------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Congo Nurses an Old Nuclear Reactor
Powell: U.S. Set for N. Korea Talks
N. Korea Urged to Move Soon on Nuclear Commitments
Rice: U.S. Won't Wait for Russia
For the Record
Threat From Democrats on Missile Test Plans
A Missile Shield, Deconstructed
N. Korea Leader Begins Russia Trip
Negotiators Ready Arms Proposals for Bush and Putin
Turks Vow to Fight Nuclear Shipments Through Bosporus
Talk of U.S. Isolationism Increasing

MILITARY
US vet tip-off leads to mass grave in Quaûng Trò Province
Arms, fighters flow to Macedonia across Kosovo's porous border
Marines Assist in Macedonia Security
U.S. Rejects Biological Arms Ban Protocol
Orbital Fills Defense Program Position
Broader Role by U.S. Likely in Colombia
War's Legacy: Many in Guatemala Still Fear Army
Senate OKs Sanctions on Iran, Libya
Iraqi Missile Nearly Hits U.S. Spy Plane
Iraq Fires Missile at U.S. Spy Plane
Palestinians March for Hamas Slaying
Quest for Mideast Peace: How and Why It Failed
Military Budget Creates Rift in G.O.P.

OTHER
Early Success Seen With 2nd Type of Stem Cell
Stem Cells May Help in Brain Repair
Scholar From AU Is Freed By China
Administration Calls Halt to Gun Buybacks
Italy Under Fire for Police Behavior at G8
Sham FBI conference used as cover for party
Senate OKs Sanctions on Iran, Libya
Scholars Freed Before Powell Visit to Beijing
12-hour glitch on spy satellite causes intelligence gap

ACTIVISTS
A Decade Later, Abortion Foes Again Gather in Wichita
French Protesters Denounce 'Brutal' Italian Police


-------- NUCLEAR

-------- congo

Congo Nurses an Old Nuclear Reactor

New York Times
July 26, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Nuclear-Congo.html

KINSHASA, Congo (AP) -- A hand-held Geiger counter tapped out a steady beat as Patrick Kanyinda -- looking decidedly uneasy about having a visitor in his small, windowless workroom -- stood at the edge of a circular pool and pointed into the water.

Above him, fluorescent lights buzzed and flickered, casting a faded light onto moldy walls. Below, submerged in the brackish water, beneath a padlocked metal grate and splotches of floating scum, about two dozen metal rods were lined up in neat rows.

``It's safe,'' insisted Kanyinda, chief technician in this all-but-forgotten facility on the fringes of the University of Kinshasa.

The water, he explains, cools the rods; heavy locks keep burglars at bay; armed guards keep watch outside, just in case.

He paused, then added: ``But I wouldn't suggest staying here long.''

Few would disagree.

The rods, about 2 feet long and triangular, hold one of the most dangerous substances on the planet: uranium.

In a crumbling concrete building on the edge of one of the world's most dysfunctional cities, in a program that traces its roots to a Belgian priest and America's Cold War ``Atoms for Peace'' program, a few Congolese scientists nurse along Africa's oldest nuclear reactor.

In Congo -- a nation savaged by decades of inept, deeply corrupt rule, poverty and a long stream of wars -- the reactor is a point of pride, proof that, for all its problems, this Central African nation can also harness the atom.

But elsewhere, the reactor is a concern. The reasons are evident.

The reactor sits on an erosion-prone hill, the electricity gives out regularly and the decades-old control panel looks as if it was stolen from the set of a 1950s Buck Rogers movie. Gardens are sprouting out back, right next to a garbage pit.

The front entrance is marked only by a poster taped to the door advising: ``How to Recognize and Quickly Treat Accidental Radioactive Burns.''

And all this is in Kinshasa, a city famed for its sprawling slums, car-swallowing potholes and paucity of regular services, from fire departments to telephone wiring. The past decade has seen the city engulfed twice by military pillaging.

The facility's budget is confidential, but cannot be very large. The Congolese government is broke and ensnared, yet again, in war.

The reactor is small, capable of producing less than 1 percent of the energy of a nuclear power plant, and the uranium is not believed to be sufficiently refined for weapons manufacturing. But an accident could spray radioactivity across a good part of the university, or poison the water supply for much of the city.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. organization that monitors nuclear facilities, won't discuss specifics, but makes clear the Kinshasa facility is in trouble.

``It's in poor condition because of the economic conditions down there,'' said David Kyd, spokesman for the Vienna, Austria-based agency. ``It's not a high priority,'' for the Congolese government.

American officials have repeatedly tried to get the fuel, both used and unused, shipped to the United States for storage.

The scientists who run it, though, have no intention of stopping their work. They insist they are doing important peaceful research: creating nuclear isotopes and looking at atomic uses tied to agriculture and mining.

``This isn't just prestige,'' grumbled Felix Malu wa Kalenga, who has headed the facility for decades. ``It's real work.''

But he and his staff seem to view that work with a surreal combination of hyperbole and despair.

At one moment Malu celebrates Congo -- incorrectly -- as ``the very first to have a nuclear reactor,'' then switches to a grim lecture on the state of the facility's finances.

``Our means are very precarious,'' he said. ``We don't have the means -- zero!''

But later he concludes: ``We'll continue, despite the problems.''

The program took root in the late 1950s when Congo was a Belgian colony. Monsignor Luc Gillon, a Belgian priest and nuclear physicist based in Congo, devoted much of his energy to bringing a reactor here, according to Malu, his protege.

He succeeded just before Congo's 1960 independence. TRIGA-Mark I was built in 1959, but is now used to store the spent fuel. TRIGA-Mark II has been operational, on and off, since 1972.

While stories differ on the facility's history, both the reactors and the fuel apparently came from the United States, compliments of President Eisenhower's ``Atoms for Peace'' plan. That program traded U.S. help for peaceful atomic research for agreements not to develop nuclear weapons.

Although Congo's soil holds enormous uranium reserves, the country turned to the United States for the fuel in refined form.

These days, though, America wants the uranium back, and U.S. Department of Energy officials have been negotiating with the Congolese government for permission to remove the nuclear fuel.

The Congolese, though, have little interest in turning it over.

Fortunat Lumu, a nuclear chemist, hints that America might get back some of the fuel as long as it buys Congo another reactor.

If not, Lumu said there's enough fuel for another 10 to 15 years of Congolese atom-splitting.

``They can't take it,'' he said. ``It would be a loss for the country ... This program is known all over the world.''

-------- korea

Powell: U.S. Set for N. Korea Talks

New York Times
July 26, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Powell.html?searchpv=aponline

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) -- On his way to South Korea, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Thursday the United States is prepared to meet with leaders of North Korea ``any time and any place'' with any issues on the table.

Powell spoke after attending a conference of Asia-Pacific leaders, including North Korean Ambassador Ho Jong.

The secretary of state said the contact between the two was limited to an exchange of pleasantries during a dinner gathering Tuesday night.

Powell said he told the delegates in a speech that there should be no conditions for a U.S. dialogue with Pyongyang.

``Put all the issues on the table that you wish to and we'll talk about anything,'' Powell said he told the delegates, referring to North Korea.

``We're prepared to meet any time and any place; we're ready to go now.''

North Korea has not responded to an offer by President Bush in early June to resume talks begun by the previous administration. Bush wants to expand the focus beyond Pyongyang's missile program to include its large conventional force that is deployed near the border with South Korea.

The United States fought alongside South Korea during the Korean War of the 1950s. The United States continues to station about 37,000 troops on the border as a deterrent against the North.

Powell leaves here Friday morning for South Korea, where he will meet with President Kim Dae-jung.

After a somewhat bumpy start with South Korea, Powell said the relationship ``is knitted up, and we are moving together.'' He added that he will reaffirm his strong support for South Korean efforts to reconcile with the North.

North Korea's secretive leader, Kim Jong-Il, started a 10-day unannounced train journey across Russia on Thursday, heading for Moscow on the Trans-Siberian Railway.

That visit is seen as another step in a continuing effort to revitalize ties which had fallen sharply after the collapse of the Soviet Union a decade ago.

Russian officials have played down U.S. concerns that North Korea poses a potential nuclear threat -- worries cited by the United States in support of its plans to build a national missile defense, which Russia opposes.

On China, Powell said that country should change its legal system so that there is no repression of people who have done no wrong.

Powell said he's convinced there is a flaw in China's system based on the experiences of some U.S.-based scholars, whom he believes have been improperly detained, including two who were set free hours before he spoke.

The principal focus should not be on individual cases but on a system that ``occasionally might go after people that should not be gone after,'' he said.

``When we see circumstances and situations like that, we're going to talk about it,'' said Powell.

Powell's day Thursday began when he shared his thoughts with reporters about returning to Vietnam for the first time since he served two tours duty here during the war as an Army officer.

Shortly before landing Tuesday evening, Powell positioned himself in the cockpit of his official aircraft so he could have a panoramic view of the scene below.

``I kind of wanted to see ... the mountains north of the river, and just to see the paddies, the beautiful green, and then to hear the voice of the air traffic controller in the tower at Hanoi, greeting our pilot, giving him instructions, to hear that voice and the accent again brought back lots of memories,'' Powell said.

He also shared his impressions of modern day life in Vietnam. ``So much has changed, of course, but so much is the same -- the rice paddies, the houses I remember, the people, industrious, hard at work. There's always a twinge,'' he said.

--------

N. Korea Urged to Move Soon on Nuclear Commitments

New York Times
July 26, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-korea-u.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - North Korea must soon begin working with international inspectors to satisfy concerns about its past nuclear program or construction of two new energy reactors could be halted, a senior U.S. official said Thursday.

Charles Pritchard, special envoy for negotiations with North Korea, also expressed confidence that North Korea and South Korea will someday be reunited and said the North's extreme food shortages would continue for ``the foreseeable future.''

He spoke at a hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives International Relations subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific reviewing the Bush administration's policy toward North Korea.

North Korea is obligated under a 1994 pact with the United States to come into full compliance with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards before receiving the nuclear components for two power reactors a U.S.-led consortium is building in the country.

North Korea suffers from a devastated economy and a crumbling infrastructure that is unable to meet its needs, including in generating power.

From the U.S. view, ``the Agreed Framework (as the 1994 accord is called) is very clear and precise,'' Pritchard said.

``The North Koreans must come into full compliance with their NPT (Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty) obligations before any significant nuclear components and any additional construction can take place'' on the reactor project, he said.

``If that doesn't happen, there will be no additional construction. The light water reactor project will stop.''

Under the Agreed Framework, North Korea vowed to halt its nuclear program, which U.S. officials figured had already produced enough material for one or two nuclear weapons.

In return, Washington would supply Pyongyang with two light water nuclear power reactors, which experts say are harder to employ in the production of weapons-grade nuclear fuel, plus alternative energy supplies in the form of fuel oil.

The deal, worth $5 billion, is financed by a consortium including South Korea, Japan and the European Union.

TURNING POINT LOOMS

Pritchard said excavation at the reactor site begins this fall and the project will reach a ``major turning point'' next year when the first concrete is poured.

Up to now, ensuring the North maintained the freeze on its nuclear program demanded the most attention. But as the reactor project ``switches into high gear,'' North Korea's cooperation with the IAEA will become increasingly important, the envoy said.

``Although the date for delivering key nuclear components is still in the future, (North Korea) must begin active cooperation (with the IAEA) soon, to avoid serious delays'' in the project, Pritchard said.

Some congressmen expressed doubts about the IAEA, whose inspectors have been verifying North Korea's nuclear freeze since 1994, but Pritchard said the agency could ``do the job.''

Separate from the reactor project, the administration has urged Pyongyang to resume negotiations on missiles and other sensitive issues stalled since President Bush took office in January and ordered a review of U.S. policy.

The review was completed in June but so far Pyongyang has not responded to the U.S. call for broad talks, covering troop and arms deployments on the Korean border as well as missiles.

Echoing comments made earlier in Vietnam by Secretary of State Colin Powell, Pritchard rejected North Korean complaints that the Americans are trying to dictate the agenda.

Instead, Pritchard said the administration has ``set no preconditions ... (but is) willing to discuss all issues.''

He also renewed the U.S. vow that if North Korea ``takes serious steps to improve relations with the United States, we are prepared to expand our efforts to help the North Korean people, ease sanctions and take other political steps.''

The Clinton administration made a similar promise. Its efforts came close to a deal that would have frozen Pyongyang's missile program in exchange for aid and improved ties.

-------- missile defense

Rice: U.S. Won't Wait for Russia

The Associated Press
Thursday, July 26, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010726/aponline071950_000.htm

MOSCOW -- National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said Thursday that the United States will not wait for Russian agreement to deploy a planned national missile defense system.

Following a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Rice said Washington will go ahead with a test system for the proposed missile defense, which Russia opposes because it violates the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

Earlier this week, Putin and President Bush announced that talks on missile defense would be linked with talks on cutting strategic nuclear weapons. Some observors saw the development as an indication that Washington and the Kremlin were moving toward a resolution of the long-standing dispute on missile defense.

Rice stressed that talks should move along quickly - first on the expert level, then between ministers and then between Bush and Putin at their next planned meeting in October in Shanghai, China.

Russian security adviser Vladimir Rushailo, however, said the strategic discussions would be lengthy and would require legislative changes that would further slow the process.

Russia contends that abandoning the 1972 ABM treaty would destroy the foundations of global security and would lead to a new arms race.

Putin, who did not speak after the meeting on Thursday, said this week that despite the new linkage of talks, Russia and the United States still supported the fundamental principles of the ABM treaty.

----

For the Record

Thursday, July 26, 2001; Page A24
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52394-2001Jul25?language=printer

From testimony yesterday by William Schneider Jr., chairman of the Defense Science Board at the Defense Department, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:

The ABM Treaty was developed to regulate the strategic nuclear competition between the United States and the former Soviet Union in a bipolar policy environment of intense reciprocal animosity.

At the time, [there were many] technological, industrial and fiscal barriers in the development of long-range missiles. The shared nonproliferation interests of the major nuclear states imparted a powerful disincentive to the transfer of ballistic missile technology to other nations.

None of these conditions [exists] today. . . . Russia enjoys benign not hostile relations with the United States. The post-Cold War liberalization of commerce in advanced technology has resulted in the proliferation of the core enabling technologies associated with the development of the military applications of ballistic missiles. Indeed, nations counted among the poorest and most technologically backward on earth have developed or operate long-range ballistic missiles.

. . . Containing the proliferation of ballistic missiles is now out of reach using the diplomatic instruments of the Cold War. New instruments must be found.

Ballistic missiles can be found in the arsenals of many of the states with the most profoundly hostile relationship with the United States, including North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Libya.

--------

Threat From Democrats on Missile Test Plans

New York Times
July 26, 2001
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/26/politics/26MISS.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, July 25 - Congressional Democrats are threatening to block the Pentagon's plans to begin work next month on a new missile defense test site at Fort Greely, Alaska, contending that Congress never appropriated financing for such work.

"We are not aware of any military construction funding expressly enacted for the purpose of constructing five new test silos at Fort Greely," said Representatives John M. Spratt Jr. of South Carolina, Ike Skelton of Missouri and Norman Dicks of Washington in a letter sent to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld two weeks ago.

In a letter sent last Friday, Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who is chairwoman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction, asked Mr. Rumsfeld "to refrain from any further action" at Fort Greely until the dispute was resolved.

Lt. Col. Rick Lehner, a spokesman for the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization at the Pentagon, declined to comment, saying Pentagon lawyers were reviewing the letters.

If the Democrats stop the Pentagon from using money budgeted for 2001 on Fort Greely, the Bush administration could try to add the money to the Pentagon budget for the 2002 fiscal year, which begins on Oct. 1. But that would effectively postpone work until next spring, since the Alaskan construction season ends in September.

The Pentagon has said it plans to start preparatory work, mainly clearing trees, in mid-August for five missile silos at Fort Greely. It plans to award a $9 million contract for the work to an Alaskan company.

The site would be part of a larger Pacific "test bed" that would include new missile launchers on Kodiak Island and existing facilities at Kwajalein atoll in the Marshall Islands. Pentagon officials said the new sites would allow for more realistic testing of interceptors, computer systems and antimissile radars.

But the Pentagon has also said it may want to make the Fort Greely operation part of an emergency national missile defense system by 2004, if a crisis seems imminent.

While endorsing the idea of more sophisticated testing, Democrats have raised questions about the Fort Greely plan. Moving too swiftly toward deployment, they contend, could destabilize relations with Russia and China.

"If at all possible, we want to see deployment of missile defense made by mutual amendment to the ABM treaty," the House Democrats wrote, referring to the Antiballistic Missile Treaty signed with the Soviet Union in 1972.

"We do not believe that it will strengthen our security to pull out of the ABM treaty and rush unproven defenses to deployment," they wrote.

Mr. Spratt is the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, Mr. Skelton is the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee and Mr. Dicks sits on the subcommittee on military appropriations.

--------

A Missile Shield, Deconstructed

New York Times
July 26, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/26/opinion/L26MISS.html?searchpv=nytToday

To the Editor:
Re "MAD Isn't Crazy" (column, July 24):

Thomas L. Friedman has cogently deconstructed and exposed the Bush administration's incoherence on missile defense, but his defense of mutual assured destruction (MAD), or "classic deterrence," is a wasted project. Basing our country's security on the threat to incinerate millions of human beings - whether you call it MAD, deterrence or the balance of terror - is morally indefensible.

The only realistic, sustainable, affordable solution to the moral and security problems posed by nuclear weapons is their complete elimination. An effort in that direction, rather than a high-risk, elusive missile defense scheme, is incumbent on the world's sole superpower.

KEVIN MARTIN
Director, Project Abolition Goshen, Ind.,
July 24, 2001

To the Editor:

Thomas L. Friedman (column, July 24) argues against President Bush's missile defense plan, saying that any attack on the United States by any rogue leaders would result in "TAD - Their Assured Destruction." Yet I believe that the United States could not afford to retaliate with a nuclear attack.

The certain death of thousands of innocent civilians, millions of dollars of destruction, radiation pollution of both the attacker's land and neighboring countries, and the worldwide condemnation that would ensue limit any retaliation to conventional weapons.

Therefore, the best defense the United States has to prevent nuclear attack or blackmail is to build the missile defense shield now, to save a future president from having to face this impossible problem.

SCOTT PERL
Albuquerque, July 24, 2001

To the Editor:

Thomas L. Friedman (column, July 24) is right that deterrence worked against Saddam Hussein, that it continues to work, and that missile defense is an obsession rather than a national security tool.

Deterrence need not require mega-death nuclear attacks on cities. Threat of retaliation is most credible if it is nonnuclear and targeted on an enemy leadership rather than on a populace. This is the threat the first President Bush used most effectively in the gulf war. The second President Bush should not forget the key to his father's success.

ROBERT SHERMAN
Director, Strategic Security Project Federation of American Scientists
Washington, July 24, 2001

To the Editor:

Thomas L. Friedman (column, July 24) asserts that "any rogues firing a missile at us would end up with TAD - Their Assured Destruction" because of our ability to retaliate with nuclear weapons. He reasons that such rogues therefore won't be "crazy" enough to launch a missile at us in the first place.

But in case deterrence fails (after all, craziness is not unknown), wouldn't it be vastly better to be able to destroy the incoming missile, rather than an entire country, with all the horror that would entail?

STEPHEN A. OXMAN
New York, July 24, 2001
The writer was assistant secretary of state for European and Canadian affairs, 1993-94.

To the Editor:
Re "MAD Isn't Crazy," by Thomas L. Friedman (column, July 24):

President Bush isn't really concerned about our enemies being mad or crazy. He envisions a day where we don't have to worry about enemies, large or small, mad or crazy. In a world in which countries like India, Pakistan, North Korea, China and others have the potential to accidentally or purposely blow up the planet, I'm glad that the president is trying to safeguard our country.

RICHARD LEVY
New York, July 24, 2001

To the Editor:

Thomas L. Friedman (column, July 24) suggests that the proposed missile defense system fails the logic test and that its supporters have allowed their ideological commitments to trump rationality.

This is an interesting argument, but not as compelling as the simple notion that missile defense is just the most recent in a long history of welfare programs for the military-industrial complex. United States industrial policy has always masqueraded as military spending. Why should things be different in 2001?

JANICE E. THOMSON
Clinton, Wash., July 24, 2001
The writer is a retired political science professor, University of Washington.

-------- russia

N. Korea Leader Begins Russia Trip

By Anatoly Medetsky
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, July 26, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010726/aponline045529_000.htm

VLADIVOSTOK, Russia -- North Korea's secretive leader started a 10-day train journey across Russia on Thursday, heading for Moscow on the Trans-Siberian Railway on only his third foreign trip as leader of his impoverished and isolated country.

Kim Jong Il's train - he is rumored to be afraid to fly - arrived in Russia's Far East, crossing the border at the town of Khasan near the Pacific coast, and headed north through Russia's Primorye region.

Russia's NTV television showed Kim, wearing a dark gray leisure suit and standing in the sunlight by the dark green, 21-car train at the border. A woman from a Russian welcoming delegation handed him a bouquet of pink roses.

Preparations for the trip were surrounded by the secrecy characteristic of Kim's rule. His impending arrival was confirmed only the day before by a Russian customs official, while the Kremlin and Foreign Ministry said they had no information on any trip.

It was only the third known foreign visit by the 59-year-old Kim as leader of North Korea. Since taking power from his father, Kim Il Sung, who died in 1994, he has twice visited China. His trip there in May 2000 - also by train - remained secret until he returned home.

He also visited China in 1983 and accompanied his father to Indonesia in 1965.

Concerns over a possible coup during any trip abroad are often cited as a key reason behind Kim's reluctance to travel.

The ITAR-Tass news agency, without naming a source, said Kim was expected in Moscow on Aug. 4 - which would make a 10-day journey of some 5,800 miles across Siberia's vast forests and the European part of Russia.

Kim's train went north from the border through Ussuriisk. It was due in the city of Khabarovsk at 12:30 a.m. Friday. No public appearances by Kim were scheduled, Russian officials said. Many South Korean and Western experts believe Kim was born in Khabarovsk in 1942, although his official birthplace is in Korea.

Igor Kolomeitsev, head of the press section of the presidential representative's office in Khabarovsk, said that the movements of the train were under the control of the North Koreans.

"The movements of the train are kept under a certain secrecy, apparently out of security concerns," he said.

Kim was visiting places associated with his father's career, said Kolomeitsev. Kim Il Sung, an anti-Japanese guerrilla fighter in Manchuria in the 1930s, crossed into the Soviet Far East in the early stages of World War II and joined the Red Army.

"Sometimes the train will arrive at a hut and Kim will order, 'Stop, Kim Il Sung spent the night there. And the train will back up," Kolomeitsev said.

Kolomeitsev said Kim would also visit St. Petersburg. Kim was invited to visit Russia during Putin's high-profile trip to North Korea last year.

Putin has pushed to renew ties that frayed with the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union, which was a major ally of North Korea. Russia had left a defense agreement with the Communist North in 1995 and developed links with South Korea, whose economy dwarfs that of the North.

Putin has sought to serve as an intermediary between Kim and Western leaders and to encourage reconciliation between North and South, which fought a bitter 1950-53 war. Russian officials have played down U.S. concerns that North Korea poses a potential nuclear threat - worries cited by the United States in support of its plans to build a national missile defense, which Russia opposes.

Putin and Kim may discuss possible rail links between the Trans-Siberian and a proposed inter-Korean railway system. Russian officials have been lobbying for such a link, which would move potentially huge South Korean export traffic to Europe by train through Russia instead of by sea.

On his Trans-Siberian journey, Kim is following in the footsteps of Nobel Prize-winning Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who made the trip in 1994 as a way to get reconnected with Russia after decades in exile.

-------- treaties

Negotiators Ready Arms Proposals for Bush and Putin

New York Times
July 26, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-US.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- Setting a timetable for strategic arms talks, President Bush's national security adviser and her Russian counterpart on Thursday both said they wanted to move from confrontation to cooperation -- then refused to budge from their tough positions.

Washington will proceed with tests of a new missile defense system, Condoleezza Rice said, while Russia's Security Council head Vladimir Rushailo said Moscow will insist on long and laborious negotiations to try to salvage the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that forbids such systems.

``The new threats that we face ... won't wait and we've agreed to work very hard over the next several months,'' Rice said to reporters after she and Rushailo met with President Vladimir Putin.

She added that Bush and Putin would have proposals before them when they next meet, in Shanghai, China, in October.

Rushailo, however, said the process would be drawn out.

``This work calls for a long period of time .... I'd like to remind you of the words of President Putin that the national security of the Russian Federation should be maintained,'' cautioned Rushailo.

Russian officials say abandoning the ABM treaty would destroy the foundations of global security, leading to a new arms race. But Bush's administration contends the treaty has outlived its usefulness, preventing the United States from developing defenses against potential nuclear threats from such nations as Iran and North Korea.

``The treaty itself is an impediment,'' Rice said.

She said the U.S.-Russian discussions were no longer about whether the United States would move forward with its missile defense plans, but how. The U.S. Defense Department announced earlier this month that it would start construction of a testing site in April.

``Our testing program is designed to give us the most effective system, not to stay within the frame of the ABM treaty. That has not changed,'' she said.

However, because Moscow is a signatory to the ABM, ``we have to work out arrangements with the Russians if we want to move beyond the ABM treaty,'' Rice said.

Earlier this week, Putin and Bush unexpectedly announced that talks on missile defense would be linked with talks on cutting strategic nuclear weapons. Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Georgy Mamedov said that Putin had repeated his proposal to cut nuclear warheads on both sides to 1,500, but Rice said no specific numbers had been discussed.

Rice said she had also raised U.S. concern about press freedom in Russia and Moscow's use of ``heavy-handed tactics'' in Chechnya, which she said ``breeds extremism.''

-------- turkey

Turks Vow to Fight Nuclear Shipments Through Bosporus

New York Times
July 26, 2001
By DOUGLAS FRANTZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/26/international/26TURK.html?searchpv=nytToday

ISTANBUL, July 24 - For years, Turkish maritime authorities have complained about the danger from the rising number of huge oil tankers plying the congested Bosporus, which runs through Istanbul. The warnings took on new urgency this month with Russia's decision to add nuclear waste to the volatile mix of cargo in the narrow strait.

President Vladimir I. Putin of Russia approved bills allowing his country to import 20,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel for disposal in the coming decade. Russia hopes to earn $21 billion by accepting the spent fuel, much of which is likely to arrive by sea.

The Bosporus and the Dardanelles straits are the only link between Russia's Black Sea region and the world's oceans, but Turkish officials said they did not know of the plan until they read about it in newspapers.

"We have the intention of prohibiting the passage of vessels carrying nuclear waste," Fevzi Aytekin, Turkey's environment minister, said in an interview. "You cannot take such risks at any price."

Ramazan Mirzaoglu, the state minister for naval affairs, also insisted that Turkey would block the transportation of nuclear waste. "I call this Russia's dirty trade," he said in an interview.

"Russia sees it as legitimate and harmless that her own land would be used as a garbage dump. International public opinion should take a unified stand against this decision."

Despite the tough talk, the problem is that Turkey has almost no control over what passes through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles.

Under a 1936 treaty called the Montreux Convention, the straits are considered international waterways and Turkey is prohibited from restricting their use in peacetime. Turkish maritime authorities can check ships for sanitary conditions and safety, but cannot stop their passage.

In a few cases, Turkish authorities have blocked the passage of ships that they determined posed a danger to Istanbul, a city of 12 million whose Asian and European sides are divided by the 18-mile-long Bosporus.

For the last year, maritime officials have refused to allow a partly built, engineless Ukrainian aircraft carrier to enter the Bosporus from the Black Sea.

The 1,000-foot ship was bought by private investors who hope to turn it into a floating hotel and casino in Macao southeast of the Chinese mainland, but Turkish officials say it is too big to be towed safely through the strait.

Under the current law, however, Turkey cannot stop nuclear waste as long as it is stored properly and accompanied by the required paperwork.

The sections of the Montreux Convention that stop Turkey from prohibiting supertankers from using the strait apply to nuclear waste, said Erdener Birol, acting director of the Atomic Energy Institution of Turkey.

Russia's plans are incomplete, and it is not expected to start transporting waste for about three years. Turkish officials hope that the delay will give them time to push through new international laws to prohibit transferring nuclear waste by sea.

Mr. Aytekin said he would raise the issue this fall at a meeting of environmental ministers from Mediterranean countries. Other officials are pursuing different avenues to block the transfers.

-------- us nuc politics

Talk of U.S. Isolationism Increasing

New York Times
July 26, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-Europe-Rift.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- As the U.S.-European rift widens, from missile defense and nuclear testing to land mines and global warming, some European leaders and U.S. Democrats suggest President Bush is drawing America into a new era of isolationism.

The Bush administration calls it ``a la carte multinationalism'' -- joining allies when it suits U.S. interests.

``I think when the heat is off on those (issues), people will see that we do want to participate in the larger world community,'' Secretary of State Colin Powell said Thursday while traveling in Asia.

However, two trips to Europe by Bush have failed to ease concerns on the part of top allies that the president is charting a go-it-alone course in foreign policy.

``There is this occasional tendency toward unilateralism. There always was that. But it has now increased,'' said Karsten Voigt, coordinator for German-American relations in the German Foreign Ministry. Still, Voigt added, ``These things will sort themselves out.''

``There is no doubt about it, Bush has made the Europeans feel uneasy,'' said Menzies Campbell, foreign affairs spokesman for Britain's Liberal Democrat party.

After six months in office, the administration's differences with European allies are stark.

Most prominent among them: Bush's thumbing his nose at the Kyoto climate-change treaty, which has wide support throughout the rest of the world. A United Nations commission last week approved rules for implementing the pact, designed to combat global warming. The United States was the only holdout.

Bush's determination to proceed with a missile-defense shield continues to alarm European allies -- a concern only mildly eased by his agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin to link talks about such a system to arms cuts.

The system would violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty. Bush would like to see that pact ditched; Putin and many European leaders see it as a bedrock arms agreement.

And just Wednesday, the Bush administration abandoned talks on enforcing a 1972 treaty against germ warfare, further fueling criticism.

The administration also opposes treaties to ban land mines and nuclear-weapons tests, and one for an international criminal court. And it balked at a proposed 189-nation pact against small-arms trafficking, supporting only a watered-down version.

The trans-Atlantic relationship bristles with trade disputes, ranging from duties on bananas to tax rates. The U.S. death penalty, strongly supported by Bush, is scorned in Europe. And the hard-line American policy toward both Iran and Iraq has been dropped by all European allies save Britain.

European governments underestimated Bush's tenacity, suggests Petra Holtrup, senior researcher at the German Council of Foreign Relations in Berlin. ``This massive retreat on all multilateral issues (is) nothing new, but Bush is the one who is articulating it most directly,'' she said.

Richard Haass, the State Department's director of policy planning, argues that the administration is working alongside allies on many issues, including efforts to start a new round of World Trade Organization talks. But he said the United States would oppose measures deemed to work against its interests.

``What you're going to get from this administration is a la carte multilateralism,'' Haass said.

Criticism of Bush from abroad is echoed by congressional Democrats at home.

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle accused him of fostering isolationism. Administration officials were quick to jump on the South Dakota Democrat for criticizing the president while he was overseas. Bush himself fired back, ``We're not retreating within our border.''

Daschle apologized for his timing but stuck to the criticism, which he repeated this week, accusing Bush of a ``dictatorial approach'' in foreign relations.

Former Rep. Lee Hamilton, an Indiana Democrat who directs the Woodrow Wilson Center, a foreign policy think tank, said he does not believe Bush is an isolationist but ``I see strong elements of unilateralism.''

Defenders suggest that many of the treaties that Bush opposes could never be ratified by the U.S. Senate anyway. Some, in fact, appear deliberately designed to tweak or embarrass the United States, administration allies suggest.

Furthermore, many European countries, including France and Germany, have left-of-center governments at odds with Bush's conservatism.

Philippe Morau Defarges, an analyst at the French Institute for International Relations in Paris, said he expects Bush and his team to moderate over time. ``If they are negative about everything, they cannot expect cooperation from their allies,'' he said.

British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown advises against reading too much into frayed relations. The disputes, he says, should not ``obscure the scale of two-way trade and investment across the Atlantic that amounts to more than $2 billion every day.''

Associated Press reporters Robert Reid in Brussels, Belgium, and Tony Czuczka in Berlin contributed to this report.

-------- MILITARY

-------- asia

US vet tip-off leads to mass grave in Quaûng Trò Province

Vietnam News Agency
Wednesday, July 26, 2001
http://vietnamnews.vnagency.com.vn/2000-07/25/Stories/06.htm

QUAÛNG TRÒ - Working on a tip-off from an American veteran, soldiers in Quaûng Trò unearthed the remains of four Vietnamese soldiers on Monday morning, thought to be the first of hundreds buried in a mass grave during the American War.

The American, Jeff Steiner, was flown in by the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation (VVAF) to identify the 32-year old battlefield. The site was eventually found in Taân Xuaân Village near Highway 9, in a garden belonging to a local resident, Döông Coâng Chöùc.

Steiner told the VVAF that he fought in a great battle in the area on January 20, 1968, during the 1968 General Uprising Campaign of the southern liberation forces and people. More than 200 Vietnamese liberation fighters are thought to have been killed and then buried.

Due to the time which has elapsed, the bodies must be removed in layers, not one by one. The remains are then wrapped and placed temporarily in a storehouse built in Chöùc's garden.

The exhumation, started on July 19, is expected to last one month, and cover an area of 100sq.m. - VNS

-------- balkans

Arms, fighters flow to Macedonia across Kosovo's porous border

Agence France-Presse
Thursday July 26, 12:33 AM
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010725/1/19q1x.html

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, - Kosovo, the Serbian province under international administration since June 1999, is the main logistical and supply base for ethnic Albanian guerrillas fighting government forces in neighbouring Macedonia.

Although around 40,000 NATO-led peacekeeping troops and more than 4,000 police officers from the United Nations are in Kosovo, ethnic Albanians say they have little trouble sneaking across the border to supply rebels in Macedonia with arms and food.

"For us to pass the frontier is not a big problem," said one trafficker, who regularly slips past KFOR troops by negotiating a mountainous region between Kosovo and Macedonia.

NATO-led troops said on Wednesday they had arrested 15 suspected ethnic Albanian guerrillas entering southern Kosovo from Macedonia.

The guerrillas had illegally crossed the border from Macedonia with around 50 donkeys and were carrying 12 assault rifles, a rocket launcher and ammunition, KFOR commander Roy Brown said, adding that they were bound for Albania.

Another KFOR source said the group was on the return leg of a trip to supply arms to Macedonia.

But the arrests will have done little to stem the flow of arms to Macedonian fighters.

Although the troops regularly intercept donkey convoys and carry out arrests, they do little to stem the flow of arms, guerrilla sources said.

They cross the mountainous border south of Vitina in southern Kosovo and reach Kumanovo in Macedonia, while sometimes from the area around Prizren at altitudes of 2,700 metres by donkey, in lorries and by car to zones controlled by ethnic Albanian guerrillas holed up in northern, northwestern and western Macedonia.

A top official at the United Nations mission said Kosovo was also a refuge for ethnic Albanian rebels, hosting training camps for would-be fighters.

On Tuesday when visiting US troops in the KFOR force, US President George W. Bush said "Kosovo must not be a safe haven for people causing insurgency elsewhere."

Most of the arms used by rebels of the Macedonian National Liberation Army arrive from Kosovo.

Some come from the arms piles of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), officially demilitarised in September 1999 after the international community moved in after the end of NATO's 11-week bombing campaign of Serbia.

Although KFOR's official line is that they are giving priority to stopping help flowing across the Kosovo border, privately, a KFOR officer, who requested anomymity, told AFP recently the border was laxly controlled as the soldiers were often "more concerned about their safety than their mission."

As well as as logistics, a large number of guerrillas fighting in Macedonia are actually guerrillas who were war hardened during the 1998-99 conflict between ethnic Albanian guerrillas and Serbian forces in Kosovo during the bloody clampdown by former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic.

--------

Marines Assist in Macedonia Security

By Eun-Kyung Kim
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, July 26, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010726/aponline162035_000.htm

WASHINGTON -- American Marines are providing additional security to the U.S. Embassy in Macedonia against protesters who stoned the building after accusing Western mediators of siding with ethnic Albanian rebels.

The U.S. Marine Corps Fleet Anti-Terrorist Support Team arrived in the Macedonian capitol of Skopje on Wednesday night "to augment security there," State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said Thursday. He said the measure was "a fairly standard step."

The unit is a quick-reaction Marine force skilled in protecting and evacuating embassy personnel. They were sent in from a U.S. base in Italy.

Mobs of Macedonian protesters had stoned the U.S. Embassy on Tuesday evening. They also damaged the entrances to the British and German embassies.

After shutting down temporarily, "the embassy is open and operating," although some public services have been curtailed, Reeker said.

At the Pentagon, spokesman Rear Adm. Craig Quigley said the Marines were requested by the ambassador and sent to Camp Able Sentry, just outside Skopje.

U.S. forces on peacekeeping duty in Kosovo have been using the camp as a staging base.

"They are in place, awaiting developments," Quigley said.

The State Department earlier this week advised Americans against traveling to Macedonia and suggested to U.S. citizens already there to "review their personal security situations, exercise caution and, if appropriate, depart the country."

Reeker said some U.S. personnel have left voluntarily and others may follow.

The administration welcomed news of Albanian rebels pulling back from Tetovo, the second-largest city in Macedonia, and allowing peace talks between ethnic Albanian and Macedonian leaders to resume.

"We call on all sides to respect the cease-fire agreement they signed and exercise restraint, because there's no military solution to this," Reeker said. "We're very pleased to see just recently announcements that the political dialogue will continue."

U.S. envoy James Pardew remained in Skopje to help NATO and European Union officials mediate talks between the two sides, Reeker said.

"We've continued to urge the Macedonian government and all the party leaders, all the parties from all the various multi-ethnic parties in Macedonia, to seize this initiative for peace and to continue the dialogue and press forward with negotiations," he said.

-------- biological weapons

U.S. Rejects Biological Arms Ban Protocol

By Glenda Cooper
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 26, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50299-2001Jul25?language=printer

The Bush administration yesterday rejected a draft agreement designed to enforce an international ban on biological weapons, dismaying some allies who said the United States effectively was killing the pact after seven years of arduous negotiations.

The chief U.S. representative at the negotiations, Donald A. Mahley, told other delegates in Geneva that "no nation is more committed than the U.S. to combating the [biological weapons] threat." But he said the 210-page draft agreement on inspections and other enforcement mechanisms contained "serious, substantive" flaws that could lead to harassment of U.S. government laboratories and theft of industrial secrets.

"In our assessment, the draft protocol would put national security and confidential business information at risk," he said.

Almost all of the other 55 nations represented at the talks supported the protocol. European, Canadian and Japanese officials agreed that the draft was imperfect but argued that it was better than nothing and could be improved.

Some diplomats also described the U.S. rejection as the latest example of unilateral action by the Bush administration, following its opposition to the Kyoto agreement on global warming, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, proposals at the United Nations to curb international trade in small arms, and efforts to establish an international court for genocide and war crimes.

"The U.S. decision is totally regrettable," said Ken Echi Okada, first secretary at the Japanese Embassy in Washington. "In addition, the U.S. did not show better ideas which could be substituted. . . . We have fundamentally had to change the negotiation process because of this, which is extremely difficult."

The goal of the draft protocol is to put teeth into the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, a treaty banning the production, possession or use of germ warfare agents. Although it has been ratified by 143 countries, including the United States, the original treaty does not contain any provisions to prevent cheating.

Delegates had set a November deadline for completing the negotiations in Geneva, which began in January 1995. Diplomats said yesterday the U.S. decision throws that timetable into disarray.

"We continue to believe that this protocol, while not perfect, is still better than not having anything," a senior German official said here. "However, without the United States on board, this thing cannot go forward. It's doomed."

The German official added that intense lobbying by chemical and pharmaceutical companies had weakened the provisions in the draft protocol for inspections of plants suspected of producing biological weapons.

"Industry, the business community, always wants the least possible intrusive measures. They're not interested in bureaucrats coming to look over their plants," the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "One of the reasons that we did not get a stronger protocol is that business communities -- including the U.S. business community -- made sure that there is not a stronger mechanism."

At the State Department, spokesman Phillip Reeker denied that the decision was a reflection of a new unilateralism in U.S. foreign policy. "I reject that completely because we work bilaterally with individual countries and very much multilaterally through the United Nations," he said.

Reeker also said the United States was not dropping out of the negotiations on an enforcement protocol. "We'll continue to work very closely with the other members, signatories and parties to the bioweapons convention to discuss how we can take steps to strengthen that convention and work on issues like verification, and we'll continue moving ahead in that direction," he said.

Separately, another senior State Department official briefed reporters on the U.S. objections to the draft. He said a Bush administration review had identified 37 provisions that were "unacceptable," many of which had also drawn objections from the Clinton administration.

In general, he said, the problems fall into three categories: They could allow foreign governments to use inspections to harass U.S. government laboratories involved in developing vaccines and other research to defend against biological attacks; they could lead to the loss of industrial secrets from U.S. companies; and they could undermine U.S. regulations against the export of sensitive technology used in bioweapons.

Although the United States will seek better enforcement provisions, the senior official added, the current draft is "unfixable."

"Before you put a car on the track, you have to get the wreck off," he said.

None of the State Department officials gave any indication of when the United States might present alternative proposals. In the meantime, U.S. officials said, the administration would try to strengthen the World Health Organization's disease monitoring program, which exchanges information on biological issues, and would support the Australia Group, in which leading industrial countries coordinate controls on the sale of technology that could be used in weapons of mass destruction.

Elisa Harris, who was responsible for chemical, biological and missile proliferation issues in the Clinton administration's National Security Council, said the draft protocol would at least have begun to address the question of verification.

"By rejecting this treaty we are letting proliferators off the hook," she said. "We are giving them a free ride and sending an unmistakable signal about the U.S. commitment to enforcing and strengthening the Biological Weapons Convention. . . . And it's a very dangerous message to give out."

But Amy E. Smithson, an expert on chemical and biological weapons at the Henry L. Stimson Center here, called the protocol "the equivalent of a sieve that can't hold water."

"The Bush administration inherited this treaty," she added. "They didn't set the deadline or write the treaty. What we should be judging them on is six months, a year down the line -- have they come to the table with stronger alternatives?"

Foreign officials said that without the United States, which is home to an estimated 40 percent of the world's pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, the draft protocol was essentially dead.

"The Americans have made clear that they believe the benefits of the protocol as drafted would be outweighed by its costs," said a British spokesman. "That means we now have to focus on what alternative routes can be developed. We are ready to consider any constructive and negotiable proposals the United States put forward."

-------- business

Orbital Fills Defense Program Position

Thursday, July 26, 2001

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46412-2001Jul25?language=printer

Orbital Sciences Corp., of Dulles, has named Robert E. Lindberg senior vice president for defense programs, a new position that will coordinate the company's military space systems, missile defense systems, classified programs and defense-related technical services.

Lindberg has worked at Orbital, a manufacturer of satellites and related equipment, for more than 14 years. He has served in senior-level positions in program and operating-group management and in business development. Before joining Orbital, Lindberg worked for 10 years at the Naval Research Laboratory, where he led research in advanced space technologies.

-------- colombia

THE WORLD
Broader Role by U.S. Likely in Colombia

Los Angeles Times
July 26, 2001
By T. CHRISTIAN MILLER, TIMES STAFF WRITER
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-000060834jul26.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage

BOGOTA, Colombia -- The United States is planning to expand its training role in Colombia, instructing military units to fight drugs in parts of the country where leftist guerrillas are becoming increasingly involved in narcotics trafficking, the top U.S. official in the country said Wednesday.

So far, the U.S. has focused its training efforts on three special counter-narcotics battalions that operate in southern Colombia, the source of nearly half the cocaine sold in the United States.

But a plan under consideration by American Ambassador Anne W. Patterson calls for the U.S. to begin training additional Colombian army units to take down drug labs protected by leftist insurgents elsewhere in the war-torn nation. Under the plan, U.S. forces or private contractors would conduct the training, embassy officials said.

Patterson said she envisioned a modest training regime, working with perhaps one battalion at a time over the next several years. The plan would have the added benefit of helping reform the Colombian army, which has a long history of human rights abuses, she said.

"We can do a lot under the counter-narcotics rubric," Patterson said in extensive remarks to a group of reporters Wednesday at her heavily guarded residence in an upscale neighborhood of Bogota, the capital. "We think we can do a lot to professionalize the army."

News of the training plan comes just after several members of the U.S. House of Representatives expressed fears about deeper involvement in the Colombian conflict during debate on military, social and economic aid packages for Andean nations. The Senate will consider similar proposals today.

Opponents of current U.S. policy in Colombia said the plan would risk drawing Washington deeper into Colombia's messy, four-decade internal war.

"We're definitely getting further into this," said Adam Isacson, a Colombia expert with the Center for International Policy in Washington. "Not only would there be more battalions and trainers, but they would be in new, conflicted parts of the country."

Additional counter-narcotics troops could be used to help secure new coca-growing areas protected or controlled by the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, Colombia's largest rebel group, or by right-wing paramilitary forces, whose ranks have soared in recent years.

In addition to allowing police safe entry to wipe out the coca crops, the troops could have the additional effect of attacking a prime revenue source for both the guerrillas and the paramilitary fighters, who have become increasingly involved in the drug trade. Colombian police estimate that the guerrillas make more than $500 million a year taxing and trafficking in drugs.

"The urgent issue is to take the money [earned from drugs] out of the hands of the armed groups," Patterson said.

Part of the problem in Colombia is that military operations and recent aerial surveys have detected extensive and previously unknown fields of coca and opium poppies in rebel-held zones in the vast, mostly unpopulated eastern plains of Colombia.

With more coca in more guerrilla-held zones, more troops with narcotics training will be needed, embassy officials said.

"It's quite possible we've underestimated the coca in Colombia," Patterson said. "Everywhere we look there is more coca than we expected. There's just more out there than we thought."

Embassy officials said that the plan was only under consideration and that the money was still not in hand. Although funds are available from current State Department resources to support some aspects of the new training, money to bring in new Special Forces trainers and for other large training expenses would have to come from the Department of Defense budget now pending in Congress.

In the past, it has cost about $20 million to train a battalion, excluding costs for military hardware that may be needed, according to the Center for International Policy.

Still, embassy officials do not anticipate strong objection to the new training. In one form or another, the U.S. has been providing military instruction to troops in Colombia for decades; the training ranges from outboard motor repair to flying advanced helicopters.

"We don't think there is going to be a problem on the Hill with that. The U.S. Congress would be notified if that plan goes forward," Patterson said.

The exact scope of the plan is under consideration. One embassy military official recently told a visiting group of human rights workers that he envisioned the U.S. training one battalion in every Colombian army brigade, as well as supplying all of them with equipment.

Those battalions, the military official said, would be better able to protect Colombian infrastructure such as highways and oil pipelines, which are under constant attack by leftist groups.

"This is exactly the fear of mission creep that people have been having," said George Vickers, the executive director of the Washington Office on Latin America, who spoke to the embassy military official last week.

That fear was a focus of discussion on the floor of the House on Tuesday about whether the aid package was leading the U.S. into a quagmire similar to the Central American conflicts of the 1980s, when the U.S. trained troops to battle leftist guerrillas in places such as El Salvador.

In fact, the House explicitly voted down a White House request to lift strict caps on the number of U.S. citizens and military officials who can participate in operations in Colombia, citing mission creep as a concern.

Rep. John Conyers Jr., a Michigan Democrat who worked out a deal to keep a cap, said he worried that the embassy's new plan would lead the U.S. deeper into Colombia's civil conflict.

"These are the kinds of developments that make it clear that we have to monitor the activities between our government . . . and the rebels much more carefully," Conyers said in a telephone interview. "What it sounds like is that we may be in the process of erasing the line between the civil war, the rebel activity and the counter-narcotics initiative. It's not going to lead us in a good direction."

Patterson, however, stressed that U.S. training was devoted exclusively to fighting drugs, not rebels. The three counter-narcotics battalions, for instance, were instructed by Green Berets in how to seize a drug lab, avoid firing at the workers inside and secure the scene for processing by police.

"The political stomach for going into the counterinsurgency business is zero. It's not going to happen," Patterson said. "It's not an issue for debate. It wasn't under the Clinton administration, it's not under the Bush administration.

"When I do a briefing, I'm going to put up a sign: 'Colombia is not El Salvador,' " she joked.

-------- guatemala

War's Legacy: Many in Guatemala Still Fear Army

New York Times
July 26, 2001
By DAVID GONZALEZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/26/international/26GUAT.html

SANTA ANITA LAS CANOAS, Guatemala - The two soldiers, dressed in battle gear and carrying assault weapons, went to Eulogia López's house with assurances that they had come to guarantee peace and build latrines for the village school.

They invited her to a town meeting, but she declined. In October 1982, soldiers had asked her husband to a similar meeting. It was the last time she saw him alive - the army killed Mr. López and 11 other civilians.

"I was not in agreement with the army then, and I'm not in agreement with them now," Mrs. López said. "They used to ask people to go to meetings and kill them. They may come offering help now, but the killers return later."

The peace accords that ended 36 years of civil war in 1996 limited the army to protecting Guatemala's borders and sovereignty, but redefining the domestic role of the military has proved difficult. Soldiers have gone recently to nearby villages in this part of southwestern Guatemala distributing fertilizer. In other areas, troops have rebuilt roads or performed other public works.

In June, after 78 felons bribed their way out of the country's most secure prison, government officials suggested that the military take over the prison system.

In this region, which was decimated by massacres during the civil war, the increased visibility of the military has brought fear and uncertainty at a time when human rights groups continue to be threatened and harassed. Activists are worried by the untouchable defense budget, as well as the persistence of a presidential bodyguard unit that has been linked to political murders and domestic spying, and which was supposed to be disbanded.

While the military says it wants to improve its domestic image, many civilians fear that it is only trying to find a way to go unpunished for the past, given that a report issued after the accords were signed blamed the military for most of the war's 200,000 deaths.

A visit by several dozen troops to Santa Anita came in February, a few months before this village and several others filed a genocide lawsuit against former Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt and other high-ranking officials.

The lawsuit accused the former general and the other men of overseeing 11 massacres in which 1,250 were killed in the early 1980's. The soldiers' visit was seen by many here as simple intimidation.

"You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see how the villagers interpreted that visit," said Paul Seils, the legal director of the Legal Action Center for Human Rights, which prepared the genocide lawsuit. "Why so many of them? Why so fully armed? We can only arrive at an interpretation that says, `We are here and we know what you are doing.' "

Certainly, for Elena González Hernández, the sight of several dozen troops in battle gear arriving in the early morning revived the horror of the war. In 1982 she and her family fled their hillside home as the soldiers advanced, looking for the guerrillas they said were in hiding. She lost four of her brothers that year, as well as two friends who were thrown alive into a burning house.

"We were scared when they came again this year," she said. "What were they looking for now?"

Luis Valcárcel, an assistant to the mayor, said the soldiers had asked to check local maps. He said that while they said they had come to build latrines for the school, the community had to build them themselves, since the soldiers spent most of the three days in the region visiting other villages.

"They told us at a meeting they came not to do violence," he said. "They said they came to do civic work. We see their faces, but we do not know what is in their hearts."

Even those who were not yet born during the war, but were raised with stories about the conflict, recoiled at the visit. When a group of soldiers entered the school, one student ran off in fear and has yet to return, said Félix Julaj Morales, a teacher.

"Many of the children did not want to talk to them at first," he said. "Then they spoke with the children and said the army's function now was to guard the borders and protect the population. They gave out candy. They said they wanted to live in peace with the community."

The soldiers have not returned to the village, but they have been to nearby areas to distribute fertilizer. They have also kept up a more sustained program of civic works in Quiché Province, much to the dismay of human rights activists.

"They have begun anew their institutional participation," said Helen Mack, the head of a foundation that has brought legal action against high-ranking officers whom it accused of ordering the assassination of her sister Myrna in 1990. "They begin to identify leaders in meetings as part of their control of the population. Supposedly they come with good motives, but they have their own objectives."

Even if the military's motives are straightforward, the country has not gotten to the point where people believe them, said one diplomat who has been monitoring the fulfillment of the peace accords.

The military, the diplomat said, has not changed its world view, which considers domestic critics subversives, civilians incompetent and the peace accords a victory for the guerrillas. As a result, civilians in turn view civic works by the military with suspicion.

"The anti-subversive ideology which is still present in the armed forces has to be reviewed, so there exists a doctrine of civic action that is accepted," the diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The defense minister, Gen. Eduardo Arévalo Lacs, did not respond to several requests for an interview. Nor did Mr. Ríos Montt or representatives of his political party.

General Arévalo told human rights advocates at the time that the soldiers had gone to the area at the request of the local governor. He also said, according to the advocates, that the visit had only been to help residents who felt ignored by other government agencies.

The overarching problem, human rights activists said, is that the government has shown neither the willingness nor the ability to carry out the reforms from the peace accords or to bring to justice those officers who masterminded human rights abuses.

While the activists were heartened by the recent conviction of three military men for the bludgeoning death of Bishop Juan Gerardi, the author of a critical human rights report in 1998, many activists say they continue to suffer harassment: anonymous threats, lurking by suspicious people outside their offices and break-ins in which computer files are reviewed or stolen.

Only a few days after the three military men were convicted in early June, a visiting researcher from Amnesty International said unknown assailants had tried to abduct her as she was entering her hotel room. Interior Minister Byron Barrientos dismissed the allegation, suggesting that the international human rights group had fabricated the incident.

Against those events, the pending genocide lawsuit filed by the villagers of Santa Anita and the surrounding region, as well as a continuing investigation of other officers who may be linked to the bishop's murder, are seen as possible flash points for resistance from the military.

"What worries me is the continuing impunity of the people in the army," said Nery Rodenas, director of the Archbishop's Office for Human Rights. "There is a lack of convergence between their acts and the requirements of the peace accords. They are sticking to a vision of the past, in the sense of considering themselves lords over the people."

In Santa Anita, people like Mrs. López cling to other, heartbreaking images of the past.

"We don't want their help," she said of the soldiers. "We want justice. We will struggle to see where we get. If people continue to struggle, not just for one day, we will get justice. As long as I'm alive, I will look to that day."

-------- iran

Senate OKs Sanctions on Iran, Libya

New York Times
July 26, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/news/AP-Iran-Libya-Sanctions.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Congress is moving toward a five-year extension of sanctions on foreign companies that invest in Iran and Libya, countries accused by Republicans and Democrats alike as being deeply involved in world terrorism.

``It is vitally important for Congress to speak ... in support of maintaining a hard line against two of the world's most dangerous outlaw states,'' Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., a sponsor of the bill, said during debate Wednesday. ``They're worthy of America's most supreme outrage.''

Sen. Paul Sarbanes, D-Md., said Iran's support for terrorism continues unabated, and it is stepping up efforts to acquire nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

Libya, he noted, has fulfilled only one requirement of a U.N. Security Council resolution concerning the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people: it handed over two suspects for trial.

``Libya has not fulfilled the requirements to pay compensation to the families of the victims, to accept responsibility for the acts of its intelligence officers and to renounce fully international terrorism,'' Sarbanes said.

The current Iran and Libya Sanctions Act, made law in 1996, expires Aug. 5.

The Senate approved the measure by a 96-2 margin. Voting against the bill were Sens. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., and Richard Lugar, R-Ind. Absent were Sens. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, and George Voinovich, R-Ohio.

The House planned to consider its version of the bill as early as Thursday.

The Bush administration sought to limit the extension to two years to give it more flexibility in foreign policy. The White House budget office reiterated that preference Wednesday. ``Sanctions should be reviewed frequently to assess their effectiveness and continued suitability,'' an office statement said.

Sarbanes's response was that given the records of Iran and Libya, failure to extend sanctions for the full five years would be seen ``as a sign of a lack of resolve by the United States.''

Under the measure, the president has numerous sanctions he can impose on offending foreign companies. Among them are blocking the companies from exporting goods to the United States, selling to the U.S. government or obtaining more than $10 million a year in U.S. bank loans.

Both the Senate and House bills carry tougher sanctions on Libya. The existing law targets foreign companies that invest more than $40 million a year in Libya's energy production. That would be reduced to a more stringent $20 million, the same as the limit on investment in Iran.

``Extending sanctions by an additional five years will ensure that Iran and Libya will not be able to bankroll their terrorist activities and weapons of mass destruction programs with oil profits,'' said Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., a co-sponsor of the House bill.

Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, endorsed continuing sanctions for Iran despite some promising signs there. ``It's up to Iran and its people as to what course they're going to follow,'' Gramm said, ``whether they're going to be one of the responsible countries of the world or if they're going to support terrorism.''

Many U.S. allies with companies that do energy business oppose the sanctions, and no company has faced sanctions since the law took effect in 1996. Yet Sarbanes and Lantos contended the law had been effective, saying even the Iranians admit seeing a reduction of international oil investment.

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Iraqi Missile Nearly Hits U.S. Spy Plane

Reuters
Thursday, July 26, 2001; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52462-2001Jul25?language=printer

The Iraqi military came close to hitting a high-altitude U.S. U-2 spy plane with a missile this week, a senior U.S. defense official said yesterday.

The official said the Russian-made anti-aircraft missile just missed the plane in a "no-fly zone" over southern Iraq on Tuesday.

"It was close to the aircraft," the official said, confirming a CBS News report that the Iraqis had improved their ability to strike at the unarmed surveillance aircraft, which take photographs and obtain other intelligence from an altitude of more than 70,000 feet.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has recently warned that U.S. and British pilots patrolling no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq faced increasing danger from Iraq's defenses.

The official said the U-2 was almost hit despite the fact that the U.S. military believed the missile was "unguided" -- fired without the benefit of targeting radars.

CBS News reported that the U-2 pilot suddenly saw the missile streaking toward him before it exploded behind and below him.

The explosion was close enough for the pilot to feel the shock waves but no damage was caused to the aircraft, the report said.

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Iraq Fires Missile at U.S. Spy Plane

New York Times
July 26, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-U2.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON -- By firing a surface-to-air missile at an American U-2 spy plane over southern Iraq, President Saddam Hussein's government has signaled a significant change in its targeting strategy against patrolling U.S. and British planes, officials said.

The high-flying U.S. plane was not hit, but the missile flew so close Wednesday that the plane's pilot felt the reverberations from the explosion.

The intelligence plane was flying as part of Operation Southern Watch, a joint U.S. and British operation patrolling ``no-fly'' zones over Iraq, Pentagon spokesman Lt. David Gai said.

The operation, in place since the Gulf War ended in 1991, is designed to protect Kurdish and Shiite groups from government forces. Iraq disputes the legitimacy of the flight-interdiction operations and regularly contests U.S. and British patrols by firing missiles and artillery guns.

Less than a week ago, the crew of a Navy E2-C surveillance aircraft flying in Kuwaiti airspace reported seeing the plume of a surface-to-air missile fired from inside Iraq. That plane also was not hit in what has become almost a daily -- and potentially deadly -- game of cat-and-mouse between the two sides.

U.S. officials are interpreting the new attacks on U.S. surveillance aircraft as a significant shift in Iraq's tactics. Rather than take aim at patrolling warplanes, officials say the Iraqis are choosing now to go after the slower-moving monitoring craft. The high-performance fighter jets have continually evaded Iraqi missiles since the flight-interdiction operation began in 1991 after the Persian Gulf War.

``This is something new, because, in the past, all the attacks have been against fighter aircraft,'' an Air Force official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

He said the twin attacks on surveillance plans within six days mark a significant shift in strategy.

The U-2 operates at an altitude of more than 70,000 feet, beyond the range of most surface-to-air missiles. CBS News, which first reported the incident, said U.S. officials believe the Iraqis have modified some of their missiles, adding extra fuel to extend their range.

In Wednesday's incident, the pilot of the Air Force U-2 saw an anti-aircraft missile streak toward him before it exploded nearby. The explosion was close enough for the pilot to feel the shock wave but not to damage the plane, the Air Force official said.

Although he said the pilot felt ``some concussion,'' he said the airman was asked to rank on a scale of one to 10 -- with 10 being most likely -- whether he thought the missile could have hit him. The pilot answered: ``One.''

Over the past three years, Iraq has occasionally claimed to have hit a U.S. or British plane, but no downing has been confirmed.

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 the frequent attacks on the U.S. and British patrols.

-------- israel

Palestinians March for Hamas Slaying

By Laurie Copans
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, July 26, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010726/aponline094944_000.htm

JERUSALEM -- Several thousand Palestinians, chanting and warning that more suicide bombers were ready to strike, marched through the West Bank town of Nablus on Thursday in a funeral procession for a senior member of the radical Hamas movement killed a day earlier by Israel.

Masked Hamas men carried the coffin of Saleh Darwazeh along the crowded streets, while about 20 militants fired guns into the air. The supporters of Hamas, which has carried out numerous suicide bombings in the current conflict, said many more attackers could be called upon.

"There are hundreds more, there are a million," the crowd chanted, in reference to the bombers.

Israeli troops at a hilltop base killed Darwazeh on Wednesday with several ground-to-ground missiles that slammed into his red Volkswagen as he drove through Nablus.

Israel said Darwazeh was involved in several recent attacks that killed eight Israelis and wounded more than 100. Darwazeh was also preparing another large bombing, the army said.

Meanwhile, an Israeli-Palestinian security meeting, mediated by the United States and aimed at easing the current tensions, broke down after only 90 minutes and failed to produce any breakthroughs.

Israeli army spokesman Yarden Vatikay said the security coordination meeting was "not good" and was filled with recriminations.

The Palestinians said they presented the Americans a list of 50 suspected Jewish extremists they want arrested by Israel. But Israel said it did not receive the list. Israel has given the Palestinians a list of dozens of Palestinians suspected of involvement in attacks, and demands that the Palestinians arrest them.

Palestinian intelligence chief Amin al-Hindi said he did not see the point in continuing the regular talks as long as Israel continues its "policy of assassinations."

But Sharon said the meetings were important and should continue. "More than once, incidents and flare-ups have been brought to an end as a result of these meetings," he told Israel radio.

The Americans organized the meetings in an effort to work out some semblance of calm in the Middle East, where more than 500 Palestinians and 100 Israelis have been killed in the 10 months of bloodshed.

The two sides declared a cease-fire last month, but it has proved ineffectual.

The United States and other countries have criticized Israel's policy of attacking suspected Palestinian militants, like the one carried out Wednesday in Nablus.

But Israel insists the strikes are necessary to prevent further Palestinian attacks, saying that the Palestinian Authority has refused to rein in militants.

In most cases, Israel says it hit the person targeted. But in several instances, bystanders have also been killed, according to the Palestinians. About 40 Palestinians have been killed in such attacks since the violence erupted last September, the Palestinians say.

Late Wednesday, Israeli soldiers destroyed a Palestinian police post across from the Jewish settlement of Morag in Gaza after Palestinians opened fire, wounding a soldier and a settler. About 40 settlers were demonstrating against Palestinian gunfire attacks when the clash erupted.

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Quest for Mideast Peace: How and Why It Failed

New York Times
July 26, 2001
By DEBORAH SONTAG
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/26/international/26MIDE.html?pagewanted=all

JERUSALEM -- Days before the Palestinian uprising erupted in September, Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Yasir Arafat held an unusually congenial dinner meeting in the Israeli's private home in Kochav Yair.

At one point, Mr. Barak even called President Clinton and, two months after the Camp David peace talks had failed, proclaimed that he and Mr. Arafat would be come the ultimate Israeli-Palestinian peace partners. Within earshot of the Palestinian leader, according to an Israeli participant, Mr. Barak theatrically announced, "I'm going to be the partner of this man even more so than Rabin was," referring to Yitzhak Rabin, the late Israeli prime minister.

It was a moment that seems incredible in retrospect, now that Mr. Barak talks of having revealed "Arafat's true face" and Ariel Sharon, the present prime minister, routinely describes the Palestinian leader as a terrorist overlord.

But during the largely ineffectual cease-fire effort now under way in the Middle East, peace advocates, academics and diplomats have begun excavating such moments to see what can be learned from the diplomacy right before and after the outbreak of violence. Their premise is that any renewal of peace talks, however remote that seems right now, would have to use the Barak-Clinton era as a point of departure or as an object lesson or both.

In the tumble of the all-consuming violence, much has not been revealed or examined. Rather, a potent, simplistic narrative has taken hold in Israel and to some extent in the United States. It says: Mr. Barak offered Mr. Arafat the moon at Camp David last summer. Mr. Arafat turned it down, and then "pushed the button" and chose the path of violence. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is insoluble, at least for the forseeable future.

But many diplomats and officials believe that the dynamic was far more complex and that Mr. Arafat does not bear sole responsibility for the breakdown of the peace effort.

There were missteps and successes by Israelis, Palestinians and Americans alike over more than seven years of peace talks between the 1993 Oslo interim agreement and the last negotiating sessions in Taba, Egypt, in January.

Mr. Barak did not offer Mr. Arafat the moon at Camp David. He broke Israeli taboos against any discussion of dividing Jerusalem, and he sketched out an offer that was politically courageous, especially for an Israeli leader with a faltering coalition. But it was a proposal that the Palestinians did not believe would leave them with a viable state. And although Mr. Barak said no Israeli leader could go further, he himself improved considerably on his Camp David proposal six months later.

"It is a terrible myth that Arafat and only Arafat caused this catastrophic failure," Terje Roed-Lar sen, the United Nations special envoy here, said in an interview. "All three parties made mistakes, and in such complex negotiations, everyone is bound to. But no one is solely to blame."

Mr. Arafat is widely blamed for his stubborn refusal to acknowledge publicly any evolution in the Israeli position, and later to seize quickly the potential contained in the 11th-hour peace pacakge that Mr. Clinton issued in late December.

Mr. Arafat did eventually authorize his negotiators to engage in talks in Taba that used the Clinton proposal as a foundation. Despite reports to the contrary in Israel, however, Mr. Arafat never turned down "97 percent of the West Bank" at Taba, as many Israelis hold. The negotiations were suspended by Israel because elections were imminent and "the pressure of Israeli public opinion against the talks could not be resisted," said Shlomo Ben-Ami, who was Israel's foreign minister at the time.

Still, the details of a permanent peace agreement were as clear at Taba as they ever have been, most participants said. So afterward, United Nations and European diplomats scrambled to convene a summit meeting in Stockholm. There, they believed, Mr. Arafat who is known to make deci sions only under extreme deadline pressure was prepared to deliver a breakthrough concession on the central issue of the fate of Palestinian refugees, and a compromise was possible on Jerusalem.

For a variety of reasons, the summit meeting never took place. In the Israeli elections in February, Mr. Barak lost re soundingly to Mr. Sharon. It was then that peace moves froze ?not six months earlier at Camp David.

After Camp David: Much Went On Behind the Scenes

Key Israeli and Palestinian negotiators, as well as several American and European diplomats keenly involved in the peace talks of the Clinton-Barak era, were interviewed for this article. Mr. Arafat also gave an interview. Mr. Barak did not; Gadi Baltiansky, his former spokesman, said the former prime minister, who has kept a low profile since his defeat, was unwilling to talk.

Few Israelis, Palestinians or Americans realize how much diplomatic activity continued after the Camp David meeting appeared to produce nothing. Building on what turned out to be a useful base, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators conducted more than 50 negotiating sessions in August and September, most of them clandestine, and most at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.

There were also some field trips to examine the practicality of ways to divide Jerusalem ?some so complicated that Nabil Shaath, a senior Palestinian official, joked about fitting residents' shoes with global positioning devices that would light up in different colors to alert them as to whose territory they were in.

One day, Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian negotiator, accompanied a high-ranking Israeli security official on what was to be a quiet visit to the City of David area outside the Old City walls, where some Jewish families have established homes in the Palestinian residential neighborhood of Silwan.

The Israeli official gave Mr. Erekat an Israeli paint company cap, and the burly Palestinian negotiator removed his eyeglasses and dressed uncharacteristically in casual clothes. He thought himself incognito, he said, but a young Palestinian boy on a bicycle peered in the window of the Israeli secret service car and said loudly, "Hi, Dr. Saeb!"

During August and September, Mr. Erekat and Gilad Sher, a senior Israeli negotiator, drafted two chapters of a permanent peace accord that were kept secret from everyone but the leaders even from other negotiators, Mr. Erekat said.

At the same time, American mediators were pulling together Mr. Clinton's permanent peace proposal. It appeared in December, but Martin Indyk, the former American ambassador to Israel, disclosed recently that they were already prepared to put it before the parties in August or September.

All this behind-the-scenes movement was reflected in the atmosphere at that dinner party at Mr. Barak's home. The prime minister, who had refused to talk directly to the Palestinian leader at Camp David, now courted him. Mr. Ben-Ami, then foreign min ister, said he left the dinner and told his wife that Mr. Barak whom he describes as "deaf to cultural nuance" was so intent on forging a peace agreement that he was willing to change "not only his policies but his personality."

But Palestinians drove away from that dinner with something else on their minds Mr. Sharon's coming visit to what Muslims call the Noble Sanctuary and Jews know as the Temple Mount. Mr. Arafat said in an interview that he huddled on the balcony with Mr. Barak and implored him to block Mr. Sharon's plans. But Mr. Barak's government perceived the planned visit by Mr. Sharon, then the opposition leader, as solely an internal Israeli political matter, specifically as an attempt to divert attention from the expected return to political life by a right-wing rival Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister.

On the heels of very intricate grappling at Camp David over the future status of the Old City's holy sites, Mr. Sharon's heavily guarded visit to the plaza outside Al Aksa Mosque to demonstrate Jewish sovereignty over the Temple Mount set off angry Palestinian demonstrations. The Israelis used lethal force to put them down. The cycle of violence started, escalated, mutated and built to a peak between mid-May and June 1 with the Israeli use of F-16 fighter jets in Nablus and the terrorist bombing outside a Tel Aviv disco.

In June and early July, a flimsy, American-brokered cease-fire rekindled talk by diplomats of what they said remained their goal: to push the parties back toward "final status" talks. But all acknowledged that the distance between what was achievable at the negotiating table and what would be palatable to the Israeli and Palestinian publics had become greater with every passing month of violence.

Some Israelis and Palestinians, in fact, believe that the clock has been set back decades and question the very two-state solution that was the goal of the Oslo accords.

Many Israelis now believe that Mr. Arafat has been completely discredited as a "peace partner" and that there is no point in negotiating more agreements with him. They believe that he deliberately resorted to violence to put pressure on Israel to give him what he could not obtain at Camp David. And an increasing number believe that he once more has his sights fixed on destroying Israel.

At the same time, many Palestinians have been led to believe the worst of the Israelis. Many fear that the inclusion of far-right parties in Mr. Sharon's coalition government signals a new respectability in Israel for the extremist belief that Palestinians should be "transferred" to neighboring Arab lands. In the last 10 months, their frustration has turned to despair, anger and, in some cases, suicidal and homicidal vengefulness.

The bloom is off the rose for the "peace camps" on both sides as well. "The Woodstock-like idea of peace ?did you hug your Palestinian today is over," said Avra ham Burg, the speaker of the Israeli Parlia ment who is the front-runner to become Labor Party leader in September.

Similarly, Mr. Erekat, the Palestinian ne gotiator, said: "The rosy peace is out. I just want my state and to be done with them."

Yet relatively few Israelis, Palestinians or outside observers believe that there can be a military solution to their conflict or that a solution can be imposed. Thus the two sides will eventually have to return somehow to some kind of talks.

"For us living here, we have no alternative in the long run to a permanent status agreement," said Mr. Sher, the Israeli negotiator. "On the horizon, we will become a minority on the West Bank of the Jordan River. And if we don't have recognizable and coherent borders, we will live through a much worse period than we are living through now."

Progress by Inches: Peace Effort Meets Rising Disaffection

In the Oslo accords signed in 1993, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization agreed to recognize each other's legitimacy and to enter a transitional period during which a permanent peace was to be negotiat ed as Israel gradually transferred land in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to a new self-governing Palestinian Authority.

In actuality, the "peace process" involved considerably more process than peace. Still, American mediators believed that it was probably irreversible and would eventually achieve its goal of two neighboring states. The mediators devoted themselves to inch ing the effort forward as the region withstood assassinations, terrorist attacks and count less political crises.

The inching, which produced several inter im agreements, went on for more than seven years, however, and always the big final-status issues the fate of Jerusalem, of Palestinian refugees and of Jewish settle ments and the future borders were de ferred. Mr. Shaath, the de facto Palestinian foreign minister, said: "The lingo during all those years was 2 percent territory here and 3 percent there. Release 20 prisoners today and 30 prisoners next week. Open this dirt road. It was bits and pieces. This did not create any deep understanding between the parties on the big issues."

Many Israelis were not in much of a hurry to get to the endgame. They simply wanted the terrorism to stop. Right-wing Israeli poli ticians complained that the Palestinian leadership was not educating its people for peace, not collecting illegal weapons and not acting to reduce incitement against Israel. But many Israelis chose to focus instead on the relative quiet that they eventually came to enjoy as a result of the Israeli-Palestinian security relationship.

The Palestinians, however, while they began the process of building a state, lost faith as land transfers were routinely delayed and as they watched the West Bank and Gaza sliced up by Israeli bypass roads and expan sion of Jewish settlements. The settler population increased by 80,000 between 1992 and 2001. The expected economic dividends of the peace path did not materialize; the Palestinian standard of living dropped by 20 percent. The Palestinian Authority proved increasingly corrupt. And Mr. Arafat kept setting and postponing dates for declaring Palestinian independence, most recently last Sept. 13.

This created a growing disaffection with the peace effort that was largely ignored by the Israeli and American negotiators. The Palestinian opposition ?the Islamic militants who considered the negotiations to be a sellout and others frustrated by the corrup tion of the Palestinian leadership gained adherents who were more than ready to return to the streets when the peace effort broke down.

Looking backward, Dennis B. Ross, the long-serving American mediator, told The Jerusalem Post recently that "one of the lessons I've learned is that you can't have one environment at the negotiating tables, and a different reality on the ground."

Yossi Beilin, an Israeli architect of the peace effort, echoed the sentiment. In an interview in Tel Aviv, he said Israeli advocates of a negotiated peace, those known as the "peace camp," had not been tough enough about the settlement expansion and not tough enough on the Palestinians about incitement from their ranks against Israel.

Rob Malley, the National Security Council's Middle East expert under Mr. Clinton, added that the Americans had not been tough enough on either side. Speaking at a public forum in Washington last spring, Mr. Malley said, "If the fundamental equation had to be land for peace, how can it have any meaning and any relevance when, on the one hand, land was being taken away on a daily basis and, on the other hand, the peace was being maligned on a daily basis."

An Israeli expert on the conflict, Joseph Alpher, who was an adviser to Mr. Barak at Camp David, argues that the Palestinian uprising, or intifada, was provoked by the failures of the seven-year interim period rather than by the Camp David impasse.

"Postponing the discussion of the contradic tions between the most fundamental Israeli and Palestinian narratives allowed the Is raeli-Palestinian dynamic to be invaded by a virus that has now paralyzed it," he wrote in a recent study for the Bertelsmann Founda tion.

The Blame Game: Why Did Talks End in Collapse?

Assuming the mantle of Mr. Rabin, Mr. Barak came to office in July 1999 trumpeting his intent to end the conflict with the Palestinians in short order. But then he chose to to direct his energy at seeking peace with the Syrians, and ignored the Palestinians long enough to make them suspicious. He also brought the settlers' representatives, the National Religious Party, into his coalition and gave them the Housing Ministry, which led to a significant expansion of the settlement enterprise.

Four years late by the original peacemaking timetable, the first substantial final-status talks began secretly only in late March

2000, after the Israeli-Syrian talks died. "It all started too late and on the wrong footing," said Mr. Larsen, the United Nations envoy.

As a signal of his good faith, Mr. Barak promised to transfer to the Palestinians three Jerusalem-area villages, a promise that was relayed to Mr. Arafat by Mr. Clinton. Mr. Barak even won Parliament's con sent to do so. But, on the day of the vote, an intense spasm of violence erupted in the West Bank, which seems in retrospect a harbinger of what was to come.

Mr. Barak indefinitely deferred the trans fer because of the violence. Both Mr. Arafat and, according to Mr. Malley, Mr. Clinton later said they felt burned by Mr. Barak's broken promise.

Nonetheless, what became known as the "Stockholm track" consisted of 15 substantive sessions, culminating in three long weekends, two in Sweden and one in Israel. Israelis and Palestinians who took part say now that the discussions were groundbreaking and that the mood was positive. They made progress on the issues of territory, borders, security and even refugees, although there were both advances and retreats on every issue.

In mid-May, the fact and the substance of the talks were leaked to Israeli newspapers, and what was printed about potential concessions caused political problems for both Mr. Barak and Mr. Arafat. That in effect brought the talks to a halt and led Mr. Barak to seek a summit meeting before the Palestinians considered the groundwork laid.

"Stockholm died once revealed," Mr. Indyk, the former American ambassador, said in an interview in June. "If Stockholm had continued, it might have laid a better foundation for Camp David. But Barak felt the leaks would lead to the breakup of his coalition and he'd never get to the endgame."

Mr. Ben-Ami said the negotiators had supported Mr. Barak's decision to push for an American-led summit meeting at that point.

"We didn't feel there was a purpose in eroding our positions further before a summit where we'd have to give up more," he said.

For other reasons, though, Mr. Ben-Ami said that in retrospect he considered it a pity that the Stockholm track was aborted. Referring to Abu Ala, he said: "The Palestinian negotiator there was an extraordinarily talented and able man who had the trust of the chairman. And he liked discreet channels. The moment they collapsed, he became an enemy of the process. He thought Camp David was a show."

The palpable displeasure of Mr. Abu Ala, whose given name is Ahmed Qurei, at Camp David was considered by many to have contributed to the talks' failure just as his subsequent leadership role at Taba was believed to have contributed to greater success there.

Mr. Abu Ala himself said Mr. Barak had doomed Camp David by cutting short the preparatory session. "We told him without preparation it would be a catastrophe, and now we are living the catastrophe," Mr. Abu Ala said in an interview in Abu Dis, his village in the West Bank. "Two weeks before Camp David, Arafat and I saw Clinton at the White House. Arafat told Clinton he needed more time. Clinton said, ?hairman Arafat, come try your best. If it fails, I will not blame you.' But that is exactly what he did."

The Palestinians went to Camp David so reluctantly that the failure of the talks should have been foreseen, many now say. "The failure of Camp David was a self-fulfilling prophesy, and it wasn't because of Jerusalem or the right of return" of refugees, said Mr. Beilin.

Mr. Larsen agreed: "It was a failure of psychology and of process, not so much of substance."

The Palestinians felt that they were being dragged to the verdant hills of Maryland to be put under joint pressure by an Israeli prime minister and an American president who, because of their separate political time tables and concerns about their legacies, had a personal sense of urgency.

The Palestinians said they had been repeatedly told by the Americans that the Israeli leader's coalition was unstable; after a while, they said, the goal of the summit meeting seemed to be as much about rescuing Mr. Barak as about making peace. At the same time, they said, the Americans did not seem to take seriously the pressures of the Palestinian public and the Muslim world on Mr. Arafat. Like Mr. Barak, Mr. Arafat went to Camp David dogged by plummeting domestic approval ratings.

Mr. Indyk, who is planning to write a book on the peace effort called "Unintended Consequences," said Mr. Barak's requirement that Camp David produce a formal end to the conflict had put too much pressure on the summit meeting.

The discussions on some issues actually went backward during the two weeks at Camp David, Mr. Sher and Mr. Ben-Ami said. Mr. Sher said he believed that it was because Palestinian negotiators had kept Mr. Arafat in the dark about key details of the Stockholm talks, which they deny. He said he and Mr. Ben-Ami had traveled to Nablus, in the West Bank, to see the Palestinian leader shortly before Camp David and were stunned to discover that Mr. Arafat did not know precisely what had been discussed.

The Israelis and the Americans describe a "bunker mentality" on the part of the Palestinians at Camp David. In response, the Palestinians say that at one point Mr. Barak did not come out of his cabin, the Dogwood, for two days and that he refused to meet with Mr. Arafat personally except for one tea.

"There was also one dinner in which Barak was on the right side of Clinton and Arafat was on the left," said Mr. Shaath, the Palestinian, adding in reference to Mr. Clinton's daughter: "But Chelsea sat to the right of Barak all evening, and she received his undivided attention. Why the hell did he insist on a summit if he did not intend to meet his partner for a minute?"

Western diplomats here say the Palestinians believed that they were being manipulated by the Americans. They said American officials had made a crucial mistake in trying to nurture special relationships with two younger-generation Palestinian offi cials whom they thought were pragmatic: Muhammad Rashid, Mr. Arafat's Kurdish economic adviser, and Muhammad Dahlan, the Gaza preventive security chief. That angered the veteran Palestinian negotiators, they said, who felt that the Americans were seeking to divide and weaken them.

In the middle of Camp David, one of the negotiators, Abu Mazen, flew back to the Middle East for his son's wedding. He was furious about the American tactics, a European diplomats said, and pledged that Camp David would never succeed if such games continued and that he would use the refugee issue to foil it, if need be.

Mr. Sher said the Palestinians had never put forward any counterproposals to what the Israelis were suggesting. They just said no, he said. Mr. Malley, who was at Camp David, wrote in an op-ed piece in The New York Times in mid-July that the American mediators were "frustrated almost to the point of despair by the Palestinians' passivity and inability to seize the moment."

The two sides had discussed territorial swaps at Stockholm, in which the Palestinians would cede a percentage of the West Bank for settlement blocs in exchange for territory elsewhere. They continued the conversation at Camp David. But Mr. Abu Ala said the Israelis had talked of an unfair swap annexing about 9 percent of the West Bank and giving the Palestinians the equivalent of about 1 percent elsewhere.

"I said, Shlomo, I cannot look at the maps. Close them," Mr. Abu Ala said, describing a conversation with Mr. Ben-Ami. He declared that he would discuss only the 1967 borders. "Clinton was angry at me and told me I was personally responsible for the failure of the summit. I told him even if occupation continues for 500 years, we will not change."

But at Taba, the Palestinians were more than willing to look at maps. Now the Israelis were talking about annexing 6 percent of the West Bank in exchange for land else where that was equivalent to 3 percent. That would have given the Palestinians some 97 percent of the total land mass of the West Bank, which is much closer to their long-held goal that the Israelis should return all the territories captured in 1967.

At Camp David, Mr. Ben-Ami said, the Israelis discovered very late in the game how differently the two sides perceived the final status talks.

"That the Palestinians would agree to less than 100 percent was the axiom of Israeli politics since 1993," he said.

Mr. Sher said most members of the Palestinian leadership "knew and agreed that this is a historic compromise that requires the Palestinians yielding on some issues all except one: Arafat."

At the end of Camp David, the three parties agreed that the chemistry had been bad. That was about all they agreed on. The Americans were deject ed, although months later Mr. Clinton described Camp David as a "transformative event" because it forced the two sides to confront each other's core needs and al lowed them to glimpse the potential contours of a final peace.

At the close of July 2000, however, the Israelis felt that their generosity had been rebuffed. And the Palestinians felt that they were being offered a state that would not be viable "less than a bantustan, for your information," Mr. Arafat said in a recent interview.

"They have to control the Jordan Valley, with five early warning stations there," Mr. Arafat said. "They have to control the air above, the water aquifers below, the sea and the borders. They have to divide the West Bank in three cantons. They keep 10 percent of it for settlements and roads and their forces. No sovereignty over Haram al Sha rif. And refugees, we didn't have a serious discussion about."

Mr. Ben-Ami said he spent considerable time after Camp David trying to explain to Israelis that the Palestinians indeed did make significant concessions from their vantage point. "They agreed to Israeli sovereignty over Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, 11 of them," he said. "They agreed to the idea that three blocs of the settlements they so oppose could remain in place and that the Western Wall and Jewish Quarter could be under Israeli sovereignty."

Mr. Malley added that the Palestinians had agreed to negotiate a solution to the refugee issue that would not end up threatening Israel's Jewish majority. "No other Arab party that has negotiated with Israel not Anwar el-Sadat's Egypt, not King Hussein's Jordan, let alone Hafez al-Assad's Syria ever came close to even consider ing such compromises," he said.

In the public analysis, the summit meet ing fell apart in bitter disagreement over how to share or divide Jerusalem. Mr. Clinton recently said it was the refugee issue that did it in. But Mr. Malley and others who took part said there were gaps on every issue.

But at the end, Mr. Clinton praised Mr. Barak's courage and vision and said Mr. Arafat had not made an equivalent effort.

Mr. Shaath said: "I personally pleaded with President Clinton: please do not put on a sad face and tell the world it failed. Please say we broke down taboos, dealt with the heart of the matter and will continue.' "

"But then the president started the blame game, and he backed Arafat into a corner," he added

Mr. Ben-Ami expressed a similar senti ment. "At the end of Camp David, we had the feeling that the package as such contained ingredients and needed to go on," he said. "But Clinton left us to our own devices after he started the blame game. He was trying to give Barak a boost knowing he had political problems going home empty hand ed but with his concessions revealed. But in doing so he created problems with the other side."

Mr. Arafat "rode home on a white horse," Mr. Shaath said, because he showed Palestinians that he "still cared about Jerusalem and the refugees." He was perceived as having stood strong in the face of incredible pressure from the Americans and the Israelis.

Nonetheless, Mr. Erekat said he had traveled from Bethlehem to Gaza preaching that "Camp David was good, Camp David was progress." He also said Mr. Arafat had made such comments, but if he did, they were very quiet.

But after Camp David, negotiators plunged back into their work at the King David Hotel. And the results were positive enough that Mr. Barak and Mr. Arafat held their upbeat dinner meeting, and the Clinton administration summoned negotiators to Washington on Sept. 27. On Sept. 28, Mr. Sharon visited the Temple Mount. On Sept. 29, the situation began disintegrating with a rapidity that shocked everyone.

Each side blamed the other. The Israeli government has said the Palestinians initi ated the uprising to force the Israelis to give them what they could not get at Camp David. Mr. Arafat said in an interview that Mr. Barak in effect conspired with Mr. Sharon "to destroy the peace process" once he could not get the Palestinians to accept his offer. Mr. Arafat called Mr. Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount "a vehicle for what they had decided on: the military plan."

An international fact-finding committee headed by former Senator George J. Mitchell did not hold either side solely responsible for the breakdown and described a lethal dynamic on the ground that grew from the behavior of both sides and took on a destruc tive life of its own. More than 650 people have been killed since Sept. 29, the over whelming majority of them Palestinians.

'Too Late' at Taba: Some Still Look to Eventual Peace

Both sides, in recent interviews, wondered aloud why Mr. Clinton could not have presented his peace proposal at Camp David or immediately afterward. In late December, when he finally did so, the timing was very tight. Mr. Clinton was due to leave the presidency on Jan. 20, and Mr. Barak faced elections on Feb. 6.

The proposal offered more to the Palestinians than what was on the table at Camp David, but they initially responded with skepticism. The plan was too vague, they said. In the midst once more of a violent relationship with Israel, they were not emotionally poised to abide by the political timetables of others and to rush into a fuzzy deal, they said.

A European diplomat said the Palestinians did not understand the imminence and implications of a victory by Mr. Sharon; another said they did not want to waste their time with Mr. Barak, who was predicted to lose.

Still, in early January, Mr. Arafat visited Mr. Clinton at the White House. In a subsequent interview, he said he had suggested that the president summon Israeli and Palestinian negotiators immediately for marathon talks. Mr. Arafat said he had told Mr. Clinton that he believed a deal was possible in 14 days.

Instead, the negotiators met later that month without the Americans and without their leaders at the Taba Hilton on the Red Sea. With the exception of Mr. Sher, who said Taba was little more than "good ambience," most of the Israelis and Palestinians who took part felt that it was a very successful session.

"Peace seemed very possible at Taba," Mr. Ben-Ami said. And Mr. Abu Ala said, "In Taba, we achieved real tangible steps toward a final agreement."

In Taba, the Israelis for the first time accepted the Palestinian principle of a return to 1967 borders, the Palestinians said. The Palestinians therefore agreed to settlement blocs, provided there would be a swap of equivalent land. Mr. Shaath said they were to end up with 10 percent more territory than they were offered at Camp David.

The Israelis also agreed for the first time to give the Palestinians full sovereignty over all Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem, both sides said, and to give the Palestinians air rights over their land. The two sides were still grappling with the precise terms under which Israel could retain small bases and radar posts in the Jordan Valley, at least transitionally.

Many Israelis believe that throughout the final-status talks, the Palestinians were inflexible in their demand that all refugees be given the right of return to their former homes, which raises existential fears in Israel. But Mr. Beilin, the Israeli who ran the negotiations on refugees at Taba, said the two sides were exploring an "agreed narrative" that would defuse the explosive nature of this issue and protect the Jewish identity of Israel. They noted that about 200,000 Palestinians living in East Jerusalem would drop off the Israeli demographic rolls, and they devised a mechanism giving refugees more financial incentive to settle outside Israel.

Mr. Abu Ala said: "When other issues move, this will move. It's not a deal breaker."

The negotiations at Taba were interrupted by Mr. Barak after two Israelis were killed in the West Bank. The talks resumed and then halted again with the agreement to pick up after the elections. They never did.

"If Camp David was too little, Taba was too late," Mr. Shaath said.

Mr. Larsen, the United Nations envoy, said he believed that a final peace deal could have been hammered out after Taba if both Mr. Barak and Mr. Clinton had remained in office.

But that is a big if. Mr. Sher noted, for instance, that the status of Jerusalem's holy sites -- always a potential deal-breaker -- was barely touched during the Taba sessions.

In any case, on leaving office, Mr. Barak declared that his successor would not be bound by the negotiations that began with Stockholm and ended with Taba.

Similarly, Mr. Clinton said his peace plan would expire when he stepped down.

Yet a year after Camp David, with the reality on the ground so transformed by bloodshed, most of those who took part in or observed the negotiations still believe that a permanent peace agreement is possible.

Although they acknowledge little likelihood of final-status talks under Mr. Sharon, they still believe in the inevitability of a future agreement that is very near to what they were designing.

"Even at this darkest of hours, I believe that peace is achievable," Mr. Erekat said in an interview in his Jericho office. "Clinton took us on a futuristic voyage. We have seen the endgame. It's just a matter of time."

Mr. Sher agreed. "I still think that peace is doable, feasible and reasonable," he said in his Jerusalem office, which is decorated with photographs from Camp David. "That's the tragedy, because the basis of the agreement is lying there in arm's reach."

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

Military Budget Creates Rift in G.O.P.

New York Times
July 26, 2001
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/26/politics/26MILI.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, July 25 - The debate over Pentagon spending has exposed a deep rift within the Republican Party's conservative wing, pitting supporters of tax cuts and smaller government against military hawks who contend that President Bush is shortchanging the armed forces.

The struggle is being played out in Congress, editorial pages and veterans groups, as supporters of a military buildup have complained bitterly that the Pentagon seems to be taking a back seat to tax cuts and spending on education and health care when it comes to White House priorities.

Though the fight is over money, it also reflects a broader trend in the Republican Party, where advocates of a muscular military contend that they are losing influence to economic conservatives who say the idea of reining in government ought to apply to the Pentagon as well.

While President Ronald Reagan was able to hold these competing strands together during the cold war by cutting taxes and raising military spending, the demise of the Soviet Union and the passage of Mr. Bush's $1.3 trillion tax cut have combined to reveal the fault lines once again.

What seems particularly dismaying to those hawkish critics is that Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney vowed in last year's campaign to restore troop morale and replace aging weapons systems, repeatedly proclaiming "help is on the way" to pro-military audiences across the country.

While Mr. Bush has proposed a 7 percent increase in military spending, many Pentagon officials and their supporters in Congress had been counting on twice that amount to pay for new ships, fighter jets and artillery weapons. Instead, most of the president's proposed $32 billion increase over the last Clinton budget is intended for basic needs like health care, spare parts and base improvements.

"We came in to rebuild national security, with an administration that I think wants to rebuild national security, at a time when you have a relative prosperity and a budgetary surplus," Representative Duncan Hunter, a Republican from California who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, said in a recent hearing. "And all of a sudden, we find ourselves making tortured statements to each other and deploring on both sides of this table today the shortfall in important military resources. That's sad, I think."

Those sentiments were amplified last week in a scathing editorial in The Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine, in which William Kristol, the editor, and Robert Kagan, a columnist, accused Mr. Bush of "shorting the military." They even urged Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul D. Wolfowitz, to resign in protest of "the impending evisceration of the American military."

"If the president does not reverse course now, he may go down in history as the man who let American military power atrophy and America's post-cold-war pre-eminence to slip away - the president who fiddled with tax cuts while the military burned," said the editorial, in the magazine's July 23 issue.

Representative Curt Weldon, a Republican from Pennsylvania who sits on the Armed Services Committee, said many Republicans privately agreed with The Standard's views.

"I don't think he's doing enough to sensitize the American people as to what the real needs of the military are," Mr. Weldon said of President Bush. "We knew the train wreck was coming for the last six years."

But these hawkish critics have themselves come under fire from economic conservatives who argue that there is little political support for a huge increase in military spending. The president was right to focus first on economic issues and tax cuts, they contend, even if those cuts have drastically reduced the surplus money available for weapons programs in coming years.

The economic conservatives also praise Mr. Rumsfeld's efforts to review and revamp the nation's war- fighting strategies, looking for savings along the way before blindly demanding a huge budget increase. And they have accused the hawks of wanting to bloat the proposed $329 billion Pentagon budget with pork- barrel projects.

"There's no grass-roots demand for dramatically increasing defense spending," said Grover G. Norquist, a prominent conservative strategist who heads Americans for Tax Reform. "What Bush promised on the campaign was to rethink the demands on the military and have national missile defense. He's doing what he promised. It's dishonest for people to claim he was going to shower money on them without accountability."

Several conservative analysts argued that the world had changed from when Mr. Reagan sharply raised military spending and deeply cut taxes, driving up the federal deficit. Then, the cold war was at its peak, and deficit spending was considered the norm. Today, the Soviet Union is gone, even liberal Democrats promote balanced budgets and the pro-military wing of the Republican Party has lost influence.

"This is not a terribly hawkish world," said James Pinkerton, a conservative writer who worked in the administration of Mr. Bush's father. "There's a need for a reality check."

Some hawkish Republicans like Senator John McCain of Arizona and Mr. Weldon said they would have been willing to accept a smaller tax cut if the money had been dedicated to the armed services. But there now seems to be little appetite among the hawks for scaling back the tax cut, as Democrats have urged.

But many conservatives who agree with Mr. Bush and Mr. Rumsfeld's step-by-step approach to modernizing the services also acknowledge widespread disenchantment among conservatives regarding the size of the Pentagon budget.

"You can't find a whole lot of people who are happy at this point," said Jack Spencer, a military analyst with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative policy group.

Democrats, meanwhile, have been trying to exploit the Republican rift by asserting that Mr. Bush's tax cut might weaken the military.

"We got no help from the administration to try to have a more balanced approach toward cutting taxes and providing for defense," Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, a Democrat from New York not known as a proponent of military spending, said in a hearing last week.

Even Mr. Rumsfeld, in defending the president, has acknowledged that the military is not spending enough to modernize. Government officials say Mr. Rumsfeld had sought as much as $40 billion in additional money for 2002.

"It is not possible to repair the damage of year after year after year of underfunding" in one year, he told reporters recently. "And the president has any number of factors to take into consideration in fashioning his overall budget."

Disenchantment with the size of the budget has spread to veterans groups, which constitute a small but influential segment of the Republican base. Leaders of several groups have warned that the White House seems bent on paying for missile defense and other costly weapons by cutting conventional forces.

"There's a lot of anxiety in the services," said Ted Stroup, a retired lieutenant general and the vice president of the Association of the United States Army. "Since it doesn't appear that the money will be there, they may be told to cut internally."

The problem, the military hawks say, is that the spending picture will probably remain bleak for several years as the surplus shrinks, pitting military spending against popular education and health care programs for years to come.

"The people are saying, `We want tax cuts, we want education, we want a prescription drug program,' " Mr. Weldon said. "They aren't saying, `We want more defense.' "

-------- OTHER

-------- genetics

Early Success Seen With 2nd Type of Stem Cell

New York Times
July 26, 2001
By NICHOLAS WADE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/26/health/genetics/26MOUS.html

A second kind of human embryonic stem cell appears to have demonstrated promise in repairing damaged tissues by helping paralyzed mice regain some powers of movement.

Dr. John D. Gearhart, a biologist at Johns Hopkins University, said the mice, whose spinal nerve cells had been destroyed by a virus, managed to move again, though not perfectly, after receiving injections of human embryonic cells.

The result, which Dr. Gearhart described at a scientific meeting at the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Me., seems likely to influence the stem cell debate because of the striking nature of paralyzed animals regaining the power to walk.

Other scientists cautioned that the clinical relevance of the finding was far from clear. But the cells have an interesting political advantage: Dr. Gearhart derived them from fetuses that were aborted for the sake of the mother's health, not from the discarded embryos produced in fertility clinics. In his view, work with the cells would not be prohibited by the Congressional stipulation that no federal money be used for research in which a human embryo is destroyed.

Dr. Gearhart and Dr. James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin reported in November 1998 that they had isolated human embryonic cells. Dr. Thomson's cells, known as embryonic stem cells, have received most of the attention; more scientific work has been done with them, and opponents have focused their fire on the cells because they require the destruction of human embryos. Dr. Gearhart's cells are called embryonic germline cells because they form the egg or sperm of the next generation.

Though the germline cells do not involve destroying embryos, they were placed in the same category as the embryonic stem cells by the National Institutes of Health in drawing up its research guidelines.

Both types of cell presumably have the potential to form all the cell types required by the human body. But biologists are not convinced that the two are equally versatile, and they prefer to work with the Thomson-type cells because more is known about them.

Dr. Gearhart, however, has shown in test tube experiments that his germline cells have many of the same properties as embryonic stem cells.

The use of his cells in making mice walk is a further demonstration of their versatility. The mice experiments were first reported in The Wall Street Journal yesterday.

The mouse work is "not something that anyone should hang their hat on," said Dr. Irving Weissman, a stem cell expert at Stanford University, noting that the exact role played by the human embryonic cells in helping the mice remained unclear.

Dr. Ronald McKay, a stem cell researcher at the National Institutes of Health, expressed concern that the videotape of walking mice would make people expect quick results.

"In my view," Dr. McKay said, "we really are all in for a decade's worth of careful work here - it won't happen by magic."

The publicity given to the success of the embryonic germline cells could encourage opponents to propose them as an alternative to embryonic stem cells. But Dr. Weissman said he believed such opponents would be hostile to research with either cell.

Valerie Estess, a founder of Project ALS, which paid for the mouse work by Dr. Gearhart, Dr. Douglas A. Kerr and other colleagues, said her organization supported research with both kinds of cell and was not trying to boost the germline variety. The mice treated with the cells were damaged in such a way as to mimic ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.

"We never intended for the videotape to be released prior to publication," Ms. Estess said. "But various of the researchers felt that given the political climate it was important for the people in power to have visual proof that embryonic cells have promise."

The Clinton administration decided that government-financed researchers could work with the embryonic cells as long as others destroyed the embryos from which the cells are derived, a decision still under review by the Bush administration. Dr. Gearhart, who was not available today, has said that his cells have always been eligible for federal financing and would continue to be even if the administration overturns the Clinton ruling.

--------

Stem Cells May Help in Brain Repair

New York Times
July 26, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Brain-Repair.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Injecting stem cells into a fetus may correct organic problems in a developing brain, researchers say in the latest study showing promise for stem cell science as President Bush weighs federal policy on funding the controversial work.

The pioneering work explored the possibility of repairing a damaged brain during gestation. Researchers injected human neural stem cells into the skulls of three unborn monkeys and then showed that the cells were incorporated into the developing brains of the animals.

The study means it may be possible to use stem cells to repair a damaged brain before a child is born, said Dr. Curt R. Freed, a researcher at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

``The clinical implications are potentially profound,'' said Freed, a co-author of the research appearing Friday in the journal Science.

``This suggests we could repair the developing human brain in utero and have a child born normally that would otherwise have a defect that could lead to failure of the brain in the first few years of life.''

Freed and Dr. Evan Y. Snyder of Harvard Medical School led a team of researchers who developed a way to treat Parkinson's disease in adults by injecting into their brains fetal neural cells that make dopamine, a brain chemical that is deficit in Parkinson's.

Although the researchers used stem cells from an aborted fetus, Freed said further research may show that repairing the brain could best be done using neural stem cells that are grown from embryonic stem cells.

Embryonic stem cells are extracted from a human embryo. Researchers have shown those stem cells can be directed to transform into other types of cells.

A plan to give federal funding to embryonic stem cell research has been delayed on the president's orders.

Some groups oppose the research because obtaining embryonic stem cells requires the death of a human embryo. These groups believe that adult stem cells, which can be isolated without the death of an embryo, should be studied instead.

Many researchers, however, believe the embryonic stem cells hold greater promise for treating disease using techniques similar to that reported by Freed and his colleagues.

Freed said he favors federal support of all the types of stem cell research.

``We need to find out which is the best source for treating any particular condition,'' he said. ``All of the stem cell possibilities need to be tested.''

Using a technique similar to one used for Parkinson's disease, researchers now are exploring ways to correct a brain disorder before birth.

Freed said the technique, years away from being ready for human clinical trials, holds promise for treating diseases of the brain that develop because of flawed brain cells.

He said an example would be Tay-Sachs disease, an inherited enzyme deficiency disorder in which a child is born normally, but has brain failure in years after birth.

The disorder occurs in about one out every 3,600 children born to European Jewish families and to French-Canadian families. It leads to mental retardation, blindness and death by the age of 4.

Freed said that in theory, injections of healthy neural stem cells could supplant the cells whose flaws cause Tay-Sachs and give the brain sufficient enzymes to develop normally after birth.

``Diseases of this sort are the ones most likely to be treated by this kind of strategy,'' Freed said.

Dr. Larry Goldstein, a stem cell researcher at the University of California, San Diego, said the work ``establishes some important properties of these cells and shows that they can engraft and colonize and migrate'' within the brain.

In the study, the researchers isolated neural stem cells from a human fetus that came from an elective abortion. The cells were cultured until they numbered several million. Then they were injected into the developing brain of a monkey fetus at three months gestational age.

The monkey fetus was carried for another month and then removed by Caesarean section. The brain then was analyzed.

``The remarkable thing we found is that the stem cells we put in did not produce a glob of cells in one place in the brain,'' Freed said. ``Instead, they distributed themselves around the fluid-filled spaces and went into an orderly migration to the areas of the brain that were under development.''

In effect, the injected cells became an active, participating part of the young brain.

By using human cells in the monkey, the researchers could easily identify the fate and development of the injected cells because they are clearly different in tests from those of the monkey.

Some of the injected stem cells joined pools or pockets of monkey stem cells. Researchers believe these may make up what Snyder has called ``an organic tool box'' that the brain could use later in life to replace or repair damaged or injured neurons. The finding supports the idea that during development the brain retains neural stem cells for future use.

-------- human rights

Scholar From AU Is Freed By China
Gao Heads for U.S. As Powell's Visit To Beijing Nears

By Philip P. Pan and Steven Mufson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, July 26, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A51021-2001Jul25?language=printer

BEIJING, July 26 (Thursday) -- China released American University researcher Gao Zhan and put her on a plane to the United States this morning, ending her 166-day detention as an accused spy for Taiwan just days before Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is scheduled to visit Beijing.

Another permanent U.S. resident convicted of espionage, scholar Qin Guangguang, was also released, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said. Both Gao and Qin were sentenced to 10 years in prison Tuesday, but a Chinese court granted their requests for early release on medical grounds, the ministry said.

U.S. officials here and others traveling with Powell in Hanoi confirmed Gao boarded a Northwest Airlines flight for Detroit shortly before 10 a.m., but there was no immediate word on whether Qin had done the same. An executive of a pharmaceutical company, he has lived in Beijing the past seven years.

Powell, who met Wednesday in Hanoi with China's foreign minister, Tang Jiaxuan, had indicated after their nearly hour-long discussion that China would release detainees before his arrival in Beijing on Saturday. Powell said some of the cases were "on the way to resolution on humanitarian grounds, and you will see that in a quite obvious way within the next 24 or so hours."

Gao's husband, Xue Donghua, who lives in McLean with Gao and their son Andrew, 5, was informed of the release by Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) after Allen was notified by the new U.S. ambassador to China, Clark Randt. A weary but excited Xue said that he had not had a chance to give family and friends the news, but had told Andrew that "Mom will be home."

Xue said he will meet his wife at Dulles International Airport later today, after she changes planes, and will schedule a news conference.

He thanked the State Department and members of Congress for their support, highlighting Powell's performance. "Obviously you can see he is the key negotiating person. He broke the wall. He's the general," Xue said.

Gao was examined by a physician from the U.S. Embassy and reported in good health.

The release of the scholars was the latest sign that China wants to repair relations with the United States, which were badly damaged in April after China detained for 11 tense days the crew of a U.S. surveillance plane that collided with a Chinese fighter jet. President Bush's missile defense plans and his friendlier policies toward Taiwan have also angered Beijing, which considers the self-governing island part of its territory.

But China and the United States have been slowly stepping away from confrontation in recent weeks, with Chinese officials repeatedly stating their interest in a reconciliation and the Bush administration choosing to stay neutral on Beijing's successful bid to host the 2008 Olympic Games, which had been opposed by many critics of China's human rights record.

One of the obstacles to improved relations had been China's detention this past year of Gao and at least five other U.S. citizens and permanent residents, most of them scholars who were accused of espionage for engaging in what others described as routine academic research. Bush and other U.S. officials urged China to release them, sometimes drawing a comparison with the detention of the crew of the Navy surveillance plane.

The decision to free Gao and Qin came one day after Beijing deported another academic convicted of espionage, U.S. citizen and business professor Li Shaomin.

U.S. officials welcomed the move but noted that others remain in custody, including American citizen Wu Jianmin, a writer, and permanent U.S. residents Liu Yaping, a businessman, and Teng Chunyan, another U.S. resident who is a member of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement.

"We will continue to work with the Chinese at all levels to resolve cases of individuals detained under similar circumstances," said a U.S. Embassy spokesman.

Powell said earlier this week that the release of a few high-profile prisoners with U.S. ties would not be enough to satisfy the administration. He said he would press for "a more basic change in their human rights attitudes and position," arguing that would be best for China and its international standing.

There are other pitfalls on the road to improved relations, most notably U.S. accusations that China sells missiles and missile technology to countries such as Pakistan and Iran.

The case against Gao appeared to hinge on copies of speeches, book excerpts and magazine articles on Taiwan she allegedly obtained from a friend, Qu Wei, and gave to Li, the American deported on Wednesday. An official with the All-China Federation of Taiwan Compatriots, Qu was sentenced to 13 years in prison.

Gao's lawyers said the material was not sensitive, was not marked secret and did not damage China's national security as alleged by prosecutors. A sociologist who studied Chinese family and women's issues, Gao was detained Feb. 11 at the Beijing airport as she was preparing to return to Washington from a visit to see her parents and look for a teaching job.

Her husband and son were detained for 26 days. The boy, a U.S. citizen, was held separately in a state kindergarten, and China failed to notify the U.S. Embassy as required by a bilateral agreement.

A senior State Department official had said Tuesday the detainees were not considered human rights cases, but he stressed their cases would cloud U.S.-China relations, adding that the Bush administration had recently told Chinese officials that it did not want to be drawn into "hostage politics" with China.

Qin, 45, who was detained in December, was accused of providing materials about the Chinese economy and Chinese political infighting to a Taiwanese spy, according to the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy. A member of the ethnic Zhuang minority, he is a scholar of China's ethnic minority cultures and has served as a visiting scholar at various U.S. universities.

In Hanoi, the Powell-Tang talks also covered nonproliferation issues. Powell said China's compliance with a November 2000 nonproliferation agreement was mixed. But Tang repeated past Chinese assertions that the U.S. poses the main proliferation problem because of its weapons sales to Taiwan. Still, Powell called the meeting positive. "We think things are improving," he said. "They are anxious to work with us, they believe that we have a role to play in the region, [and] they are not trying to squeeze us out."

Mufson reported from Hanoi. Staff writer Clarence Williams in Washington contributed to this report.

-------- police / prisoners

Administration Calls Halt to Gun Buybacks
Program Touted by Clinton White House Called Not Part of HUD's 'Core Mission'

By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 26, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50620-2001Jul25?language=printer

The Bush administration has pulled the plug on the federal government's $15 million gun buyback program, launched to great fanfare by the Clinton administration in the fall of 1999.

Touted then as an important crime-fighting tool by Vice President Al Gore and HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo, it took 20,000 guns off the streets in 80 cities in its first year, according to Clinton administration figures.

The Bush administration disputes the figures.

The program, run through a Department of Housing and Urban Development drug-fighting grant, provided up to $500,000 to police departments around the country to buy back and destroy weapons, especially around housing projects.

On Monday, the administration published a notice in the Federal Register alerting public housing authorities that the grants could no longer be used for buying back weapons from private owners.

"We're ending the program because it does not fit in with the core mission of HUD," department spokeswoman Nancy Segerdahl said.

HUD Secretary Mel R. Martinez is pushing to streamline the department's focus, retaining programs geared at housing development and proposing to move related services -- drug fighting, job counseling -- to other agencies.

Segerdahl noted that the administration has proposed spending $560 million over two years at the Justice Department to fight gun violence by, for instance, beefing up the ranks of prosecutors.

Gun control advocates denounced the program's demise as evidence that the administration is bent on weakening gun laws and doing the bidding of the National Rifle Association, one of whose top officials last year bragged that with Bush's election, the group would have a virtual office in the White House.

"It's been seven months since President Bush took office, and we've seen his administration slowly chipping away at every gun violence prevention measure opposed by the gun lobby," said Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.). "When the NRA said they'd be working out of the White House, I didn't realize that they'd be setting up offices in all the other departments, too."

"This is pure payback -- another item the administration is checking off the NRA wish list," said Jim Kessler, a spokesman for Americans for Gun Safety.

Kessler and other activists say they see this move as the latest in a series of administration actions aimed at eroding gun control.

In June, for example, Attorney General John D. Ashcroft proposed destroying the background-check records of gun buyers one day after a sale instead of 90 days.

And earlier this month, John R. Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, warned a United Nations conference that its restrictions on small-arms trafficking could not impinge on legal gun ownership in the United States.

"We think the administration is responding pretty favorably on a variety of fronts," said John Frazer, an NRA lobbyist.

He said the gun buyback program was just one of a "number of initiatives under the Clinton administration -- and particularly under HUD -- that were matters of concern to us."

"We're not aware of any study that showed any significant benefit from this type of expenditure," Frazer said.

HUD officials said 80 members of Congress have written Martinez opposing the program and few local officials have requested money for it this year.

Rep. James T. Walsh (R-N.Y.) said the buyback program is a waste of housing money.

"Gun buyback programs like this are ineffective at pulling guns off the streets and out of the hands of criminals," he said.

The program was based on successful, smaller programs in cities around the country.

Among those supporting it was former Syracuse mayor Roy A. Bernardi, a Republican and now an assistant HUD secretary. Last August when he was mayor, Bernardi praised the initiative, saying that taking any "unwanted gun out of circulation is a success."

Police in the District, which until recently had the highest homicide rate in the country, collected several thousand guns over the past two years through the program.

"Measuring prevention is a hard thing to do," said Terrance W. Gainer, executive assistant police chief. "All I can say is, those are guns that won't be used in a crime or by a child or in a domestic violence situation."

Gainer said the District spent $250,000 last year -- half D.C. money, half federal -- and netted 3,362 guns.

--------

Italy Under Fire for Police Behavior at G8

New York Times
July 26, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-protest.html

ROME (Reuters) - Prosecutors opened a third investigation on Thursday into alleged police brutality at the Genoa G8 summit, as Italy was pressed to respond to charges that demonstrators were denied human and legal rights.

Witness' accounts of brutal beatings have appeared in media throughout Europe and criticism from parliamentarians and human rights groups has poured into Italy since the meeting of industrialized nations, during which one protester was shot dead and more than 231 were injured.

Police arrested 280 demonstrators, many of them foreign, though many have since been freed.

A judicial source told Reuters that prosecutors were looking into possible charges of assault, bodily harm and abuse of office by police on activists detained in jails.

The other inquiries focus on a police raid on a school used as sleeping quarters of umbrella protest group the Genoa Social Forum (GSF) and alleged beatings at a police station.

They are part of a whirlwind of investigations after demonstrations that drew more than 200,000 protesters to the Italian port city.

``There has been mistreatment in police stations which reminds me of the depictions of Argentina during the military dictatorship,'' senior German Greens politician Hans-Christian Stroebele told Germany's FAZ business radio after visiting German activists detained in Genoa.

The German government also has expressed concern. A Foreign Ministry spokesman said Berlin would contact the Italian authorities, if necessary.

Italy's foreign ministry said that so far it had not received official protests from foreign governments.

ALLEGED BEATINGS

Sharp criticism of alleged police beatings has also come from Italian opposition politicians, who filed a parliamentary motion asking Interior Minister Claudio Scajola to resign.

An opposition demand to set up a parliamentary committee to investigate the Genoa events was rejected by the center-right ruling coalition headed by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Scajola has said the police acted with professionalism and had the government's full support. Police chief Gianni De Gennaro said individual officers would be punished if they had committed abuses.

Witness accounts of alleged police beatings were carried by several mayor European newspapers such as El Pais, Le Monde and the Berliner Zeitung.

A witness to the police raid against the GSF school told Reuters on Wednesday that he would file a complaint against the police behavior.

Michael Gieser, 35, a freelance economic adviser and business trainer from Luxembourg, said: ``When police came in, we all laid down on the floor face down with arms and legs spread without resisting.

``They took advantage of our position to hit us with batons, kick us, and hit us very hard with extreme violence.''

Some 92 people were arrested in the raid and many injured. Police, who seized batons, a shovel, sledgehammers and some knives, said they entered the school because they thought violent protesters were hiding there.

Police said some protesters had resisted arrest and attacked police officers. The GSF denies this.

A judicial source told Reuters all 92 had been freed, with no charges pressed against almost all of them.

London-based human rights group Amnesty International complained some detainees had not been allowed to contact family, lawyers or consulates until three days after the raid.

--with additional reporting by Berlin, Paris and Madrid bureaus.

--------

Sham FBI conference used as cover for party

July 26, 2001
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010726-92356793.htm

Senior FBI executives scheduled a sham conference at the bureau's Virginia training academy to allow colleagues to attend at taxpayers' expense a 1997 retirement party for a top FBI official, an internal report shows.

While the "Integrity in Law Enforcement" conference was later found to have been cover for senior FBI managers to obtain improper reimbursements for personal travel to Washington, no one was disciplined other than to receive letters of censure.

Similar actions by rank-and-file FBI agents would have led to their firing.

The report was given last week to Senate investigators looking into recent FBI mismanagement and questions concerning such investigations as the Timothy McVeigh case and the arrest as a spy of agent Robert P. Hanssen.

More than 140 persons, including as many as nine FBI executives and special-agents-in-charge (SACs) of bureau field offices, attended the Oct. 9, 1997, party in Arlington for veteran agent Larry A. Potts, while only five persons showed up for the Oct. 10, 1997, conference in Quantico, Va., -- which lasted about 90 minutes, including lunch.

Two months before the party, Mr. Potts -- a onetime FBI deputy director -- was under criminal investigation over his questionable handling of a standoff at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, during which three persons died.

According to a September 1999 report by the Law Enforcement Ethics Unit (LEEU) at the FBI Academy, an inquiry into the Potts party began Oct. 22, 1997, and focused on whether the Quantico conference was illegally used to justify travel reimbursements to senior agents, who otherwise would have been on personal business.

The probe, initiated by the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), reviewed accusations that the conference "was a sham, intended to be used as justification to allow financial reimbursement to SACs to travel to a peer's retirement function."

"Although this paper only summarizes a complicated case, there can be little question that OPR was correct in its initial suspicions," the LEEU report said, adding that a "fair and reasonable reading" of the OPR report "clearly shows both voucher fraud and lack of candor on the part of several" senior FBI executives who attended the party.

The 24-page LEEU report was part of a study commissioned by former FBI Director Louis J. Freeh to monitor the integrity of the bureau's organizational components.

The report said a board of FBI executives who oversaw punishment for senior managers in the Potts case ignored warnings by Mr. Freeh in a 1994 "Bright Line" memo that said voucher fraud and lack of candor or making false statements would result in dismissal. The board recommended letters of censure.

In addition, the report said, the board never addressed accusations that senior FBI managers lied concerning travel vouchers they submitted to attend the Potts party.

"As a result of the Potts dinner cases, one could argue that the director's 'Bright Line' promulgation in 1994 has been relegated to a faded chalk mark in the history of FBI discipline," the LEEU said.

Mr. Potts was not available yesterday for comment. An assistant who identified herself only as "Katie" said Mr. Potts has a "solid rule of not speaking to the media."

Now employed at Investigative Group International in Washington, he got a letter of censure for flack of oversight at Ruby Ridge.

In March 1997, Mr. Freeh established new disciplinary procedures for bureau rank and file and directed that disciplinary measures involving FBI senior managers were to conform "as closely as feasible." He modified that order in August 2000 to revise disciplinary procedures for senior managers "to mirror those for all other employees."

FBI spokesman John Collingwood said the inquiry was the "exact issue" that caused Mr. Freeh to ultimately change the FBI's disciplinary procedures.

"There is an expectation that all FBI employees will be held to a very high standard commensurate with our responsibilities," he said. "Senior executives must expect to be held to an even higher standard, simply because of their position of leadership."

After the LEEU report, Mr. Collingwood said, Mr. Freeh recognized that separate systems of discipline "fostered and magnified" the belief that senior managers were held to a lesser standard.

"After receiving a report on this exact issue, he abolished the separate system, concluding that we should not have a distinct disciplinary process that fosters even the perception of favored treatment. It was the right thing to do," he said.

The LEEU report said the OPR inquiry focused on an assistant FBI director, a section chief and seven special agents-in-charge, each of whom submitted vouchers seeking reimbursement for official travel.

Nobody was named in the LEEU report, although five retired in the Potts inquiry and were never disciplined. The report also did not detail the value of the reimbursements. The report said:

• One SAC, in a sworn deposition, said his trip to Washington was to attend a "career board" meeting, although no such meeting was scheduled. He was recommended by the board for a letter of censure for "inappropriate travel."

• Another said his trip to Washington was to assist an employee seeking a hardship transfer. Arriving in Washington at 1:30 p.m. Oct. 9, 1997 -- the day of the Potts party -- he left the city at 10 a.m. on Oct. 10, 1997. The employee with whom he said he met was out of the country. He received a letter of censure for "inappropriate travel."

•A third who filed travel documents to "attend meetings" in Washington had been censured, suspended, demoted and placed on probation 15 years earlier for using government travel for personal business. He received a letter of censure for "inattention to detail."

The report said an FBI section chief told OPR the conference was set up after the Potts party had been planned and he realized senior managers could use it to pay for their travel. But he told OPR investigators the conference was a "way to take advantage of the SACs being here," although there had not previously been "a perceived or articulated need to have such a conference."

The report said the section chief told OPR he did not believe "an objective observer would conclude this was a legitimate conference, as opposed to a cover for SAC travel."

Saying the section chief failed to exercise proper oversight, the board recommended a 15-day suspension. The recommendation later was determined by top FBI officials to be "unnecessarily harsh" and was downgraded to a letter of censure.

OPR investigators believed senior FBI managers filed false vouchers, misused government property, lacked candor or lied under oath, the report said. They cited 15 prior cases involving similar accusations resulted in dismissals, including former FBI Director William Sessions, who was fired for abusing government travel for personal reasons.

-------- sanctions

Senate OKs Sanctions on Iran, Libya

By Carolyn Skorneck
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, July 26, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010726/aponline021038_001.htm

WASHINGTON -- Congress is moving toward a five-year extension of sanctions on foreign companies that invest in Iran and Libya, countries accused by Republicans and Democrats alike as being deeply involved in world terrorism.

"It is vitally important for Congress to speak ... in support of maintaining a hard line against two of the world's most dangerous outlaw states," Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., a sponsor of the bill, said during debate Wednesday. "They're worthy of America's most supreme outrage."

Sen. Paul Sarbanes, D-Md., said Iran's support for terrorism continues unabated, and it is stepping up efforts to acquire nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

Libya, he noted, has fulfilled only one requirement of a U.N. Security Council resolution concerning the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people: it handed over two suspects for trial.

"Libya has not fulfilled the requirements to pay compensation to the families of the victims, to accept responsibility for the acts of its intelligence officers and to renounce fully international terrorism," Sarbanes said.

The current Iran and Libya Sanctions Act, made law in 1996, expires Aug. 5.

The Senate approved the measure by a 96-2 margin. Voting against the bill were Sens. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., and Richard Lugar, R-Ind. Absent were Sens. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, and George Voinovich, R-Ohio.

The House planned to consider its version of the bill as early as Thursday.

The Bush administration sought to limit the extension to two years to give it more flexibility in foreign policy. The White House budget office reiterated that preference Wednesday. "Sanctions should be reviewed frequently to assess their effectiveness and continued suitability," an office statement said.

Sarbanes's response was that given the records of Iran and Libya, failure to extend sanctions for the full five years would be seen "as a sign of a lack of resolve by the United States."

Under the measure, the president has numerous sanctions he can impose on offending foreign companies. Among them are blocking the companies from exporting goods to the United States, selling to the U.S. government or obtaining more than $10 million a year in U.S. bank loans.

Both the Senate and House bills carry tougher sanctions on Libya. The existing law targets foreign companies that invest more than $40 million a year in Libya's energy production. That would be reduced to a more stringent $20 million, the same as the limit on investment in Iran.

"Extending sanctions by an additional five years will ensure that Iran and Libya will not be able to bankroll their terrorist activities and weapons of mass destruction programs with oil profits," said Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., a co-sponsor of the House bill.

Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, endorsed continuing sanctions for Iran despite some promising signs there. "It's up to Iran and its people as to what course they're going to follow," Gramm said, "whether they're going to be one of the responsible countries of the world or if they're going to support terrorism."

Many U.S. allies with companies that do energy business oppose the sanctions, and no company has faced sanctions since the law took effect in 1996. Yet Sarbanes and Lantos contended the law had been effective, saying even the Iranians admit seeing a reduction of international oil investment.

The bill is H.R. 1954.
On the Net: International Relations Committee: http://www.house.gov/international-relations/
Ways and Means Committee: http://waysandmeans.house.gov/

-------- spying

Scholars Freed Before Powell Visit to Beijing

New York Times
July 26, 2001
By JANE PERLEZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/26/international/26DIPL.html?searchpv=nytToday

HANOI, Vietnam, Thursday, July 26 - The Chinese government said today that two Chinese citizens with United States residency who were sentenced in Beijing to 10 years' imprisonment for espionage have been granted medical parole. A senior State Department official here said that one of them, Gao Zhan, a researcher at American University in Washington, was on a plane headed for the United States.

The quick resolution of the cases of Ms. Gao and Qin Guangguang, who were tried and convicted on Tuesday of spying for Taiwan, suggested that the Chinese government wanted to remove a source of contention with the United States before the arrival in Beijing on Saturday of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.

The secretary, who is on a tour of Asia, will become the most senior Bush administration official to visit China.

Officials at the United State Embassy in Beijing said that Ms. Gao, 39, had boarded a Northwest Airlines flight that was scheduled land in Detroit this morning.

There was no further information on the whereabouts of Mr. Qin, who had been a visiting scholar at several American universities, including Stanford, before going to work for an American pharmaceuticals company in Beijing.

Before the Chinese government's statement that both Ms. Gao and Mr. Qin would be released on medical parole, Secretary Powell, who met with China's Foreign Minister, Tang Jiaxuan, here on Wednesday, had appeared confident that the two cases would be resolved soon "on humanitarian grounds."

After the sentencing of Ms. Gao, the State Department expressed dismay at the outcome. But by Wednesday the secretary was painting an almost rosy picture of United States- China relations.

"I think the relationship is on the upswing now, now that these irritations are behind us, and I know they are anxious to move forward," Secretary Powell said after his hour- long session with Foreign Minister Tang.

Mr. Tang, for his part, took a sterner line with reporters, insisting that Ms. Gao, 39, was a spy who had joined the "espionage organizations of Taiwan." However, he added that the Chinese courts would consider her application for medical release "in due course."

Both Ms. Gao and Mr. Qin had requested release on medical grounds. Ms. Gao was described by her lawyers as suffering from a heart ailment.

Ms. Gao's release came a day after Beijing concluded an earlier case by deporting a Chinese-born American citizen, Li Shaomin, who was convicted of spying earlier this month. Mr. Li, who had been working as a business professor in Hong Kong, arrived in San Francisco on Wednesday.

Both the secretary and Mr. Tang were in Hanoi to attend the annual meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations here. The effort by both sides to compliment each other, and put the tensions of the last few months aside, was evident on Wednesday during the main session, Bush administration officials said. Those officials went out of their way to tell reporters that Mr. Tang had told the assembled foreign ministers in closed session that China welcomed the "constructive role of the United States in Asia and the Pacific."

Echoing this theme, Secretary Powell said of the Chinese: "They are anxious to work with us. They believe that we have a role to play in the region. They are not trying to squeeze us out."

Those references to cooperation represent an almost complete turnaround by Beijing from recent hard- nosed statements about the Bush administration's plans for a missile- defense system and the negative effects that would have for security in the Asian region. The secretary is scheduled to meet with a full array of top Chinese officials, including President Jiang Zemin, during his one-day stay in Beijing, which has been cast primarily as a visit to prepare for Mr. Bush's first trip to China as president. Mr. Bush plans to go to Shanghai in October for the annual summit meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation group and then proceed to Beijing, for what the Chinese would like to be a state visit.

Mr. Bush telephoned Mr. Jiang earlier this month to make a personal appeal for the speedy resolution of the cases of the United States-affiliated academics who had been detained. On Wednesday, a State Department official said that between "three and five" such scholars, including the two who were sentenced on Tuesday, have been detained on espionage charges in the last several months.

Before he left Washington for his current Asian trip, Secretary Powell attempted to set a positive tone by noticeably dropping the Bush campaign phrase describing China as a "strategic competitor." At a news conference at the State Department he said that China is an "important and powerful country that is going through a transformation, an economic transformation, a political transformation. It is trying to control that transformation and trying to control transforming forces that are within the society."

Even in the weeks before that, Secretary Powell had repeatedly said that the United States does not see China as an enemy, language that appears to be intended to balance some of the more negative views coming out of the Pentagon.

Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage went so far as to predict in an interview last week that Chinese authorities were "going to be on their absolute best behavior, I guarantee it," during the secretary's visit. "Butter won't melt in their mouth. Guarantee it."

On Wednesday afternoon, Secretary Powell, who had not been in Vietnam since his military service in the 1960's and had never before visited the capital of his former enemy, broke away from his formal schedule for a stroll through Hanoi.

--------

12-hour glitch on spy satellite causes intelligence gap

July 26, 2001
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010726-76644483.htm

The National Reconnaissance Office lost contact with a U.S. spy satellite last week, causing a major gap in intelligence monitoring of world hot spots, The Washington Times has learned.

The satellite stopped functioning for some 12 hours, according to U.S. intelligence officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

It was described by officials as a "Series 3100" radar-imaging satellite, also known as Lacrosse. It uses radar pulses to generate images of the ground that can be produced through clouds and at night.

Spy satellite photographs have provided some of the U.S. government's most important intelligence. They detected Russia's movement of nuclear weapons to the Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad last year.

Satellite intelligence also detected recent nuclear weapons experiments at a test facility in northwestern China. Satellites also are monitoring China's buildup of short-range missiles opposite Taiwan.

Rick Oborn, a spokesman for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), declined to comment on the satellite malfunction, citing a policy of not discussing specific satellite operations.

However, Mr. Oborn said from time to time satellites "are programmed to go into safe mode."

"If a burp happens in the computer or what have you, they are basically designed to protect themselves" by temporarily shutting down, Mr. Oborn said.

As for the lack of world coverage, Mr. Oborn said that "if something goes down, that doesn't mean there isn't coverage."

An administration official said Congress' intelligence oversight committees were informed of the satellite problem under rules requiring reporting of significant intelligence activities.

Other intelligence officials said the satellite is one of a small number of the U.S. intelligence community's most technologically advanced satellites.

During the outage, intelligence agencies were unable to obtain photographs of such places as Russia, where missile fields are constantly monitored, and the Balkans, where U.S. and allied peacekeepers are increasingly coming under fire from guerrillas.

The satellite malfunction also hampered efforts to monitor China and military developments there, which officials said is a key priority.

The satellite was said to be functioning normally after the glitch was fixed.

Some NRO satellites perform dual functions, both creating images and collecting electronic signals. It could not be learned if the satellite malfunction limited signals-intelligence-gathering capabilities.

Contrary to its stated policy of not commenting on satellite operations, the Pentagon announced in January 2000 that a New Year's Eve computer glitch had temporarily "blinded" NRO's global satellite spy network.

The year-2000 incident prevented the agency from processing information sent from the satellites to ground stations. It was the U.S. government's only reported computer failure resulting from digital crossover from 1999 to 2000.

John Hamre, the deputy defense secretary at the time, said the January 2000 failure caused a "significant" reduction in the Pentagon's ability to monitor world events.

The temporary loss of a radar-imaging satellite comes amid criticism of the NRO for mishandling funds. U.S. officials said a recent internal audit at the office had uncovered what were described as "funding abuses."

John Pike, a specialist on intelligence satellites with the private group Global Security.org, said losing contact with military satellites is not unprecedented but could have left important intelligence targets on the ground unmonitored.

"The whole purpose of these radar-imaging satellites is to give [U.S. intelligence agencies] 24/7 coverage and to lose that for 12 hours would obviously make them nervous," Mr. Pike said.

The U.S. intelligence community developed radar-imaging satellites specifically to close gaps in space surveillance and reconnaissance caused by darkness and cloud cover, Mr. Pike said in an interview.

Mr. Pike said the NRO has at least two radar-imaging satellites deployed, along with other photographic and signals-gathering satellites.

-------- activists (of all types)

A Decade Later, Abortion Foes Again Gather in Wichita
City Has Changed Since Protests of '91

By William Claiborne
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 16, 2001; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59479-2001Jul13?language=printer

CHICAGO, July 15 -- A decade has passed since Operation Rescue's "Summer of Mercy" turned Wichita into a flash point of antiabortion protests. Now, hundreds of abortion opponents from across the Midwest are attempting a week-long revival of the massive 1991 demonstrations that captured the nation's attention for 46 days.

The protests began Saturday with a prayer and fasting vigil outside an abortion clinic and will include downtown parades beginning Monday and more demonstrations at the clinic.

But Wichita is a changed city from a decade ago, and both locally and nationally, the opposing sides of the volatile abortion issue are also different. As a result, advocacy groups on both sides are predicting far smaller gatherings this week and less turmoil than there was during the original event.

Wichita Assistant Police Chief Stephen Cole said his force was "absolutely better prepared" than in 1991. "I'm really anticipating a much more peaceful event than we had last time." He reported no arrests this afternoon.

As city workers erected barricades outside the city's only abortion clinic over the weekend, antiabortion leaders went to federal court, claiming their constitutional rights were violated when authorities decided that only vigils, and not parades, would be allowed at the clinic.

In 1991, the Summer of Mercy attracted an estimated 30,000 people to one rally. Before the protests were over, police had arrested 2,700 demonstrators, including some who forced their way past police and federal marshals and entered an abortion clinic. The organizers of this year's protest say they anticipate that hundreds, not thousands, will turn out, and they have encouraged demonstrators to engage in prayer and peaceful vigils and not in civil disobedience or clashes with police.

"Abortion is a Gospel issue, and it will end in Wichita when the church steps up and makes it a Gospel battle," said the Rev. Flip Benham, national director of Operation Save America, the successor organization to Operation Rescue. He said that out of necessity, solemn assemblies will be staged in Wichita for the next week instead of confrontations and acts of civil disobedience.

"This is all we can do. The legal landscape is different," Benham said. "If we do what we did in 1991, they can use the courts to silence us. It's not worth it." Benham said the changes in the law had given "most-favored business status" to abortion clinics by creating buffer zones in which antiabortion activists are prohibited from demonstrating.

Benham's remarks urging peaceful assembly contrasted sharply with the confrontational rhetoric attributed to him on his group's Web site, which declares, "We have allowed the blood of innocent children to flow through the streets of this city, and be certain that bloodshed follows bloodshed." The Web site adds, "There can be no more compromise, no more common ground. . . . It is time to lay down our lives for others."

But in a telephone interview, Benham said changed circumstances require new approaches.

In the wake of the first Summer of Mercy, city officials passed an ordinance imposing a $2,000 cash bond on people who block access to clinics and other businesses. In 1991, most arrested protesters were released on their own recognizance and fined $50.

One of those who was arrested 10 years ago is Dick Kelsey, executive director of the Wichita Alliance of Evangelical Churches. "We're not planning any blockades because we don't want to get hauled off to jail," Kelsey said. "Most of us local folks are in this to help the cause and not to become martyrs."

Kelsey said there has been a sea change in attitudes in the local and national antiabortion movement over the past decade.

"We understand we are in for a long-haul battle and not a quick victory," he said. "Americans aren't so good in long-haul battles like Vietnam. They prefer quick victories like the Gulf War, but a lot of people in the pro-life movement now realize you can't go the long haul if you are always getting yourself arrested."

Also, in 1994, after antiabortion militant Michael Griffin shot and killed David Gunn, a doctor who performed abortions, outside a Pensacola, Fla., clinic, Congress enacted the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which bans the use of threats or blockades to interfere with access to reproductive services.

In 1991, three clinics offered abortions in Wichita, a university city in a conservative state. Today there is only one, Wichita Women's Health Care Services, run by George Tiller, one of the few physicians in the country who performs late-term abortions. Tiller's clinic was bombed in 1985, and he was shot and wounded by an abortion protester in 1993.

Next door to Tiller's clinic is the Choices Medical Clinic, a pregnancy crisis center that offers imaging technology to expectant mothers to encourage them to bond with their fetuses and not undergo abortions. But while abortions nationwide have fallen to their lowest point in 20 years, abortions performed in Kansas have increased 22 percent since 1991, half of them obtained by patients coming from other states, according to state health officials.

Joan Hawkins, director of Kansans for Life, the state's largest antiabortion group, said that although the number of Kansans having abortions has fallen, the cross-border lure of a clinic that offers late-term abortions is strong. Kansans for Life declined to affiliate itself with the Summer of Mercy, but Hawkins said some of its supporters may demonstrate this week.

"As an organization, we will just continue our education, legislative and political action activities," Hawkins said. "We discourage our sympathizers from participating in any illegal activities."

But abortion rights activists vowed to match Operation Save America protester for protester at any rallies held at Tiller's clinic or elsewhere in Wichita.

Julie Burkhart, co-chairwoman of the Wichita Choice Alliance, was a counselor at a now-closed clinic during the 1991 Summer of Mercy. She said both the city and the abortion rights movement are better prepared now than they were 10 years ago.

"For one thing, this time we're going to let any outside agitators know that they are not welcome here," Burkhart said. "We made a mistake in 1991 by assuming they would demonstrate for only a week, as they promised, and not for most of the summer."

"In hindsight, we never should have allowed them to come in here without having to face counterdemonstrations from us," Burkhart said.

The Rev. Gary Cox, a member of Kansas Religious Leaders for Christ, said abortion rights supporters in the church are committed to avoiding confrontation and would mount a presence in Wichita this week only if one is needed.

"We don't really want a demonstration, and if they [antiabortion activists] are not there, we won't be there," said Cox, pastor of Wichita's University Congregational Church.

Betsy Cavendish, legal director of the Washington-based National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, said the big issue for her movement is whether Attorney General John D. Ashcroft will enforce the 1994 clinic access protection law.

Nationally, Cavendish said, the number of clinics that provide abortions has declined in the face of rising tensions brought about by antiabortion militants. She said relatively new technological developments, such as Web sites profiling doctors who perform abortions, and real-time Web cameras trained on the entrances of abortion clinics to intimidate patients, have exacerbated the tensions.

"The question is, will John Ashcroft live up to his promises to enforce the [access] act, or will he revert to his quarter of a century of hostility toward women's choice," Cavendish said.

Ashcroft last week ordered the U.S. Marshals Service to provide backup protection for abortion clinics in Kansas, including Tiller's, during the Summer of Mercy revival if local police need it. His announcement followed complaints from abortion rights groups that he has not done enough to protect abortion clinics from violence.

--------

French Protesters Denounce 'Brutal' Italian Police

New York Times
July 26, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-france-.html

PARIS (Reuters) - Some 1,500 people marched through central Paris on Thursday to demonstrate against alleged police brutality at the recent G8 summit in Italy, while in Marseille protesters hurled red paint and blood at the Italian consulate.

``Police everywhere, justice nowhere,'' the crowd chanted as it made its way through the French capital's chic Left Bank.

Some demonstrators held up banners saying ``Police Murderers,'' others wore posters bearing the faces of the eight heads of state of the major powers: ``Wanted: These dangerous people make up the G8 band,'' the posters said.

Around 100 people in the Mediterranean port city of Marseille staged a vocal protest outside the Italian consulate before starting to throw condoms full of red paint and bulls' blood at the building.

French media reported that in the ensuing melee, three policemen were slightly injured and a dozen people arrested.

One protester was killed, 231 people were wounded and more than 280 arrested during three days of clashes between police and activists in the north Italian port city of Genoa last week.

``This protest today is aimed against (Italian Prime Minister Silvio) Berlusconi and his police who transformed Genoa into a besieged fortress,'' said French anti-globalization activist Jose Bove in Paris.

He took part in the Genoa demonstrations and accused the Italian police of attacking peaceful protesters and of beating up people taken into custody.

``This is absolutely unacceptable in a democracy and we are demanding the creation of an international commission of inquiry to look into the crimes of the Italian police,'' Bove said.

The Paris marchers tried to reach the Italian embassy, but were denied access by a line of riot police. A violent thunderstorm sent most of the protesters scurrying for cover.

Italian Interior Minister Claudio Scajola has brushed off allegations of police excesses in Genoa, saying the security forces had acted with professionalism in the face of a small number of protesters hell-bent on confrontation.

However, Italian prosecutors have opened three investigations into the charges of police brutality.


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