victims under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act is part of a $6.5 billion spending bill designed to address programs in need of urgent funding. The House hadn't budgeted for it, while the Senate had.
"That's great news and it's a relief for the families of the ill IOU-holders," said Lori Goodman, spokeswoman for the group Dine-CARE, which represents Navajos who worked uranium mines on the reservation. "They're doing the right thing -- the humane thing."
"It's a long time overdue," said Ed Brickey, co-chairman of the Western States RECA Reform Coalition. "It's an oversight that shouldn't have happened."
The act provided cash payments of $100,000 to uranium miners and $50,000 to "Downwinders" -- residents sickened by their exposure to radioactive fallout caused by nuclear weapons tests in Nevada.
Last year, the law was expanded to cover more people, but no new money was added. Starting in May 2000, qualifying claimants received letters informing them the program was out of money.
Many have died while awaiting payments.
In Colorado, 71 claimants are owed $6.5 million. Sixty-eight claimants are owed $3.5 million in Nevada, 47 are owed $3 million in Arizona, 42 are owed $4 million in New Mexico, and 13 are owed $1 million in California.
Other claimants are scattered across the country.
-------- tennessee
Coalition assists sick workers
by Paul Parson,
July 20, 2001
Oak Ridger http://www.oakridger.com/stories/072001/new_0720010077.html
When you get them together, members of the Coalition for a Healthy Environment are likely to toss around a few jokes and update each other on their respective medical conditions. But when it comes to accomplishing their mission, they get serious.
The group serves as a support and research group pertaining to the illnesses of workers at Department of Energy facilities and the citizens of Oak Ridge and the surrounding areas.
"It's amazing," says Janine Voner, a coalition member, "being a group with sick members and fighting the fights we have."
Coalition members say the group has come a long way since it started in 1995, with a handful of concerned employees at the Oak Ridge K-25 Site who were trying to get help because of chemical exposures.
The group quickly evolved into about 15 to 20 people meeting at various places in Oak Ridge. They named themselves The Exposed.
"It was not a very pretty name, but that name said it all," said coalition member Sherrie Farver.
Donzettia Hill became the first president of the group, which changed its name to Coalition for a Healthy Environment in 1996. Janet Michel succeeded Hill as president.
Members of the coalition say they got a bad reputation from the very start.
"We were considered troublemakers," said Harry Williams, the coalition's current president.
Hill said people initially thought the group was out to shut down DOE's facilities.
"We were just trying to protect the people," Hill said.
Though there are still misconceptions about the group to this day, according to Williams, the Coalition is for the most part better understood by the community.
"I think we have built a good reputation," Voner added. "[The coalition] continues to be a self-educating group. We go about our efforts in a professional manner."
Today, the coalition has around 50 members, including many who say they are ill because of their work at DOE and some who are considered "whistleblowers" because they voiced concerns about the safety of their working environments.
Some of the most recent projects the group has been involved in include having worked to get a compensation plan for people who are ill because of their work at DOE facilities and the investigation of contaminated water at K-25.
Coalition members say they worked hard to get an adequate compensation plan, but they are quick to point out that the legislation Congress approved wasn't acceptable.
"We did not want them to pass an inadequate compensation bill," Voner said. "But they did."
The sick-worker compensation plan, or the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act, covers radiation-induced cancer and beryllium disease for Oak Ridge workers. It provides a $150,000 lump-sum, nontaxable payment as well as related medical expenses.
However, people who believe their illnesses were caused by exposure to other toxicants will have to settle for possibly getting state workers' compensation. And, coalition members say the state compensation program won't be able to handle illnesses related to exposures at DOE.
Voner said the coalition hopes the compensation plan, which is being administered by the Labor Department, can be changed to include the other toxic exposures category.
Regarding the water issue, several Coalition members either serve on the oversight team for the project or regularly attend its meetings. The goal of the project is to determine if K-25 employees could have been exposed to chemicals as a result of cross-connected water lines.
As for the group's future, Farver says, "We're not going away."
The Coalition for a Healthy Environment has public meetings from 6 to 8 p.m. on the third Thursday of the month at Pellissippi State Technical Community College. Check the group's Web site, www.che-or.org/, or call Williams at 693-7249 for more information.
-------- washington
Senate OKs Hanford cleanup money
Fri, Jul 20, 2001,
Tri-City Herald
http://www.hanfordnews.com/2001/0720.html
By a veto-proof tally of 97-2, the U.S. Senate on Thursday approved spending enough money -- $1.834 billion -- to meet Hanford's minimum legal cleanup obligations in fiscal 2002.
The vote sets up a yet-unscheduled conference with U.S. House members for the two chambers to compromise on appropriations for Department of Energy nuclear cleanup money.
The action also puts Congress in a strong position when President Bush studies congressional appropriations this fall to determine if he will sign them, said the staff of U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.
The federal budget political situation is expected to change this fall since the administration is seeking additional defense spending to go with its massive tax cuts.
"Now that both the Senate and House have done the right thing by approving money for nuclear cleanup, I hope the Bush administration will decide to support our effort as well," Murray said.
This is the status of the Hanford cleanup budget for fiscal 2002, which starts Oct. 1.
-- Congress is expected to pass a supplemental DOE cleanup budget for fiscal 2001 of $180 million, including $53 million for Hanford. That is expected to be spent in 2002, so DOE officials and congressional members are informally adding it to the 2002 budget.
-- In fiscal 2001, DOE's national cleanup budget was $6.267 billion with $1.456 billion for Hanford. DOE calculated Hanford needs at least $1.832 billion in 2002 to meet minimum legal obligations plus accelerate cleanup along the Columbia River.
-- The administration asked Congress for $5.913 billion for nationwide cleanup in 2002, with $1.4 billion for Hanford, a $432 million shortfall.
-- The House recently passed a nationwide cleanup budget of $6.613 billion. With the extra $53 million, that would send $1.814 billion to Hanford.
-- Thursday's Senate vote appropriates $6.754 billion to nationwide cleanup, with $1.834 billion for Hanford with the $53 million included.
-------- us nuc politics
It's Official
By Al Kamen
Friday, July 20, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A23960-2001Jul19?language=printer
Bush has picked career diplomat Ronald E. Neumann, former ambassador to Algeria, to be ambassador to Bahrain. Linton F. Brooks, vice president and director of policy, strategy and forces division at the Center for Naval Analysis, is to be deputy administrator for defense nuclear nonproliferation at the Department of Energy. Brownsville, Tex., police chief Benigno G. Reyna is to be director of the U.S. Marshals Service.
----
Compromise Reached On Defense Legislation
WASHINGTON IN BRIEF
Friday, July 20, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A23971-2001Jul19?language=printer
House and Senate negotiators shook hands yesterday on a compromise $6.5 billion measure for defense and other programs. The bill does not include the disaster aid that had pitted the No. 3 House Republican against the Bush administration.
Most of the money is for routine Pentagon fuel, health insurance and operations costs. The measure also includes money for cooling and heating assistance for the poor, the fight against AIDS in Africa and for people sickened by Cold War nuclear weapons testing in the Southwest.
The House, and perhaps the Senate, could complete the legislation as early as today.
House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) lost a bid to include $1.3 billion for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. DeLay's Houston district was swamped by heavy rains from Tropical Storm Allison in June. As part of the White House drive to keep spending down, the Bush administration opposed including the money in the bill.
----
Defiant Bush Defends Foreign Policy Skills
President Bristles at Daschle's Criticism
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 20, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21050-2001Jul19?language=printer
AYLESBURY, England, July 19 -- President Bush declared today that he is "plenty capable" of handling U.S. foreign policy after Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle questioned the president's competence as he headed for his first economic summit.
The transatlantic fight between Bush and Daschle (D-S.D.) overshadowed an elaborately staged meeting between Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, a political soul mate of former president Bill Clinton who has offered himself as an intermediary between the administration and more skeptical European allies.
Daschle told USA Today reporters and editors on Wednesday that he was "troubled by the fragile relationship that is becoming more and more evident" between the United States and its allies, adding that he did not "think we are taken as seriously today as we were a few years ago."
"I think we are isolating ourselves, and in so isolating ourselves, I think we're minimizing ourselves," Daschle said.
Bush fired back during a joint news conference with Blair at Chequers, the prime minister's country home. "I think people will find that I'm plenty capable of conducting foreign policy for the United States in a way that reflects positively on our nation," he said. "And I'm glad to be back in Europe."
Bush heard of Daschle's criticism aboard Air Force One as he flew here at the start of a four-nation, seven-day European trip highlighted by a summit of the Group of Eight major industrialized nations beginning Friday in Genoa, Italy. Stung by Daschle's remarks, Bush's aides accused the majority leader of excessive partisanship on foreign policy. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice phoned Daschle to express displeasure.
Bush responded defiantly to Daschle. In an unscheduled break from a visit to the British Museum this morning, the president said: "I think the people of America appreciate the foreign policy positions we've taken, that we're not retreating within our borders. But I'll represent the American interests."
The president said world leaders "have found that I'm a person who speaks plainly and openly about key issues."
"We're willing to listen," Bush said. "But I will still continue to stand for what I think is right for our country and the world."
Blair called Bush's visit "yet another example of the strength of the relationship between our two countries." He praised the approach Bush has taken in moving toward deploying a missile defense shield, an issue of some concern to European leaders. "We welcome very much the approach that President Bush and the administration have taken to consulting allies, and also making it clear that they wish to have a dialogue and a partnership with Russia about this issue," Blair said.
In Washington, Daschle responsed to the White House criticism by saying he could "understand their sensitivity" and wants to be cooperative but stands by what he said.
"Had I given some thought to the fact that the president was departing, I probably would have chosen a different time to make those comments," Daschle said, conceding that he believed officials should be "a little more supportive" of the president publicly while he is abroad. "But having said that, I certainly will not back away from my comments."
He added: "I do think that it's unfortunate that on so many occasions during the Clinton administration, Republicans were extraordinarily critical and damaging to the president's efforts when he attempted a number of foreign policy initiatives. I don't want to take that approach."
Officials on both sides called Bush's meeting with Blair at Chequers cordial and productive. The leaders met one-on-one for an hour -- longer than scheduled -- and then held a 20-minute session with aides. Blair has criticized Bush's decision to abandon the Kyoto global warming treaty, but a Blair aide said today the prime minister "stood up" for his point of view "without being angry."
Blair said that Bush's arguments on behalf of the U.S. position on climate change at a European Union meeting in Sweden last month "impressed everybody who was there -- I thought it was a highly successful visit."
The Blair aide said the men talked more than half the time about relations with President Vladimir Putin of Russia, and a senior U.S. official said the two are coming closer on an approach to arms control.
Bush acknowledged that selling his plan for a missile defense shield may be more difficult because he has not worked out specifics. "It's hard for any country to commit to vague notions," he said. "Therein lies part of the dilemma for the prime minister. He said, 'What do you want me to support? What are you proposing?' And what I'm first proposing to Mr. Putin is that we move beyond the [Anti-Ballistic Missile] treaty so that we can figure out what does work."
----
Bush, in Britain, Enjoys the Calm Before the Storm
New York Times
July 20, 2001
By DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/20/international/20PREX.html?searchpv=nytToday
AYLESBURY, England, July 19 - President Bush basked today in the least problematic of his administration's foreign relationships, visiting the bunker where Churchill weathered World War II, lunching with Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace and spending the night here at Chequers, the official country retreat, as a guest of Prime Minister Tony Blair, who did everything he could to minimize his differences with Washington.
The visit here came just hours before Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair were scheduled to fly to the annual summit meeting of industrialized nations, in Genoa, Italy, where both men said they expected to be surrounded by demonstrators protesting free trade and Mr. Bush's position on global warming.
Today's show of British-American friendship was apparently intended to demonstrate that Mr. Bush was tending to the United States' strongest alliance, even as his relations with Europe and China have been under considerable strain. Today he and Mr. Blair invoked the "special relationship" between Washington and London at every turn. And Mr. Blair went as far as he could to sound positive about Mr. Bush's missile defense plans without actually endorsing them, declaring that any new nuclear strategy "has got to encompass defensive systems and offensive systems."
Both men know that Mr. Blair's endorsement will eventually become crucial for President Bush's plans for a comprehensive missile defense system, because American radar sites here would play an integral role in detecting missile launchings near Europe.
Without naming names, Mr. Bush noted today that "there are some leaders who just out of hand reject any willingness to think differently about security." Then he said Mr. Blair "is not that way."
"He's had great questions," Mr. Bush said. "He's been more than willing to listen to the philosophy of moving beyond a treaty that has codified a relationship that no longer exists" between the United States and the former Soviet Union.
Tonight's visit to Chequers was intended to cement the budding relationship between the two leaders. Mr. Blair's wife, Cherie, told American reporters over tea at 10 Downing Street this morning that three of her four children would be there - Mr. Bush was seen lifting one of them into the air - along with Laura Bush and Barbara, one of the president's twin daughters.
Together, they wandered the gardens around the Tudor mansion, which looks like it could easily serve as the setting for a novel by the Brontë sisters. But that was the last stop of a busy day of sightseeing for Mr. Bush.
This morning he began his day at the British Museum, where the circular, domed reading room has been recently restored. After Mrs. Bush read "The Legend of the Bluebonnet" to a group of children, Mr. Bush urged them to read rather than watch television. He also reviewed the list of notables who have held "tickets" to read in the room.
"Karl Marx and Lenin, Mark Twain, George W. Bush," he said, laughing. "From one end of the spectrum to the other."
From there he moved to the underground Cabinet War Rooms, where Churchill and his aides operated during the Blitz. Mr. Bush has often expressed admiration for the wartime leader and recently installed a bust of the former prime minister, on loan from the British government, in the Oval Office.
"I loved Churchill's stance on principle," he said. "Sometimes in this world, it is important to have a world leader stand up on principle and defend policy based upon principle, not trying to figure out politics." Then it was off to see the Queen and Prince Philip, with an entourage of his senior advisers, for a lunch out of earshot and, in the words of one participant, "utterly apolitical."
-------- us nuc power
Poll: Nuclear Power Too Dangerous
The Associated Press
Friday, July 20, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010720/aponline000409_000.htm
SAN FRANCISCO -- A poll released Thursday said 55 percent of Californians believe nuclear power is too dangerous, even if building more plants would help alleviate the country's energy problems.
The findings by the non-partisan Public Policy Institute of California conflicted with the results of another group's poll in May that found 59 percent of Californians favored nuclear power and 36 percent opposed it.
The May poll, conducted by the nonpartisan Field Institute, was taken at a time when energy shortages had forced rolling blackouts and state officials were predicting a summer of worse shortages. But unusually cool weather and increased supply in recent weeks have helped the state avoid blackouts.
The Public Policy Institute's poll found that 57 percent of Californians say they would oppose a proposal to build a nuclear plant in their region.
California has two nuclear power plants currently in operation - the 2,254-megawatt San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in San Clemente owned by San Diego Gas and Electric Co., and the 2,212-megawatt Diablo Canyon power plant near San Luis Obispo, owned by Pacific Gas and Electric Co.
The Public Policy Institute polled 2,007 California adults from July 1-10. The margin of error was plus or minus 2 percentage points.
The poll by the Field Institute included 1,015 adults and was taken May 11-20. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.
-------- MILITARY
-------- asia
Pentagon confirms defense talks between Taiwan, U.S.
July 20, 2001
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010720-10600471.htm
The Pentagon confirmed for the first time yesterday that it holds regular secret talks with Republic of China military officials to discuss "the defense of Taiwan."
U.S. defense officials have met seven times since 1997 with Taiwan's military officers, Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, Pentagon spokesman, told reporters. It was the first time the talks were acknowledged publicly.
Other defense officials said the next round of U.S.-Taiwan defense talks began yesterday at a military facility in Monterey, Calif.
"We do frequently meet with representatives of the Taiwan military, in accordance with the terms of the Taiwan Relations Act, again to discuss issues of interaction and means by which to provide for the defense of Taiwan," Adm. Quigley said.
"But by the same token, as a policy issue, we do not typically provide any details of those meetings," he said, declining to comment when asked if there would be a meeting in California this week.
The admiral made the comments in response to a report in Wednesday's editions of The Washington Times quoting defense officials who said the next set of Taiwan military talks would begin this week.
The Monterey talks were started in 1997 as part of an initiative by Curt Campbell, the deputy assistant defense secretary for East Asia.
However, defense officials said the subject of the talks and the level of representation were restricted by Clinton administration officials to avoid offending Beijing, which views Taiwan as a breakaway province and opposes U.S. support for Taiwan's military.
The Pentagon also is prohibited from sending any officers to Taiwan above the rank of colonel or Navy captain, and civilian officials who visit must be low-ranking government representatives.
According to defense officials, Fred Smith, the outgoing deputy assistant defense secretary for East Asia, is heading the U.S. delegation.
One official said the two delegations, each consisting of 18 military and civilian officials, are not permitted to discuss Taiwan's arms-sales requests or in-depth planning for joint military operations.
Adm. Quigley said the meetings with the Taiwanese are not held on a set schedule. "It is not that regular," he said. "But it's a constant dialogue back and forth between the United States and Taiwan."
The talks took on new meaning after President Bush said in a television interview in May that the United States would do "whatever it took" to defend Taiwan from a mainland attack. The remark clarified earlier U.S. policy that indicated the United States might not defend the island under some circumstances.
Asked whether the Pentagon should discuss "interoperability" issues with Taiwan's military in light of the president's remarks, Adm. Quigley said: "Well, we will do our best to carry out the directions of the commander in chief, whatever the circumstances might be.
"You can have a philosophical debate till sundown as to what might be the appropriate way of going about doing that, but there are very specific and sensitive particular details that are contained in the Taiwan Relations Act. We comply with those, no more, no less."
China has threatened to use force to reunite the island with the mainland and has deployed more than 300 missiles within range of the island over the past five years.
The Pentagon announced yesterday that it will sell Taiwan a joint tactical communications system used by U.S. forces. The communications system would help Taiwan conduct joint operations with U.S. forces in a conflict, defense officials said.
-------- arms sales
China Signs $2 Billion Deal To Buy Russian Fighter Jets
Aircraft to Strengthen Beijing's Ability to Attack Taiwan
By John Pomfret
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, July 20, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9583-2001Jul17?language=printer
BEIJING, July 19 -- China has signed a contract with a Russian aircraft manufacturer for another batch of ground-attack jets, Russian news reports and diplomats said, in a move that would allow China's modernizing armed forces to improve their ability to launch an assault on Taiwan.
Russian news reports and diplomats said Chinese officials signed the contract with the Komsomolsk-on-Amur Aviation Production Association to supply upward of $2 billion worth of Su-30 MKK ground-attack planes. One report, by the Russian Tass news agency, put the number of jets at 38.
Another report, by Russia's Military News Agency, said the factory's 5,000 workers would be working overtime until 2003 to fulfill the terms of a foreign contract. In 1999, China concluded a $1.8 billion deal for 40 Su-30s. So far, 10 are believed to have been delivered.
The Su-30 will provide China's air force with a potent ground-attack element to complement the Su-27 fighter that China first purchased from Russia in 1992, analysts said. So far, Russia has delivered between 70 and 100 Su-27s to China, and the two countries are currently co-producing the fighter in an aeronautics factory in Shenyang, China. Ten are believed to have rolled off that production line.
News of the contract came after China and Russia concluded on Monday their first treaty since their military alliance of 1950 that collapsed 10 years later. China's President Jiang Zemin and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, signed the treaty on the second day of Jiang's four-day visit to Russia, the second of four summits scheduled between the two leaders this year.
The treaty contains provisions for military technology cooperation but falls far short of the previous, ill-fated alliance. After it collapsed, relations degenerated into sporadic border clashes in the 1960s and 1970s.
The new treaty, which has a duration of 10 years, commits Russia and China to unite wherever possible to work against "hegemonism," which analysts say is a code word for the United States. Moscow also reiterated its support for China's stance on Taiwan: that the island of 23 million people is an inalienable part of China, and China has the right to attack Taiwan if it declares independence.
Jiang's delegation did not include senior weapons procurement officials, diplomats said, so the deal was signed either before or just after he left.
China's modernization of its military is of concern to the United States because it is aimed at Taiwan, an island 100 miles off China's coast that the United States issomewhat vaguely committed to defending. The United States is most concerned with a buildup of China's missile bases opposite Taiwan, but other areas of Beijing's military modernization, specifically its air force and navy, are also of concern to Washington, Western diplomats said.
Ken Allen, a former U.S. Air Force officer and an expert on the Chinese air force, said the purchase of the Su-30s was even more significant than China's decision in 1992 to buy the Su-27 fighters. The reason is that China has now obtained a sophisticated ground-attack aircraft after years of relying on its 450 A-5s, a slightly redesigned MiG-19 with no ability to defend itself and a short range.
"China had tried for years to make the Su-27 into a ground-attack aircraft and it didn't work," Allen said. "The Su-30 gives them a long-range, air-to-ground attack aircraft. That's arguably more important than having the Su-27."
Allen said that combined with the Su-27, the Su-30 could constitute a potent threat to Taiwan. The Chinese could use the Su-27 to attempt to gain air superiority and use the Su-30 in its primary role as a ground-attack aircraft.
However, Taiwan's air force also has potentially powerful countermeasures: U.S.-built F-16 fighters, French-built Mirage 2000s and a Taiwanese-designed fighter.
Allen said the Su-30 deal also marked another major step toward increasing China's dependence on Russian military technology. Russia is China's biggest foreign arms supplier and China now constitutes Russia's biggest arms market -- accounting for between 30 percent and 50 percent of Russia's foreign military sales, according to a recent report by the Interfax news agency.
An example of this dependence is the Su-27 co-production arrangement. The fighters are assembled in Shenyang, but the parts are made in Russia. And there is little sign that Russia is willing in the near future to transfer the technology needed to manufacture important parts of the plane, such as its avionics and engine, in Shenyang. And, most important, jet fighters need to have their airframes overhauled, usually after about 800 hours of flight time, and this can only be performed on the Su-27s and Su-30s in Russia.
"This means that China is going to be shipping the pride of its air force back to Russia," said an Asian diplomat. "Think about it. No wonder China is so interested in ensuring good ties with Moscow."
The pair are believed to be negotiating a deal to provide China with an airborne early warning radar system as well as advanced in-flight refueling technology.
China has concentrated its military buildup on ensuring that it will have military superiority in the Taiwan Strait. The Pentagon has predicted that the military balance will begin to shift between 2005 and 2010. China's purchases, particularly of Kilo-class submarines, Su-27s, Su-30s and Sovremenny-class destroyers equipped with Sunburn supersonic anti-ship missiles, are designed, analysts say, not to simply threaten Taiwan but to make U.S. commanders in the region hesitate to engage China in a fight if China attacked Taiwan.
Allen said the sale is also another indication that China's plans to create an indigenous ground-attack aircraft, called the F-10, are far behind schedule.
-------- balkans
Institute for War & Peace Reporting http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?links_index.html
Lists Balkans Media
---------
EU Monitors Die in Macedonia
Washington Post
By Aleksandar Vasovic
Associated Press Writer
Friday, July 20, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010720/aponline085139_000.htm
SKOPJE, Macedonia -- Two European observers monitoring a cease-fire in Macedonia's conflict and their translator were killed after their vehicle apparently hit a land mine and tumbled into a ravine, officials said Friday.
"The vehicle was blown up by a mine. We are reasonably certain that this was a powerful mine explosion," Norwegian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bjorn Berge said in Oslo.
But a spokeswoman for the Swedish Foreign Ministry, Diana Madunic, said it was still unclear if the vehicle hit a mine, or if it was involved in an accident on the mountain road.
The dead were identified as a Norwegian and a Slovak monitor, and an ethnic Albanian translator from Macedonia, Madunic said. Their names were not immediately available.
The three disappeared Thursday afternoon near the city of Tetovo, and their vehicle was found Friday morning in a ravine 7 miles southwest of Tetovo, between the villages of Novo Selo and Mazdraca, said Macedonian Defense Ministry spokesman Marjan Djurovski.
A Defense Ministry statement said a strong explosion had been heard about the time the vehicle disappeared. "The mission's vehicle is thought to have hit a land mine planted by ethnic Albanian terrorists."
Meanwhile, talks between Macedonian and ethnic Albanian leaders aimed at preventing a full-scale civil war have stalled following the government's rejection of a Western-backed peace plan, but experts from both sides were to continue negotiations Friday.
Macedonian leaders earlier in the week rejected a plan backed by two Western envoys that would have made Albanian an official second language alongside the Macedonian tongue spoken by the majority of the population, among other concessions to ethnic Albanians.
Ethnic Albanian political leaders pulled out of high-level talks Thursday. Following intense bargaining that included U.S. envoy James Pardew and European Union envoy Francois Leotard, President Boris Trajkovski said both sides had agreed to send experts to a negotiating session Friday.
However, Zehir Bekteshi of the influential Party for Democratic Prosperity said Friday that Albanians were reluctant to relegate talks to "a level from four months ago."
"We want dialogue to continue, ... but with two envoys and political leaders," he said, adding that the party's leadership would decide later Friday whether to participate in the newest talks.
The deadlock has raised concerns that a cease-fire brokered earlier this month by NATO could break down and full-scale fighting resume.
Ethnic Albanian militants launched their insurgency against government forces in February in a campaign to demand more rights. Majority Macedonians say the ethnic Albanians already enjoy enough protection under the constitution, and allege that their struggle is aimed at carving up the country.
Arben Xhaferi, the main ethnic Albanian official, said Thursday that Macedonian leaders "are continuously provoking a continuation of fighting."
"Macedonia would be the only case in history where a war will start because of linguistic disputes," Xhaferi said.
Earlier this week, Macedonian Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski called the Western-backed peace plan a "blatant violation" of Macedonia's affairs.
NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson and Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief, postponed a trip to Skopje planned for Thursday.
-------- drug war
Ecuador asks Colombia to halt aerial coca fumigation
ECUADOR: July 20, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11671
QUITO, Ecuador - Ecuador has asked Colombia to stop aerial crop spraying near the border the two nations share, fearing the chemical applied to eradicate coca in its war-torn nation could harm Ecuadoreans' health.
Aerial spraying of coca, the raw ingredient of cocaine, in Colombia's Putumayo province is a key part of that nation's $1 billion US-backed war on drugs but the use of fumigation to destroy coca plants has sparked controversy over its effects.
Ecuador has complained that spraying the herbicide glyphosate could make Ecuadoreans ill and damage crops in the region's jungle towns, adding to fears that Colombia's war on drugs and Marxist rebels was spilling into its neighbors.
Local media reported this week an increase in headaches, fever and rashes among some Amazon village residents since the spraying began. Ecuador shares a 389-mile (620 km) border with Colombia.
"We asked Colombia that in areas close to this strip of 10 km on the Ecuadorean border, for its eradication program to be manual, without the use of aerial fumigation," Ecuador's Foreign Affairs Minister Heinz Moeller said this week.
Moeller said that the government was worried aerial spraying was more uncontrolled could waft over the border.
Conflict-torn Colombia has sprayed 75,000 acres (30,000 hectares) with glyphosate since December.
Still, Moeller admitted that without scientific studies, "there is no proof that the problems are the result of aerial fumigation."
Ecuadorean authorities are increasingly fearful that the anti-drug offensive Plan Colombia will push that nation's violent conflict between left-wing rebels, rightist paramilitaries and the armed forces across the border.
There is also concern that coca could find fertile soil in Ecuador's Amazon, an area plagued by poverty and years of admitted neglect by the central government.
Local environmentalists debate the danger of crop spraying, with some opposed to the use of glyphosate and others who say greater damage is caused when coca-growers raze jungle brush to plant their crop.
Colombia's ambassador in Quito, Eliseo Restrepo told Reuters yesterday that glyphosate is often used on agricultural crops, such as bananas and flowers, is considered innocuous and not easily dispersed.
While Colombia weighs Moeller's request, it is also pushing for manual eradication of coca with the cooperation of the local population, he said.
-------- iran
Iraq, Iran Trade Accusations in UN
New York Times
July 20, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-UN-Iraq-Iran.html?searchpv=aponline
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Longtime foes Iran and Iraq are trading accusations in the United Nations that each is hiding weapons of mass destruction.
The spat began during an open meeting of the U.N. Security Council on June 28 when Iraq's Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Riyadh Al-Qaisi called for the Middle East to be a zone free of weapons of mass destruction.
He urged the council to take ``all necessary measures to deal with weapons of mass destruction possessed by Israel and with programs for possessing such weapons by Iran.''
The following day, Iran's U.N. Ambassador Mohammad Hasan Fadaifard wrote to the council rejecting ``the baseless allegations'' in Al-Qaisi's statement. He noted that Iran has repeatedly called for the Middle East to be a zone free from weapons of mass destruction.
Fadaifard referred to the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war that killed or wounded more than a million people and Baghdad's confirmed use of chemical weapons.
In March 1988, Iraq used poison gas in attacking Halabja, an Iraqi town, after it was captured by Iranian forces. Doctors who treated survivors said cyanide gas, mustard gas and other nerve agents were used.
``It is ironic, indeed, that an official of a government that has extensively resorted to the use of chemical weapons in the 1980s, and has never spared any efforts in having access to weapons of mass destruction, comes up with advice, in the very same field, for the council, against my country,'' the Iranian ambassador said.
Iran has not only been the victim of the documented use of Iraqi chemical weapons ``but has also meticulously abided by all its obligations in the field of elimination and nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction,'' Fadaifard said.
He accused Iraq of stockpiling chemical and biological weapons and urged Baghdad to sign the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which Iran has already signed.
Iraq responded with a letter circulated Thursday, accusing Iran of ``misrepresentations and distortions of fact.''
Iraq's U.N. ambassador Mohammed Al-Douri charged that Iran was ``raking over the past'' and repeating Israeli allegations concerning Iraq's possession of use of banned weapons ``in order to exonerate itself of the charge of possessing and using weapons of mass destruction.''
-------- iraq
Pentagon: Iraq Fires at US Aircraft
By Robert Burns
AP Military Writer
Friday, July 20, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010720/aponline205117_000.htm
WASHINGTON -- Iraq apparently fired a surface-to-air missile at a U.S. military plane in Kuwaiti airspace, Pentagon officials said Friday. The U.S. plane was not hit.
The crew of a Navy E2-C surveillance aircraft flying in Kuwaiti airspace on Thursday reported seeing the plume of a surface-to-air missile apparently fired from inside Iraqi territory, according to a senior defense official who discussed the matter on condition of anonymity.
The official said the sighting could not be immediately confirmed through other means. He said it was possible the missile was fired ballistically, meaning it was not guided by radar and in which case could not be tracked by its electronic emissions.
The E2-C was not hit by the missile, he said, and there were no other reported incidents.
If early reports of the incident are correct, it would be the first known instance of Iraq firing a missile into Kuwaiti airspace since the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
U.S. and British jets have been patrolling no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq in a program designed to protect Kurdish and Shiite groups against government forces. Iraq disputes the legitimacy of the zones and regularly contests U.S. and British patrols by firing missiles and artillery guns.
Last month, a U.S. Navy fighter jet attacked an anti-aircraft artillery site in southern Iraq in what U.S. military officials called a response to attacks on U.S. and British aircraft patrolling the zones.
-------- israel
West Bank Blast Levels Fatah Office
By Nasser Shiyoukhi
Associated Press Writer
Friday, July 20, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010720/aponline171818_000.htm
HEBRON, West Bank -- An explosion leveled the office of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction in this troubled West Bank city Friday night, killing a member of the group's military wing and injuring eight others.
Palestinian security officials said an Israeli helicopter fired two missiles at the one-story building. But Raanan Gissin, an aide to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, flatly denied any Israeli role in the explosion. Israeli military sources described what happened as a "work accident" - a term used when bombs explode prematurely.
"I was walking and I heard a big explosion, and everyone heard it," said Mohammed Jabai, 34, "There was helicopter in the area, but I didn't see it didn't shoot any missiles."
Jibril Rajoub, chief of West Bank security for the Palestinians, refused to comment on the cause of the explosion, which blew off part of the top of a neighboring house.
Palestinians dug through the debris of the building - located at the center of the Palestinian-controlled area of Hebron. The body of Rajai Abu Rajab, an activist in the Tanzim, Fatah's military wing, was found in the wreckage. The injured were passers-by and were not members of Tanzim or Fatah.
Soon after, heavy gunfire broke out at a valley between the Palestinian village of Beit Jalla and the Israeli neighborhood of Gilo, built in disputed east Jerusalem.
The violence came amid worries about Palestinian retaliation after the killings of three Palestinians - including a 3-month-old baby - the night before - slayings claimed by an extremist Jewish group. At the victims' funeral processions Friday in Hebron, mourners shouted "death to settlers," and the Palestinian militant group Hamas passed out leaflets vowing to "teach the Zionist enemy a lesson it will never forget."
The Israeli government condemned the shooting deaths, while authorities said it could be a sign of a re-emergence of Jewish extremists.
An extremist Jewish cell, the Committee for Road Safety, claimed responsibility for the attack that killed Diya Tmaizi as well as the baby's uncle, Mohammed Hilmy Tmaizi, 20, and a more distant relative, Mohammed Salameh Tmaizi, 23.
The cell is linked to the outlawed Kach movement, which advocates expulsion of Palestinians from the West Bank. The Committee for Road Safety was among Jewish groups outlawed after Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1995, but Israeli police spokesman Rafi Yaffe said such groups may be reorganizing.
"In recent months it appears that a cell is organizing that is responsible for such shooting attacks," Yaffe said. "We are making great, intense efforts to catch them."
Israeli nationalist extremists are believed to be behind at least four roadside ambushes in recent months against Palestinians in the West Bank, including Thursday's, Yaffe said.
In a sign of the increase in radical activity, the settler group Zo Artzeinu or "It's Our Country," put an ad in the Makor Rishon nationalist newspaper Friday calling on Israelis to assassinate Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
"Don't hesitate! Do the just and moral thing! Kill Arafat," read the full-page ad in the weekly newspaper.
The United States and the European Union condemned the attack. Sharon's office issued a statement "condemning all forms of terror" and pledging to "do everything possible to apprehend those responsible."
About 1,000 people followed the flag-draped bodies in a funeral procession from Hebron to nearby Idna, the family's home village. Mourners demanded revenge be meted out in Tel Aviv and chanted, "Death to the settlers, death to America, death to Israel."
At the family's home, the mother, Rima Tmaizi, sobbing and choking on nearly every word, spoke of trying for 11 years to have a baby before Diya was born.
"I lost my soul," Tmaizi, 28, said. "God will lift my baby to heaven. I'm sure our people will take revenge for him."
Nabil Aburdeneh, an Arafat spokesman, said Israel was responsible for the shooting attack. Palestinian Cabinet minister Ziad Abu-Zayyad warned of Palestinian retribution: "Every attack invites a counterattack."
Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer on Friday gave the first indication that Israel may be willing to bend in its opposition to outsiders monitoring a cease-fire that largely unraveled without ever taking hold. Palestinians long have called for third-party observers.
Ben-Eliezer told Israeli television Friday that he opposes any observers, but "if something will be imposed on us ... then, without any other possibility, I will accept the presence of the CIA here."
His spokesman, Yarden Vatikai, said the defense minister was referring only to an extreme situation. Then, Vatikai said, "something that could be considered would be an enlargement of the CIA presence here," but not "some kind of active force."
In explaining Ben-Eliezer's comments, Raanan Gissin, a Sharon spokesman, said Israel was opposed to any deployment of any type of force.
"The position is clear; anything like deployment or placement of observers, U.N. forces or anything, we are opposed to it," Gissin said.
The CIA currently coordinates Israeli-Palestinian security meetings designed to restore cooperation and trust between the parties.
----
8 Leading Nations Are Urging 3rd-Party Monitors in Mideast
New York Times
July 20, 2001
By JANE PERLEZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/20/international/20DIPL.html?searchpv=nytToday
ROME, July 19 - Responding to the increasing fury of violence in the Middle East, the foreign ministers of the major industrialized countries told the Israelis and Palestinians today that they should agree to "third party" monitors as the most assured way of halting the deteriorating situation.
In a fresh outburst of violence in the Middle East today, Israeli gunmen near Hebron were reported to have shot and killed three members of a Palestinian family, including an infant, and to have wounded several other people. [Page A3.]
Given Israel's frequent objections to any plan for outside monitors, the decision by the ministers, including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, was seen as reflecting frustration with the disintegrating cease-fire as well as an effort to take a more active role in encouraging peace.
Bush administration policy on peace in the Middle East has evolved significantly in the president's six months in office, moving from a hands-off approach to limited involvement, to brokering the current cease-fire five weeks ago. Just over two weeks ago, on a trip to Jerusalem, Secretary Powell pushed to the next step, saying observers would be needed to monitor a cease-fire between Israelis and Palestinians, if the two sides would agree to them, and setting a schedule for moving toward political talks.
The wording of the foreign ministers' statement on the monitors, which was attached as an appendix to their official communiqué, was checked by the American delegation with the State Department's senior Middle East experts in Washington, apparently in an effort to ensure that it did not transgress the policies of the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon.
After a news conference at which the communiqué was discussed, a senior administration official said the United States was satisfied with the Middle East statement because a reference to "third party" did not imply that either the United Nations or the European Union would provide the monitors.
Israel has consistently objected to "international" monitors but has expressed more willingness to entertain "third party" monitors, the official said. The third-party monitors that Israel would feel most comfortable with would be from the United States, the official added.
But Israeli officials rejected the suggestion, saying that creating a monitoring team would be pointless and even dangerous in the absence of a working cease-fire.
"We strongly believe that what we need is not observers but observance, meaning observance on the part of the Palestinians to observe the cease-fire," said Avi Pazner, a government spokesman.
Dore Gold, an adviser to Mr. Sharon, said the Palestinian Authority chairman, Yasir Arafat, would view an observer force as a victory. "There's a danger that Arafat will perceive that his policy of violence has been rewarded, and it will become more difficult to dissuade him from violence in the future," Mr. Gold said.
The Israelis were pleased that the Group of 8 ministers had said Israel and the Palestinians should both agree on this matter. Israel is not automatically opposed to observers, Mr. Pazner said, noting that there are monitors from several countries in Sinai, to help maintain the Egyptian-Israeli peace, and a United Nations force on the Golan Heights, observing a 28-year-old cease-fire between Israel and Syria.
But in a situation as volatile as the present one, "it is dangerous, and we think it will make matters worse," he said.
"It is obvious," Mr. Pazner said, "that in the present situation - I stress, the present situation - there is no agreement on the part of Israel to observers."
Nabil Shaath, the Palestinian Authority's minister of planning and international cooperation, welcomed the G-8 ministers' call, saying, "Any presence of a third party on the ground is a positive step."
"What is demanded now is that these countries should commit Israel to accept the presence of a third party," Mr. Shaath said. "This was a Palestinian demand for a long time. Now it's gaining international support."
Diplomats said the most spirited exchanges among the foreign ministers, who discussed issues from globalization to arms control, occurred over the Middle East. At the heart of the discussion was how far to go in instructing the two sides to accept monitors as a way to ensure the carrying out of the Mitchell Report, which maps a path to negotiation between Israelis and Palestinians.
While the call for monitors was quite strong, it was not as strong as some countries would have liked. "The trick is to persuade the Israelis that monitors are useful," a European diplomat said.
All the foreign ministers, including Igor S. Ivanov of Russia, agreed that the report, written by the former Senator George Mitchell, must form the basis of trying to move the Israelis and Palestinians beyond violence and toward political talks. The plan calls for an end to the violence, followed by a period in which both sides would take steps to rebuild trust between them. The final phase would be a return to peace negotiations.
The ministers' meeting today touched on many of the themes that their leaders will discuss when they gather for their summit meeting in Genoa on Friday. In what amounted to a preview of the Genoa meeting, where President Bush will be making his G-8 debut, the ministers discussed arms control but sidestepped the specific issue of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty. They agreed instead in their communiqué to place "great importance on the existing regimes of multilateral treaties."
The ABM treaty, which the Bush administration has said it may withdraw from, is a bilateral agreement between Russia and the United States. And by referring to "existing regimes," the ministers did not endorse the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, a multilateral treaty that is not yet in existence because of the failure of the United States, among others, to ratify it.
At today's session on arms control, diplomats said Canada was the only nations to speak out against the Bush administration's plans on missile defense. In response, Secretary Powell gave what several diplomats called an "encouraging" reply, reassuring the closed-door conference that Washington would continue to consult with its allies and Russia on its intentions about the ABM treaty.
Over all, the meeting was a fairly low-key affair. In some respects, the Bush administration looked on the G- 8 - both the foreign ministers' meeting and the grander event in Genoa - as one more diplomatic chore, a more onerous task than a useful thrashing-out of burning economic issues, the original agenda nearly three decades ago when the meetings began with a smaller group. Earlier this month, in the middle of its final preparation for the G-8, a member of the Bush foreign policy team said the administration was "scraping around" for issues to discuss.
In an effort to breathe new life into the summit meeting, the so-called Shadow Group of Eight, a collection of foreign policy luminaries, including Henry A. Kissinger and Paul A. Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, called on the G-8 nations to include less-developed countries like China, Brazil and India in their meetings. Embracing those regional powers is seen as helping answer the concerns of protesters worried about the ill effects of globalization as well as promoting progress in fighting poverty and expanding trade. A Bush administration official said today that the United States was opposed to expanding the G-8 any further.
The efforts to settle the conflict in Macedonia, which are being led by diplomats from the United States and the European Union in the capital, Skopje, were dealt with informally and without any conclusion before the official start of the foreign ministers' meeting. The discussion reflected the precarious negotiations in Skopje where the Macedonian government is balking at accepting a final political deal with Macedonian Albanians, diplomats said.
On the one hand, the foreign ministers were eager to get a deal so that a planned NATO force could begin to disarm the Albanian insurgents, a European diplomat said. On the other hand, the ministers held back from imposing a settlement on the Macedonian government for fear of encouraging a takeover there by hard-liners.
--------
US intelligence: Israel will attack
Friday, 20 July 2001 18:21 (ET)
By RICHARD SALE,
UPI Terrorism Correspondent
http://www.vny.com/cf/News/upidetail.cfm?QID=204500
The CIA believes Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has decided to launch a retaliatory full-scale attack on Palestinian-controlled territory if there is another suicide bombing attack, several former Agency and other U.S. intelligence officials said.
Some intelligence sources said they expected the Israeli attack probably within a matter of days.
"There's no question that he's going in," said a former CIA official, referring to Sharon.
The question for these sources was when. They think the Israelis would wait until after the summit of the Group of Eight industrialized nations in Genoa, Italy. The summit ends Sunday.
According to these sources, Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat was already engaged in talks with Syria about relocating Palestinian leaders to that country.
One former CIA official, still active in the region, said he believed that Sharon would wait for the next in the recent wave of car-bomb attacks before launching "a full-scale assault" designed to drive Arafat into exile and destroy the PA.
"You'll have public outrage, you'll have high morale among the Israeli military -- it's the perfect time," the official said.
However, senior Israeli officials, including Sharon himself, have insisted that troop movements this week were intended to strengthen Israel's defensive position. Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister Michael Melchior made this point in Washington Thursday.
Reports of an impending all-out Israeli attack have come as relations have worsened between the Israeli government and the CIA.
CIA Director George Tenet negotiated the cease-fire aimed at halting the seemingly endless violence in the West Bank and Gaza.
The CIA has been at the center of the Bush administration's efforts to stop the fighting between Palestinians and the Israeli Defense Forces that has claimed more than 600 lives, most of them Palestinians. But the cease-fire has all but collapsed, and observers point out that its collapse could be seen as a CIA failure.
A State Department official said, "The situation does not look good," and "We are all watching it," but he would not go so far as to confirm the impending attack. He also added that the Hadassah chain of hospitals in Israel "has been ratcheting up" its medical preparations.
Asked to comment, a State Department official said only: "You're getting into the area of sensitive foreign intelligence. We have no comment on intelligence operations."
As United Press International reported exclusively on June 12, Israel's military was poised to carry out a huge, full-force invasion that would involve two infantry and paratroop divisions, an armored force, plus large numbers of U.S.-supplied F-16 and F-15 jet fighters and Apache helicopter gunships that would attack the West Bank and Gaza including the major Palestinian cities of Ramallah, Qualqilya, Jericho, Tul karm, Nablus, Jenin, and Bethlehem. Portions of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip would be captured and held for an indeterminate length of time.
Under that plan, the Israeli forces would also capture and kill any members of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Islamic Jihad or other organizations defined by Israel as "terrorist." A "wanted list" has already been drawn up by Israeli intelligence services and approved by Sharon, according to a U.S. administration official.
At the time the plan was halted, thanks to strong warnings from senior Bush administration officials, U.S. government sources said. There was no official confirmation of this incident.
Foreign ministers of the industrialized nations, meeting in Rome this week in advance of the G8 summit, repeated earlier calls for a force of international observers to be sent to the West Bank and Gaza to reduce the Palestinian-Israeli tension. Secretary of State Colin Powell said the United States would support international observers if Israel accepted them.
But Sharon has rejected the proposal. Antony Cordesman, the Arleigh Burke Chair for Strategic Assessment at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said: "Sharon didn't like having monitors because it ended the `My word against your word' game when it came seeing who was escalating the violence."
What worries some U.S. intelligence analysts is that, as one put it, "all the logistic and other preparations" for such an assault have been completed, including beefing up Israeli medical treatment facilities. Others argue that the Israeli contingency plan has been in place for some time as an option if the situation worsened.
"The plan is in place," a U.S. intelligence official said.
According to one intelligence source: "The administration is talking to Sharon every day counseling patience."
But as David Schenker, Middle East analyst for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy told UPI recently, "If the cease-fire with Arafat doesn't hold, then the reprisal really could happen."
There has been a build-up of Israeli armor at strategic points, and the Sharon government has ploughed up road links to the West Bank, splitting the territory into eight blockaded zones, isolating Palestinian towns, and fuel supplies in the Gaza Strip have been cut off to reduce Palestinian mobility.
The huge numbers of Palestinians expected to be arrested would be kept in large detention centers, U.S. intelligence officials said.
An administration official pointed out that Sharon has been "churning out a lot of diversionary smoke," including false reports of Iranian soldiers moving into the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, fear of Iranian missiles, questionable reports of increasing Iraqi activity. But one analyst said Iraqi forces are "concentrated ... mainly on the east-west road that leads to Syria and to the Golan Heights."
"Sharon is a fine strategist. He knows how to mislead and distract," said an administration official.
But a major concern in U.S. government circles is that a major Israeli offensive against the Palestinians might trigger a wider Middle East conflict involving Iraq and Syria.
A former Defense Intelligence Agency official, on the ground in the Gaza Strip, told UPI on June 27 that Israeli Merkava tanks and M113 armored personnel carriers were active around Netsarim and Khan Yunis, and that "roads around settlements have been completely cut off from Palestinian use while buildings, trees, and people have been moved (bulldozed) as the Israelis clear fields of fire."
One military expert in Washington pointed out, however, that armor movements could also be a way to deter Palestinian attacks.
Writing from Hebron, the largest city in the West Bank, on Tuesday, this same source told UPI: "the situation is extremely tense "
He added, "Israeli assassinations/abductions in Area A (the West Bank and Gaza) have taken the rug out from under PA efforts, limited as they may be in real capability, to keep the violence down or limited to 1967 borders."
This source added in the same report that Hebron, which contains 500,000 people, is ringed by Israeli settlements and IDF outposts and spoke of OH58 Scout helicopters overhead.
As for an Israeli reprisal, he predicted: "If more Palestinian (shootings) occur -- particularly across the Green Line (which separates Israel and the Palestinian territories) -- the Israelis may choose a 'rolling' response, upping the response each time."
This has already happened, U.S. officials said.
"After a while, the eye for an eye policy involves and endless exchange of eyes," a former CIA official said, speaking of Sharon. "You have to act."
-------- nato
Putin's Blast at NATO Gets Shrug
New York Times
July 20, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-NATO-Russia.html?searchpv=aponline
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- It used to be that when the Russian bear growled, it got the attention of the folks at NATO headquarters.
Not this time. President Vladimir Putin's blast at the Western alliance during a Moscow news conference Wednesday elicited little more than a shrug in Brussels, where NATO is based.
NATO should be abandoned and replaced by a new security organization in Europe that would include Russia, Putin told 500 reporters. And if it won't disband, it should at least let Russia in -- otherwise, Europe is dangerously divided, as it was during the Cold War.
While Putin's words made headlines, NATO officials had a sense they had heard it all before. And they have. To some in the United States and Western Europe, Russia's decline means the West doesn't have to worry too much about what its leaders think -- or at least about what they say.
Others disagree.
``I wouldn't shrug, I would take it seriously,'' said Prof. Karl Kaiser, a defense expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations. ``I would argue that the West should make a serious effort to deal with Russian concerns and continue its effort to integrate them into a system that is open.''
NATO, of course, says it is doing just that.
Several officials in the 19-nation alliance pointed out that Putin's tough words came at exactly the same time that ambassadors of the NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council were meeting at alliance headquarters, discussing many of the divisive issues.
On a May 1997 afternoon in Paris, a beaming Boris Yeltsin embraced then-President Clinton -- and other leaders of NATO nations -- and signed the NATO-Russia cooperation and security agreement.
The deal called for a Permanent Joint Council where the two sides could consult on matters of mutual interest, and for the posting of a Russian general to NATO's military headquarters in southern Belgium.
Two years later, the agreement was in tatters. Moscow virtually shut down the council when NATO bombed Yugoslavia and refused to discuss anything beyond Bosnia and Kosovo, where Russia has troops. But despite the animosity, military cooperation remained intact.
Now, the joint council's operations are back on track. The ambassadors meet regularly and top Russian officials frequently trek to NATO headquarters.
This shows that Moscow regards NATO as an important security partner and wants to work with it, said one NATO official, speaking on condition of anonymity. As to eventual Russian membership, the official said, ``We have never said never.''
Analysts said Putin's tough statements result from a realization, after his June summit with President Bush, that Washington plans to push ahead with missile defense and NATO enlargement -- possibly to the former Soviet republics on the Baltic Sea -- whether Moscow likes it or not.
Kaiser said they are also the result of ``an exaggerated perception of NATO as a hostile alliance. That will disappear slowly from the Russian mindset.''
NATO, meanwhile, says it is trying to make a partnership with Russia work.
``We feel convinced we have reached a level of maturity in our relationship that the benefits of partnership and cooperation are appreciated on both sides,'' said NATO spokesman Robert Pszczel. ``We have no doubt that the relationship, the partnership ... has a good, solid future based on mutual interest.''
-------- space
Solar - Sailing Test Rocket Launched
New York Times
July 20, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Solar-Sail.html?searchpv=aponline
PASADENA, Calif. (AP) -- A Russian nuclear submarine launched a rocket to test a prototype of an American-sponsored spacecraft that sails on the gentle pressure of the sun's rays.
But it was unclear whether the results of the test will ever be known because the instruments that recorded the flight may have been lost.
The rocket blasted from the submarine as it cruised beneath the Barents Sea north of Russia on Thursday.
``Beautiful. Beautiful. It looks beautiful,'' Louis Friedman, executive director of The Planetary Society, said via satellite phone as he watched the launch from a nearby ship.
Following the launch, the rocket was expected to deploy two Russian-built solar sails, each four stories tall, in a test of how well the lightweight blades unfurl in space from tightly packed canisters the size of a loaf of bread.
Project leaders said it would take several days before they could confirm the sail panels deployed. While the sails themselves would burn up in the atmosphere, a capsule that recorded video and still images of the deployment was expected to bounce down on a peninsula.
But project members could not immediately detect the signals they needed to track down the capsule, leading former Jet Propulsion Laboratory director Bruce Murray, one of the project coordinators, to speculate that there was only a 50-50 chance that any data would be recovered.
The 31-minute suborbital test had been delayed earlier this year when the spacecraft was damaged during testing.
The test flight was made in preparation for the Cosmos 1 project's expected launch of a complete spacecraft this winter. Project leaders have not decided whether that launch would proceed even without data from Thursday's test, said John Garvey, a project engineer.
The solar sail uses the steady pressure of photons hitting it to move it forward, just as a conventional sail uses the wind.
Cosmos 1 would send into Earth orbit a pinwheel of eight similarly sized blades that will harness for the first time the push of sunlight to propel it farther into space.
The spacecraft should be easily visible from Earth during the course of the mission, expected to last weeks or months.
Proponents envision the day when spacecraft will be able to cruise from planet to planet -- and beyond.
``At least today, this is the only way we know of getting to the stars,'' Garvey said.
Light-driven spacecraft will be slow to accelerate, but with time should reach velocities that will make travel across great distances possible. The sails could theoretically attain speeds 10 times greater than NASA's Voyager I and II, which travel at 38,000 mph.
If Cosmos 1 is a success, Murray said, the next project may be a solar-sail mission to the moon.
The $4 million Cosmos 1 project is coordinated by The Planetary Society, a space exploration advocacy group founded by Friedman, Murray and the late astronomer Carl Sagan. The $4 million project is underwritten by Cosmos Studios, led by late astronomer Carl Sagan's widow, Ann Druyan, and the cable A&E Network.
-------- u.n.
Iraq, Iran Trade Accusations in UN
The Associated Press
Friday, July 20, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010720/aponline065224_000.htm
UNITED NATIONS -- Longtime foes Iran and Iraq are trading accusations in the United Nations that each is hiding weapons of mass destruction.
The spat began during an open meeting of the U.N. Security Council on June 28 when Iraq's Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Riyadh Al-Qaisi called for the Middle East to be a zone free of weapons of mass destruction.
He urged the council to take "all necessary measures to deal with weapons of mass destruction possessed by Israel and with programs for possessing such weapons by Iran."
The following day, Iran's U.N. Ambassador Mohammad Hasan Fadaifard wrote to the council rejecting "the baseless allegations" in Al-Qaisi's statement. He noted that Iran has repeatedly called for the Middle East to be a zone free from weapons of mass destruction.
Fadaifard referred to the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war that killed or wounded more than a million people and Baghdad's confirmed use of chemical weapons.
In March 1988, Iraq used poison gas in attacking Halabja, an Iraqi town, after it was captured by Iranian forces. Doctors who treated survivors said cyanide gas, mustard gas and other nerve agents were used.
"It is ironic, indeed, that an official of a government that has extensively resorted to the use of chemical weapons in the 1980s, and has never spared any efforts in having access to weapons of mass destruction, comes up with advice, in the very same field, for the council, against my country," the Iranian ambassador said.
Iran has not only been the victim of the documented use of Iraqi chemical weapons "but has also meticulously abided by all its obligations in the field of elimination and nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction," Fadaifard said.
He accused Iraq of stockpiling chemical and biological weapons and urged Baghdad to sign the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which Iran has already signed.
Iraq responded with a letter circulated Thursday, accusing Iran of "misrepresentations and distortions of fact."
Iraq's U.N. ambassador Mohammed Al-Douri charged that Iran was "raking over the past" and repeating Israeli allegations concerning Iraq's possession of use of banned weapons "in order to exonerate itself of the charge of possessing and using weapons of mass destruction."
----
Afghanistan Sanctions Questioned
New York Times
July 20, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-UN-Afghanistan.html
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Sanctions aimed at forcing Afghanistan to hand over suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden are not working and the United Nations should review the policy, some U.N. Security Council members said Thursday.
The members expressed their concern during a closed-door discussion of a report on Afghanistan by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. The report said sanctions were hurting U.N. credibility but blamed most of the civilian suffering in Afghanistan on war, drought and widespread human rights violations.
``Quite a few members noted the imposition of the sanctions have not changed the present situation in Afghanistan,'' said China's U.N. Ambassador Wang Yingfan, the current council president. ``That is why some of the members suggested that we should have some kind of comprehensive review of the whole problem in the country.''
A statement from the entire 15-member council noted Annan's ``important conclusion,'' and the continued provision of humanitarian assistance under an exemption from sanctions.
Nonetheless, council members expressed concern about ``the deterioration of the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan and called on the international community to continue with generous donations.'' Members said they would also work within the council and with the U.N. Secretariat ``on a comprehensive strategy'' toward Afghanistan.
The council's discussion Thursday reflects a growing debate within the United Nations over its policies toward Afghanistan. Last week, Human Rights Watch criticized the sanctions as self-serving and accused Russia, Iran and Pakistan of prolonging the civil war.
The Taliban militia has seized over 95 percent of the country and imposed a harsh regime based on Islamic law. Millions of refugees have fled the battle zones and spilled into neighboring countries.
Last year, at the urging of the United States, the United Nations imposed sanctions on the Taliban to flush out bin Laden, a Saudi billionaire suspected in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that left 224 dead.
The Taliban have refused to hand bin Laden over, calling him a guest and saying the United States has not offered proof of his involvement.
-------- u.s.
Figures Say US Needs Bigger Military
By Pauline Jelinek
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, July 19, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010719/aponline044847_000.htm
WASHINGTON -- Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld sent Pentagon planners back to the drawing board after they came up with a blueprint for a military force larger than the one America has now.
"We went back and asked ourselves how that might have happened," Rumsfeld said Wednesday.
The Defense Department was trying to calculate how many people, weapons and materiel would be needed if it scrapped the long-held goal of being ready to fight two major wars at the same time.
Rumsfeld and the Joint Chiefs of Staff asked planners to look instead at what it would take to fight one major war and cover international peacekeeping and humanitarian missions as well as defend U.S. soil.
Officials said the senior officials were surprised when the answer came back that it would take more battle carrier groups, air units and troops than currently included in the 1.4 million person military.
One official said the planners misunderstood the strategy laid out by the senior officials and thought the force was supposed to be big enough to take on the smaller missions simultaneously. Rumsfeld said it was unclear whether they misunderstood or whether the written strategy they were working from was flawed.
The new approach was described in a classified document called the "Terms of Reference." Rumsfeld and senior officials asked several panels to work with the strategy to come up with needs.
"Either the terms of reference had ambiguities in them ... or there was simply a misunderstanding on the part of the ... team that was working it through," he said.
He said "several pockets of people" were working on the problem.
The work was being done as part of the congressionally mandated Quadrennial Defense Review. Rumsfeld said that despite the setback, Congress will receive the report as required by Sept. 30.
Since the end of the Cold War in 1991, the U.S. military has stuck to what became known as the two-war strategy.
The notion was that by sizing the military to deal with two major regional wars, an outbreak of conflict in, say, the Gulf would not embolden North Korea to invade South Korea, where about 37,000 American troops are based.
Rumsfeld has said the two-war approach was overdue for change because it had outlived its usefulness and left the United States increasingly vulnerable to emerging threats like ballistic missiles.
Additionally, President Bush campaigned on his view that the military was being asked to do too much with too few resources and promised to reduce military commitments.
Officials have said previously that it was unclear whether dropping the two-war strategy would lead to a decrease in the size of the American military, which has about 1.4 million men and women in uniform.
It was clear from what Rumsfeld said Wednesday at a Pentagon briefing, however, that the increase would be a move in the wrong direction.
Rumsfeld didn't describe what the strategy projected. Officials said privately last month that it recommended maintaining sufficient forces to win decisively in one major regional war and have the capability to conduct three other high-priority missions at the same time.
The three other missions, they said, were to defend U.S. territory, conduct "small-scale contingencies of limited duration" in other parts of the world - such as peacekeeping in the Balkans - and deter aggression in critical areas of the world through the presence of U.S. forces in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
-------
For Military, 'Change Is Hard'
Rumsfeld Indicates His Review Is Running Into Resistance
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 19, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A16301-2001Jul18?language=printer
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld conceded yesterday that his review of the military has run into difficulty but said he believes it ultimately will produce significant change.
"I feel that while it's a tough challenge, that we're making very good progress on it," he said at a Pentagon news conference.
On Monday, according to two defense officials, Rumsfeld told the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other senior officials that "we have a big problem" with developing a plan to revamp the size and shape of the U.S. military.
A general involved in the review said that since Rumsfeld made that statement, the review -- which was supposed to be on the verge of major decisions about the military, such as whether to cut the size of the Army -- has been at a standstill.
"Things are on hold until the Joint Staff and [Rumsfeld's aides] figure out the way ahead," the general said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "There is a huge rift between the Joint Staff and [Rumsfeld's aides] over this."
Though neither side is saying so publicly, the core of the argument appears to be that the armed services fear Rumsfeld wants to cut conventional forces -- troops, tanks, ships and aircraft -- to free up funds for his new emphases of missile defense, space and intelligence. Bureaucratically, the argument is being played out over the force requirements to meet a new military strategy developed under Rumsfeld.
Yesterday morning, the Joint Staff and Steven A. Cambone, an assistant to Rumsfeld who is running the review on a day-to-day basis, were offering senior officials "dueling" recommendations on how to proceed, according to another person familiar with the process.
At his news conference, Rumsfeld confirmed that earlier this week he ordered some planners to go back to a document developed earlier this summer that lays out future U.S. military strategy.
That document, "Terms of Reference," essentially says the military should be ready to do everything it is doing today in Europe, East Asia and the Persian Gulf, while also developing new capabilities in space, intelligence, missile defense and information warfare. In addition, the document calls on the military to establish task forces that are ready to deploy and fight more quickly than the military does today. It also calls on the armed forces to experiment with new technologies.
A panel of Pentagon analysts reported to Rumsfeld that such an approach would require a far larger military than today's 1.4 million-person active-duty force, as well as more aircraft carriers and Air Force fighter wings. Building a bigger military likely would undercut Rumsfeld's plans to spend more on his new priorities.
"It was clear that the work that had been done did not fit the 'Terms of Reference,' " Rumsfeld said yesterday.
He stopped short of saying what changes he hopes to work out over the next 10 weeks, before the review's Oct. 1 congressional deadline. Asked if the military needs to become bigger or smaller, he said, "I just don't know at the moment."
Overall, the defense secretary dismissed news reports that there is strong opposition in the top ranks to his efforts to change the military. "I think that would not be correct," he said. Rather, he said, "I think it is perfectly correct to say that change is hard."
-------- OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Solar-Sailing Test Rocket Launched
By Andrew Bridges
AP Science Writer
Friday, July 20, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010720/aponline070610_001.htm
PASADENA, Calif. -- A Russian nuclear submarine launched a rocket to test a prototype of an American-sponsored spacecraft that sails on the gentle pressure of the sun's rays.
But it was unclear whether the results of the test will ever be known because the instruments that recorded the flight may have been lost.
The rocket blasted from the submarine as it cruised beneath the Barents Sea north of Russia on Thursday.
"Beautiful. Beautiful. It looks beautiful," Louis Friedman, executive director of The Planetary Society, said via satellite phone as he watched the launch from a nearby ship.
Following the launch, the rocket was expected to deploy two Russian-built solar sails, each four stories tall, in a test of how well the lightweight blades unfurl in space from tightly packed canisters the size of a loaf of bread.
Project leaders said it would take several days before they could confirm the sail panels deployed. While the sails themselves would burn up in the atmosphere, a capsule that recorded video and still images of the deployment was expected to bounce down on a peninsula.
But project members could not immediately detect the signals they needed to track down the capsule, leading former Jet Propulsion Laboratory director Bruce Murray, one of the project coordinators, to speculate that there was only a 50-50 chance that any data would be recovered.
The 31-minute suborbital test had been delayed earlier this year when the spacecraft was damaged during testing.
The test flight was made in preparation for the Cosmos 1 project's expected launch of a complete spacecraft this winter. Project leaders have not decided whether that launch would proceed even without data from Thursday's test, said John Garvey, a project engineer.
The solar sail uses the steady pressure of photons hitting it to move it forward, just as a conventional sail uses the wind.
Cosmos 1 would send into Earth orbit a pinwheel of eight similarly sized blades that will harness for the first time the push of sunlight to propel it farther into space.
The spacecraft should be easily visible from Earth during the course of the mission, expected to last weeks or months.
Proponents envision the day when spacecraft will be able to cruise from planet to planet - and beyond.
"At least today, this is the only way we know of getting to the stars," Garvey said.
Light-driven spacecraft will be slow to accelerate, but with time should reach velocities that will make travel across great distances possible. The sails could theoretically attain speeds 10 times greater than NASA's Voyager I and II, which travel at 38,000 mph.
If Cosmos 1 is a success, Murray said, the next project may be a solar-sail mission to the moon.
The $4 million Cosmos 1 project is coordinated by The Planetary Society, a space exploration advocacy group founded by Friedman, Murray and the late astronomer Carl Sagan. The $4 million project is underwritten by Cosmos Studios, led by late astronomer Carl Sagan's widow, Ann Druyan, and the cable A&E Network.
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AEP, TXU to expand West Texas wind project
USA: July 20, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11691
NEW YORK - American Electric Power (AEP) said Wednesday they will expand the Trent Mesa wind power project near Abilene, Texas by 20,000 kilowatts, or enough electricity to run an additional 5,000 Texas homes.
When completed, the plant will provide 150,000 kW, up from the previously announced 130,000, to Dallas-based TXU Corp. , the buyer of the plant's electricity output, the companies said in a joint statement.
AEP will build, own and operate the plant.
The planned expansion adds 13 wind turbines to the 87 turbines currently being installed at Trent Mesa and brings AEP's total investment in the project to approximately $160 million.
AEP expects to begin delivering energy from the plant to TXU this autumn and estimates that its facility will generate more than 590 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity, enough power to supply about 35,000 homes.
Columbus, Ohio-based AEP owns and operates more than 38,000 megawatts of generating capacity and provides retail electricity to more than 7 million customers worldwide.
TXU Corp. delivers or sells energy to 11 million customers primarily in the US Europe and Australia.
-------- death penalty
DNA Tests May Help Idaho Inmate
New York Times
July 20, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Death-Row-DNA.html
BOISE, Idaho (AP) -- After almost 20 years on death row, Charles Irvin Fain may be set free after new DNA testing cast a long shadow of doubt on his conviction.
The 52-year-old Fain was found guilty in 1983 of kidnapping, sexually assaulting and drowning 9-year-old Daralyn Johnson.
But after the DNA tests on pubic hairs, his conviction was set aside by a judge who gave prosecutors until Sept. 4 to file new charges or free Fain.
``He's an innocent man who has been in jail for 18 years for a crime he didn't commit. It has been a tremendously long battle,'' said Spencer McIntyre, one of Fain's lawyers.
Daralyn was abducted as she walked to school in 1982. Her body was found by fishermen a few days later along the Snake River.
Fain, a handyman, moved into Daralyn's neighborhood shortly after her death. His attorneys said he passed a lie-detector test but was arrested and charged with murder.
Among the evidence against Fain were statements from cellmates who said he admitted to the crime and a girl who saw the abduction from a distance. Prosecutors also said a partially washed-out footprint near Daralyn's body resembled the sole of a tennis shoe found at Fain's home.
But the key evidence came from an FBI forensics expert, who said pubic hairs found on the victim's clothing may have been Fain's.
Last year, U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill authorized $18,000 for new forensic tests. And last month, a Virginia laboratory said that none of the three hairs -- one found on Daralyn's sock, the others in her underpants -- was Fain's.
Two weeks ago, the judge set aside Fain's conviction.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, 10 death row inmates have been exonerated by DNA evidence since 1990.
Prosecutors have not said what they plan to do. But prosecutor David Young acknowledged that winning another conviction against Fain could be difficult.
``If we do have the wrong guy, it's our job to identify that and get him out of there,'' Young said.
The girl's mother, Deanna Johnson, did not return a call for comment.
Fain is eligible to be moved off death row while awaiting a new trial or release, but he has asked to remain in the same cell where he has lived for years.
``He's used to it,'' defense attorney D. Frederick Hoopes said.
--------
Serial killer asks judge to clear way for execution
USA Today
07/20/2001
The Associated Press
http://usatoday.com/news/nation/2001/07/20/serial-killer.htm
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) - Sobbing that "there's no sense in keeping me alive," one of the nation's first known female serial killers won a court victory Friday in her bid to fire her attorneys and hasten her execution.
"I am a serial killer. I would kill again," Aileen Wuornos said during 1 1/2 hours on the witness stand.
She said she wanted to fire her state-appointed attorneys and end her appeals because she wants to come clean and make her peace with God.
"I wanted to clear all the lies and let the truth come out," she said. "I have hate crawling through my system."
Circuit Judge Michael Hutcheson said he would recommend to the Florida Supreme Court that Wuornos is competent to make such a decision. He told Wuornos it would put her on the "fast track" to be executed.
"I'm not scared by it," Wuornos said. "I know what the heck I'm doing."
Wuornos, 45, was sentenced to death six times for killing middle-aged men when she worked as a prostitute along the highways of central Florida in 1989 and 1990. She has been on death row for nearly a decade.
Wuornos, the subject of a television movie Overkill: The Aileen Wuornos Story and an opera that recently opened in San Francisco, testified during her 1992 trial that she killed men who assaulted her and made her fear for her life.
But Friday, she said she had lied in an attempt to beat the system: "I killed those men in the first degree, robbed and killed them."
She apologized to her victims' families and said there was no point in spending more taxpayers' money on her defense.
"There's no sense in keeping me alive," she said. "This world doesn't mean anything to me."
One of her attorneys, Richard Kiley, said Wuornos didn't understand the ramifications of what she was doing, and her behavior raised questions about her mental health.
Lawyers from the Capital Collateral Regional Counsel, the state agency that handles post-conviction death-sentence appeals, will try to have Wuornos declared incompetent.
Letha Prater, whose 50-year-old brother, Troy Burress, was killed by Wuornos in 1989, said she was glad the decision would end the appeals.
"I don't hate her. I hate what she did," Prater said. "Hatred is lost on her."
Burress' daughter, Wanda Pouncey, added: "It's time for all this to be done instead of dragging this on."
Wuornos had the opportunity to end her appeals at a hearing in February, when a judge ruled she was competent to make decisions about her case. She chose to continue her appeals, later saying CCRC lawyers misled her about her ability to drop them.
Wuornos sent several letters to the Florida Supreme Court asking to end her appeals, and the court ordered Friday's hearing.
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Justice Dept. Solicits Study Bids
New York Times
July 20, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/news/AP-Death-Penalty.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Justice Department solicited bids on Friday for a study on homicide cases that could shed light on racial disparities in the federal death penalty system.
The department published on its web site an application for proposals to study ``how homicide cases are investigated and why some of those cases enter the federal system and others enter the state system.''
Attorney General John Ashcroft and his predecessor, Janet Reno, had called for an independent study on death penalty cases in response to a government report released last year that showed the vast majority of defendants charged in capital offenses on the federal level were minorities.
Most of the inmates currently on federal death row are minorities.
Last month Ashcroft said a follow-up review showed no evidence of racial bias in the application of the federal death penalty. The review said the reason more blacks and Hispanics get death sentences is that there are more minorities in the pool of cases that carry the federal death penalty, such as murder and drug trafficking.
Death penalty opponents said the review was flawed and ignored the role of local prosecutors in choosing which defendants to go after. They accused Ashcroft of dragging his heels in commissioning a broader independent study of the death penalty system.
The solicitation published Friday calls for a study to examine, on a national level, why some murder cases are prosecuted on the federal level while others are pursued by state prosecutors, why the death penalty is sought in some cases and not in others and why some murder cases are not pursued by either or state or federal authorities.
``Research should also address issues of race/ethnicity and geography,'' the solicitation said.
-------- environment
As the World Warms: More Debate
New York Times
July 20, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/20/opinion/L20ENVI.html?searchpv=nytToday
To the Editor:
Re "Clueless on Global Warming" (editorial, July 19):
The real issue is about global development, not just reducing greenhouse gases. Rather than focusing the debate over the Kyoto Protocol on how much to reduce greenhouse gases, we might better address how industrialized and modernizing countries can develop in ways that reduce environmental impact per unit of economic growth.
Over the last decade, many countries have been able to improve both environmental and economic performance through "eco-efficient" investments - choosing methods and technologies that promote environmental quality, reduce costs and generate short-term profits. Understanding the issue this way could frame a more productive debate.
OWEN CYLKE Washington, July 19, 2001 The writer is a senior adviser, National Environmental Policy Institute. • To the Editor:
In "Frustrated Europeans Set to Battle U.S. on Climate" (news article, July 16), you quote Peter Hüllen, a retired coal-mining engineer in Germany, as asking, "How much do the Americans really know about climate problems?"
I would ask him, and other supporters of the Kyoto Protocol, why they are so sure that putting the protocol into effect would have any impact at all in preventing the warming of the earth.
Are Americans supposed to accept the restrictions imposed by Kyoto without proof that they would work, just to make the rest of the world feel better?
THOMAS KEARNEY
Plainview, N.Y., July 16, 2001
• To the Editor:
Re "The New Laws of Nations," by Laura D. Tyson (Op-Ed, July 14): While it is the case that an increasingly global economy will require multinational solutions, what kind of international governance will we choose and whom it will benefit?
The Kyoto Protocol on climate change and other environmental treaties represent the type of approach we require to sustain the environment and improve social standards. In contrast are harmful multinational approaches like the investor-rights provisions in the North American Free Trade Agreement, which are being used by multinational investors to sue governments for enacting environmental and other public interest protections.
Although we must embrace multilateral solutions that raise environmental and social standards, we should also reject those that pull them downward.
DAVID WASKOW Washington, July 15, 2001
The writer is trade and investment policy coordinator, Friends of the Earth.
• To the Editor:
Re "U.S. Set to Oppose International Plan for Cleaner Energy" (front page, July 14):
The Bush administration's opposition to the clean-energy initiative of the Group of Eight industrial nations is yet another twist of contradictions and international embarrassments.
The administration wants the marketplace and not government to decide how quickly renewable resources will enter the marketplace. Yet economists agree that present energy prices are far from representing real costs of energy, particularly the damages done by fossil fuels, which do receive handsome subsidies in both the United States and, more important, in most of the developing world.
So the marketplace can't decide without government help. Worse, the Bush administration's own energy policy suggestions are precisely what the market will not bring forth to the United States - significantly more oil and gas production and more nuclear power.
LEE SCHIPPER Paris, July 15, 2001 The writer is an energy economist.
--------
8 Months Later, Talks on Climate Treaty Restart, Now in Bonn
New York Times
July 20, 2001
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/20/science/earth/20CLIM.html
BONN, July 19 - Nearly eight months after formal talks over a proposed climate treaty fell apart in The Hague, negotiations resumed here today in nearly as tangled and troubled a state.
Informal talks started on Monday, and today environment ministers and other senior diplomats who represented 178 nations took their seats. Jan Pronk, chairman of the talks since last year, admonished them to find consensus, albeit without the United States, the largest emitter of heat-trapping gases. The United States has rejected the treaty.
"We did a good job in Kyoto," Mr. Pronk, of the Netherlands, said, defending the document negotiated in 1997 in Japan. "It is the only game in town. It is the best we have."
The accord, now called the Kyoto Protocol, would be the first treaty to require industrialized countries to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases linked to a potentially disruptive warming trend. Because it could have just as many effects on economies as on the environment, negotiations have proved extraordinarily complex and contentious.
In talks today, wealthy countries still disagreed over rules to measure cuts and punish those that failed to meet targets. Poor countries insisted that wealthy ones help pay for damage from changing temperatures and rising sea levels, and they want control over spending that money.
Although President Bush rejected the treaty months ago, the United States, even from the sidelines, threw a long shadow over the officials, corporate lobbyists and environmentalists who milled in the halls of the Maritim Hotel. American negotiators, ending their routine of nightly news conferences last year, remained deeply immersed in talks on points that they said could harm the country's interests. At least one point could imperil the effort to close out the talks and allow countries to seek ratification. That point is a proposal for a $1 billion-a-year fund to help developing countries.
Under a negotiating text used as a guide for the talks, some of that money would be paid by all countries that have signed an existing climate treaty, including the United States. That is a structure that some developing countries prefer, because it guarantees that they will receive the money even if the Kyoto Protocol never takes effect. But it could also theoretically mean that the United States would have to pay for parts of the Kyoto pact even though Mr. Bush has rejected it.
At a news session this evening, Mr. Pronk appeared to side with Washington on that point. "If you are not becoming a party to the protocol," he said, "it would not be fair to be expected to have implicitly or indirectly similar obligations as those countries who become a party."
That could become a sticking point at the conference if the developing countries, 134 of which act as a bloc, insist that the proposed payment structure follow the current plan.
Other disputes simmered unrelated to United States interests. Europe, Japan and Canada once again debated the merits of forests as a means of absorbing carbon dioxide.
Generally, however, the tone was more subdued at this meeting than the one that was suspended last fall, when cream pies were thrown at American negotiators and protesters climbed to the rafters of the Dutch conference center.
"At The Hague, there was a sense of urgency," said Glenn Kelly, executive director of the Global Climate Coalition, a lobby in Washington that has fought the protocol through contributions from industry. "Here it's more like being at the wake for a not- so-well-liked second cousin."
--------
NAFTA Panel Examines Air Pollution
New York Times
July 20, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Canada-US-Pollution.html
TORONTO (AP) -- Electricity plant emissions and waste made up the largest portion of industrial pollution in Canada and the United States in 1998, according to a report issued Friday.
The study by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation said the power plant releases amounted to more than 40 percent of air pollution that year and 25 percent of all industrial pollution.
It cited the U.S. states of Ohio, Texas, and Pennsylvania as the top three polluters of 1998, followed by the Canadian province of Ontario.
Created under the North American Free Trade Agreement, the commission compiles an annual survey of pollution sources titled ``Taking Stock.'' This year's report, its fifth, was the first to include the electricity industry.
The information comes from mandatory industry reports, and commission spokesman Charles Dickson acknowledged the study was unable to provide a comprehensive summary of pollution in North America.
Mexico has yet to start reporting on its pollution, and some sectors of U.S. and Canadian industries such as motor vehicles, agriculture and some kinds of mining also lack reporting systems.
``We just take the data that the governments give us,'' Dickson said, adding that if total figures for all pollution were available, the study would show that ``the overall picture is worse.''
According to the report, 77 percent of air pollution from electricity plants in 1998 was hydrochloric and sulfuric acid that can become acid rain.
Other industries listed as major polluters were the metals sector, which includes steel mills -- along with the chemical industry, the hazardous waste management industry and paper producers.
Ohio ranked first among states for pollutants, reporting 135,820 tons, followed by 106,000 tons of Texas and Pennsylvania's 94,483 tons. Along with Ontario's 89,000 tons, the top four combined for 26 percent of the overall figure of 1.6 million tons in 1998.
Janine Ferretti, executive director of the commission, noted that comparing statistics from the panel's previous reports showed minor declines in some areas, but said the overall figures remained too high.
She cited the 84,000 tons amount of carcinogens released into the air in 1998 as a particular concern.
Carcinogenic substances are those listed by the International Agency for Research on Cancer or the U.S. National Toxicological Program as promoting cancer.
-------- genetics
Bush to promote biotechnology at Genoa G8
ITALY: July 20, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11677
ROME - US President George W. Bush will promote biotechnology at this weekend's Group of Eight (G8) summit in Genoa, a senior US official said yesterday.
"President Bush will be promoting biotech in the context of its potential to address world hunger," the official, who declined to be identified, told Reuters.
Genetically modified crops can yield more than conventional crops, offering the potential to feed more people. The United Nations estimates 800 million people go to bed hungry and says the world is behind a target to halve world hunger by 2015.
The United States has been promoting biotechnology heavily in recent months in Europe where resistance to genetically modified crops remains strong.
At a recent seminar hosted by the US embassy in Florence, US diplomats argued strongly in favour of biotechnology, saying that it was well regulated in the United States and reduced the need for chemical inputs such as insecticides.
Many European consumers are worried that the new technology, already widespread in soya-based products, could pose a threat to health and the environment.
Jacques Diouf, director-general of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, said yesterday genetically modified crops could be helpful in the war on hunger as the world's population expanded, provided proper controls were in place.
Referring to genetically modified organisms (GMOs), Diouf told Reuters: "With the world's population expected to reach nine billion, naturally using more productive varieties like GMO becomes one of the solutions."
He said he saw no reason not to use GMOs as long as they were internationally regulated and agreement was reached on problems relating to allergenicity, labelling and traceability of products.
--------
Genome Mappers Navigate the Tricky Terrain of Race
New York Times
July 20, 2001
By NICHOLAS WADE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/20/health/genetics/20GENO.html
WASHINGTON, July 19 - Scientists planning the next phase of the human genome project are being forced to confront a treacherous issue: the genetic differences between human races.
With the decoding of the human genome largely complete, government scientists are beginning to construct a special kind of genetic map that would provide a shortcut to locating the variant human genes that predispose people to common diseases.
The question the scientists face is whether that map should chart possible differences that may emerge among the principal population groups, those of Africans, Asians and Europeans.
Identifying the genetic variations that predispose people to diseases like cancer, diabetes and schizophrenia was a major purpose of the Human Genome Project. Most of these variant genes are thought likely to be the same throughout the world. But some may differ by population.
At a two-day conference that ended today, population geneticists and ethicists discussed whether the map should be constructed to explore these population differences.
Some speakers argued that the differences, even though obtained for medical purposes, might be used invidiously. Others said it would be wrong to exclude any group from the map if that meant they would not fully share the expected medical benefits.
The conference was organized by the National Human Genome Research Institute to plan the next phase in the process of interpreting the human genome. The genome sequence - the order of the three billion units of DNA that hold hereditary information - was obtained in draft form last June.
Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the institute, said it was important to set up the proposed map "in a fashion that benefits human kind and doesn't unwittingly do damage to one population or another."
The geneticists seeking to construct the map are working under the shadow of a previous proposal, called the Human Genome Diversity Project, which was intended to map the pattern of human migration out of Africa by analyzing the genomes of many peoples around the world. That project foundered after opponents said it would exploit the genetic patrimony of endangered peoples without addressing their more immediate health needs.
Geneticists said at the conference that the genome mapping project had very different goals and that different populations might be sampled to the bare minimum necessary to make sure the map was representative of everyone. Indeed, the first issue, they said, was whether to record the ethnic identity of the people whose genomes were sampled.
Most human genetic variations are found in all populations and presumably arose before the major population subdivisions produced after modern humans left Africa some 50,000 years ago. The roots of common genetic diseases are expected to lie in common variations that are found in all human populations.
Many of these disease-causing variants should be discoverable without having to search in specific population groups. But some population-specific variants may exist, and a population could fail to benefit if the variant is not detected.
Because scientists are not certain how disease-causing genes are distributed, the geneticists at the conference were divided on the need to keep track of ethnicity.
"In the end we may conclude none of those identifiers add much," said Dr. Eric S. Lander of the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Mass.
But Dr. Lander and others also sketched out the balance between helping and harming specific peoples.
"We must make sure the information is not used to stigmatize populations," Dr. Lander said. "But we have an affirmative responsibility to ensure that what is learned will be useful for all populations. If we shy away and don't record the data for certain populations, we can't be sure to serve those populations medically."
Dr. Thomas Murray, an ethicist who is president of the Hastings Center in Garrison, N.Y., said that to extend the medical benefits to everyone the project had to be inclusive.
"We don't have the luxury of blinding ourselves," Dr. Murray said, referring to the idea of ignoring ethnicity. "We have to say we want to be sure that all Americans get included in this."
Several speakers suggested that the information about different racial groups might in fact be helpful in showing how much of the genetic make-up is in fact held in common.
"If we educate the public properly it will undermine the traditional concepts of race, and race will begin to fall by the wayside in the traditional sense," said Dr. Phyllis Epps, a health lawyer at the University of Houston.
Dr. Lander said, "I think these data have tremendous potential to deconstruct simplistic notions of race and ethnicity."
The genomic map now being envisioned is called a haplotype map, and it is based on an emerging discovery that the cards in the human genome have been far less finely shuffled than was expected.
The genome, of course, consists not of cards but of chromosomes, each a gigantic DNA molecule of about 100 million units, or bases, in length. In each generation, the maternal and paternal versions of each chromosome exchange sections, shuffling the genetic material. The length of the unshuffled sections is an important consideration in trying to associate variant genes with the diseases they promote.
As the human genome was decoded, geneticists started looking for single bases that differed from the usual base at that position on the chromosome. These single base changes, called S.N.P.s or "snips," serve as markers to track variant genes, and can themselves be the cause of the variation.
Some 3 million S.N.P.'s have now been cataloged and in recent months scientists have found that the unshuffled sections of the genome are far larger than expected. A recent estimate predicted they would be an average of 3,000 bases long, but in fact many have turned out to be 50,000 bases or longer, a length that would cover several genes.
These long sections that contain several correlated S.N.P.'s are called haplotypes. Because of the large size of these haplotypes, geneticists believe it would be more useful to organize the growing collection of S.N.P.'s into their component blocks or haplotypes, with the goal of mapping these haplotypes across the genome. A haplotype map would speed the search for the variant genes that underlie disease.
Dr. Collins proposed at the end of the meeting that an international steering group be set up to decide how construction of the haplotype map should proceed and how it should sample the genomes of different population groups.
--------
Bush to Decide on Stem Cell Funding
New York Times
July 20, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Stem-Cells.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A leading Republican senator says he believes a majority of U.S. senators now support allowing federal funding of embryonic stem cell research.
Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter and 12 other Republican senators reiterated their support for the practice in a new letter to Bush on Friday.
``There is more than a groundswell here. There is really an avalanche of support,'' Specter said.
Bush, an abortion opponent, has been grappling with a decision on whether to allow government support of stem cell research involving human embryos.
Stem cells are master cells that can generate body tissue. Scientists believe the cures for many diseases could be unlocked from research using stem cells. Abortion opponents say harvesting the stem cells requires the death of an embryo, which many regard as human life.
The issue is not pending in Congress at this time although several lawmakers have indicated they will bring up a bill if Bush rejects the funding policy, which had been instituted during the Clinton administration.
Specter, who has written Bush on the issue previously, said Friday he believed there are 75 senators who would vote in favor of stem cell research should Congress take up the issue. That's more than enough to override a presidential veto.
The letter sent Friday by Specter and other Republican senators said, ``Stem cell research has demonstrated a remarkable capacity of these cells to transform into any type of cell in the human body. If scientists are correct, stem cells could be used to treat and cure a multitude of maladies ... ``
The letter also was signed by Sens. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado, Ted Stevens of Alaska, Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, Gordon Smith of Oregon, Orrin Hatch of Utah, Richard Lugar of Indiana, John McCain of Arizona and John Warner of Virginia.
And on Thursday, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., sent Bush a letter signed by 59 Republican and Democratic senators supporting the practice.
Earlier this week, Republican Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee, the Senate's only physician and a key Bush ally, said he opposed abortion but felt compelled to support research that could save lives. His comments followed a federal health research report that said scientists should be free to pursue all avenues of research, including that involving human embryos. But it did not address the use of federal funds.
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Debate Rages Over Ethics of Stem Cell Research
New York Times
July 20, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/health/science-health-stemce.html
BOSTON (Reuters) - A few hundred human embryonic cells in a petri dish are forcing scientists, ethicists and politicians to clash over the question of when life begins and the morality of using such cells in medical research.
At the heart of the issue is whether it is ethical for scientists to harvest stem cells -- master cells that can develop into a variety of cells in the human body -- from early stage human embryos for research, or whether life begins at conception and the cells should not be touched. Harvesting the cells destroys the embryo.
Advocates of their use pin their hopes on studies that show stem cells may be useful in the development of new treatments for such ailments as heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.
Those who argue against it say destroying human embryos is ending one human life to benefit another. Germany, still haunted by the specter of the Nazis' genetic experiments, halted all such research earlier this month.
``This is an issue that is way beyond politics,'' President Bush told reporters in London on Thursday when asked if he would approve federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. ''This is an issue that speaks to morality and science.''
The U.S. National Institutes of Health does not fund such research now, but it added fuel to the debate on Wednesday when it released a report touting the advantages of using stem cells that are formed in embryos within days of fertilization over stem cells harbored in the bodies of children and adults.
Stem cells can come from human fetal tissue following an abortion; they can come from human embryos created by in vitro fertilization whether for reproductive or research purposes; or they can be generated asexually by cloning techniques.
Whatever technique is used to create an embryo, by day six or so it is a multicell ball called a blastocyst. At this point, it can be implanted into a woman's womb to start a pregnancy. If it is going to be used for research, scientists remove several hundred stem cells from inside the blastocyst, destroying it in the process.
BUSH PRESSURED BY BOTH SIDES OF DEBATE
Bush is under pressure from a wide range of interest groups on both sides of the debate, from celebrities like quadriplegic actor Christopher Reeve, who favors funding the research, to the Roman Catholic Church and anti-abortion groups, which oppose any research involving the destruction of a human embryo.
In January, Britain explicitly legalized the cloning of human embryos for stem cell research.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair told reporters, ``We have made our decision here'' on the contentious issue.
The law means British scientists can carry out therapeutic cloning. Reproductive cloning -- to create babies -- remains banned and any cloned embryos must be destroyed after 14 days.
``The UK is going to be a more secure environment in which to conduct most areas of embryo research,'' said Simon Best, chief executive of Edinburgh, Scotland-based Ardana Biosciences, who sits on the boards of biotechnology trade bodies on both sides of the Atlantic.
On Monday, a top U.S. stem cell scientist, Roger Pedersen of the University of California, San Francisco, said he was leaving to join the faculty at the University of Cambridge in England and cited the increasingly unfriendly climate for his work in the United States.
Dr. George Daley, a researcher at Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, chafes at the restrictions on his research into how human blood cells form.
``I'm not an ethicist. I'm a molecular biologist. I am very comfortable with the trade-offs involved,'' Daley said. ``I have a healthy respect for human life, but I hold the needs of living, breathing human beings as being very different from the primordial mass of cells in a petri dish.''
DEBATE NOT CONFINED TO U.S.
U.S. scientists are not alone in struggling with what University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Arthur Caplan calls the ''what's in the dish problem.''
``It's not always clear how to describe a cloned human embryo or some of the other things'' that are created in laboratories, said Caplan, who resigned from the advisory board of Worcester, Massachusetts-based Advanced Cell Technology, Inc., which recently paid women to harvest their eggs for use in stem cell research.
In Australia, a parliamentary committee is due to release recommendations in August for national guidelines on human embryonic stem cell research. That country's health minister has said any legislation banning human cloning should allow embryonic stem cell research.
Three of Australia's eight states and territories have banned human cloning and limited human embryo experiments. To get around the restrictions, biotech companies like BresaGen Ltd. are importing stems sells from the United States.
Australia's Monash Institute of Reproduction and Development is importing embryos from Singapore and working with Singapore National University and the Israeli Hadassah Medical Center.
In Israel, ``research that is not intended to produce a human being or to clone one is legal,'' Israeli Health Ministry legal adviser Mira Hbener-Harel told Reuters.
-------- health
G8 Leaders Agree to Create AIDS Fund
The Washington Times
JULY 20, 14:56 EST
Associated Press
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER AP Economics Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_package.html?FRONTID=BUSINESS&PACKAGEID=BIZ-G8&STORYID=APIS7DC7TO00&SLUG=SUMMIT%2dRDP
GENOA, Italy (AP) - Club-wielding riot police and violent protesters clashed Friday with deadly consequences as leaders of the world's seven wealthiest nations vowed to fight AIDS and global economic woes. Safe inside their summit site, European heads also plotted against President Bush's environmental policies.
One protester was killed and dozens of others injured - along with many police - in bloody demonstrations against the policies being pursued by presidents and prime ministers inside the walls of a nearby palace.
With miles of fence-and-concrete barricades isolating them from tens of thousands of protesters, President Bush and six European leaders issued a joint statement saying the right policies were in place to avert a global recession - though the economy ``has slowed more than expected.''
They pressed forward with an agenda designed in part to show sympathy for causes espoused by demonstrators: A $1 billion AIDS relief plan, economic relief for Third World countries and a new round of global trade talks along with a unified bid to rally their sluggish economies, which the leaders say would help spread prosperity.
Bush and his counterparts took aim at the protesters' motives.
``Instead of addressing policies that represent the poor, you embrace policies that lock poor people into poverty,'' Bush said on the opening day of a three-day summit.
The protests revived memories of demonstrations that have marred international summits in Quebec and Seattle, but the death was apparently the first death connected to such clashes.
Anti-globalization protesters flooded this hilly, Mediterranean port city - with a few of them turning violent.
An unknown number hurled cobblestones and Molotov cocktails, smashed windows, set fires and looted storefronts. Computers and other office equipment were flung from one office building.
Police responded with water cannons, tear gas and nightsticks, clubbing some protesters into submission and arresting at least 39.
The dead person was not immediately identified and the circumstances surrounding his death were unclear.
Local hospitals said at least 46 protesters were injured, plus 31 police and two journalists.
In private meetings at a 13th century palace-turned-conference center, conversations wandered from economics to politics. French President Jacques Chirac led a lobbying effort against Bush's climate change policies.
``It is our duty to act vigorously and collectively to combat the principal threat to the future of the planet,'' Chirac told Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, according to officials in the French delegation.
Later, Chirac and Bush were seen engaged in animated conversation during a summit dinner that also included leaders from five poor countries.
Bush defied most of the industrialized world by denouncing a 1997 Kyoto global warming treaty aimed at reducing heat-trapping gases. His administration has quietly urged Canada, Australia and Japan to scuttle an effort by pro-treaty nations to implement the pact without the United States.
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi supports the treaty that bares the name of his country's ancient capital, but nonetheless assured Bush recently that he doesn't want to proceed without the United States.
In a private chat, Koizumi told German Prime Minister Gerhard Schroeder, a treaty backer, that Japan ``will do our best'' to see the pact take effect in 2002, according to the Japanese delegation. A German spokesman later said Bush's position will dominate summit talks.
The president himself has told his colleagues he won't bow to their pressure on Kyoto. He has promised to provide an alternative to the treaty.
Bush is also at odds with U.S. allies over his plans to develop a missile defense system. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has warned that the system could trigger a new arms race, attended the summit with leaders of the traditional Group of Seven - the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada.
Bush meets privately with Putin on Saturday.
Putin joined his seven colleagues and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to announce a new global health fund, with an initial contribution of $1.2 billion, to combat AIDS and other infectious diseases.
Bush has pledged $200 million, saying more money will come only if the fund proves a success.
Annan praised the effort, but said the leaders fell short of the $7 billion to $10 billion needed to fight diseases.
On the economy, the leaders' statement also:
-Predicted that Bush's tax-cut package will bolster economic growth in the United States. They also praised Koizumi's tough-minded reform package dealing with that country's decade-long economic slump.
-Pledged to get personally involved in the effort to launch a new global trade round, hoping to rebound from the failed effort to launch the talks in Seattle in December 1999. They said that the new talks should be aimed at providing poor nations with better access to world markets.
-Praised Turkey and Argentina for wrestling with financial crises.
-------- imf / world bank
Security Tightened As G7 Summit Set to Start
New York Times
July 20, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-group-l.html
GENOA (Reuters) - Leaders of the world's richest nations gather behind a steel cordon in the Italian port of Genoa on Friday, beset by economic and political worries and ringed by protesters determined to drown out an annual summit.
Police and troops sealed off the center of Genoa where Group of Seven leaders were due to gather at noon (6:00 a.m. EDT) in a Renaissance palace for the first of three days of meetings.
They were to spend most of Friday discussing a gloomy world economy, but aides said they were unlikely to heed calls for a major new initiative to cut Third World debt or come up with a coordinated plan to reignite economic growth at home.
Tens of thousands of anti-globalization protesters prepared to stage a second march on Friday morning.
A first demonstration on Thursday attracted some 50,000 people, ranging from Kurds to Greens, and passed off peacefully.
But hardline demonstrators have vowed to try to break into the high-security ``red zone'' surrounding the Palazzo Ducale, where the leaders will meet, and Genoa's old port, where most are staying aboard a French-built luxury cruise liner.
Genoa is taking no chances after a wave of violent protests against rich countries and multinational firms at nearly every major international gathering over the past two years.
``SURREAL'' SUMMIT
Overnight, authorities reinforced the security cordon that has turned the heart of Genoa into a virtual ghost town populated mostly by the 20,000 police and soldiers guarding the leaders.
They placed rows of heavy shipping containers around the perimeter of the ``red zone'' to reinforce the 20 foot concrete and wire fence barricades. Coast guard boats patrolled the port and police helicopters flew overhead.
``The way in which this summit is taking place is surreal,'' said Genoa Mayor Giuseppe Pericu.
Italy warned it would deal firmly with any violence aimed at disrupting the talks.
``I hope there won't be any violent demonstrations by a few people who would do only harm to themselves,'' Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi told reporters.
A wave of false bomb alerts kept organizers' nerves on edge following an explosion which injured a policeman on Monday.
AFRICAN LEADERS TO TAKE PART
Berlusconi and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who arrived in Genoa the day before the summit, will be joined on Friday morning by the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany and the United States. Together they form the G7.
Later in the day Russian President Vladimir Putin was to join them for the start of the Group of Eight meeting.
At 5 p.m. (11:00 a.m. EDT) they were to join with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to announce the establishment of a global AIDS and health fund.
In the evening, African leaders and heads of the World Bank and World Trade Organization, were to join them -- part of an effort to respond to critics who accuse the G8 of ignoring the world's poor.
NO NEW DEBT RELIEF
The summit starts not only under siege from protesters but against a gloomy economic and diplomatic backdrop.
On Thursday, South African President Thabo Mbeki added his voice to those of campaigners urging the richest countries to forgive the debts of the poorest.
``The goal must be complete debt write-off,'' Mbeki told Reuters in an interview during a two-day stop in Rome.
But a summit official said the leaders would not announce new initiatives to cancel Third World debt.
Instead they would focus on fighting AIDS by setting up a $1 billion global health fund to tackle the pandemic which is causing havoc in many of the world's most indebted countries, particularly in Africa.
Protest groups dismissed the plan as a smokescreen. They accuse the West of failing to uphold past pledges to cancel debt payments that swamp developing countries' health spending.
ECONOMY ``NOT IN GOOD SHAPE''
Industrial powers are grappling with worries closer to home as the United States, Europe and Japan face economic slowdown.
``At present the world economy is not in a good shape. Each country will talk about what it is doing to bolster its economy,'' Japan's Koizumi told reporters.
A senior Canadian official said the leaders would ``compare notes'' on the world economy but were unlikely to come up with a coordinated approach to reignite growth.
``There is no need to look at gloomy scenarios and to have deep contingency plans here for recession. That's not the way we're going,'' he said.
The leaders, who will also confirm their commitment to a new trade round, are expected to acknowledge the global economic slowdown has been steeper than expected but to state that the fundamental picture remains healthy.
The Canadian official said the G7 would probably discuss the sensitive issue of exchange rates but were unlikely to criticize the strength of the dollar, blamed for hampering U.S. exports.
The diplomatic backdrop to the summit is gloomy, especially in the Middle East. Suspected Jewish militants shot and killed three Palestinians, including a baby boy, in the latest violence there.
President Bush vowed on the eve of the summit to stand up for his views on global warming and his controversial planned missile defense system, both of which have caused unease among his European partners.
-------- police / prisoners
Ukraine to Free 35, 000 Prisoners
New York Times
July 20, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Ukraine-Amnesty.html
KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- Ukraine's President Leonid Kuchma has decreed an amnesty for 35,000 prisoners, who will be freed by September, an official said Friday.
An amnesty bill was approved by the parliament on June 5 and Kuchma signed the decree Thursday, an official with the presidential administration said.
The amnesty does not cover repeat offenders, prisoners already granted amnesty in the previous 10 years, those convicted of premeditated murder or of crimes against the state, such as espionage or large-scale embezzlement of state funds.
Counting the current measure, Ukraine has declared at least 10 amnesties since gaining independence in 1991, with the number of those released each time standing at between 20,000 to more than 30,000.
Such steps are generally aimed at reducing the number of inmates in Ukraine's overcrowded prisons, which at any given time hold around 220,000 people including tens of thousands in pretrial detention or serving sentences of less than three years.
Early releases customarily affect women, juvenile inmates, elderly or disabled prisoners, World War II veterans, those suffering from tuberculosis and those convicted of petty crimes.
The prospect of a mass prisoner release has sparked fears among Ukrainians that it may worsen the spread of tuberculosis. The disease has spread widely in Ukrainian and Russian prisons because of poor conditions and overcrowding.
Although no figures for the number of tuberculosis cases in Ukrainian prisons were immediately available, health officials believe prison facilities to be a major contributor to the spread of the disease.
According to the latest Health Ministry data, 60 out of every 100,000 people in Ukraine have tuberculosis. In the United States, less than six people per 100,000 have it.
-------- spying
Ex - UNSCOM Inspector: FBI Probing Me
New York Times
July 20, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-UN-Ritter-Israel.html
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter says he has been under investigation by the FBI for more than three years for allegedly spying for Israel.
The FBI spokesman James Margolin said Friday that the bureau would not comment on Ritter's claims.
Ritter discussed the spying allegations at Wednesday's screening of his new documentary on the U.N. Special Commission, known as UNSCOM. The commission was created after the 1991 Gulf War to ensure the destruction of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
``I was withdrawn from Iraq in January 1998 at the behest of the Federal Bureau of Investigation which was calling me an Israeli spy,'' Ritter said. ``It is an investigation that is ongoing to this day.''
Ritter, who resigned from UNSCOM in August 1998 after seven years as a weapons inspector, said he did cooperate with Israel as part of his job, and with the knowledge of his bosses.
-------- activists
A Tense Silence Blankets Genoa
Italy Steps Up G-8 Security; Protesters Pledge Nonviolence
By Sarah Delaney
Special to The Washington Post
Friday, July 20, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21895-2001Jul19?language=printer
GENOA, Italy, July 19 -- One day before it plays host to protesters, journalists and eight of the most powerful men in the world, this usually bustling, noisy port city is but a spectral shadow of itself. Hectic traffic has been reduced to a trickle, constant shipping activity has come to a halt and the medieval heart of the city has been sealed off by 20-foot-high iron barriers.
Mindful of the violence that has marred recent gatherings of world leaders, Italian authorities have committed to a massive deployment of men and equipment to quell any trouble when President Bush and other leaders from the Group of Eight nations arrive Friday for a three-day summit.
The tension is palpable from the minute one enters the city. Missile launchers can be seen from the runways at the airport; police nervously await special trains and buses carrying thousands of protesters aligned with the anti-globalization movement; carabinieri police wait at street corners, ready to stop anyone who looks as if he does not belong.
In Genoa's port, four ships will provide a temporary home for journalists and delegates to the meeting, the organizers' solution to a shortage of hotel beds for the extraordinary number of law enforcement officers, protesters and journalists. The cheery lights on the ships give no hint of the precautions taken by scuba divers looking for explosives or other hazards.
Incidents in the past few days have increased the tension. Letter bombs have exploded in a Genoa police station and at a television station owned by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Police and media organizations have received several bomb threats, which proved to be false alarms. Giuseppe Pericu, the mayor of Genoa, received a letter containing two bullets and photos of the leaders of two anti-globalization groups.
Violence will be a real possibility Friday if protesters try to force their way into the "red zone," the heavily guarded area around the historic Palazzo Ducale, where the G-8 leaders will meet. But the Genoa Social Forum, the umbrella organization for the anti-globalization groups that have gathered here, insists the protests will be nonviolent. Today, as demonstrations began, things were relatively peaceful.
In a colorful parade supporting the rights of immigrants in Europe, 15,000 protesters wound through downtown streets carrying "No nations, no borders" signs and yelling, "The world is not for sale, throw the bankers in jail!" A potential confrontation with about 100 police in riot gear was defused when several demonstrators joined hands to separate the marchers and the officers.
The "anti-globals" have gathered in the Carlini soccer stadium, at campsites, in a city square near the port and at the headquarters of the Genoa Social Forum.
The aim of the Forum and other groups -- including the Tute Bianche, or White Overalls, which has come to symbolize the anti-globalization movement in Italy -- is to enter the red zone. Leaders are telling their groups to get past the barriers and the police by relentlessly pushing forward, but not to bring or use weapons. Vittorio Agnoletto, the leader of the Forum, said that if the demonstrators get close to the Palazzo Ducale, "we'll just wave and say ciao."
----
Greenpeace wraps "Statue of Liberty" in chains
AUSTRALIA: July 20, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11683
CANBERRA - Environmental group Greenpeace wrapped a "Statue of Liberty" in chains outside the US embassy in Australia yesterday in protest at potential 10-year jail terms faced by 15 anti-missile shield activists in Los Angeles.
The detained activists, who include two Australians, last weekend managed to delay the launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, part of a successful US anti-missile test.
American prosecutors have asked a Los Angeles court to deny bail to the activists, who face charges of conspiracy to trespass on military property.
Greenpeace Australia said the Canberra action, in which about a dozen people took part, was to condemn a "crackdown" in the United States against the right to stage a peaceful protest.
The Australian government is almost alone in the world in unambiguously backing the US proposal to develop a multi-billion-dollar system to defend itself and its allies from missile attack by "rogue" states.
The proposal has been criticised by nuclear powers Russia and China, and by some of Washington's European allies because they fear it might kick-start a new arms race.
Australian Greens senator Bob Brown on Wednesday urged the public to put pressure on both the United States and Australian governments to help the detained anti-missile shield campaigners.
The Australian activists had done "something for everyone who loves the idea of a nuclear-free future on this planet," Brown said.
----
G8 protests in Genoa start peacefully
ITALY: July 20, 2001
Story by Gideon Long
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11662
GENOA - Tens of thousands of protesters marched peacefully yesterday in the streets of Genoa as the heavily guarded Italian city braced for the start of a three-day Group of Eight summit threatened by violent demonstrations.
It was the first of three days of planned demonstrations coinciding with the annual meeting of G8 leaders, set to start on Friday.
The atmosphere was festive as the demonstrators, waving banners and shouting slogans, snaked their way through Genoa's streets, with eight police vans and a phalanx of officers with batons, gas masks and helmets leading the way.
Police said there were 50,000 protesters.
The march organisers agreed with authorities earlier in the week that the demonstration would skirt the high-security "red zone" protecting the heart of the city and G8 leaders, without entering the off-limits area.
Protesters filed past side streets where helmeted paramilitary Carabinieri police, some with automatic weapons and full-length riot shields, stood guard, but there were no skirmishes.
There was one tense moment when the marchers filed past the main police station on the edge of the "red zone". A group of anarchists threw bottles at police, but other demonstrators quickly intervened and deflated the tension by dancing in front of the police.
The demonstration was called to support immigrants but attracted a range of campaigners, from Kurdish activists to environmentalists.
WIDE RANGE OF GROUPS
"If big business and multinational companies can cross borders, so should refugees, asylum seekers and migrants," said Martin Empson, a member of the British Socialist Workers Party and Globalise Resistance, the group that organised the march.
Several dozen Kurdish activists stretched a banner across a street reading "Freedom for Ocalan, Peace in Kurdistan".
Rebel commander Abdullah Ocalan of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), fighting for self-rule in Turkey's southeast, was sentenced to death in 1999 and is in a Turkish prison.
Protest marches were also scheduled for Friday, the first day of the summit when most G8 leaders arrive in the ancient port city, and Saturday.
Several groups including the anti-globalisation organisation "Tute Bianche" (White Overalls) have said they will try to break into the "red zone", protected by concrete barriers, razor sharp wire mesh fencing and an estimated 20,000 police and soldiers.
But there was no violence during the first two hours of Thursday's march.
Immigrant groups from Africa and Latin America led the cortege, some carrying Colombian, Argentinian and Peruvian flags.
Protesters held up a large banner at the front saying in Italian, "Freedom of Movement, Freedom without Borders".
A brass band played music, and environmentalists held large green balloons that floated above the marchers.
At the back of the demonstration were about 150 anarchists dressed in black.
Authorities have said they expect most of the more than 700 groups which have gathered in Genoa to remain non-violent during the summit.
The leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States were scheduled to spend the whole summit in the "red zone", mostly at the Renaissance palace where they will meet and a luxury liner where most will sleep.
----
US EPA seeks public comment for new arsenic standard
USA: July 20, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11668
WASHINGTON - The US Environmental Protection Agency yesterday asked for public comment through Oct. 31 on a new arsenic-in-tap-water standard before it decides the issue early next year.
"EPA today is requesting public comment on the analyses it used in developing a standard published on January 22, and on up-to-date risk, costs and benefits data associated with a more protective potential standard of either 3, 5, 10 or 20 parts per billion," EPA said in a statement.
Arsenic standards became a hot political topic earlier this year when President George W. Bush's EPA in March delayed a rule issued by the Clinton White House to cut levels of cancer-causing arsenic in tap water from 50 parts per billion to 10 parts per billion.
Environmentalists jumped on the decision to delay the rule, calling it a move to placate the mining industry and its concerns about the costs of a new standard.
Bush's EPA said the delayed rulemaking was done in order to gather better science on the issue, and would not delay the actual implementation date under the Clinton rule of January, 2006. The EPA notes the new standard may be even lower than the one offered by the previous administration.
The EPA review is to be completed by Feb. 22, 2002.
Exposure to high levels of arsenic, a chemical element, has been linked to an increased risk of bladder, lung, skin, kidney and liver cancer.
Additionally, EPA said it was proceeding with independent studies on the arsenic issue before a final decision was made.
"This includes an update by the National Academy of Sciences on arsenic health effects and separate studies on costs and benefits," EPA said.
--------
What the Protesters in Genoa Want
New York Times
July 20, 2001
By MICHAEL HARDT and ANTONIO NEGRI
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/20/opinion/20HARDT.html?searchpv=nytToday
Genoa, that Renaissance city known for both openness and shrewd political sophistication, is in crisis this weekend. It should have thrown its gates wide for the celebration of this summit of the world's most powerful leaders. But instead Genoa has been transformed into a medieval fortress of barricades with high-tech controls. The ruling ideology about the present form of globalization is that there is no alternative. And strangely, this restricts both the rulers and the ruled.
Leaders of the Group of Eight have no choice but to attempt a show of political sophistication. They try to appear charitable and transparent in their goals. They promise to aid the world's poor and they genuflect to Pope John Paul II and his interests. But the real agenda is to renegotiate relations among the powerful, on issues such as the construction of missile defense systems.
The leaders, however, seem detached somehow from the transformations around them, as though they are following the stage directions from a dated play. We can see the photo already, though it has not yet been taken: President George W. Bush as an unlikely king, bolstered by lesser monarchs. This is not quite an image of the future. It resembles more an archival photo, pre-1914, of superannuated royal potentates.
Those demonstrating against the summit in Genoa, however, are not distracted by these old-fashioned symbols of power. They know that a fundamentally new global system is being formed. It can no longer be understood in terms of British, French, Russian or even American imperialism.
The many protests that have led up to Genoa were based on the recognition that no national power is in control of the present global order. Consequently protests must be directed at international and supranational organizations, such as the G-8, the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The movements are not anti-American, as they often appear, but aimed at a different, larger power structure.
If it is not national but supranational powers that rule today's globalization, however, we must recognize that this new order has no democratic institutional mechanisms for representation, as nation-states do: no elections, no public forum for debate.
The rulers are effectively blind and deaf to the ruled. The protesters take to the streets because this is the form of expression available to them. The lack of other venues and social mechanisms is not their creation.
Antiglobalization is not an adequate characterization of the protesters in Genoa (or Göteborg, Quebec, Prague, or Seattle). The globalization debate will remain hopelessly confused, in fact, unless we insist on qualifying the term globalization. The protesters are indeed united against the present form of capitalist globalization, but the vast majority of them are not against globalizing currents and forces as such; they are not isolationist, separatist or even nationalist.
The protests themselves have become global movements and one of their clearest objectives is for the democratization of globalizing processes. It should not be called an antiglobalization movement. It is pro-globalization, or rather an alternative globalization movement - one that seeks to eliminate inequalities between rich and poor and between the powerful and the powerless, and to expand the possibilities of self-determination.
If we understand one thing from the multitude of voices in Genoa this weekend, it should be that a different and better future is possible. When one recognizes the tremendous power of the international and supranational forces that support our present form of globalization, one could conclude that resistance is futile.
But those in the streets today are foolish enough to believe that alternatives are possible - that "inevitability" should not be the last word in politics. A new species of political activist has been born with a spirit that is reminiscent of the paradoxical idealism of the 1960's - the realistic course of action today is to demand what is seemingly impossible, that is, something new.
Protest movements are an integral part of a democratic society and, for this reason alone, we should all thank those in the streets in Genoa, whether we agree with them or not. Protest movements, however, do not provide a practical blueprint for how to solve problems, and we should not expect that of them. They seek rather to transform the public agenda by creating political desires for a better future. We see seeds of that future already in the sea of faces that stretches from the streets of Seattle to those of Genoa. One of the most remarkable characteristics of these movements is their diversity: trade unionists together with ecologists together with priests and communists. We are beginning to see emerge a multitude that is not defined by any single identity, but can discover commonality in its multiplicity.
These movements are what link Genoa this weekend most clearly to the openness - toward new kinds of exchange and new ideas - of its Renaissance past.
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri are the authors of "Empire.''
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Police and Protesters Clash as Economic Summit Opens
New York Times
July 20, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Summit-Rdp.html
GENOA, Italy (AP) -- Leaders of the world's largest industrial countries agreed Friday to create a new global fund to combat AIDS and said the right policies are in place to avert a worldwide recession.
The opening of the summit was marred by violent protests. Police reported that one demonstrator was killed.
As President Bush and the other summit leaders gathered for their talks in an historic palace, police used tear gas, water cannons and batons to battle the demonstrators, who tried to breach a security perimeter.
The dead person was not immediately identified and the circumstances surrounding his death were unclear. The body lay in a pool of blood, covered by a white sheet. Witnesses gave conflicting accounts with some saying the demonstrator had been shot.
At a late afternoon news conference, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi proudly announced creation of the new global health fund, with initial pledges of support of $1 billion from the United States and other wealthy donors.
In a joint economic statement, the leaders said that the tax cut pursued by Bush and aggressive interest rate reductions by the Federal Reserve had demonstrated that government policies were being ``actively employed'' to combat the year-long U.S. slowdown. The predicted the efforts should ``bolster growth'' in coming months.
``While the global economy has slowed more than expected over the past year, sound economic policies and fundamentals provide a solid foundation for stronger growth,'' the leaders said in their statement.
It was issued after several hours spent reviewing economic conditions in their respective countries and current trouble spots including Argentina and Turkey.
The group embraced the tax cut Bush pushed through Congress and the aggressive interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve. They said the actions set the stage for a rebound in economic growth.
``It was a good day of work,'' Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien said. ``We reviewed the economy of the world and yes, we are in a slowdown although everyone thinks there won't be a recession.''
The leaders also pledged to get personally involved in the effort to launch a new global trade round, hoping to recoup from the failed effort to launch the talks in Seattle in December 1999. They said that the new talks should be aimed at providing poor nations with better access to world markets.
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi received praise from the other leaders for his ambitious program to overhaul the Japanese economy, which has been mired in a decade-long economic slump.
The economic statement also endorsed various proposals being advanced by the Bush administration to reform the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank by refocusing the fund on preventing future economic crises and by installing more accountability in the Bank's effort to combat poverty.
But the leaders' statement did not specifically mention Bush's call to replace 50 percent of the World Bank's loans to poor nations with grants that don't have to be repaid.
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, who lobbied extensively for creation of the health fund, was present for the announcement of the fund's creation.
``For the first time, we are seeing the emergence of a response to this deadly disease that begins to match the scale of the epidemic itself,'' Annan said. But he added the $1 billion in initial pledges fell short of the $7 billion to $10 billion needed to adequately fund the effort.
Protests continued sporadically throughout the day. Summit leaders, while denouncing the tactics, carried on with their scheduled program. Bush criticized the protesters' ``isolationism and protectionism.''
Police said in addition to the one dead, at least 46 protesters and 31 police officers were hurt and 39 people arrested.
Before the summit opened, Bush said he would tell his partners that his massive tax cut and the Federal Reserve's aggressive easing of credit would be enough to lift the U.S. economy out of the doldrums and translate into higher world growth as long as other countries did their part.
``It really begins with each of our own countries making sure our economic houses are in order,'' Bush declared.
While efforts to stimulate economic growth in the rich nations and the plight of poor countries were the main topics, the leaders explored other items Friday on the sidelines of the meeting.
Koizumi told German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder that he was continuing efforts to persuade Bush to accept the Kyoto treaty to control greenhouse gases.
French President Jacques Chirac took a tougher stance.
``There is no alternative to the Kyoto protocol and to the efforts to reduce green house gas emissions,'' he told Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, according to French government officials.
Another hot topic the leaders will discuss is Bush's insistence on developing a missile defense shield that would abrogate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
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G8 Protester Is Killed in Italy
New York Times
July 20, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Summit-Protests.html
GENOA, Italy (AP) -- A protester was killed in a frenzied day of clashes Friday as demonstrators hurled firebombs and stones at riot police to disrupt a summit of the world's industrialized nations.
Police fired water cannons and tear gas to drive demonstrators back. At least 46 protesters and 31 police officers were hurt and 39 people arrested in clashes.
The dead person was not immediately identified by police, and the circumstances of the death were not clear. The body lay in a pool of blood, covered by a white sheet and surrounded by dozens of police who kept reporters at bay.
Witnesses gave conflicting accounts, some saying the person had been shot, others saying the death was the result of a beating by police.
One witness, Fabio Cardella, said demonstrators near one of the city's main train stations were throwing rocks at police vehicles when he saw a man suddenly drop to the pavement. A police vehicle then appeared to run the man over, he said.
Only blocks from the medieval palace where eight world leaders including President Bush were holding their opening session, demonstrators tried to breach a high steel-mesh security barricade. They hurled themselves against the double-layered fence, opening a narrow gap.
Inside the sealed-off ``red zone'' surrounding the summit sites, riot police scrambled to erect new barriers and positioned a bus to block an alleyway in case protesters were able to break through.
Near a railroad station in the city center -- and on the edge of the red zone -- another sustained clash broke out when police fired a barrage of tear gas and then charged into the ranks of protesters, batons swinging.
About two miles from the meeting sites, a group of self-described anarchists threw bottles and firebombs at a jail.
Other protesters hurled cobblestones at police, set fires, smashed windows and threw computers and other office equipment out of offices into the streets.
An Italian nurse and Associated Press Television News producer Sam Cole were among those clubbed by police, witnesses said. Associated Press photographer Jerome Delay sustained a fractured rib when he was hit from behind by a metal bar wielded by one of the demonstrators.
The violence involved small groups of protesters breaking away from tens of thousands involved in marches.
Thousands of protesters -- representing trade unions, environmental groups, farmers, anarchists and the unemployed -- have descended on Genoa because they are troubled by the direction that globalization is taking. Multinational corporations, they claim, are exploiting this new economy and need to be held in check.
Bush rejected the protesters' claims, saying that although protesters claim to represent the poor, they embrace policies that ``lock people into poverty and that is unacceptable to the United States.''
The clashes followed days of tension leading up to the summit, after the Italian government vowed to crack down on any violence by protesters opposed to the annual summit bringing together the leaders of the United States, Japan, Russia, Germany, France, Britain, Canada and Italy.
Protesters by the hundreds had streamed into Genoa at the last minute, but police said they couldn't immediately provide an updated count for the demonstrators.
Hours before the clashes erupted, protesters were stocking up on lemon juice to fight the effects of tear gas, while authorities lined up shipping containers to block thousands of demonstrators as this city. Some 20,000 police and soldiers braced for the showdown.
After spending the night under a drenching rain in a Genoa stadium, protesters warmed up in the morning to the energizing notes of the ``William Tell Overture,'' which was piped in on loudspeakers by organizers.
About 100,000 demonstrators were preparing to march toward the summit site, an organizer, Francesco Caruso, predicted as hundreds more streamed in to Genoa at the last minute, from Britain, Spain, Sweden, Greece and southern Italy.
One of the late arrivals, a 22-year-old Swede, Karl Eklund, was part of a group shouting ``revolution is the only solution.''
``We will go ahead and break into the red zone,'' Eklund said.
Caruso said the surprise appearance of the containers across a boulevard marchers had wanted to take toward the summit site further exasperated protesters.
``Setting up the containers has sharpened the confrontation,'' Caruso said.
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Live Ammo Kills Sri Lanka Protester
New York Times
July 20, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Sri-Lanka-Protest.html
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) -- Although police said they fired only rubber bullets to halt a massive pro-democracy protest in the streets of the capital, a senior medical investigator said Friday one of the two dead was killed by live ammunition.
The government posted soldiers with automatic weapons on the streets Thursday, backing police who blocked thousands of opposition-led demonstrators from marching into central Colombo to protest the suspension of Parliament.
Doctors at the two main hospitals said Thursday that 60 people were wounded by rubber bullets and batons, and that two protesters were killed, apparently from rubber bullet wounds.
On Friday, however, Judicial Medical Officer Dr. L. De Alwis said, ``One of the victims was shot through the neck and jaw and death was caused by an injury to the spine from live ammunition.
``He was killed by live bullets,'' said De Alwis, who is assigned by the Health Ministry to conducts autopsies when crimes are suspected. He said an autopsy on the second victim would be carried out later Friday.
Colombo's deputy inspector general of police, D. Ignatius, said the deaths were being investigated.
The main opposition United National Party had called the protest against President Chandrika Kumaratunga's suspension of Parliament on July 11.
Police and soldiers have wide powers of arrest in Sri Lanka, under laws aimed at curbing Tamil rebels who have been fighting since 1983 for a separate homeland in the north and east for the minority Tamils in the Indian Ocean island nation of 18.6 million people.
Using those emergency laws, police declared they would arrest anyone who tried to demonstrate in the capital.
Independent newspapers criticized the government and police on Friday. ``The severe retaliatory measures deployed by the government indicated that opposition toward the new moves were a serious challenge to the government,'' said The Island.
``It could well be that those in power are retaliating through fear,'' the paper said.
The state-run Daily News accused the protesters of inciting police retaliation.
``It is this destructive militancy which engulfed the city in chaos and brought tears and groans among citizenry,'' said the Daily News. ``Law enforcement officers were compelled to use force to bring the situation under control.''
Kumaratunga's 60 day-suspension of Parliament was valid under the constitution but has been severely criticized by other parties, human rights groups and political analysts.
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Anniversary of China Sect Crackdown
New York Times
July 20, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-China-Banned-Sect.html
BEIJING (AP) -- Police detained at least six people on Tiananmen Square in central Beijing on Friday, the second anniversary of the start of China's crackdown on the Falun Gong spiritual group.
It wasn't immediately clear whether those detained were Falun Gong members, but the square has been the site of repeated protests by the group, especially on key anniversaries.
Reporters saw one man chased, tackled and dragged into a police van. A man who was with him was wrestled to the ground and taken away.
In a different part of the square, police took away more people in a van. Bystanders there said they saw four people detained.
Officers were stationed throughout the square, which was packed mostly with tour groups and schoolchildren on field trips. Blue and white police vans moved through the crowd, honking loudly. Busloads of officers stood by.
Last year, police broke up scattered protests and rounded up more than 90 people on the square. Most had demonstrated in small groups, using small banners, by sitting in the lotus position or by raising their arms to form an O-shape over their heads -- a popular meditation pose for the sect.
Friday was the second anniversary of the arrests of 70 leaders of the group, which prompted protests by tens of thousands of followers in Beijing. It was followed two days later by a ban on the group, which the government labeled an ``evil cult.''
China's leaders worried that the group's size and organizational strength could challenge communist rule.
Falun Gong attracted millions of followers in the 1990s with its mix of slow-motion exercises, Eastern philosophies and the ideas of founder Li Hongzhi, a former government clerk. By some estimates, its followers at one point outnumbered the 64.5 million members of the Chinese Communist Party.
The group has since taken root in the United States, Australia, Singapore and South Korea. Taiwan is believed to have the biggest following outside China, with 100,000 adherents. Li lives in the United States.
Since the crackdown began, thousands of followers have been sent to labor camps, where officials say they are given counseling to persuade them to leave the group.
The government has accused the sect of cheating followers and causing thousands of deaths, mostly of practitioners who it maintains refused medical treatment in accordance with what it claims are the group's teachings. Officials claim followers have killed themselves in the belief they will go to heaven.
In a commentary published Friday the People's Daily, the main Communist Party newspaper, said the group ``lacked humanity.''
The newspaper and the official Xinhua News Agency said the death of a Falun Gong member in Sichuan province in the southwest showed the group's practices were harmful.
Liu Renfang, a 52-year-old farmer, had been suffering a long illness but refused to go to the hospital. When she died, fellow practitioners threw her body in a river to destroy evidence and protect the sect, the media said.
China's crackdown has drawn sharp criticism from human rights groups. They say detainees are denied sleep, sexually abused, beaten, shocked with electric batons and exposed to extreme cold by guards under pressure to make them renounce the group.
``During the past two years, the suppression hasn't stopped but has escalated and gotten worse,'' said Kan Hung-cheung, a Falun Gong spokesman in Hong Kong, where the group remains legal.
Followers in Hong Kong issued a plea Friday for an end to China's efforts to eradicate Falun Gong. About 160 adherents practiced their slow-motion exercises outside Hong Kong government offices, some wearing yellow T-shirts bearing the phrase, ``Help stop the killing in China.''
Falun Gong says at least 250 followers have died from police brutality since July 1999, more than half of them in the past six months. The Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy says it has confirmed 153 deaths in the crackdown.
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Greenpeace Protester 'Buzzes' Blair And Bush
New York Times
July 20, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-bush-br.html
AYLESBURY, England (Reuters) - A Greenpeace protester in a ''propeller-powered parachute'' on Friday buzzed the residence where British Prime Minister Tony Blair was meeting with President Bush, the group said.
A spokeswoman for the environmentalist group said the man, named as Simon Steele, was chased by two police helicopters before unfurling a banner reading ``Greenpeace outlaws Bush'' after breaching tight security to ``buzz'' Chequers, the prime minister's country residence.
Flying what Greenpeace described as a ``propeller-powered parachute,'' he broke a police no-fly zone and circled Chequers, in Buckinghamshire west of London, 10 times, the spokeswoman said.
``Greenpeace has condemned Bush as a criminal and want him to stay at home until he signs the Kyoto Protocol and gives up the Star Wars defense plans,'' she said.
The pilot was forced to land but was not arrested.
``We can confirm a paraglider -- a parachute with a propeller strapped to the rider -- did fly near Chequers,'' a Thames Valley Police spokesman said.
He said details would be sent to the Crown Prosecution Service and the man might face criminal charges for breaching the no-fly zone.
On Thursday Bush and Blair met to discuss the president's rejection of the 1997 Kyoto global warming treaty, to which Britain is committed, and U.S. plans for the ``Star Wars'' missile defense system, which could require the use of British bases.
Blair has said he is prepared to listen to Bush's plans although many European leaders, and some in Blair's Labour Party strongly oppose the proposals.
Earlier this month, about 100 Greenpeace protesters staged a two-day occupation at the Menwith radar base in northern England, demanding that Britain reject the missile scheme.
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Reporters Caught in Summit Clashes
New York Times
July 20, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Summit-Journalists-Injured.html
GENOA, Italy (AP) -- Journalists became targets of both police and protesters in clashes that erupted Friday during the summit of the world's industrialized nations. At least a half-dozen were injured.
One protester was killed during riots that occurred as demonstrators tried to break into the so-called ``red zone,'' a cordoned section intended to protect the summit leaders.
The violence involved small groups of protesters breaking away from tens of thousands involved in marches protesting globalization.
Associated Press Television News producer Sam Cole, a British citizen stationed in Rome, sustained a head wound when he was clubbed by police. Associated Press photographer Jerome Delay, based in Paris, fractured a rib when he was hit from behind by a demonstrator wielding a metal bar.
Also clubbed by police was a reporter for the Italian news agency AP.Biscom. The agency said the reporter, whose name they preferred not to disclose, had identified himself to police as a journalist and showed his summit press credentials.
Among others injured was Gamma Press agency's Timothy Fadek, who said police beat him after throwing him to the ground while he photographed protesters hurling tear gas canisters. Fadek was treated for bruises and contusions on his arms and back.
The secretary of the Italian Journalists Union, Paolo Serventi Longhi, expressed his solidarity with the injured journalists, some of whom he said were ``unjustly beaten'' by the police.
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