------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Briton 'sent nuclear parts to Pakistan'
Painting Pyongyang Into a Corner
Arms pivotal to N. Korea leader's Russia visit
Ky. Uranium Workers Reject Contract
DOE looks at options for Hanford

MILITARY
Bosnian Serb Found Guilty of Genocide
102 Killed in Colombia Fighting
Canadian Gov't 'Mines' Marijuana
Kuwait Takes Iraqi Threats Serious
Israel Battles Criticism; Arafat Demands Monitors
Assassination's Aftermath
Israel's Answer to Palestinians: Elimination
House Committee Backs Navy Training
House Panel Forbids Closing of Firing Range on Vieques
Navy Begins Fresh Round of Bombing
The Vieques problem
Jail Time Done, Kennedy Goes Back to Vieques
Air Force's Chief Backs Space Arms
Bush Budget 'Starves' NASA, Florida Senator Bill Nelson Says
Flood uncovers U.S. aircraft downed in China
F22s Said to Cost Billions More
Video shows Peru flight's final frantic moments

OTHER
Nebraska Is Said to Use Death Penalty Unequally
Court May Set Death Penalty Limits
Senate wants new arsenic standards for water
Daschle seeks to separate stem-cell, cloning debates
States get funds to analyze backlog of DNA samples
Italy Orders Transfer of Police Chiefs at G8


-------- NUCLEAR

-------- britain

Briton 'sent nuclear parts to Pakistan'

BBC News
Thursday, 2 August, 2001
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_1469000/1469529.stm

A court in London has heard allegations that equipment vital for the nuclear industry in Pakistan was exported there in breach of British customs controls.

The accused, Abu Siddiqui, has denied fraudulently evading export regulations aimed at stopping the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

He is alleged to have exported items to Dr A Q Khan, a specialist in uranium enrichment, said to be the architect of Pakistan's nuclear programme.

The items included a furnace, an overhead gantry crane, a sophisticated measuring device and aluminium bars, with both military and civilian applications.

Mr Siddiqui, a 38-year-old Briton, was arrested after British customs stopped a shipment of aluminium bars. He has been charged with seven counts of customs regulations violations, all of which he denies.

'Deliberate infringement'

Prosecutor Mukul Chawla said that all the items he exported were covered by European legislation on preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

A police search of Mr Siddiqui's offices revealed a booklet containing guidelines on items which could be potentially used in warfare, Mr Chawla said, suggesting that Mr Siddiqui knowingly broke the law.

Pakistan was preparing for a nuclear test at the time the items were sent and Mr Siddiqui should have been suspicious about their possible use, the prosecutor said.

Dr Khan pioneered Pakistan's first nuclear test in May 1998, shortly after a similar test by India.

Both countries say they possess a minimum nuclear deterrent although neither has spelled out what that means.

The case is continuing.

-------- korea

Painting Pyongyang Into a Corner

New York Times
August 2, 2001
By SELIG S. HARRISON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/02/opinion/02HARR.html?searchpv=nytToday

ISLESFORD Me. -- In seeking to justify its controversial missile defense program, the Bush administration often warns that North Korea is developing long-range missiles capable of reaching the United States. But is the administration really worried about North Korean missiles? Or are some of the president's more hawkish advisers exaggerating North Korean missile capabilities and sabotaging a détente that could undermine the rationale for missile defense?

From a North Korean perspective, the Bush administration is pursuing confrontational policies that seem calculated to make détente impossible and could indeed drive North Korea to develop nuclear weapons and missiles.

When I was recently in Pyongyang, a leading general, Ri Chan Bok, suddenly said to me over lunch, "What we in the armed forces cannot understand is why we are not entitled to have nuclear weapons and missiles when our principal belligerent adversary, the United States, has thousands of them."

"At this stage," he declared, "I don't know anybody who believes that we need nuclear weapons, but everybody is thinking in that direction in view of the hostile attitude and hostile policies of the Bush administration."

Foreign Minister Paek Nam Sun delivered a similar warning, but he also emphasized, "It's up to the United States." He said Pyongyang is ready to resume the promising negotiations initiated by the Clinton administration on a deal that would freeze North Korean long-range missile development in conjunction with broader progress toward normalization of relations.

Secretary of State Colin Powell blames North Korea for the fact that these negotiations have not yet been resumed. He said last week that the United States is ready to meet anywhere at any time. From the start, however, the way the administration has handled Pyongyang has predictably made North Korean leaders reluctant to negotiate.

First, President Bush said in February that the North Korean regime and its leader, Kim Jong Il, could not be trusted. Then, on June 6, after South Korean President Kim Dae Jung protested that the United States was damaging his efforts to improve relations with the North, Mr. Bush offered to open negotiations. But he failed to say that the goal of negotiations would be to normalize relations, or even to reaffirm the declaration made in Washington by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and North Korea's second-ranking leader, Vice Marshal Jo Myong Rok, that the two countries would no longer "have hostile intent toward each other."

Instead, the June offer treated North Korea as the defendant at the bar. It put the burden on North Korea "to demonstrate the seriousness of its desire for improved relations." It also implied that North Korea had cheated on its 1994 agreement with the United States to freeze its nuclear weapons program, even though American and international inspectors have found no evidence of such cheating. Calling for broadened nuclear inspections not required under the agreement and for unilateral North Korean force pullbacks from the border with the South, the United States has refused to put North Korean priorities on the agenda, especially non-nuclear energy assistance pending the completion of two nuclear reactors promised in the 1994 agreement. The agreement envisaged the completion of these reactors, of a type not suitable for making weapons-grade plutonium, by 2003, but their completion is not expected now until 2008 at the earliest.

Last week, Mr. Powell sent a negative signal to Pyongyang when he evaded an advance commitment to meet with Foreign Minister Paek at the Hanoi meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations regional forum, prompting Mr. Paek's decision not to attend.

The attitude underlying administration policy is that the North Koreans need us more than we need them. But this attitude ignores political realities in Pyongyang. Precisely because North Korea is a small, impoverished country, it is intensely proud and nationalistic. Kim Jong Il is ready for an opening to the United States and South Korea, but he cannot afford the appearance of bowing to superpower pressure.

If the administration does, in fact, want to resume negotiations with North Korea, the first step would be for Mr. Powell to reaffirm that the Jo-Albright declaration is still American policy. This should be accompanied by an agreement to discuss non-nuclear energy assistance. A flat refusal to provide any interim energy assistance would strengthen hard-line sentiment in Pyongyang. "That would mean you are breaking the 1994 agreement," Mr. Paek said. "We would be driven to go our own way."

The North's demand for such assistance is understandable. In 1994, President Clinton pledged to facilitate "interim energy alternatives pending completion of the first reactor." At present, the United States is not even letting South Korea give Pyongyang desperately needed energy assistance that Seoul had promised. This is the principal reason for Kim Jong Il's delay in visiting the South for a second summit meeting. Encouraging South Korean energy aid to the North is the key to a resumption of both the American-North Korean and South Korean-North Korean dialogues.

In addition, the United States should make good on Mr. Clinton's pledge of direct energy assistance, together with food aid, in exchange for an end to North Korean missile exports.

As for a broader missile deal, I asked Foreign Minister Paek whether it is true that Kim Jong Il had offered in his meetings with Dr. Albright to freeze the testing and production of all missiles with a range over 300 miles. "It is true that our respected general discussed many aspects of an agreement with the secretary of state," Mr. Paek said. "But that was in the context of the rapid improvement in our relations that was taking place in advance of the expected presidential visit. We are not bound now by any of the elements that were then under discussion. Our attitude now depends on their attitude."

Selig S. Harrison is director of the Century Foundation's Korea Project and author of the forthcoming "Korean Endgame: A Strategy for Reunification and U.S. Disengagement.''

--------

Arms pivotal to N. Korea leader's Russia visit
KIM MAY BE TRYING TO EASE MISSILE-SHIELD TENSIONS WITH UNITED STATES VIA PUTIN, POLICY ANALYSTS SAY

Friday, Aug. 3, 2001
San Jose Mercury News
BY SHARON LAFRANIERE Washington Post
http://www0.mercurycenter.com/premium/world/docs/nkorea03.htm

MOSCOW -- Wednesday was the seventh day of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's 5,800-mile train trip across Russia, as he heads for what could be significant arms talks with President Vladimir Putin this weekend.

The secretive leader, who is afraid to fly, is rattling toward Moscow in a dark green, Japanese-made, 21-car armored train, accompanied by a staff of more than 100, including doctors and cooks. The train windows are tinted, the platforms are cleared for stops and glimpses of Kim are rare.

Though the circumstances are more than odd, foreign-policy analysts say the purpose of Kim's trip to Moscow is easy to grasp: They see it as part of his effort to reduce his impoverished country's isolation, as well as a possible attempt to renew talks with the United States about North Korea's missile program.

As soon as he took office, President Bush suspended discussions with North Korea. After a policy review, he offered in June to restart negotiations on a variety of issues, including North Korea's production and export of missiles and its stationing of soldiers on the South Korean border.

Ivo Daalder, a foreign-policy expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said using Putin as a messenger would allow Kim to reopen talks without losing face.

``Kim wants to re-engage with the Americans,'' Daalder said, ``but he won't do it as a beggar. It's easier for him to do it through Russia, with Russia as the surrogate, even though the audience is Washington.''

The United States hopes Russia will use its influence to encourage Kim to negotiate with Washington and visit Seoul for a second summit with South Korean President Kim Dae Jung. Although he said he had no expectations from Kim Jong Il's visit to Moscow, Secretary of State Colin Powell said last week in Seoul that a diplomatic push from Putin ``would be very useful.''

From Putin's standpoint, any concessions by Kim could strengthen his own hand in Russia's talks with the United States on missile defense. Bush administration officials cite North Korea as one of the main justifications for developing some kind of missile shield, even though a 1972 U.S.-Soviet arms-control treaty limits such defenses. If he can persuade Kim to resume negotiations with the United States, Putin is better positioned to argue that a missile-defense system is unnecessary.

``It's important for the Kremlin to show that Kim is not a real threat, but much more civilized,'' said Pavel Felgenhauer, a Russian military analyst in Moscow.

Kim is expected to arrive in Moscow tonight and meet with Putin on Saturday. In an interview last week with the Russian Tass news agency, Kim insisted that North Korea's missile program was ``purely peaceful'' and that U.S. claims of a North Korean missile threat were ``nothing but a lie to hide its intention to dominate other countries.''

Kim's visit follows that of Condoleezza Rice, the Bush administration's national security adviser, who flew to Moscow last week to set a timetable for talks on missile defense and cuts in nuclear missile arsenals. Rice said at a news conference after the talks that ``the ballistic missiles that the North Koreans are spreading around the world'' threatened the security of both the United States and Russia.

During Putin's first meeting with Kim, in Pyongyang a year ago, Kim promised that North Korea would drop its missile program if other countries would launch its commercial satellites. Later, Kim reportedly told South Korean executives he had been joking.

Kim's 10-day train ride to Moscow is only the third known foreign trip he has made since he came to power in 1994.

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

-------- kentucky

Ky. Uranium Workers Reject Contract

Las Vegas SUN
August 02, 2001
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/archives/2001/aug/02/080206775.html

PADUCAH, Ky. (AP) - Hourly workers at Paducah's U.S. Enrichment Corp. plant rejected a five-year contract proposal from the company Thursday but will not go on strike immediately, a union official said.

David Fuller, president of Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy (PACE) Workers Union Local 5-550, said the workers "overwhelmingly" rejected the offer. Fuller would not give the final tally but said 657 of about 700 union workers cast ballots.

"We have notified the company of the rejection of the offer and expressed to them the overwhelming margin by which it was rejected," Fuller said.

The main sticking point with the workers was wording in the proposal that said the company would only renew the contract after the first year if it was successful in meeting certain terms to buy uranium from Russia.

Fuller said that part of the deal was "a little bit of a slap in the face" for workers and was "an issue that should be decided between governments."

The workers were also disappointed in the contract's terms for overtime compensation and medical benefits, Fuller said.

"This was a substandard contract proposal regardless of the Russian aspect," Fuller said.

Negotiations between company and union officials will begin Wednesday in Paducah, he said. The workers will show up for work on Friday and continue working "as long as there is hope," Fuller said.

"We've decided to work day-to-day for some length of time," Fuller said. "But we made it clear we may strike ay any time with one day's notice. The union is angry, somewhat insulted and very unified."

USEC spokeswoman Elizabeth Stuckle said the company wants to quickly find a contract proposal "that is satisfactory to all."

"We will work with the union very hard," Stuckle said after the vote.

She said if the company fails to land the contract with Russia, it would be forced to make concessions "out of economic necessity."

The union represents nearly half of the plant's 1,500 workers.

Production was stopped at USEC's uranium enrichment plant in Piketon, Ohio, early this summer because of a market glut for nuclear plant fuel.

USEC, created in the early 1990s as a government corporation with the mission of restructuring the government's uranium enrichment operation, went private in 1998.

-------- washington

DOE looks at options for Hanford

Thursday, August 02, 2001
The Seattle Times
By Katherine Pfleger The Associated Press
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis/web/vortex/display?slug=hanford02m&date=20010802

WASHINGTON - The Department of Energy (DOE) is starting a 60-day review to determine whether a reactor at the Hanford nuclear reservation can be used for medical and industrial uses, rather than be shut down.

In a statement yesterday, the department said a recently completed report on the Fast Flux Test Facility (FFTF) supported further consideration of alternative uses. Specifically, the department is looking at whether the reactor, whose fate has been in limbo for years, can be used to develop medical or industrial isotopes.

A medical isotope is a very small quantity of a radioactive substance that could be used to treat diseases, such as cancer, by directly targeting the cells rather than using an external radiation beam. Industrial isotopes could be used for smoke detectors, emergency lighting, instrument calibration and other purposes.

The team that prepared the report looked at a variety of options for restarting or shutting down the facility, but "only one submittal" - the isotope option - "provides new information worthy of further consideration," the DOE statement said.

FFTF was designed to research advanced forms of nuclear fuel for certain reactors. The federal government canceled the program in the 1980s after deciding it had misjudged the nation's electricity needs. The reactor has been on standby since 1992.

Former President Clinton's energy secretary ordered it shut down in January. And in April, Bush administration Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced the department would take another look at the issue.

In recent weeks, House and Senate committees have each approved more than $38 million for the reactor for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1. The Democratic Senate included language that said funding could be suspended - at least temporarily - if Abraham decides to restart the FFTF.

-------- MILITARY

-------- balkans

Bosnian Serb Found Guilty of Genocide

New York Times
August 2, 2001
By MARLISE SIMONS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/02/international/02WIRE-WAR-CRIMES.html

THE HAGUE, Aug. 2 -- A former Bosnian Serb general was found guilty of genocide today for his role in the massacre of more than 7,000 Muslims by Bosnian Serbs at Srebrenica, eastern Bosnia, in July 1995. It was the first finding of genocide in Europe since World War II.

The ex-general, Radislav Krstic, was sentenced to 46 years in prison after Judge Almiro Rodrigues at the United Nations war crimes tribunal here said he had individually "agreed to evil."

General Krstic, who lost a leg in a mine explosion and was allowed to sit for the verdict, had pleaded not guilty to eight counts, including genocide and crimes against humanity.

General Krstic, the highest-ranking Serb to face judgment at the tribunal so far, was a commander of the 15,000-member Drina Corps, which overran Srebrenica, a town with tens of thousands of Muslims who were supposed to have had United Nations protection.

In the 16-month trial, the prosecution offered evidence that the Drina Corps and the Bosnian Serb special police took more than 7,500 prisoners, almost all unarmed men from 13 to 70, during and after the capture of the enclave. Almost all those men were reportedly executed. Tribunal investigators have exhumed 2,028 bodies from mass graves in the region. An additional 2,500 have been located.

"In five days, a community was destroyed in eastern Bosnia," Mark Harmon, an American prosecutor, said in his closing argument in June. "What was once a vibrant community is no more. What remains are only the memories."

The allegation of genocide and the execution of civilian prisoners were just two of the charges against General Krstic. Another concerned the mass deportation of civilians. In front of 300 Dutch peacekeepers, the Bosnian Serbs forced 25,000 to 35,000 people, mostly women and children, to board buses and leave the territory where their families had lived for generations.

In his defense, General Krstic faulted others for the killings. He pointed to Gen. Ratko Mladic, the overall Bosnian Serb military commander in the 1992-95 war who has been indicted on similar charges and is a fugitive. General Mladic took over command in the capture of Srebrenica and its aftermath.

General Krstic's lawyers argued that although numerous killings occurred, it was impossible to speak of genocide, because thousands of women and children were spared and transported to safety. The lawyers said the prosecution had failed to prove that there was a plan or even intent to commit genocide. According to the tribunal rules, proving intent is the core of proving genocide.

The defense team also insisted that many of those in mass graves were battle casualties. Prosecutors responded with gruesome images on a large screen in the courtroom with photographs taken at grave sites that showed skulls with blindfolds attached to the bones and decayed hands with their bony thumbs and wrists tied together with wires or strings. Mr. Harmon said 448 blindfolds were found.

The trial was preceded by five years of investigations and produced the largest catalogue of extermination presented at the tribunal. More than 100 witnesses, including survivors and peacekeepers, testified. Prosecutors showed more than 900 exhibits, including intercepts of Bosnian Serb radio messages provided by Bosnian Muslim forces and forensic reports on human tissue from sites where prisoners were killed.

Prosecutors had American satellite pictures that showed that corpses had been dug up and moved to other sites and documents seized from the Bosnian Serb military when NATO forces entered Bosnia at the end of the war.

-------- colombia

102 Killed in Colombia Fighting

UK Guardian
Thursday August 2, 2001 3:40 am
http://www.guardian.co.uk/breakingnews/International/0,3561,1083264,00.html

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - Heavy fighting between Colombian troops and rebels this week killed 87 guerrillas and 15 soldiers, most in a fierce day-long battle in a northwestern mountain region, the army chief said Wednesday.

The bloodiest battle came when the army attacked rebels before dawn Tuesday near the village of Puerto Libertador, 250 miles northwest of Bogota, army commander Gen. Fernando Tapias said.

About 60 rebels and 13 government troops died in more than 24 hours of fighting in the mountainous area, Tapias told a news conference.

Fighting also occurred in Huila state in the south, in Antioquia and Cordoba states in the northwest and Arauca and Santander states in north-central and eastern Colombia.

Tapias said a total 87 rebels and 15 soldiers have died in combat this week.

The surge in fighting came as police have been dealing with widespread protests by farmers, who have set up blockades on major roads across the country, demanding price supports, fewer food imports and debt forgiveness.

Police and farmers clashes in several places Wednesday, leaving several police officers and farmers bloodied, though no serious injuries were reported.

Raul Reyes, a spokesman of the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the largest rebel group in the country, announced on the radio that his group supports the farmers.

In the town of Ventaquemada, 60 miles northeast of Bogota, eight police officers were injured during a confrontation with protesters on a highway leading north from the capital, Police Gen. Tobias Duran said.

Police used armored trucks and tear gas to disperse some protesters. Strike organizer Jorge Robledo said the farmers ``will resist until the last minute.''

The farmers - primarily cattle ranchers and growers of coffee, sugarcane, potatoes and grain - began blocking highways on Monday. Protesters complain that cheap food imports are pushing out Colombian products. They have also been hurt by low coffee prices and the 37-year civil war, fought mainly in the countriside.

-------- drug war

Canadian Gov't 'Mines' Marijuana

New York Times
August 2, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Canada-Marijuana-Mine.html

FLIN FLON, Manitoba (AP) -- Growing marijuana is an underground industry, especially when the Canadian government is the customer.

Deep in the earth of northern Manitoba, in an old copper mine turned underground greenhouse, 3,000 pot plants are being grown for Canada's newly expanded medical marijuana program.

The plants, nurtured by Prairie Plant Systems of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan under a five-year $3.7 million government contract, are thriving in the controlled subsurface environment of Canada's first legal marijuana farm.

Health Minister Allan Rock went down for a look Thursday and said the 43-day-old plants were almost as tall as he is -- six feet.

Court decisions cleared the way for medical marijuana in Canada, Rock said, as well as an efficient, legal supply chain. So, he contracted Prairie Plant Systems to grow government-regulated marijuana for distribution to qualifying patients and for medical research.

As a lawyer and former justice minister, Rock said he could have delayed the implementation of the court rulings for decades.

``That was not the right thing to do. The right thing to do was to make (medical marijuana) available,'' he said after his tour. ``We have medical morphine and medical heroin, why not medical marijuana?''

Prairie Plants operations in other abandoned mines, including one in Michigan, have shown how plants thrive underground, where temperatures are stable and variables such as light and nutrients can be controlled.

The Trout Lake mine near Flin Flon is a bustling hydroponics lab carved out of the rock hundreds of yards below the surface.

Under tight security and the glare of powerful grow lights, the plants fill the chamber with a musky, sweet odor.

``It's an incredible experience to see this operation,'' Rock said of the underground operation named in his honor as the Rock Garden.

Once the company harvests its first crop in October, the Canadian government will inaugurate a distribution system for patients with terminal illnesses or serious conditions including severe arthritis. Rock said details for distribution still need to be worked out and could include using doctors or pharmacies.

Flin Flon Mayor Dennis Ballard was thankful for the publicity the marijuana mine has brought the city of 7,000, even if it comes with ``humor and some controversy.''

A local shop, the Zig Zag Zone, has sold nearly 10,000 T-shirts touting Flin Flon as the ``Marijuana Capital of Canada.''

Prairie Plant president Brent Zettl hailed the project as the beginning of a new ``biological era'' in technology, where production of pharmacological plants can move beyond laboratories.

Rock said other countries already have expressed interest in learning more about the expanded Canadian medical marijuana program that took effect Monday, along with the supply system.

The Canadian policy differs sharply with the United States, where the Supreme Court affirmed a federal ban on medical marijuana earlier this year.

Canada also has a legal hemp industry, banned south of the border, and its Supreme Court has agreed to consider a case challenging the constitutionality of criminal marijuana laws.

A Parliament committee has been established to look at the nation's drug laws, including the issue of decriminalization of marijuana.

Rock said Canada has to adhere to international treaties regarding drugs and drug laws, but insisted the government was committed to a ``made-in-Canada drug policy.''

-------- iraq

Kuwait Takes Iraqi Threats Serious

New York Times
August 2, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-UN-Kuwait.html

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Eleven years after Iraq invaded, Kuwait believes Saddam Hussein is trying to destabilize the region and is taking new Iraqi threats of terrorist attacks on Kuwaiti installations very seriously, Kuwait's acting U.N. representative said.

``We are not ruling anything out,'' Mansour Al-Otaibi said in an interview Wednesday night. ``We have no trust of this regime, and we know he still poses a threat. If he had any chance to do it again, he might do it.''

Al-Otaibi was particularly concerned about the anniversary of Saddam's assault on Kuwait, Aug. 2, 1990, when Iraqi troops and armored vehicles crossed the border and shortly annexed Kuwait. Less than six months later, a U.S.-led coalition force routed the Iraqis in the Persian Gulf War and liberated the tiny oil-rich nation.

In recent weeks, the Kuwaiti government has become increasingly concerned about Iraqi press reports that an armed opposition group is operating in the country. Information Minister Sheik Ahmed Fahd Al Ahmed said Wednesday the reports ``made us certain that there are intentions for a terrorist act in Kuwait.''

The Iraqis claim the group includes stateless people ousted by Kuwait who have already started to vandalize some institutions, Al-Otaiba said.

But Kuwait believes Saddam may be using these people as a cover for his own terrorist operations, Al-Otaibi said.

``We think the Iraqis -- they will seize any opportunities to destabilize the region, particularly Kuwait, by threatening, by establishing such groups,'' he said.

The government is taking ``all precautions,'' he said.

Kuwait is the only Arab country in the Persian Gulf that has an elected legislature and a peaceful opposition. Slightly smaller than New Jersey, it holds a strategic position at the head of the Gulf, between Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

After the Gulf War, Kuwait signed security defense agreements with all five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council -- the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China.

Between 17,000 and 25,000 American troops remain in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. U.S. and British aircraft patrol no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq.

``Kuwait now is much stronger than 1990,'' Al-Otaibi said. ``Now we can rely really on our friends, Saudi Arabia, the United States, and Britain. We can really face any Iraqi aggression. ... It will not be like what happened in 1990.''

The U.S. Defense Department says the Iraqi military has become considerably more aggressive in targeting and shooting at patrolling U.S. and British aircraft during the past seven months.

Al-Otaibi said Saddam is desperate to bring down a plane because he thinks it will lead to a change in the U.S.-British strategy in the no-fly zones.

-------- israel

Israel Battles Criticism; Arafat Demands Monitors

New York Times
August 2, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-mideast.html?searchpv=reuters

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel fended off international criticism on Thursday of its missile attack on Islamic militants that killed eight people, as Palestinian President Yasser Arafat demanded monitors be sent to the Middle East.

Two children were among the victims of the Tuesday raid on a Hamas headquarters in Nablus which touched off a fresh wave of violence across the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Militant Islamic groups vowed Israel would pay a heavy price for its policy of killing militants it suspects of planning operations against the Jewish state.

Arafat was in Rome to drum up support from Italian leaders and Pope John Paul for international monitors for the occupied territories, something he said was needed ``very, very quickly'' although it is opposed by Israel.

The United States condemned the Israeli attack as ``too aggressive'' and Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher dismissed Israeli justifications of its policies.

Maher told reporters Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres phoned him on Wednesday ``saying the Israeli government was forced to defend itself.''

``These Israeli clarifications are rejected. Israeli practices against the Palestinian people which have resulted in the murder of a large number of civilians and children violate all laws and international covenants,'' Maher said.

ISRAEL ON THE DEFENSIVE

Peres told army radio on Thursday that Israel had no choice but to attack militants before they were able to carry out suicide bombings or other attacks.

``We are the only country that is now experiencing a type of terror that doesn't happen in any place in the world,'' he said.

Israeli army chief Shaul Mofaz told reporters on Wednesday the military operation in Nablus would have been canceled if children had been known to be in the vicinity.

``There is no army more moral then the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces). We check every target we attack in a very thorough way.''

The Nablus killings brought simmering violence to boiling point as gun battles erupted across the West Bank, including in the town of Hebron where a Palestinian was killed during a long exchange of fire between Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen.

An army spokeswoman said Palestinian gunmen and Israeli soldiers traded fire next to the Jewish settlement of Gadid in the Gaza Strip. She said four mortars shells fell in or near the Jewish settlement of Morag.

Israeli tanks stationed in the Gush Katif Jewish settlements in Gaza fired on the Palestinian village of Khan Younis overnight, wounding a family of five in a house, hospital sources said. Three girls aged under 13 were hurt by shrapnel.

Gun battles erupted near the West Bank towns of Tulkarm, Nablus and Ramallah on Wednesday night and the Israeli army reported its troops came under Palestinian fire in around a dozen incidents.

VOLATILE SITUATION

Palestinian minister Yasser Abed Rabbo told Israeli television in an interview that the killings in Nablus ``made the situation volatile and, I am sorry to say, even out of control.''

Israel said Jamal Mansour, a high-profile Hamas official killed in the Nablus raid, had been part of a Hamas command responsible for a long series of attacks on Israelis, including a suicide bombing at a Tel Aviv disco that killed 21 people on June 1.

The Israeli government was not deterred from its policy of killing Palestinian militants by the sharply worded criticism from the United States and the European Union, which called the Nablus raid ``provocative.''

``Israel will continue to reserve its basic right to self-defense and to fulfil its obligation to protect the lives of its citizens,'' Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office said after the inner cabinet approved a continuation of the policy.

Palestinians accuse Israel of ``assassinating'' around 60 activists since their uprising against Israeli occupation erupted last September after peace negotiations deadlocked.

In Nablus, tens of thousands of Palestinians, some firing rifles into the air, chanted ``Revenge, revenge'' and ``Death to Israel'' during a funeral procession on Wednesday for the eight dead, who included brothers aged eight and 10.

At least 509 Palestinians, 130 Israelis and 13 Israeli Arabs have died in more than 10 months of fighting.

--------

Assassination's Aftermath
Moral Questions Surround Israeli Policy of 'Targeted Killings'

By Lee Hockstader
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, August 2, 2001; Page A01
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18064-2001Aug1.html

JERUSALEM, Aug. 1 -- The Abu Khadr brothers, age 10 and 7, were so scrawny that both their corpses fit on one narrow slab in the hospital morgue's refrigerator. Bundled together in a flag of green and white, the colors of Islam, their bodies were torn by shrapnel and their handsome faces frozen in death.

The Palestinian brothers, who died Tuesday in an Israeli missile attack on Islamic militants in the West Bank city of Nablus, were the latest unintended casualties of Israel's campaign of assassinations. Their deaths brought a spate of diplomatic protests and raised anew difficult moral questions about Israel's tactics in the guerrilla war with the Palestinians.

Within Israel, there was little domestic criticism of the killings, except from a dovish minority and a handful of human rights groups. The assassinations have killed about 40 Palestinians since last fall, at least 13 of them innocent bystanders.

In a poll published last week by the newspaper Maariv, three-quarters of Israelis surveyed either endorsed the government's handling of the conflict, including the hits on suspected Palestinian militants, or suggested it was inadequate; nearly half favored an all-out assault on Yasser Arafat's seven-year-old Palestinian Authority.

"If we do nothing the terrorists would feel free to act, and there'd be no danger for them, no threat, no fear for their personal security," said Yuval Steinitz, a hard-line Israeli lawmaker who has urged an unbridled offensive to destroy Palestinian institutions and infrastructure. "We have no choice -- it's the existence of the state of Israel that is under danger here."

Still, even as Israel's security cabinet, a select group of top ministers, today reaffirmed its policy of assassinations -- known euphemistically here as "active self-defense" and "targeted killings" -- there were serious questions about it. Some insist it will not work to suppress the 10-month-old Palestinian uprising, or that it may even make things worse. And there are concerns, too, that in carrying out what amount to extrajudicial executions, Israel is forfeiting its self-proclaimed status as a state based on law and morality.

"It's an ineffective and inefficient policy," said Naomi Chazan, one of the few Jewish members of Israel's legislature, the Knesset, who publicly opposes the government's policy. "It breeds more hatred and more terrorism instead of eliminating or even reducing it. . . . If these people are guilty, they should be brought to trial, not assassinated."

The missile strike Tuesday killed two top leaders of the Islamic Resistance Movement, known as Hamas, and six others, including Ashraf and Bilal Abu Khadr.

The assassinations again put Israel on the defensive internationally. Ever since a Palestinian suicide bomber killed 21 people and himself at a Tel Aviv disco June 1, the United States and its European allies had trained much of their criticism and pressure on Arafat, condemning the Palestinian leader for permitting or encouraging violence. But the missile strike Tuesday elicited unusually harsh condemnations from Washington, London and other Western capitals. Britain called the assassinations "wrong and illegal"; the State Department said they were "reprehensible and cannot be justified."

Israel was bracing today for the reprisal suicide bombings that Hamas has promised.

"Revenge Alert!" warned the front-page headline in today's Yedioth Aharonoth, the country's largest newspaper.

The atmosphere, already tense following the killings of the eight Palestinians, was further stoked today by their funerals. Tens of thousands of people marched through the streets of Nablus with the funeral cortege, shaking their fists in fury and crying for revenge. Masked gunmen sent volleys of assault-weapon fire into the air and small boys waved Hamas flags and brandished toy rifles.

A small pipe bomb was discovered and disposed of on the grounds of Jerusalem's luxurious King David Hotel. A Palestinian was killed in fighting in Hebron, in the southern West Bank, and the Palestinians refused to attend a security meeting with their Israeli counterparts, mediated by representatives of the CIA here.

Defending the assassinations, Israeli security sources insist the murders of Palestinian militants are having the desired effect, forcing the survivors to worry more about staying alive than plotting attacks or recruiting bombers.

"The continuing killing has an impact in diminishing the capabilities and expertise and know-how of Hamas and Islamic Jihad -- this accounts for an increasing number of failures in these operations," said Ziad Abu Amr, a moderate Palestinian lawmaker who has studied Hamas. "The lack of cadres affects the level of professionalism."

But Israel has been trying to decapitate and silence Hamas and other militant Palestinian groups for years, never with complete success. What the groups lose in experience to Israeli assassinations they often make up for in enthusiastic young recruits, fired up to exact revenge. Hamas leaders have been saying for months that they have marshaled dozens of young men ready to become "martyrs" by blowing themselves up among Israelis. Israeli security officials take them at their word.

"We are not keen to kill," a senior Israeli army general said in an interview. "We know that using helicopters to kill Hamas leaders will lead to a certain escalation for a while. We know the price and we consider it very carefully. . . . But when we understood that he is involved in [planning imminent attacks], we had to decide what to do, and to act."

The government has insisted that by killing Palestinian militants, it is derailing terror operations that could take many Israeli lives. Israel maintains that it would prefer to arrest the militants or that the Palestinian Authority arrest them, but the Palestinians have refused. Instead, Israel says, the suspects are allowed to operate freely in Palestinian-controlled territory.

Israel's argument has proved a hard sell internationally. One reason is that the army provides virtually no evidence for assertions that certain people targeted were involved in plotting attacks, and in some instances does not even bother to provide a reason for their killings.

One notable case involved a Palestinian dentist, Thabet Thabet, 49, who was shot to death by Israeli snipers in front of his home in the West Bank city of Tulkarm on New Year's Eve. Thabet was a local political leader of Arafat's Fatah movement, but he had close ties with Israeli peace activists who considered him a thoughtful moderate and who were shocked by his assassination.

When one top-ranking army officer was pressed to explain the decision to kill Thabet, he replied, "I can't talk about it, but there were solid reasons."

To Israeli human rights advocates, the government's stance on assassinations -- which they say amounts to "trust us" -- is inadequate. They point to the record of the Shin Bet, Israel's main domestic security organization, which for years routinely tortured Palestinian detainees even though the government's guidelines permitted such practices only if an imminent threat or "ticking bomb" was involved.

"It's very rare that a case [of assassination] is justified," said Yael Stein, director of research for the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem. "In cases where there's immediate danger to life it can be justified, but those cases are very rare, and the government is not even close to these very rare cases. . . . The fact that the minister of defense comes on the radio and says they were responsible for a bomb or planning another bomb, this is not very convincing."

In the case of Jamal Mansour and Jamal Salim, the senior Hamas leaders killed in Nablus Tuesday, the army and security officials insisted the men were responsible for planning a wave of terror attacks focusing on Jerusalem. But a five-page summary of their alleged misdeeds, faxed to foreign correspondents Tuesday night, provided no hard evidence to back up the government's assertions.

Security sources insist they cannot provide such evidence publicly for fear of endangering intelligence sources who have furnished the most sensitive information. Without it, though, Israel is on shaky legal and moral ground, Stein said.

"A government that claims to be acting according to the rule of law shouldn't kill people and decide about it behind closed doors," she said.

What's more, many Palestinians and some Israelis argue that the probable upshot of liquidating prominent militants will be more passion, more violence and more death, not less.

"Now there are no ground rules, there are no limits," said Abu Amr, the Palestinian lawmaker. "We are going through a cycle of violence and counterviolence, and this may have the effect of causing the kind of situation that everybody tried to avoid -- the all-out confrontation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority."

Researcher Eetta Prince-Gibson contributed to this report.

--------

Israel's Answer to Palestinians: Elimination

Fox News
August 2, 2001
by George Friedman
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,31209,00.html

It appears Israel is preparing to implement its final option: break battle gridlock with the Palestinians and destroy them once and for all.

Rather than tolerate the continuation of random, spontaneous violence, the Sharon strategy will be to silence them entirely. It will require a massive military blow against the Palestinian political infrastructure. It will involve the decapitation of the Palestinian leadership and the exile or deaths of the political elite. Weapons caches will be sought and destroyed, communications facilities ruined. From Israel's standpoint, the Palestinian community must be isolated and controlled.

There is also a chance that Israel may apply this strategy to two other long-standing problems: the Syrian control of Lebanon and the potential Iraqi military threat against Israel.

International condemnation, including the potential for sanctions, will follow any Israeli action. From Israel's point of view, a broader strike carries minimal additional cost. The current absence of external constraints against Israel by the United States and regional neighbors may lead Sharon to consider expanding his elimination strategy against Syria and Iraq as well.

A confluence of factors, stemming from the Six Day War in 1967, is driving Israel toward such a massive military option.

Israel's national security requirements historically have exceeded the capacity of the nation's industrial plant. Israel's national strategy is predicated on a negative: at all costs avoiding a war of attrition it cannot wage indefinitely.

So Israel always has strived to maintain a massive technological edge over its enemies, primarily by maintaining a strategic relationship with an outside power that could provide the means to maintain that edge.

For more than a decade spanning the mid-1950s to 1967, Israel's main patron and ally was France (after a brief relationship with the Soviet Union in the early 1950s). Then came 1967, and Israel made a major shift.

In that war, Israel concluded that the benefits of seizing the territory outweighed the loss of French patronage, and Jerusalem defied France's demand not to launch the attack. Israel calculated - correctly, in retrospect - that its national interest in redefining the regional balance of power outstripped its interest in placating France and that it could replace French patronage with American support.

A prime reason Israel went to war in 1967 was to redefine its frontiers. Seizing the West Bank and Golan Heights allowed Israeli forces to be anchored on the Jordan River line and the Golan Heights (as well as to expel Egypt from the Sinai Desert). Throughout decades of low-intensity conflict and the 1973 war, all of these Israeli gains from 1967 have remained intact.

The drawback was that the move to the Jordan line placed a large, hostile Palestinian population under Israeli control and responsibility. For the past 34 years, Israeli energy has been sapped by the need to maintain security on the West Bank while avoiding a level of military action that would lead to a rupture in U.S. aid and political support.

But that also contained the seeds of failure for diplomatic efforts, such as the Oslo peace strategy. Given Israel's intractable security requirements, the West Bank can never be economically autonomous. Since Israel controls the transport and communications infrastructure to support its Jordan River strategy, Palestine cannot be allowed to become militarily independent. Therefore, the political autonomy and sovereignty for Palestine inherent in the Oslo process has been an illusion.

When it became clear to Palestinians at Camp David last summer that Oslo meant this condition would be institutionalized permanently, the result was the re-emergence of the deep hostility of Palestinians toward Israel and a resumption in the ongoing cycle of violence.

Since 1967, the United States has been the primary patron for Israel, and it has been for fear of alienating the United States that Israel has rejected the elimination of the Palestinian threat - until now.

This is even more the case because of the current global geopolitical situation. Neither Russia nor China is inclined to inject itself into the crisis through arms shipments to Syria or Egypt. Moreover, Cairo itself is constrained in its actions by the United States because of its dependence on weapons and foreign aid from Washington.

Russia might ultimately have such an interest, but not now. President Vladimir Putin is preoccupied with his diplomatic balancing act between China and the United States and is not prepared for a massive challenge of fundamental American interests in Egypt.

China is a potential replacement source, but there are logistical and operational limits that would make such an effort a long, costly and complicated affair. It is not clear that China has a geopolitical interest in a deep challenge to the United States either.

Israeli leaders know that a window of opportunity has opened for them to deal definitively with the strategic consequences of 1967.

Israel appears willing to pay the price of international condemnation and ostracism it will incur with the elimination of the Palestinian threat. From its viewpoint, this is a small price to pay to try to end the low-intensity warfare that has raged since the failure of the Camp David initiative.

George Friedman is the chairman and founder of STRATFOR, the global intelligence company.

-------- puerto rico

House Committee Backs Navy Training

New York Times
August 2, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/news/AP-Defense-Spending.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The House Armed Services Committee approved a $343 billion defense budget that includes a directive to the Navy that training should continue on a Puerto Rican island until an equal or better site becomes available.

President Bush has ordered the Navy to pull out of Vieques by May 2003, without any conditions on a replacement site.

Under the House bill, the alternative site must allow simultaneous large-scale tactical air strikes, naval surface fire support and artillery and amphibious landing operations. Such realistic combat-style training was conducted at Vieques before a civilian working for the Navy was killed by an errant bomb in April 1999.

The Navy also cannot close the Vieques range until top Defense officials certify that such an alternative is immediately available, according to the provision passed during Wednesday's marathon committee meeting that began at 10 a.m. and lasted past 11 p.m.

The Republicans also maintained a missile defense budget of $8.16 billion, still $135 million less than Bush had requested, by voting down a Democratic alternative. The Democrats wanted to divert nearly $1 billion from the missile shield money for uses including two aerial tankers for the Marine Corps, two transport planes for the Air Force, 11 Black Hawk helicopters for the Navy and ship depot maintenance.

The $343 billion covers the Defense Department and the defense work of the Energy Department. The committee sent the bill to the full House by a vote of 58-1, with only Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., voting against it.

In other areas, the committee voted to delay cuts in the B-1 bomber force, rejected a bid to allow abortion on demand at military medical facilities and discussed base-closing proposals but did not vote on any.

As for Vieques, the panel also recommended canceling a November referendum, which Congress authorized last year, that would give Puerto Ricans a say in how long Navy bombing should continue. The vote would allow islanders to choose either the Bush plan and or having the Navy remain indefinitely, with live bombing resumed.

Bush announced in June that he would pull the Navy off the island in 2003. Government officials have said the Pentagon will probably need the full two years to make the transition out.

In a nonbinding referendum Sunday in Vieques, 68 percent of voters supported an end to the bombing and the Navy's immediate withdrawal. Bush's spokesman said Monday the president was sticking to his plans.

The Vieques provision came from the committee chairman, Rep. Bob Stump, R-Ariz., and the lawmakers expressed their support by defeating, 35-20, an effort by Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, to delete it. Six Democrats joined 29 Republicans in voting it down. All 20 votes for the amendment came from Democrats.

``It would set a dangerous precedent if we're going to let 3,000 Americans tell the other 2 million Americans in uniform that we're not going to allow you to train here anymore,'' said Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss.

Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif., contended the referendum was a way to give a voice to Puerto Ricans, who lack full representation in the House.

The B-1 amendment, which passed 33-26, came from Reps. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., and Jim Ryun, R-Kan., whose states would lose bombers in the planned reduction from 93 to 60 planes. Idaho's Mountain Home Air Force Base also would lose its B-1s.

The fleet is to be consolidated at Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota and Dyess Air Force Base in Texas.

The measure would require the Bush administration to complete a wide array of reports before it could spend money to retire, dismantle or transfer any of the bombers.

On abortion, the committee rejected by a 35-23 vote an amendment Sanchez offered to let women in uniform and dependents of soldiers and sailors pay for abortions at military facilities. She said the amendment was important to women stationed in countries that outlaw abortion or have rudimentary off-base health facilities.

Military medical facilities perform abortions only in cases of rape or incest or when the life of the mother is at risk.

--------

House Panel Forbids Closing of Firing Range on Vieques

New York Times
August 2, 2001
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/02/politics/02MILI.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, Aug. 1 - The House Armed Services Committee today approved a measure that would prohibit the Navy from closing its firing range on the island of Vieques until it found a replacement that was as good or better, a move that Democrats said could keep the Puerto Rican training site open for many years.

The Bush administration has called for closing the Vieques range by May 2003. But Navy officials have said it will be difficult to find a site as good as Vieques for amphibious-assault training involving land, sea and air forces. The officials have suggested that the Navy might have to settle for splitting such training among two or more places.

But wording added today by Republican lawmakers to President Bush's proposed Pentagon budget specified that the Navy must find a single site that was "equivalent or superior" to Vieques.

Democrats who opposed the Republican language argued that it would allow the Navy to keep the Vieques range open well beyond 2003. The range, where a civilian employee was killed in a bombing accident in 1999, has been the focus of raucous protests by demonstrators, some of them politicians and celebrities from the mainland, who want the base shuttered immediately.

"How can we replicate the same kind of training site?" asked Representative Silvestre Reyes, Democrat of Texas, after the vote. "It would be difficult if not impossible."

The vote on Vieques occurred as the Armed Services Committee opened formal review of the president's proposed $329 billion Pentagon budget for the fiscal year that begins on Oct. 1. Though today's debate was just the first of many on the spending plan, it defined the emerging partisan battle lines on several major issues.

For instance, Democrats offered an amendment that would cut nearly $1 billion from the administration's proposed $8.3 billion budget for missile defense. The Democratic proposal would shift that money toward programs that also enjoy broad support among Republicans and military commanders, including buying helicopters and transport planes, improving ship maintenance and developing a new Navy destroyer.

Although the Democrats expected to lose on a party-line vote, the move was intended to force Republican lawmakers into supporting a major increase in missile defense spending at the expense of conventional military programs that are popular within the Pentagon.

National security strategy and the future size and composition of the nation's military - especially nuclear forces - were discussed this afternoon when President Bush met at the Pentagon with Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld.

"No decisions were being made and no conclusions were being reached," a senior Pentagon official said after the 90-minute session.

Today's vote on Vieques underscored how difficult it will be for the Bush administration to build a consensus behind its plan to end training on Vieques within two years. As part of that plan, the administration wants to prevent a binding referendum scheduled for this November that would allow the island's voters to decide whether the Navy should continue using the range.

Many Democrats, including Mr. Reyes, want the referendum to go forward to enable Vieques residents to voice their opposition to the Navy training. In a nonbinding referendum held on Vieques last Sunday, 68 percent of voters supported closing the range immediately, while 30 percent favored letting the Navy stay indefinitely.

On the other hand, the Bush administration, with the support of many Republicans and a significant number of centrist Democrats, oppose referendums, arguing that military policy should not be subject to popular votes.

But many of those same lawmakers oppose the Bush administration's efforts to close the Vieques training range, asserting that it is irreplaceable and that military readiness will decline sharply if the site is shut down.

"We're not going to have an alternative as good," said Representative Duncan Hunter, Republican of California, who opposes closing the range.

Vieques was not the only issue where House Republicans differed from the White House today.

Committee Republicans also tried to block an administration proposal to retire 50 nuclear-tipped MX missiles. The plan would require rescinding a 1998 law prohibiting the Pentagon from reducing the nuclear arsenal below levels set by the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

But the administration's proposal was removed from the budget bill by Republican lawmakers who said they opposed allowing the Pentagon to mothball the MX missiles before a review of the nation's nuclear arsenal was completed this year.

In an odd role reversal, Democrats rallied behind the administration's proposal. After lengthy debate, the committee approved an amendment offered by Representative Tom Allen, Democrat of Maine, that would allow the Pentagon to begin dismantling the missiles.

The committee also approved an amendment offered by Representative Saxby Chambliss, Republican of Georgia, that would severely limit the Air Force's ability to cut the B-1 bomber force. The Pentagon has proposed retiring 33 of the 93-plane force, arguing the planes are costly to operate and highly vulnerable to enemy air defenses.

But the plan has run into sharp, bipartisan opposition from states with B-1 bases, including Georgia, Kansas and Idaho.

--------

Navy Begins Fresh Round of Bombing

New York Times
August 2, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Puerto-Rico-Vieques.html

VIEQUES, Puerto Rico (AP) -- Battleships took their positions for a fresh round of U.S. Navy exercises on Thursday despite pleas from politicians and residents to stop using the outlying island of Vieques as a target.

Environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who served 30 days in prison for trespassing on federal land during an attempt to stop the Navy exercises in April and May, said he was embarrassed by the Navy's actions.

Kennedy, whose father and uncle -- President John F. Kennedy -- served in the Navy during World War II, was freed Wednesday from a federal prison outside of San Juan, Puerto Rico. He immediately flew to Vieques.

``I grew up with the Navy and it's been painful for me to oppose a service that was really an icon of my childhood,'' said Kennedy. ``But in this case, what the Navy is doing here is wrong, and it's arrogant and it's bullying and it's the worst face of America.''

The exercises, which could last until Aug. 10, are to include ship-to-shore maneuvers, air-to-ground shelling and amphibious landings.

Kennedy and New York labor leader Dennis Rivera, who also served a 30-day sentence for trespassing, encouraged protesters to do what they could to stop the bombing and exercises.

``The experience was a good one, I would encourage other people to try it as well, as many as possible,'' Kennedy said, speaking partly in the Spanish that he said he learned in the San Juan prison.

Last week, nearly 70 percent of Vieques residents voted in a nonbinding referendum for an immediate end to the bombing. The firing range is 3 to 4 miles from the inhabited areas.

``We will keep mobilizing the forces of peace,'' said Rivera, a Puerto Rican who heads New York's 210,000 member health care union.

Robert Rabin, an anti-Navy protest leader, said their resources had been drained by the referendum, but promised more civil disobedience.

``This time the acts of civil disobedience will be carried out with a firm base of support among the people of Vieques,'' he said.

Thirty percent of Vieques voters supported the Navy remaining indefinitely and resuming bombing with live munitions -- a protest vote against the alleged anti-American policies of the U.S. territory's Gov. Sila Calderon, who called for the referendum.

Only 1.7 percent of Vieques voters in Sunday's referendum backed President Bush's plan for the Navy to withdraw in 2003 and continue exercises with dummy bombs. Vieques has 9,100 residents.

``We're not here to do anything other than to be a good neighbor and train our sailors and marines, and we try to do that with as little impact on the local community as possible,'' said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Katherine Goode.

Years of resentment over the Navy's appropriation of two-thirds of the 18-mile-long island in 1941 and decades of bombing exploded in anger and protests when two 500-pound bombs dropped off target killed a civilian guard on the range in 1999.

Residents say the exercises have led to increased health problems on the island, a claim the Navy denies.

--------

The Vieques problem

Washington Times
Jed Babbin
EDITORIAL • August 2, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20010802-7643228.htm

The recent referendum vote by Vieques island's residents to stop Navy live-fire training has no real effect. It's just another political kick in the teeth of military readiness. What makes this one worse than usual is that it's a direct result of President Bush's casual announcement of his decision to cease fire on the island by 2003.

Mr. Bush chose to throw away the crown jewel of Navy training.

Vieques, a small patch of ground off the east side of Puerto Rico, is about 80 square miles of nothing in particular, and has been the primary site for Navy live-fire training for 60 years. It's the only place in the Atlantic side of the world where all the pieces can work together, practicing with real bombs and bullets. And now the president has said it was his "attitude" that the Navy should find another place to train. Tough luck, squids, if there isn't one.

There are too many things going wrong with defense, and so many promises Mr. Bush made in the election to fix those same things. And as the clock winds down on his first year in office, we're still waiting for those promises to be fulfilled. All the promises of the presidential campaign seem to be on tomorrow's agenda. And tomorrow just never comes.

The problem with the Vieques closing is not just that it's only politics that drove the decision. Politics drives almost all military decisions and has since the time of Caesar. But this time it was supposed to be different. This was Mr. Bush, not Mr. Clinton, and he took a blood oath to military strength and readiness. The admirals all said that without Vieques the Atlantic Fleet has no place to really exercise its air arm. And without these exercises, there can be no straight-faced claim of readiness.

Teaching someone to fly a $50 million aircraft and drop bombs on people is just a tad complicated. (I refuse to give currency to the old joke that the only difference between a fighter pilot and a gorilla is that you don't spend $5 million to train a gorilla). If you want your pilot to get experience, and practice what he may have to do for real, odds are you don't want to just do the classroom work, then watch him take off and fly circles over the runway.

Your guy's got to learn how to yank and bank, and how to drop heavy loads of ordnance in the right place without getting himself killed in the process. You have to learn how the aircraft handles when you pickle off a bomb and how to lob it - or slam it - into the target. And the only way you learn is by doing. And the only way you stay good at it, like anything else, is practice.

For naval aviation, readiness is not just a matter of time in the air, or the number of bombs dropped on some range. When you want to measure the readiness of a carrier battle group, you don't measure it by playing computer games. What you do is take your battle group out of sight of land, and exercise the hell out of it.

To exercise it for real, you do a whole bunch of things at once, and they can't all be done in an hour or two. You take a three or four-day period and you do all of the following, pretty much at once. Set a high threat level, and plan an attack. While you cruise along, spring some problems on your team. Simulate a threat for the anti-submarine guys to deal with, and let 'em loose. Form up an aggressor squadron, and have them make attack runs at the ships. At the same time, you'll be launching your Prowlers to clear and jam the bad guys over a target, launching your F-18s and F-14s on fighter defense and bomber offensive runs. You want your fly-guys to practice it all, so one carrier's fighters may have to cover their bombers and, at the same time, fly cover over the ships.

Put a platoon or two of those guys who ride rubber boats at night onto the target beforehand, and let them blow something up. Next, you load a bunch of green faces onto their helos and fast landing craft and drop the Marines in a place where the bad guys are. They can launch about a battalion of these guys from the Landing Helicopter Assault ship that rides ahead of your carrier. And you cover their landing with naval gunfire, which is supposed to be able to coordinate with them.

At the end of the couple of days, you know how well your people did, giving you information on where you're strong, and - more importantly - where you're weak. When you know what's broken, you can fix it.

The problem with closing Vieques is that the Atlantic Fleet can't do this anywhere else. There are other places where you can practice landings, but not with live fire support from the air and naval gunfire. The Navy needs Vieques now, and for the foreseeable future.

The president has made a fundamental mistake on Vieques, and the repercussions have just begun. It is a mistake that changes the tone of his presidency, because it breaks a big promise to us, and to the guys wearing the uniform. If things aren't turned around soon, Mr. Clinton's military will soon be Dubya's. And we won't be able to blame Li'l Billy any more.

Jed Babbin is a former undersecretary of defense in the prior Bush administration.

--------

Jail Time Done, Kennedy Goes Back to Vieques

Associated Press
Thursday, August 2, 2001; Page A05
The Washington Post
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20084-2001Aug1?language=printer

VIEQUES, Puerto Rico, Aug. 1 -- Environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. left prison today after completing a 30-day sentence for trespassing on U.S. Navy land on Vieques. He immediately returned to the island to encourage protesters planning to invade the Navy bombing range here.

Kennedy, who brought his 7-year-old son, Conor, to Vieques, was accompanied by New York labor leader Dennis Rivera, who also served a 30-day sentence for trespassing on Navy land. Both men were trying to stop a round of U.S. military exercises in late April and early May.

Earlier today, the two emerged from a federal detention center in a San Juan suburb on the main island of Puerto Rico, flashing peace signs echoing the "Peace for Vieques" slogan.

The Navy plans to resume exercises on Vieques on Thursday, ignoring the results of a nonbinding referendum this weekend in which 68 percent of voters chose an immediate end to the bombing.

"We are going to continue putting on the pressure," promised Rivera, who heads New York City's 210,000-member health care union.

Thirty percent of voters supported the Navy remaining indefinitely and resuming bombing with live munitions -- a protest vote against the alleged anti-American policies of Gov. Sila Calderon, who called the referendum.

-------- space

Air Force's Chief Backs Space Arms
U.S. Must Protect Satellites, He Says

By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 2, 2001; Page A17
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17889-2001Aug1?language=printer

The Air Force's top general yesterday endorsed the deployment of space-based weapons to protect the nation's satellites and predicted that the United States would develop the capacity to shoot down other countries' orbiting spacecraft.

Gen. Michael E. Ryan, the Air Force chief of staff, noted that there are "huge policy implications" in any move to "weaponize" space. But he said the United States has critical assets in space -- an estimated 100 military satellites and 150 commercial satellites -- that are increasingly vulnerable.

"We have to in some way be able to protect those assets, at least defensively," Ryan said in a breakfast interview with defense writers. "I would suggest that sometime in the future here, we're going to have to come to a policy decision on whether we're going to use space for defensive and offensive capabilities."

Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and other critics of the Bush administration's missile defense agenda argue that its plans to experiment with a space-based laser could cross a dangerous threshold and trigger an arms race in space, where no nation currently has weapons.

"I think it's going to be increasingly controversial as the implications of this policy play out," said John Pike, a space expert who runs Globalsecurity.org, a think tank. "It runs fundamentally against the main theme of our space policy for the last half century -- to demonstrate America's power in space in a nonthreatening way."

But Ryan and his boss, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, have argued that the nation's dependence on satellites for military operations and commercial communications makes the development of space defenses -- if not space weapons -- an imperative over the next 25 years.

A commission on space headed by Rumsfeld before he became defense secretary called for the development of anti-satellite weapons as well as a doctrine for space combat, concluding that the weaponization of space is inevitable.

The United States has already experimented with anti-satellite weapons, including a giant chemical laser fired in 1997 from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico that successfully disabled sensors on its target, an aging U.S. military satellite. The Soviet Union also deployed a ground-launched satellite interceptor in 1971, and it remained operational through the end of the Cold War.

Ryan said the Air Force and the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization could be in position to fire an experimental, satellite-based laser at a missile in its "boost" or ascent phase between 2010 and 2012.

Beyond that, Ryan said, some U.S. military aircraft could be capable of operating in space, including a futuristic "space bomber" being contemplated by the Pentagon's long-range planners.

But the actual deployment of space weapons may still be decades away. A report by the nonprofit Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments concluded in February that the U.S. military would most likely continue using space only for communications, reconnaissance, intelligence and guidance of precision munitions until at least 2020. For the next two decades, space will not be "an arena of overt military competition, much less an actual battleground," it predicted.

Nonetheless, the report's author, Barry D. Watts, who recently became the director of program analysis and evaluation in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, wrote that "it is not difficult to imagine trigger events" that could hasten the weaponization of space.

In fact, Watts wrote, space arguably has been weaponized already if the term "is construed broadly enough to include terrestrial-based applications of military force aimed at affecting orbital systems and their use" -- meaning weapons capable of disrupting satellites.

One senior Air Force official said technology is readily available to jam signals from satellites in the Pentagon's global positioning system.

Watts also wrote that the Air Force came "very close" to employing space-based offensive capabilities during NATO's bombing of Yugoslav forces in Kosovo in 1999, when B-2 bombers launched Joint Direct Attack Munitions guided by signals from global positioning satellites.

The success of the B-2 "unquestionably reinforces the view that the United States is far ahead of other nations in its ability to enhance terrestrial military operations with space systems," Watts wrote.

Whatever the result of the debate over weaponizing space, Ryan's Air Force is heavily engaged in what it calls "space control," a mission that includes everything from protecting U.S. satellites against attack to tracking 8,000 objects orbiting Earth, including 400 to 500 active satellites.

--------

Bush Budget 'Starves' NASA, Florida Senator Bill Nelson Says

By Steven Siceloff
FLORIDA TODAY
31 July 2001
http://www.space.com/news/spacestation/nasa_congress_010731.html

ORLANDO - Continued money problems and an inattentive White House are setting up NASA to fail, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson said Monday at the second Florida Space Summit.

"You just can't continue to starve the American space agency of funds (without jeopardizing safety)," Nelson, D-Tallahassee, said, laying the blame at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. "I am very frustrated with the White House budget proposal on NASA."

But U.S. Rep. Dave Weldon, R-Palm Bay, said Nelson's position smacks of partisan politics.

The wide-ranging summit touched on civilian and military space issues, with key players from both sides represented. The discussions are integral to Florida's economic well-being. Florida's economy receives a $4 billion economic boost each year from space.

But the event was colored by political infighting between two Florida members of Congress.

The sparring came as both houses of Congress prepare to vote this week on spending plans for NASA. The House budget includes $275 million for a space station escape craft, plus $35 million for Kennedy Space Center improvements.

The Senate Appropriations Committee shifted $150 million from the space station to support shuttle safety upgrades and space station research.

The House of Representatives has "$400 million more in our bill than the Senate does," Weldon said, challenging Nelson to turn his comments into money for the space agency. "I never heard Bill Nelson use the word 'ominous' when Bill Clinton was in office."

Clinton cut NASA's budget seven of his eight years.

President Bush proposed a 2 percent increase for NASA next year, but Nelson argued that was far too little to cover the agency's needs, particularly in light of a $4.8 billion cost overrun on the International Space Station. NASA is trying to make up the rest by slashing science research on the outpost by $1 billion.

Shuttle safety improvements and refurbishment of the KSC infrastructure also have been bumped routinely to make up cash. KSC's Vehicle Assembly Building, where the shuttles are assembled, needs $150 million in repairs, NASA Administrator Dan Goldin said.

"They're trying to punish NASA for its cost overruns," Nelson said. "There's a considerable majority in Congress that wants to preserve an aggressive program of research (on the station), but without the science, there's not much to do in the way of research."

A deeper concern is the aging shuttle fleet itself, the senator said.

"Another major accident would cause a real threat to the manned space program," Nelson said. He said political support for NASA could evaporate if a Challenger-type disaster occurs. Nelson flew on shuttle Columbia in 1986 on the mission prior to the Challenger accident.

Saying NASA has "real tough budget challenges," Goldin told the audience of government, industry and military space leaders the strains would not compromise safety.

Emphasizing the NASA budget increase, Gov. Jeb Bush defended his brother's NASA blueprint and said he has spoken with the president about NASA's travails, though not recently.

"Some parts of the space program are going to go through tighter times than others," Bush said.

The younger Bush called for Monday's space workshop as a way to keep Florida in the forefront of the space business. He also rationalized the president's emphasis on military aspects of space, a position that far overshadows NASA efforts.

"He made a big point (during his campaign) of military readiness," the governor said.

The Pentagon had a sizeable presence at the summit, showing again the importance the Air Force and military place on the ultimate high ground.

"We can't go to war and certainly can't win a war without space," Undersecretary of Defense Pete Aldridge said.

While the Pentagon is publicly united on space, those who control the purse strings in Congress have divergent opinions, especially regarding the president's National Missile Defense program.

Sen. Bob Graham, D-Miami Lakes, said the missile shield is a good idea, but other proposals that do not rely on missiles hitting missiles may be better. Bush's plan calls for sophisticated radar bases to steer missiles into warheads in space.

"I think we need a national missile defense, but I think there may be better options, such as effective pre-emptive strikes, we should explore," Graham said. That approach may prevent a new arms race with Russia and China, he added.

President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have begun a crash program to develop a rudimentary antimissile system by 2005. Four tests of an experimental missile interceptor have been conducted, but two failed. The last, about two weeks ago, succeeded.

As the system progresses through increased testing, Gov. Bush foresees economic benefits for Florida, even though the tests are performed from bases in California and Alaska.

"It is the ultimate military space investment, and there are all kinds of spin-offs that Florida could benefit from," he said.

Florida companies involved in the missile defense program center run tests on rocket plumes to improve satellite and other tracking techniques for ballistic missile launches.

The Air Force also is pursuing other space weaponry, including a bomber that would fly briefly into space, would be able to reach any target in the world and return to base within 90 minutes. Testing is expected on air- and space-based lasers designed to destroy missiles just after launch.

Air Force Maj. Gen. Bill Looney said the White House is forming a national commitment to new military uses of space and is beginning to back it up with money.

"I truly believe the stars are aligning," Looney said.

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

Flood uncovers U.S. aircraft downed in China

USA TODAY
08/02/2001
The Associated Press
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001/08/02/craft.htm

BEIJING (AP) - A wrecked World War II-era American warplane has been found in a river in southwest China and officials are trying to salvage it.

The wreckage was discovered after a flood pushed it from deep to shallower waters of the Tuojiang River in Yunnan province, the China Daily reported Thursday.

The aircraft crashed in March 1943, the state-run newspaper said. Five of the plane's seven-member crew were rescued by residents, but two others died trying to parachute to safety, it said.

The newspaper said the plane was a fighter but the number of crew suggested it was bigger than that.

The United States poured aid and bomber crews into China during World War II to fight the invading Japanese. About 1,000 U.S. planes went down over China during the war, and about 100 remain missing.

News of the discovery comes three months before President Bush is scheduled to visit China.

Chinese leaders have previously turned the discovery of a missing U.S. aircraft into a token of friendship with the United States.

In 1996, after a period of rocky relations, Chinese President Jiang Zemin gave then-President Clinton photographs of five dog tags and videotape from the crash site of a U.S. B-24 bomber that went missing after attacking Japanese ships near Taiwan in 1944.

China later allowed U.S. forensic experts to visit the crash site, in a remote ravine in southern China's Guangxi region, and turned over human remains found there to U.S. officials.

--------

F22s Said to Cost Billions More

August 2, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Production of 333 F-22 Raptor fighter planes, being developed for the Air Force to replace aging F-15s, will cost anywhere from $2 billion to $9 billion more than the $37.6 billion Congress specified as the cap in 1997, the General Accounting Office said Thursday.

Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., chairman of the Government Reform Committee's national security panel, said those predictions of potential cost overruns -- the lower one by the Air Force and the higher one by the office of the secretary of defense -- put the Air Force's purchasing plans at risk.

``Current cost-control strategies may not be adequate to allow production of the right number of F-22s at an affordable per-unit price,'' Shays told a hearing of his panel.

Allen Li, the GAO's director of acquisition and sourcing management, said his agency could not say which estimate will prove to be more accurate.

But he said that for the Air Force to stay within the $37.6 billion cap, it would have to reduce its order by 85 planes, down to 248, if the higher, $46.6 billion, total cost is correct and projected savings are not realized.

``The number of planes keeps dwindling and the costs keep escalating,'' said Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, the top Democrat on Shays' panel, questioning what the situation might be in a few years: ``One plane for a trillion dollars?''

Letting contractors reduce the number of airplanes they must produce for the same amount of money is unfair to the taxpayers, he said.

``Doesn't this seem like a game of bait and switch?'' Kucinich asked. ``I think people are really being cheated on this. They're being ripped off. ... The contractors are the last ones to lose. The taxpayers are the first.''

Li said it was difficult to estimate costs far out into the future on planes that require development of new technology.

The F-22's contractors estimated in January that their cost-reduction plans would eventually add up to about $26.5 billion, up from $13.1 billion in January 1997, Li said.

---------

Video shows Peru flight's final frantic moments

08/03/2001 - Updated 01:17 PM ET
By Jack Kelley,
USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001/08/03/peru-video.htm

WASHINGTON - It began as a routine drug-surveillance flight with the CIA contract employees listening to rock music by Bachman-Turner Overdrive and joking about an approaching storm. It ended with the crew screaming at the top of their lungs, "Don't shoot! No mas! No mas!" ("No more! No more!") and watching helplessly as a Peruvian Air Force jet shot down a U.S. missionary plane. Two people were killed. State Department officials released a dramatic 45-minute black-and-white video Thursday of the mistaken downing of the plane over Peru on April 20 and an accompanying report of the accident.

The U.S.-Peruvian report concluded that procedural errors, language problems and an overloaded communication system contributed to the accident. It did not directly blame anyone but said neither nation had been following procedures developed by the two governments in 1994 to avoid mistaken attacks.

However, the videotape, shot from the nose of the CIA plane, and accompanying audio of the cockpit conversation, shows the three-man crew repeatedly questioned whether the missionary plane was carrying drugs and tried to stop the Peruvian jet from shooting.

The missionaries' Cessna floatplane was shot down by the Peruvian A-37 after the CIA-operated Citation identified it as a possible drug flight. Missionary Veronica Bowers, 35, and her 7-month-old daughter, Charity, were killed. Pilot Kevin Donaldson, 42, was injured.

The United States has suspended drug surveillance flights since the downing. The report did not address whether flights should be resumed or recommend changes in policy. Those issues will be part of a follow-up report.

The videotape also shows that the Peruvian fighter correctly reported the registration number of Donaldson's plane at least eight minutes before it opened fire on the missionaries. But the CIA crew, including the Peruvian officer aboard, could not hear it because they were trying to stop the attack.

"Are you sure it's a bandido?" a CIA pilot asks the Peruvian liaison officer. "I think we're making a mistake."

The Peruvian jet then sprays the floatplane with bullets. Donaldson screams, "They're killing us! They're killing us!"

"God!" the CIA pilot yells. "The plane's on fire." Seconds later, it crashed into the Amazon River and exploded.

-------- OTHER

-------- death penalty

Nebraska Is Said to Use Death Penalty Unequally

New York Times
August 2, 2001
By PAM BELLUCK
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/02/national/02NEBR.html

A new study of capital punishment suggests that it is applied unequally in rural and urban areas and that defendants whose victims are affluent are more likely to get the death penalty.

Regarding race, the study, which looked at cases that were eligible for the death penalty in Nebraska, found that white and nonwhite defendants were about equally likely to receive the death penalty. It also found no significant evidence that members of minorities who killed whites were more likely to be sentenced to death.

But the study found striking differences in the way that urban and nonurban counties handled the death penalty, discrepancies that had more subtle racial implications.

Prosecutors in urban counties, namely the Omaha and Lincoln areas, were more likely to seek the death penalty and were more likely to take death penalty cases to trial rather than accept plea bargains. The reasons for this were not clear, but experts said it might be because urban counties have more money and experience than rural areas to handle complicated cases.

At the same time, judges in urban counties were less likely to impose a death sentence than judges in rural areas, perhaps, experts suggested, because urban areas had many more murders and judges waited for an especially severe crime to impose the most severe sentence.

The effect of the rural-urban differences, the study concluded, was that minority defendants, the vast majority of whom were prosecuted in Omaha and Lincoln, were more likely to face the prospect of capital punishment at trial. But because urban judges were less inclined to impose the death penalty, members of minorities in Nebraska were ultimately no more likely than whites to be executed.

The Nebraska report, released by the Nebraska Crime Commission yesterday, is the first of eight death penalty studies commissioned by states in the last few years. The other states are Arizona, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia.

The Nebraska study looked at 177 homicides that were eligible for the death penalty in 1973 through 1999. Of those, 27 received the death penalty, and 3 have been executed.

National experts on both sides of the capital punishment debate said the most significant finding was that prosecutors were more likely to seek the death penalty and judges more likely to impose it in cases where the victim was well-off. The study's authors, led by David C. Baldus, a law professor at the University of Iowa, wrote that this might be because "press coverage and manifestations of community concern" are greater when the victim is wealthy or prominent or that prosecutors and judges may unconsciously identify more with the victim.

"I'm not aware of another study that made a confident finding about the effect of socioeconomic status," said James S. Liebman, a law professor at Columbia University who has represented defendants in death penalty appeals. "This is something that people have long suspected, that in essence it is a penalty only for crimes committed that are seen as important crimes and that people don't think of it as an important crime unless it's against a high status person."

Michael Rushford, president of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation and a death penalty advocate, said the death penalty was not being imposed often enough against people whose victims were poor.

"There are going to be disparities," Mr. Rushford said. "Look, there's a rich neighborhood and somebody gets killed and it wasn't his wife killed him and the district attorney knows he's going to get campaign contributions, so he says death penalty."

Nebraska's death penalty system is different from other states in several ways. The decision about whether to impose a death sentence is made by a panel of judges appointed by the governor. In most states, juries impose death sentences, and in the few states where judges do, the judges are usually elected.

Nebraska law also requires judges to measure a capital case against comparable cases to ensure that the sentence is not wildly out of sync.

Both factors probably mean Nebraska's system is more controlled and perhaps fairer than those in other states, the study's authors and other experts suggested.

In addition, Nebraska has a small minority population highly concentrated in two cities, which experts said may make the conclusion on lack of racial disparities less representative of the national picture.

The study was commissioned in 1999 by the legislature after Gov. Mike Johanns vetoed the legislature's proposal for a moratorium on executions. Governor Johanns, a Republican, also vetoed the proposed study, but was overridden.

But yesterday, he hailed the study and said it would bolster efforts to speed up executions.

--------

Court May Set Death Penalty Limits

New York Times
August 2, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/news/AP-Scotus-Death-Penalty.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Almost every week a death row inmate somewhere in America asks the nation's highest court for a reprieve. Almost every week the Supreme Court says no, and another execution goes forward.

Now, as the two female justices publicly express qualms about the death penalty, the high court seems prepared this fall for the most extensive reconsideration of the issue in a quarter-century.

The court is far from a head-on confrontation over whether the death penalty violates the Constitution's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. At least three of the nine justices are firm death penalty supporters, and none is an abolitionist on the model of such liberals as the late Thurgood Marshall.

Instead, in choosing to hear some death row appeals and in unusually blunt public comments, the court is poking around the edges of the national debate over whether the death penalty is being applied fairly.

``The justices are not immune to this whole new atmosphere about the death penalty, the debate that is under way and the concern about accuracy and fairness,'' said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a clearinghouse that is critical of the way the death penalty is applied.

The court's interest coincides with the high-profile releases of 10 Death Row inmates after DNA tests proved or suggested their innocence and with public opinion polls that show public unease with some aspects of American capital justice.

The American Bar Association, opening its annual meeting in Chicago this week, recommended that states that allow the death penalty examine the process, from trial through lengthy appeals, to improve its fairness.

``Every state that imposes the death penalty has a duty to determine whether its capital punishment system is flawed and, if so, to eliminate those flaws,'' said Michael Greco, head of the ABA panel that released a step-by-step guide for reviews of state capital punishment procedures.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor startled her audience as well as people on both sides of the issue when she opened a speech in Minnesota last month by suggesting that the country may need minimum standards for lawyers representing people facing the death penalty.

``After 20 years on (the) high court, I have to acknowledge that serious questions are being raised about whether the death penalty is being fairly administered in this country,'' O'Connor said.

A cautious death penalty supporter, O'Connor noted the approximately 20-fold increase in executions annually since she joined the court in 1981, and said the quickening pace has highlighted problems.

``Perhaps most alarming among these is the fact that if statistics are any indication the system may well be allowing some innocent defendants to be executed,'' she said.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said she would support at least one state's proposal to suspend executions while the process was examined.

``I have yet to see a death case among the dozens coming to the Supreme Court on eve-of-execution (reprieve) applications in which the defendant was well represented at trial,'' Ginsburg said in a speech in April.

More than 700 people have been executed since the Supreme Court declared in 1976 that it is possible to administer the death penalty fairly, and allowed states to reinstate the practice.

The justices are now the court of last resort for some 70 or 80 condemned people a year, but death penalty supporter Justice Clarence Thomas recently told a St. Louis audience that the court's reviews are never routine.

``I think the concern is there, it's a continuing concern and a concern heightened by the finality,'' Thomas said last month.

In its most recent term the court voted 6-3 to overturn the death sentence of a retarded Texas killer. O'Connor wrote a majority opinion critical of the way Texas authorities handled the case.

The court has agreed to hear appeals from two additional Death Row inmates in the fall. With drama that does not usually attend the court's dry, one- or two-sentence pronouncements on most death penalty cases, the justices stopped the men's executions with only hours to spare.

One case goes beyond the procedural issues in the recent Texas case to test the constitutionality of executing the mentally retarded. The court settled that question with a qualified yes a dozen years ago. In agreeing to revisit the issue, the court will look at whether national attitudes have changed.

The justices also agreed to hear an appeal from a convicted killer whose court-appointed lawyer once represented the victim.

While an unusual question, the case may offer the court an opportunity to look more widely at the quality of legal representation in capital cases.

-------- environment

Senate wants new arsenic standards for water

USA TODAY
08/02/2001 - Updated 09:43 AM ET
The Associated Press
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/august01/2001-08-02-arsenic.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Senate is backing new arsenic standards for drinking water, but seems to have avoided a confrontation with President Bush over the issue.

The Senate voted 97-1 on Wednesday to require the Environmental Protection Agency to put new arsenic regulations into effect immediately. The House voted last week to require Bush to retain the 10 parts per billion standard that President Clinton had set, but the Senate version cited no specific figure, which Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Mo., called "a happy resolution to the situation."

The Senate language would clearly pressure Bush to set tighter standards for the carcinogen, calling on EPA to protect the young, elderly and others susceptible to the health risks it poses. Even so, Bond said the administration believes the provision and its flexible requirement "is an appropriate way to deal with arsenic in drinking water."

The arsenic provision was part of a $113.4 billion measure financing housing, veterans and environmental programs for next year.

After the Senate completes work on the overall bill, a conference committee will be convened to work out differences between the House and Senate versions of the spending bills.

Clinton proposed the maximum 10 parts per billion level just before leaving office in January. In March, Bush put the new standards on hold, subject to further study, in effect leaving the 59-year-old 50 parts per billion requirement in place.

The Senate proposal, sponsored by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., won widespread support after Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said he would introduce legislation requiring federal assistance to communities that have to upgrade their water systems to lower their arsenic levels. Many communities in the West have higher amounts of arsenic in their water.

The Senate provision would also require the government to mail people information about whether they have high levels of arsenic in their water. That requirement was another part of Clinton's order on the issue that Bush suspended.

"He suspended everything good when it came to these rules," Boxer said.

Westerners complained that conforming with lower arsenic standards was a potentially costly proposition, especially for small towns in areas where the substance occurs naturally. Some estimates are that it could cost communities and private industry $200 million annually to meet Clinton's proposed standards.

Last Friday, the House voted 218-189 to bar the EPA from weakening the Clinton standards. That was the latest in a series of environmental votes in which the chamber has clashed with Bush, including several battles over oil and gas drilling.

While he has blocked Clinton's new arsenic standards from going into effect until next February, he has left 2006 as the target date for full compliance.

EPA Administrator Christie Whitman has not ruled out a standard that would be even lower than 10 parts per billion, though her office has elicited public comment on 20 ppb.

In a 1999 report, the National Academy of Sciences called for stricter standards, saying arsenic was a potent human carcinogen linked to lung, bladder and skin cancer.

Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, cast the lone vote against the proposal. Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., and Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., did not vote.

-------- genetics

Daschle seeks to separate stem-cell, cloning debates

August 2, 2001
By John Godfrey
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010802-12927119.htm

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, South Dakota Democrat, said yesterday he fears both sides of the stem-cell debate will try to misuse the incendiary issue of cloning to further their cause in the Senate.

"I think as we write about it and talk about it, we can't casually intermingle these issues and make them one in the same. They're not," Mr. Daschle said yesterday.

"I strongly believe that this country ought to advance research and science utilizing embryonic stem cells," he said. "But I draw the distinction between that and a full-fledged willingness on the part of the country and the scientific community to use cloning as a method of research and scientific development."

However, Mr. Daschle said, given the open rules of debate in the Senate, "my guess is that as soon as you bring up the issue of stem-cell research, you're going to bring up all of the panoply of questions involving cloning as well I don't think that that can be avoided, especially in the Senate."

Stem cells are undifferentiated cells found in embryos and fetal material capable of becoming any type of cell produced in the body. Adults also have undifferentiated cells, but adult stem cells appear far less flexible in the types of cells they can become. Scientists believe research of both embryonic and adult stem-cell research could yield cures to diseases.

Sen. Sam Brownback, Kansas Republican, opposes embryonic stem-cell research and has sponsored legislation that would ban cloning, but he agrees with Mr. Daschle. "My strong preference would be for them to be debated as separate issues," Mr. Brownback said yesterday afternoon.

While his opinions on the two issues are underpinned by a single belief in the sanctity in life, "the way [the two issues] come to us in government is quite different," Mr. Brownback said yesterday.

The question on embryonic stem-cell research is whether federal dollars should be used to fund procedures. Cloning of humans has not yet begun, and the question is whether to ban it, Mr. Brownback explained.

Still, if Mr. Daschle does not bring a bill to ban cloning to the Senate floor for debate, Mr. Brownback said he would offer such legislation as an amendment to a stem-cell bill when it does come to the floor.

On Tuesday, the House overwhelmingly passed legislation that would ban cloning for any purpose. Mr. Brownback's version of that bill has been referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Opponents of the bill argued that while there should be a ban on trying to give birth to a cloned baby, scientists should be allowed to create cloned embryos to advance stem-cell research.

"At the intersection of these two fields -- cloning technology and stem-cell research -- may lie the creation of insulin-secreting cells for diabetics, nervous system tissue for spinal cord injury victims and a variety of other treatments for devastating illnesses, including Parkinson's disease, heart disease, multiple sclerosis, and various cancers," said Biotechnology Industry Organization President Carl B. Feldbaum in a statement released during the House's debate.

Mr. Daschle initially blamed opponents of stem-cell research for muddying the waters, but when told of the tone and details of the House debate, he said: "I don't care whether you're a proponent or an opponent, I think you need to draw a pretty sharp line here between cloning and embryonic stem-cell research."

-------- police / prisoners

States get funds to analyze backlog of DNA samples

USA TODAY
08/01/2001
The Associated Press
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/august01/2001-08-01-dna-funds.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - With hundreds of thousands of unanalyzed DNA samples sitting in state crime labs, Attorney General John Ashcroft said Wednesday states would receive federal dollars to deal with the genetic evidence that could help solve crimes or clear the innocent.

The Justice Department will provide more than $30 million over the next 18 months for crime labs to analyze DNA collected from criminals and from crime scenes that, in some states, has been left undocumented in storage lockers for months or weeks after it has been gathered.

A law signed last December authorized the department to provide the money.

New testing technology and highly reliable results have made DNA samples a powerful law enforcement tool, driving states to pass laws requiring rapists, murderers and even robbers to submit DNA samples.

The samples can help solve cases that have languished for years. Just this week, police in Florida said DNA evidence linked a man to an attack on a tourist who was raped and left for dead two decades ago. New testing technology led to a match between semen from the attack and the man's DNA, which had been kept in a state database of convicted criminals.

But labs are overloaded with samples; an estimated 1 million DNA samples collected from criminals have never been analyzed.

Ashcroft said over 180,000 kits with DNA samples collected from rape cases across the country have never been analyzed.

"DNA technology can operate as a kind of truth machine, ensuring justice by identifying the guilty and clearing the innocent," said Ashcroft at a news conference. "Backlogs of unanalyzed DNA samples and unacceptable delays in analysis of crime scene DNA evidence are preventing the full utilization of this remarkable technology is solving crimes and promoting justice."

The grants will pay for 500,000 samples to be analyzed, Ashcroft said.

Ashcroft also asked the FBI to improve its Combined DNA Index System, a national computer network that allows comparisons with samples in other states, and ordered a Justice Department study on how to eliminate delays in obtaining DNA test results, which can take from six months to a year.

"Ideally, with current technology, any delays in obtaining test results should be at most a matter of days rather than weeks, months or more," said Ashcroft.

The attorney general was joined at a news conference by Republican and Democratic lawmakers who supported the DNA backlog legislation, including Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who opposes Ashcroft's proposal to limit holding times for records generated by gun purchase background checks.

Schumer praised Ashcroft's DNA initiative. "You and I agree on a lot more than people think we do," said Schumer, whose state has 15,000 rape cases that have never been analyzed

Some lawmakers want federal grants for alleviating the DNA backlogs to be contingent upon states passing laws allowing convicts access to DNA testing that could exonerate them if the tests were not available at trial.

Twelve states have enacted such laws. According to the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, 10 death row inmates have been exonerated by DNA evidence since 1990.

Asked whether he supports such a requirement, Ashcroft said, "There may be other things we can do. None of us has any desire to prolong the wrongful detention."

--------

Italy Orders Transfer of Police Chiefs at G8

New York Times
August 2, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-italy-p.html

ROME (Reuters) - Italy's Interior Minister Claudio Scajola Thursday ordered the transfer of three top police officials following a probe into the conduct of security forces at last month's Group of Eight summit in Genoa.

Scajola's office said in a brief statement that deputy police chief Ansoino Andreassi, in charge of supervising security operations at the G8, anti-terrorism police chief Arnaldo La Barbera and Genoa's police chief Francesco Colucci had been ``moved to other posts.''

It did not explain the reason for the transfer. Italian media had said the three, together with other top police figures, were questioned in a series of probes into allegations of police beatings of anti-G8 protesters.

The interior ministry launched its own probe into the Genoa events and Italian newspapers have reported that ministry inspectors recommended that heads of senior police officials roll.

Scajola himself told parliament Wednesday at a debate on the G8 events: ``If, as it seems, some (police) behaved improperly, they will be severely censured.''

So far the focus has been on the legitimacy of a police raid on a school serving as media center and sleeping quarters for anti-globalization groups, and on allegations that arrested activists were beaten at a police station.

The raid, in which 62 people were injured and 93 arrested, came 36 hours after pitched battles between police and anti-globalization protesters raged through Genoa's streets, marring the July 20-22 summit.

Genoa prosecutors have also opened several investigations into the allegations.

Francesco Meloni, who heads the team of investigating magistrates, told reporters Thursday that he would offer an assessment of his first week of probes Saturday, adding: ``At the same time, I will set out what lines of inquiry we are pursuing.''

Activists arrested in the raid, carried out soon after midnight, alleged police had beaten them without provocation. Many were carried out on stretchers, covered in blood.

Police say they had to crack down hard because activists resisted arrest and attacked a policeman -- a version rejected by injured protesters. Police said they found objects in the school that could be used as weapons and knives.

Some 36 hours earlier, police shot and killed a protester during clashes with thousands of protesters. At least 231 people were injured and 280 demonstrators arrested during and after the clashes.



------- OneList (submissions from subscribers)

------- Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!