------- Index of Articles
NUCLEAR
China's President Will Visit North Korea
U.S. Seeks to Lift Sanctions on India
Bush to quit ABM Treaty
US admits losing nuke
Rumsfeld Heads to Russia for Talks
There's a Point To Going It Alone
MILITARY
Southern African Leaders Meet on AIDS, Conflicts
Egypt threatens show of armed force to aid Arafat
Russia in NATO?
OTHER
Abortion Foes Split Over Bush's Plan on Stem Cells
Stem Cell Decision Examined
World Bank, IMF cut meetings for security
ACTIVISTS
15 Antimissile Protesters Face Felony Charges
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- asia
China's President Will Visit North Korea
By John Pomfret
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, August 12, 2001; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64347-2001Aug11?language=printer
President Jiang Zemin of China will visit North Korea next month in another sign of improving ties between the two countries, Asian diplomatic sources said.
Diplomats in Beijing said Jiang will meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang on Sept. 20.
Jiang's trip is part of a flurry of diplomatic activity involving North Korea, Russia and China.
Kim is concluding what could be a month-long visit to Russia, during which he and President Vladimir Putin reaffirmed their countries' close ties dating to the Cold War.
The trip marked only the third time the reclusive Kim has ventured abroad since succeeding his father as leader of the impoverished and isolated country. His two other trips were to China.
In Moscow, Kim apparently reiterated his pledge to continue a moratorium on missile tests. North Korea tested a two-stage rocket over Japanese airspace in August 1998, raising concern that it was working on a delivery system for a nuclear or conventional warhead.
Diplomats said they considered China's engagement with North Korea important for security in northeast Asia, and hoped Jiang would press Kim to resume talks with South Korea. Exchanges between Seoul and Pyongyang thrived after leaders of the two countries held their first summit last year in the North Korean capital. But tensions between North Korea and the United States have brought those nascent ties to a virtual standstill.
-------- india / pakistan
U.S. Seeks to Lift Sanctions on India
Aim Is to Bolster Military Relations
By Alan Sipress
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 12, 2001; Page A01
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64632-2001Aug11?language=printer
The Bush administration will start working with Congress next month to lift sanctions placed on India after its 1998 nuclear tests, clearing the way for greater military planning, joint operations and eventual sharing of weapons technology with New Delhi.
Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage said State Department officials have held preliminary talks with Capitol Hill and will move forward "at a speed visible to the naked eye" in easing sanctions once Congress returns from summer recess.
The move is aimed at strengthening ties between the world's two largest democracies and would accelerate their evolving military cooperation in various areas, including joint exercises, officer exchanges, and coordinated efforts to combat piracy and protect navigation through the crucial sea lanes of the Indian Ocean. The two countries are already cooperating in planning for peacekeeping operations.
"It would give us a wider range of flexibility in moving forward in these areas," said Adm. Dennis C. Blair, commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, which covers India. This cooperation is expected to get a major boost late this year when the two sides resume high-level discussions over defense policy and joint operations. "You've seen some seeds sprouting. With the [upcoming discussions], we now have a way forward with these activities," Blair said.
American military and diplomatic officials point to the benefits of improving often-strained relations with India because it is a major regional power with a professional army increasingly led by Western-oriented commanders. Though U.S. officials won't say so, some experts outside the government stress that Washington is also looking to beef up these military ties with an eye on China, seen by some U.S. strategic planners as posing a mounting challenge to American interests in Asia.
"Both India and the United States have a common interest if China becomes a danger or a threatening state. That's what's behind the military-to-military relationship at the highest geopolitical level," said Stephen P. Cohen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of the newly published "India: Emerging Power."
U.S. officials are scrupulous about not depicting their emerging ties with India as an initiative to counter China -- an objective that could also offend many Indians long proud of their independent role in world affairs.
"For us to have a sustainable relationship with India, it must be based in and on India and not be a relationship which we try to develop with India to face a third country," Armitage said.
American officials say Washington and New Delhi share a particular interest in ensuring free navigation through the Indian Ocean. An increasing proportion of Persian Gulf oil passes along those sea lanes, as does much of India's trade, which has soared since it began to reform its socialist economy.
Military cooperation with India could also help enhance U.S. military readiness by offering training in the Indian Ocean. American forces have no facilities for training between the Persian Gulf and Southeast Asia, defense officials said. U.S. officials also are careful to say that their aspiration for closer ties with New Delhi does not represent a snub of Pakistan, an American ally during the Cold War and a longtime rival of India.
Much of the military cooperation sought by the United States and India is stalled by the sanctions imposed after the May 1998 nuclear tests. Those restrictions preclude military sales and the transfer of weapons technology to India -- one of New Delhi's prime objectives in improving ties. It is also politically difficult for the United States to justify other forms of military cooperation while India is blacklisted for its nuclear weapons program, a senior Defense Department official said.
The United States, however, has already waived the sanctions to allow Indian officers to receive American training as a way of maintaining relations between the two militaries, the official added. This year, the United States plans to spend $500,000 bringing Indians here for military education and training.
"Where the rubber hits the road is how do we address sanctions," a Pentagon official said. "Both sides will move as fast as they possibly can given the legal considerations we have to work through. There is now a common desire to have a much closer, much better relationship."
The two countries have made a modest start within the past year. In June, they conducted their first joint exercise, albeit a table-top peacekeeping game in which no troops participated, and a joint search-and-rescue exercise at sea is scheduled for this year. The guided missile cruiser USS Cowpen made a rare American appearance in an Indian port in February, participating in an international naval review in Bombay.
Indo-American ties began to pick up steam during the final year of the Clinton administration, especially after the White House and State Department dropped their objection to renewing military contacts, said James M. Bodner, undersecretary of defense for policy under Clinton. "The new administration has picked up the ball and run with it," Bodner said.
That interest has not been lost on Indian officials, who are delighted by the attention the Bush administration is paying them.
"Ever since the new administration took over, we have received very encouraging signals at all levels of the administration that they would like to build on and continue the momentum of Indo-U.S. relations," an Indian diplomat said. "Both sides are moving ahead fairly expeditiously."
During an April visit to Washington, India's foreign and defense minister, Jaswant Singh, was given an unscheduled 45-minute audience with President Bush, who took him for a stroll in the Rose Garden before they retired to the Oval Office for a discussion of missile defense. At the Pentagon, Singh was welcomed with a full military honor guard by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who is traditionally sparing in his reception of foreign dignitaries.
India was added to a number of allies and friends briefed in May by senior officials about the administration's thinking on missile defense, dispatching Armitage to New Delhi. "We put India into the category with our allies -- she's not an ally, of course -- but we consulted with her in that vein and that was pleasing to our Indian hosts," he said. "They saw the United States acknowledging that India is a country poised to take its place on the world stage."
Under the Bush administration, U.S. officials no longer view India primarily as an international scofflaw undercutting efforts to limit nuclear proliferation, but rather as a potential supporter of American missile defense development. The Clinton administration vigorously pressed India to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, but Bush has made no secret of his skepticism about the agreement.
American officials, however, remain concerned that India's military planners have not fully moved away from the notion of using nuclear weapons in conventional warfare. "There's still some undeveloped thinking about using nuclear weapons," Blair said. "The trend is right, but it's not complete yet."
Though India first conducted a nuclear test three decades ago, U.S. officials said its doctrine for using the weapons and the procedures for deploying them remain "immature." They say this continues to raise the prospect of nuclear escalation in South Asia, one of the most dangerous places on earth because of the Indian-Pakistani conflict over Kashmir, pitting two nuclear powers against each other.
But Congress has been growing increasingly sympathetic to warmer U.S. relations with India, in large part because of the growing political might and savvy of the Indian American community.
India, meanwhile, has been one of the few major countries that has not objected to Bush's proposal for a ballistic missile shield, perhaps the administration's top foreign policy priority. "We are quite open-minded and want to hear more about missile defense," an Indian diplomat said.
On Friday, after U.S. officials finished a round of discussions with their Russian counterparts about missile defense and nuclear weapons, an Indian delegation was among the few invited to be briefed by the Pentagon. This is a small club of countries that did not include India until recently, a senior Defense Department official said.
Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, became the highest ranking U.S. military officer to travel to India since 1998 when he visited New Delhi last month. He gave a major boost to the military relationship when he informed his Indian counterparts that the Bush administration had decided to reinstate the Defense Policy Group, a forum for regular, senior-level military discussions that was suspended three years ago, Pentagon officials said.
That group, which could convene by December, is expected to take up Asian security issues of mutual concern and map out a program of future cooperation. These could, for instance, include training American soldiers at Indian centers for jungle counter-insurgency and high-altitude warfare, U.S. and Indian officials said. For its part, India has been seeking American instruction in electronic warfare and cryptology.
The discussions could also lead to more joint exercises and coordination in fighting piracy, responding to natural disasters, peacekeeping and conducting search-and- rescue missions at sea, officials from both countries said. Given India's vast coastline and American security interests in the Indian Ocean, much of the military relationship will focus on maritime coordination, these officials said.
"I expect we'll have a whole series of port visits in the year to come," said Ashley J. Tellis, a former Rand Corp. analyst who this month became a senior adviser to U.S. Ambassador to India Robert Blackwill. "Navy-to-Navy cooperation is going to take off."
-------- treaties
Source: Bush to quit ABM Treaty
Leaving the pact would let the U.S. proceed with missile tests next year.
Philadelphia Inquirer
By Warren P. Strobel
INQUIRER WASHINGTON BUREAU
http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/2001/08/12/national/MISSILE12.htm
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration intends to announce before the end of the year that it will withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to pave the way for advanced missile-defense tests nearly next year, a senior administration official has told Knight Ridder.
While President Bush has called the ABM Treaty a Cold War relic and signaled his intent to move beyond it, the senior official actually offered a timetable for withdrawing from the pact.
Arms-control advocates and some U.S. allies consider the treaty the cornerstone of nuclear stability, and some Democrats in the Senate, which ratified the treaty in 1972, may seek ways to prevent the administration from abandoning it now.
The senior official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, made his comments as U.S. and Russian officials accelerated talks last week over missile defense and reductions in both sides' arsenals of long-range nuclear weapons.
The talks in Washington, while cordial, made little real progress, said the senior official, who participated. Because of Bush's year-end deadline, "there's not a lot of time for [the Russians] to jaw over this," he said.
Bush has made it clear that he would seek Russia's cooperation in nullifying the ABM treaty, perhaps in the form of a joint U.S.-Russian statement that it is no longer valid.
But the President and his aides also have said they will move ahead without Moscow's consent. The United States and Russia, the only two treaty signatories, must give six months' notice of withdrawal if either were to determine that the pact "jeopardized its supreme national interests."
A second senior official confirmed that the President intended to give the six-month notice by the end of the year but cautioned that Bush has not yet formally given the order to do so.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is to hold talks Tuesday in Moscow with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Ivanov, on plans for the missile defense. In preparation for that meeting, a senior Russian military delegation held two days of talks and briefings at the Pentagon last week.
Announcing its intent to abandon the treaty would permit the administration to proceed with planned missile-defense tests next spring that could violate the treaty's strict limits on antimissile testing and deployment.
The 1972 pact, signed by President Richard M. Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, bans all but the most rudimentary systems for defending against long-range, nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles, and prohibits many kinds of tests, as well. The theory behind the pact was that if both superpowers were vulnerable to attack, neither would launch a first nuclear strike for fear of devastating retaliation. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told the Senate Armed Services Committee last month that the Pentagon's testing program could come into conflict with the treaty as early as February when a tests of antimissile and air-defense radars are planned.
A senior Pentagon official, briefing reporters Friday in advance of Rumsfeld's trip to Moscow, said testing of a defense system would continue and Bush would continue to seek Russia's backing for abandoning the ABM accord.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
US admits losing nuke
The Australian
August 12, 2001
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,2566427^401,00.html
A NUCLEAR bomb, 100 times more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima, is lying 10km off the east coast of the United States.
Until now one of the most closely guarded secrets in US military history, its existence has been confirmed in newly declassified documents which reveal how it was dumped in the sea after a mid-air collision more than 40 years ago.
Pentagon officials, though admitting they do not know the bomb's exact location, insist it is safe.
They have rejected demands for it to be recovered, saying it is too dangerous to be touched.
The 3450kg hydrogen bomb, known as a Mark 15 weapon, has been lying off the coast of Georgia since February 5, 1958, when it was jettisoned from a B-47 Stratojet bomber after the plane was struck by a fighter jet during a training exercise at 36,000ft.
One of the bomber's wings was damaged and an engine dislodged.
The pilot, Maj Howard Richardson, was ordered to drop the 3.5m bomb before attempting to land.
He did so near Tybee Island, close to the mouth of the Savannah River.
Despite a 10-week search, the bomb was never found.
In a top-secret memo to the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), a Pentagon official wrote: "A B-47 aircraft with a (word censored) nuclear weapon aboard was damaged in a collision with an F-86 aircraft near Sylvania.
"The B-47 aircraft attempted three times unsuccessfully to land with the weapon.
"The weapon was then jettisoned visually over water off the mouth of the Savannah River. No detonation was observed."
Documents reveal the search was called off when another hydrogen bomb was accidentally dropped near Florence, South Carolina.
A TNT explosive trigger detonated on impact, but the actual nuclear device did not explode.
Troops looking for the bomb off the coast were then ordered to Florence to conduct a clean-up operation. They never returned to Tybee Island.
"The search for this weapon was discontinued on 4-16-'58 and the weapon is considered irretrievably lost," one of the declassified documents states.
The military suspected the bomb plunged into water 6m deep, coming to rest beneath about 5m of sand.
The bomb's existence was only made public when a salvage company, run by former CIA officer Bert Soleau, offered to find it.
Now Georgians are demanding action, but the military is standing firm, saying recovery could take five years and cost $23 million.
Officials claim the bomb is safe because, though it contained 180kg of TNT to trigger the atomic explosion, a vital link between the TNT and the nuclear device had been removed. Without the link -- in this case a capsule containing plutonium -- detonation was impossible.
This has been challenged by former servicemen and residents, who have discovered documents stating it was armed.
Derek Duke, a former US Air Force pilot from Savannah, cites a 1966 memo to the Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy by W.J. Howard, then assistant to the secretary of defence, stating that the bomb was a "complete weapon".
Howard H. Nixon, a former crew chief who loaded nuclear weapons on to planes at Georgia's Hunter Army Airfield from 1957 to 1959, said the bombs were always armed.
"Never in my air force career did I install a Mark 15 weapon without installing the plutonium capsule," he said.
The capsule debate has failed to convince Mr Duke. "It's a nuclear bomb," he said.
"It's like if I take the battery out of your car, then I try to convince you it's not a car."
Tybee Islanders agree. Mayor Walter Parker said: "It's in the best interest of everybody that it be found to determine what condition the weapon is in."
Resident Ken Wade was more blunt: "There is no doubt we've got a nuclear bomb right here in our neighbourhood."
-------- us nuc politics
Rumsfeld Heads to Russia for Talks
August 12, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Rumsfeld-Russia.html?searchpv=aponline
MOSCOW (AP) -- It is unrealistic to expect Russia to retreat anytime soon from its position opposing a U.S. plan to deploy defenses against long-range missiles, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Sunday.
``It's a difficult road to travel,'' he said, referring to efforts to change the Russians' thinking.
Speaking to reporters traveling with him on an overnight flight from Washington, Rumsfeld gave no indication that he expected talks Monday with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov to produce an agreement on missile defenses, offensive nuclear forces or any other security issues.
Monday's talks grew out of President Bush's meeting in Italy last month with Russian President Vladimir Putin in which they agreed to pursue parallel discussions on missile defense and nuclear force reductions.
At the time it appeared the Russians might be warming to Bush's view that missile defense testing and deployment should not be limited by Cold War-era arms control treaties.
But since then there has been little indication of movement toward Bush's goal of getting Russia to agree on a mutual withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, which prohibits the kind of broad missile defense Bush says the United States must have as soon as the technology is ready.
In the interview aboard his plane, Rumsfeld said the Bush administration is attempting to forge a new, broader relationship with Russia and that this cannot be done quickly -- even with regard to missile defense, which he views as a matter of some urgency.
``It is not something that just happens,'' for two countries that considered each other enemies for more than four decades and still harbor some suspicions of each other, he said. ``It takes some time.''
He would not be drawn into saying how much he expected to accomplish in Moscow. He originally planned to hold two days of talks here but on Friday his office announced that the schedule -- which includes an afternoon cruise with Ivanov on the Moscow River -- had been condensed into a single day.
``You just don't know'' what could be accomplished, he said, adding that it was enough to have an exchange of views with the Russians ``and begin a process of going back and forth'' with ideas.
Rumsfeld said he was confident that the U.S. view on the need for missile defenses will prevail eventually.
``If you look ahead 10 years ahead, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the people of Russia had become fans of missile defense,'' he said. Later he added, ``People's attitudes about this are going to change.''
The basis of Russia's opposition is a concern that scrapping the ABM treaty could unravel the whole fabric of international arms control and that U.S. missile defenses might one day undercut Russia's own nuclear deterrent.
Rumsfeld's Moscow talks are among a series of high-level U.S.-Russian contacts leading to Bush-Putin meetings in October in Shanghai and at Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, in November.
Although Rumsfeld indicated there is no rush to reach an accommodation on missile defense and the ABM treaty, the administration is fast approaching the point where it will have to either scale back its testing program in order to stay within the limits of the treaty or give six months notice of its intent to withdraw.
The administration said in July that its testing program might come in conflict with the treaty as soon as next spring.
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There's a Point To Going It Alone
Unilateralism Has Often Served Us Well
"President Kennedy unilaterally announced that the United States would halt atmospheric nuclear testing provided the Soviet Union did the same."
By Michael J. Glennon
Sunday, August 12, 2001; Page B02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A62469-2001Aug11?language=printer
"Unilateralism," the pejorative-du-jour for disliked foreign policy initiatives, is in danger of taking on the scent of its rightly discredited forebear, "isolationism." Critics both abroad and at home, most recently Senate Majority leader Tom Daschle and House Minority leader Dick Gephardt, have lambasted the administration for a series of initiatives undertaken alone. White House press secretary Ari Fleischer even turned the tables recently by charging that the administration's critics, who oppose Mexican trucks on U.S. roads in violation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, were the real unilateralists. Surely no one, he implied, would in this day and age wish to be seen as what in a previous era was known as the Ugly American.
That's too bad. Unilateralism has always been a centerpiece of American foreign policymaking, and the world is the better for it. The unilaterally promulgated Monroe Doctrine shielded the Western Hemisphere in the early 19th century from foreign colonization and exploitation of the sort that afflicted Africa and Asia. In the early 20th century, Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points served as a unilaterally delivered agenda for the Versailles peace conference, at which World War I was formally ended. At mid-century, the Truman Doctrine unilaterally committed the United States to a worldwide effort to stop the spread of communism. In 1956, President Eisenhower unilaterally blocked the military campaign of Britain and France to overthrow Nasser and capture the Suez Canal. President Kennedy unilaterally announced that the United States would halt atmospheric nuclear testing provided the Soviet Union did the same. The first President Bush helped take the African elephant off the road to extinction by announcing -- unilaterally -- that the United States would ban ivory trading.
Other nations have not shrunk from unilateralism when it has served their interests. France, one of the foremost critics of what its foreign minister calls American "hyperpower," alone rejected the declaration of the Community of Democracies, which 106 countries signed in Warsaw last year, pledging cooperation in support of democratic institutions in newly emerging democracies. New Zealand in the mid-1980s unilaterally banned visits from nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed ships. Britain, declining thus far to participate in a single European currency, is a prominent -- but hardly the only -- European nation that unilaterally resists full integration. Norway refuses to join the European Union. Switzerland takes a pass on the United Nations. The list goes on.
Why does the United States act alone? Both friends and foes of American preeminence claim that the United States acts unilaterally to advance American hegemony. But in reality, it's hard to tell when it does advance it and when it doesn't. Consider American rejection of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, the 1997 ban on anti-personnel land mines, the nuclear test ban treaty or restraints on small arms sales. Each of these actions irritated other nations and clearly did not benefit U.S. diplomatic influence. Yet nixing Kyoto probably enhanced relative American economic power, and retaining the option to use land mines could conceivably tip the balance in a conflict on the Korean peninsula.
As someone who has advised Congress, the executive branch and international organizations for nearly 30 years on issues of international law and policy, it seems clear to me that the real reasons for the persistence of American unilateralism have little to do with advancing our hegemony.
First, acting multilaterally can carry huge costs, even for longtime allies. The United States sacrificed operational efficiency for political consensus in waging a committee-run war in Kosovo. NATO's target selection procedure initially gave 18 coalition partners a veto over every target that the U.S. military wished to hit -- even though destruction of that target could have been essential to the protection of American forces committed to combat. While that subsequently changed, "coalition warfare" could have turned into a bureaucratic nightmare had the need arisen to improvise a coordinated ground attack.
Second, multilateralism doesn't transform a bad idea into a good one. The fact that a group of nations favors a given solution to some problem does not mean that that solution advances the interests of every other nation -- or even members of the group. Man-made global warming is no myth. But the Kyoto Protocol will not significantly reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that cause it. In this century, most of those emissions are likely to come from India, China and other Third World nations to which the pact does not apply. What the protocol demonstrably would do is slow economic growth dramatically in the United States.
Third, as often as not, the United States acts alone not to assert power over other nations, but to prevent them from asserting power over this country. The Senate's 1919 refusal to approve the covenant of the League of Nations -- an act that set the stage for American unilateralism throughout the 20th century -- can be traced to the belief of Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge and the Senate "Reservationists" that the covenant would have committed the United States to go to war when so directed by the League. More recently, the treaty that would establish an International Criminal Court raises similar questions by permitting amendments or court decisions that, the Clinton administration concluded, "could effectively create 'new' and unacceptable crimes."
None of this is to suggest that all or even most of the challenges confronting the United States are amenable to unilateral solutions. The most serious contemporary international problem, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, cannot be resolved by the United States alone. The cooperation of other states -- Russia and China foremost among them -- is required. Nor, appearances notwithstanding, can a missile defense system be put in place unilaterally. The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty can be terminated with or without Russian consent -- but building a full-fledged, operational system would require the approval of at least Britain, where radars would almost surely have to be located.
Further, a willingness to act unilaterally does not resolve the elaborately difficult question that underlies several of the administration's recent unilateral initiatives: Whenthe two aims conflict, should the United States act in its own national interest, or should it act in the interest of the international community? As recently as 25 years ago, the United States often was able to avoid confronting this issue because American and international interests did not conflict nearly as often as they are now perceived to: Policies such as maintaining global peace and security normally benefited both. With issues such as global warming, however, the dilemma cannot be escaped. As with ranchers whose cattle overgraze a common pasture, the rational course for a given country may lie in continuing to destroy the global commons and "free riding" on the efforts of other nations to clean it up -- a course that many Americans would be loath to see their country take.
If the United States wishes to maintain global preeminence, it will have to think through carefully at what point that objective requires it to oppose further constraints on its behavior. Some universal constraints, such as those directed at protecting free trade, intellectual property rights and fundamental human rights, may sustain or advance American preeminence. Others -- aimed at delegating American governmental functions to international organizations -- may impede it. Which are which -- and whether the long-term benefits of hegemony compensate for the sacrifices needed to maintain it -- should be the focus of the debate. Flinging charges of "unilateralist" at opponents merely confuses the issue.
Acting alone is not the same as acting for yourself.
Moreover, it's important to remember that acting alone is more risky than acting with others. Had the United States approached Vietnam as it did the conflicts in Kosovo and the Persian Gulf -- had it conditioned American willingness to intervene on its ability to assemble a coalition -- the war probably would never have been fought. America's reluctant allies were right; listening to them would have spared the nation an unparalleled tragedy.
The way to avoid future Vietnams, however, is not to renounce the unilateral use of force. The judicious use or threat of force -- multilateral when possible, unilateral when necessary -- can advance both international peace and justice.
Still, in a disorderly international system, in which nations continue to use force against each other with impunity, sovereignty remains the central organizing principle. The power to act alone is an indispensable attribute of sovereignty. Forgoing that option through gradual attrition can be dangerous, especially for a nation such as the United States that relishes its difference from the conformist, group-oriented cultures that pervade most of the world. Individualism is and has been the factor most responsible for the vibrancy of American law and politics, economics and diplomacy. Much of the United States's success in the world traces to its taste for risk, its sense of independence, its willingness to experiment and take the initiative.
The road less traveled is never the most popular path, for individuals or for nations. But the readiness to strike out alone has made America and Americans what they are. It would be a shame, for us and the world, if fear of being labeled "unilateralist" caused that readiness to diminish.
Michael J. Glennon, a 2001-2002 fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, was legal counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1977 to 1980 and is the author of "Limits of Law, Prerogatives of Power: Interventionism After Kosovo," published this month by St. Martin's/Palgrave.
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
Southern African Leaders Meet on AIDS, Conflicts
August 12, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-africa-.html
BLANTYRE, Malawi (Reuters) - Southern African leaders began an annual summit amid heavy security in Malawi on Sunday where they were to discuss how to tackle a devastating AIDS epidemic as well as debt, poverty and regional conflicts.
``Our main frustrations are with...conflicts and AIDS,'' Namibian President Sam Nujoma said at the start of the summit of the 14 countries of the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
The AIDS epidemic is heaping more misery on an already impoverished region as it kills off much of the young work force. The leaders will be looking at a range of options to battle the scourge, including cheaper drugs, during three days of meetings.
The region also has more than its share of conflict, with an almost three-decade-old civil war raging in Angola and the armies of several African countries squared off in the mineral-rich Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Nujoma said SADC would push for a tightening of sanctions by the region and the international community against the UNITA rebel movement in Angola, which has been at war with the government since independence in 1975.
Sanctions against UNITA have targeted its sale of illicit diamonds which funds its purchase of weapons and other goods.
Zambian President Frederick Chiluba had earlier told reporters that progress was being made in implementing a Congo peace plan. He is the chief mediator in the conflict.
``There has been overall progress in the Congo peace process,'' said Chiluba. ``The area of (the withdrawal) of foreign armies is where there has been some slow movement. There are no negotiations in which there aren't any difficulties.''
The war in Congo, which began three years ago, pits troops from Namibia, Angola and Zimbabwe, who are backing the government, against rebels supported by Uganda and Rwanda.
The leaders are also expected to approve new plans for a common SADC visa -- the ``univisa'' -- to boost tourism, which is widely seen as a job-generating sector with great potential.
Security was tight, with crack paramilitary guards and a military helicopter escorting leaders on the 25 kmride from the airport into the commercial city of Blantyre.
A previously unknown group calling itself the Scorpions made a threat last week to mount a bomb attack on Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe and the host, Malawian President Bakili Muluzi.
South African bomb disposal experts had been flown in and swept the hotel and summit hall Friday and Saturday. Security sources said they remained on standby Sunday.
MUGABE SAYS LAND REFORM ``HUMANE''
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe said on arrival that his land reform drive was ``humane'' and did not mean his government was throwing white farmers out of the country.
``We are not kicking the white settlers out but we are being humane and humanitarian,'' Mugabe said.
A defiant Mugabe has vowed to press on with his plan to confiscate most of the white farming community's land without compensation for redistribution to poor and landless blacks.
Zimbabwe may not be high on the official agenda of the SADC meeting but summit sources said ``quiet diplomacy'' would be used behind the scenes to persuade Mugabe to resolve his country's crisis, which has hurt investor confidence across the region.
South Africa has said it will stick to its policy of engagement with Mugabe despite an admission by President Thabo Mbeki that this approach had failed so far to yield results.
South Africa, Swaziland, Lesotho, Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Seychelles, Mauritius, Tanzania, Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique and Malawi are the 14 SADC members.
-------- israel
Egypt threatens show of armed force to aid Arafat
Sunday Times (UK)
Uzi Mahnaimi, Tel Aviv
August 12 2001
http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/2001/08/12/stifgnmid02001.html
THE threat of a wider Middle East conflict is growing as the Egyptian government considers sending its 3rd Armoured Army into the Sinai peninsula if Israel moves into Palestinian territories.
In recent weeks Egypt has come under increased pressure from the Palestinians to help them. The Sinai option was confirmed by a senior Egyptian security source, who said the Israelis had to be deterred from "destroying" the Palestinian Authority and Yasser Arafat, its leader.
Under the terms of a 1979 peace agreement, Israel withdrew from the Sinai, which it had conquered in the six day war of 1967, while Egypt agreed not to keep substantial military forces there.
Palestinian sources said that last month Arafat reminded Egypt's president, Hosni Mubarak, that the country had other obligations: as a signatory of the Arab League's defence treaty, it had a duty to give military support to any fellow member coming under attack.
Arafat, the sources said, urged Mubarak to implement the treaty. Mubarak has so far taken no action, but has said that as long as Ariel Sharon is prime minister of Israel, there will be no peace in the region.
Israeli security sources say the possibility of Mubarak's intervention is now being factored into military planning. Any incursion into the Sinai would be viewed as a violation of the peace accord. Israel would send a substantial force to defend its southern border, raising the prospect of the first confrontation with Egypt since 1973.
Any encounter now would be no pushover for the Israelis. The Egyptian army has improved dramatically in the past 30 years, and is one of the most modern in the world. Its hardware is advanced and almost entirely American; its air force is well maintained and its navy bigger than Israel's, and stronger.
Israel's northern border is no less tense. Mubarak's special adviser, Osama al-Baz, said last month that if Israel attacked Syria, the Syrians would not be alone.
Israeli military intelligence warned in a recent report to the government that confrontation could follow on all borders if relations with the Palestinians deteriorated sharply.
With the anniversary of the Palestinian uprising approaching, Sheikh Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, the extreme Iranian-backed Islamic group, has promised full military support to the Palestinians.
Intense Hezbollah preparations observed by Israeli intelligence over the past week have increased speculation about the group's intentions. It has built 20 to 30 outposts along the border between Lebanon and Israel. Iranian army units are keeping long-range rockets on standby in southern Lebanon, capable of striking northern parts of Israel.
The Israeli military also has to take another foe into consideration: Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Iraqi forces have advanced a tank division from a Republican Guard barracks near Baghdad towards the Jordanian border at least twice since the beginning of the intifada.
Senior officers say an Iraqi expeditionary army arriving on the Jordanian border would be a casus belli for Israel, although they hope allied air strikes would deter any such move. "We are sure they would be tackled by the Americans," said one officer.
On Friday, American and British aircraft bombed three sites in southern Iraq, the largest allied strike since February. Altogether, 20 ground-attack fighters were involved, backed up by 30 support aircraft, according to the Pentagon.
The official Iraqi News Agency said one person was killed and 11 were wounded.
-------- nato
Russia in NATO?
For Now, Just Talk Larger Debate Surrounds a 'Non-Issue'
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, August 12, 2001; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64653-2001Aug11?language=printer
MOSCOW -- For four decades, the nations of the West trained their troops to defend against the Red Army. Now, nearly 10 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the issue is no longer Russian aggression against NATO. It's Russian accession to NATO.
President Vladimir Putin floated the idea last month, suggesting it was time for the Atlantic alliance to consider accepting Russia as a member of the treaty organization founded half a century ago to counter Moscow's growing power. Either NATO should stop viewing Russia as an enemy, he said, or it should disband as a geopolitical anachronism.
Others have picked up the theme. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder last week spoke approvingly of the idea of Russian membership in NATO, while President Bush has raised the concept in private with advisers, according to a source informed about the discussions. The idea has won public endorsement from legislative leaders ranging from House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) in Washington to ultranationalist State Duma member Vladimir Zhirinovsky in Moscow.
No one expects the Kremlin to be filling out a membership application anytime soon. In the short term, broaching the topic allows both sides to make political points as NATO prepares to expand farther east. According to analysts, the West is dangling the prospect of NATO membership to make it easier for Moscow to swallow admission of the Baltic republics. Putin, meanwhile, wants to underscore the contradiction in extending the alliance to Russian borders while maintaining that it is not targeted against his country.
"It's political," said Pavel Felgenhauer, a military analyst in Moscow. "Russia cannot join NATO; everybody knows that. . . . Russia's saying it wants to join NATO, NATO says anyone can apply, but of course it's all nonsense. The West just wants to be nice to Mr. Putin. He knows it won't happen."
But all the talk is fueling a provocative debate here and in the West about Russia's longer-term place in the European security structure and NATO's mission in the post-Cold War world. As expressed by some international specialists, the NATO membership discussion raises the questions of how and when Russia can be integrated into the security framework of the rest of the continent.
"One of the good things about this being on the theoretical agenda is [that] people will start talking about the big picture," said Celeste Wallander, director of the Russian program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. In her view, the debate about NATO enlargement in the 1990s focused too narrowly on which countries would be enrolled and which would have to wait. "We didn't really have the debate about what NATO is, what it should be and what it will be. We pushed down the road the bigger debate."
During President Bill Clinton's term, NATO enlarged into former communist Eastern Europe by admitting Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. Bush has vowed to continue the process, saying in a recent speech in Warsaw that he could envision a NATO stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea.
Nine countries have applied for the next expansion round, including Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, three former parts of the Soviet empire that remain especially touchy for Moscow. The 19 current NATO partners intend to decide which to accept at a November 2002 summit in Prague.
NATO spokesman Yves Brodeur said the question of Russia has not come up much. "This is not part of the actual debate at all," he said. "It's a non-issue at this point."
And Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, who plans to meet with U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld here on Monday, tried to play down the issue late last week. "Russian entry into NATO in the near future is unrealistic or improbable," he said.
But he added that Moscow favored closer cooperation with NATO against security threats in such places as the Middle East or the Balkans. "I have noticed that our Western partners do want integration in the sphere of security," he said. "We want it too." And the Kremlin appears to be encouraging discussion of the topic. A Kremlin-affiliated Internet site, www.strana.ru, posted 13 articles on possible Russian membership in NATO last week.
Putin brought up the idea at a July 18 news conference before meeting with Bush in Genoa, Italy, while discussing how to redefine the relationship between East and West. One "option is to include Russia in NATO," he said. "This also creates a single defense and security space."
Gephardt embraced the concept after visiting Russia this summer. "NATO was created to defend against common threats and reduce conflicts among its members, so what better way to prevent a new Cold War or something worse than to extend to Russia the prospect of NATO membership?" he said in an Aug. 2 speech.
Citing comments he attributed to Bush's national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Schroeder said last week that it was "very encouraging" that the United States thought Russia could join NATO one day. While he did not specify when Rice made such comments, he seconded the sentiment. "If one puts things into a historical context, Russia's membership in NATO cannot be ruled out in the long term," he said.
Asked about Schroeder's comment, a U.S. administration official said Rice's position was that "in America, one day, one could imagine that Russia could contemplate NATO membership" -- a more cautious formulation than the German leader suggested.
As a realistic matter, Russia at this point would not meet the political and military criteria set by NATO for new members, according to a broad range of analysts. Among other things, NATO looks at political freedoms, democratic institutions and the rights of minorities. Russia's continuing war in Chechnya would give many members pause, said NATO spokesman Brodeur. Other specialists noted that Russia's military budget is not transparent and its armed forces are not truly under civilian control.
Moreover, Western officials pointed out that Russia has not eagerly embraced the potential for cooperation with NATO already offered through programs such as the Partnership for Peace. Moscow has been reluctant to join in such programs, which would put it on the same level as countries such as Albania. Except for contributing peacekeeping troops in the Balkans, Russia has largely shied away from joint exercises or training that the U.S. military has proposed.
But a Western diplomat here said that the latest comments by Putin were cause for optimism. "What I find interesting is that Putin is the one who put this back on the table," he said. "He did bring it back into the debate. We're interested now in trying to pick up where he left off."
Staff writer Steven Mufson contributed to this report from Washington.
-------- OTHER
-------- genetics
Abortion Foes Split Over Bush's Plan on Stem Cells
New York Times
August 12, 2001
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/12/politics/12RIGH.html
Minutes after President Bush announced his decision on stem cell research, some of the leading anti- abortion voices on the Christian right appeared on CNN to praise him for a Solomonic decision in which he kept his promise that no federal money would be spent to sacrifice human embryos in the cause of research.
Stunned by the positive view of a decision that still allows stem cell research, Richard M. Doerflinger, a spokesman for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the group's point man on abortion issues, said Thursday night after his own CNN appearance, "I seem to be the only man in America who is against the president's policy."
But by Friday morning, Mr. Doerflinger found that he had allies. A different set of leaders who oppose abortion spoke at the National Press Club in Washington to denounce a presidential decision that some among them even likened to the medical experiments of the Nazis.
The president's decision to allow some research on existing embryos created a sudden and stark division in the large, long-reliable coalition against abortion. Although it is too early to predict what effect the split will have on this movement, opponents of abortion say their initial failure to respond in a unified voice at such a defining moment has left them disturbed and confused.
The split within the movement does not fall along religious or theological lines. It does not, for example, pit Roman Catholic against Protestant, because some evangelical groups were just as critical of the president as the bishops were. Instead, it appears to be tactical: pragmatist versus purist.
"I find their positions difficult to square with the fundamental principle that human life is precious and ought to be preserved," Kenneth L. Connor, president of the Family Research Council said of abortion foes who praised the president's decision.
Mr. Connor, whose group had been counting on Mr. Bush to hold the line against federal financing for such research, suggested that the stance of some groups opposed to abortions might be driven more by loyalty to Mr. Bush than by their principles.
"If a President Al Gore had come out with this position," he said, "I am left to wonder whether or not their reaction would have been entirely different."
Mr. Bush seems aware of the differences within his core constituency and eager to try to heal them. In an article today on The New York Times Op-Ed page, Mr. Bush underscores his own devotion to anti-abortion principles - the same principles that his critics on the right accuse his stem cell decision of violating. "We do not end some lives for the medical benefit of others," he writes. "For me, this is a matter of conviction: a belief that life, including early life, is biologically human, genetically distinct and valuable."
The anti-abortion coalition headed into the president's announcement unanimously agreeing on the principles that life begins at conception and that even a microscopic embryo is a human life. Because harvesting stem cells from human embryos kills the embryo, they agreed, stem cell research is the equivalent of killing a human being.
But Mr. Bush, some anti-abortion leaders said, took them by surprise when he said he would approve federal financing for research on only 60 stem cell colonies, or lines, that had already been harvested. He said no new stem cells would be harvested with federal financing, and therefore no more embryos would be destroyed with taxpayer dollars.
Dr. Lana Skirboll, a policy expert at the National Institutes of Health, said on Friday that all 60 of the cell lines met Mr. Bush's criteria for federal financing, criteria slightly less restrictive than rules proposed by former President Bill Clinton.
While Mr. Clinton would have required the cells to be derived only from frozen embryos held by fertility clinics, to ensure that fresh embryos were not taken from couples at the moment the woman was trying to become pregnant, some of the cell lines approved for use by Mr. Bush were derived from fresh embryos that were created in excess of patients' need.
Yet the National Right to Life Committee, the largest anti-abortion group, announced that it was "delighted" with Mr. Bush's speech. So did the Rev. Jerry Falwell, the founder of the Moral Majority, a conservative religious group, and Dr. James C. Dobson, the president and founder of Focus on the Family, a ministry based in Colorado.
Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition, proclaimed Mr. Bush's compromise "an elegant solution to the thorny issue of stem research by firmly protecting the rights of the unborn."
Some leading opponents of abortion speculated that the initial positive view was a result of relief at learning that Mr. Bush had not taken a position permitting more extensive embryonic stem cell research. Others said that the stem cell issue was so new that many groups were still formulating their responses.
"Quite frankly," said Carrie Gordon Earll, a bioethics analyst at Focus on the Family, "this proposal that the president put forth is not something anyone expected, and I think people are still examining the repercussions of where this policy could take us."
The split became clear on Friday when 11 anti-abortion allies called the news conference at the Press Club, where they accused Mr. Bush of missing a historic opportunity to close the door on stem cell research.
"The president's position contradicts the Nuremberg Code," said Wendy Wright, the communications director of Concerned Women for America, a conservative public policy group. "We should be horrified at the prospect of participating in research on embryos who are deliberately killed for the same reason that we are horrified that gold fillings were taken from the teeth of Holocaust victims."
The abortion foes accused Mr. Bush of breaking a campaign promise to outlaw research on living embryonic cells, a pledge he reiterated to an anti-abortion group in May.
Lauren Newell of the Savior's Alliance for Lifting the Truth, a Christian youth group, said: "I am ashamed of our president, who compromises and gives my generation the disposable human life mentality that human life can be picked apart, abused and destroyed. If the president wants to be a strong man and a moral man, then I urge him to reconsider his decision."
This disappointment was echoed by leaders of several organizations supported by evangelicals and Catholics. They include Human Life International; the Christian Legal Society; the Traditional Values Coalition; the Eagle Forum, led by Phyllis Schlafly; the Prison Fellowship, headed by Charles W. Colson, whom the president has praised for his ministry; and the Family Research Council, founded by Gary L. Bauer, who opposed Mr. Bush in the Republican primaries last year. All are conservative Christian groups with sizable followings.
They said they would try to stop the research through legal action. But they stopped short of saying that their anger at the president would translate into direct political opposition. Asked whether they would still support the president in 2004, Angela Buchanan, better known as Bay, whose brother Patrick J. Buchanan was a presidential candidate in 2000, said, "There are some other decisions down the road that we'll be watching, and I guess it will put even more emphasis on those, obviously the Supreme Court justice choices that the president should make."
Though he was not at the news conference, it was Mr. Doerflinger, the bishops' spokesman, who first accused the president of sending the nation into an ethical morass.
"His moral principle seems to be, if the killing has already been done, we can fund this research," Mr. Doerflinger said. "But by the time the scientists come forward with the next group of cell lines, that destruction will already have been done, too. And on we go. Where is the moral limit? On what basis will the president say no? I think it is an untenable and unstable policy."
Mr. Bush seems to respond to critics in his Times Op-Ed article today when he refers to the development of a vaccine for chicken pox, which came from aborted fetal tissue. Once the vaccine's benefits were evident, Mr. Bush says, the origin of it was seen as less important. "Many ethical and religious leaders agree that even if the history of this vaccine raises ethical questions, its current use does not," Mr. Bush writes.
--------
Stem Cell Decision Examined
Scientists Are Wondering About Its Impact on Their Work
By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 12, 2001; Page A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64200-2001Aug11?language=printer
BALTIMORE -- In his laboratory at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, neuroscientist Jeffrey D. Rothstein is injecting stem cells from first-trimester fetuses, human cadavers, umbilical cords and bone marrow into the spinal cords of crippled mice.
Rothstein hopes the work will eventually lead to a treatment for Lou Gehrig's disease, a fatal neurological condition that is currently incurable.
Now, after President Bush's decision last week to allow federal money to be used to support a limited amount of stem cell research for the first time, Rothstein may find it easier to eventually add embryonic stem cells to the mix.
"I basically need to test a lot of cells before I know which one works. One could easily imagine that one of the embryonic stem cells that's about to be made available could be an effective line," he said.
Rothstein is one of dozens of scientists around the country who are trying to determine exactly how Bush's decision will affect them and their hot, but very young, field.
Bush decided to allow federal money to be used for the study of 60 or so existing colonies, or "lines," of embryonic stem cells that officials say they have identified around the world. No taxpayer money may be used to create embryos for research, or to study cells harvested from newly destroyed embryos.
What and where are the 60 cell lines? How valuable will they really be? Will they be enough? How much access to them will scientists really have?
Those are among the questions researchers are asking in a field that today has more questions than answers, and which probably remains a decade away from actually helping the first patients.
In truth, the availability of stem cells isn't the main impediment to medical therapies based on stem cells. Knowledge is.
"It's not like we know what to do," said Douglas A. Melton, a Harvard University researcher using embryonic stem cells to try to grow pancreatic tissue called "islets" that might eventually be used to treat juvenile diabetes. "It would be wrong to say that if only we had the cells we'd be making islets tomorrow."
Nevertheless, nobody doubts that Bush's decision, despite its limitations and uncertainties, is a significant step toward building knowledge of how to use the primitive and powerful cells. Until now, research was confined to biotech companies, where it's usually conducted in secret, and to the few academic scientists such as Melton and Rothstein who have been able to raise private funding for their work.
"The most effective and productive members of the biomedical research community are in academia, and they depend on federal funding," said Paul Berg, a Nobel laureate biochemist at Stanford University. "If they are cut out, we are deprived by a factor of 90 percent."
David Baltimore, president of the California Institute of Technology and also a Nobel laureate, believes it will be a long time before there are clinical uses for stem cells.
"That is why Bush had to go ahead with his decision," he said. "It is going to take a lot of work from a lot of different kinds of scientists focusing their expertise on these problems. It shouldn't be left to a few companies, which necessarily focus on short-term results."
Embryonic stem cells are taken from the human embryo when it consists only of hundreds of cells forming a largely hollow ball. They're commonly described as being able to develop into any tissue, a process called "differentiation." They are also said to be immortal -- to be able to replicate and divide forever.
In practice, though, they're much quirkier. Like virtually all cells grown in the laboratory, they have their own foibles, personalities and limitations.
Melton has access to a half-dozen lines of embryonic stem cells developed by a research team in Israel. He has been studying them with grants from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, and they're presumably among the lines that could now be studied with federal money. In practice, he only uses one for most of his work.
"Only one works well," he said. "The others, they have all kinds of different problems. They either don't grow well or they differentiate spontaneously, kind of like popcorn popping before you've added heat."
Experience with mouse stem cells, which have been objects of research for more than a decade, also leads him to doubt the claims of immortality for embryonic stem cells. Between uses, all cell cultures are kept frozen and inactive. Mouse cells tend to lose their "totipotency" -- the ability to become any tissue -- the more times a batch is thawed and allowed to divide.
"In my view [human embryonic stem cells'] properties will degrade with time. Everyone is fearful that the more you grow them in the dish, the more they lose their properties."
Different personalities and a limited life span are the two main reasons many scientists view 60 cell lines as a very low ceiling that the field may bump up against long before a stem cell treatment is ready for human trials.
It's also the reason Rothstein is testing a whole stable of comers.
"Each researcher sort of believes his is the best cell -- you know, 'This is the real one,' " he said Friday afternoon as he went over a grant application in his lab at Johns Hopkins Hospital. "But I don't know what the best cell is, and I'm not willing to spend five years on just one. It's a gamble -- and it could be a waste of time."
Rothstein's solution is to set up a parallel track system that is almost industrial in its design.
Using money from the patient organization Project ALS and from a privately endowed center at Johns Hopkins, he is testing three cell lines derived from non-embryonic human tissue and one from pigs. The cells are injected into the spinal fluid of mice carrying a mutant gene that causes the equivalent of ALS, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a disease in which nerve cells controlling muscle movement die.
Each cell line is being put through the same paces: a varying number of injections, with varying "doses" of stem cells, in ALS mice of varying ages.
The preliminary work is finished and under review at a scientific journal. Rothstein won't say whether any of the human stem cell lines brought improvements in the animals' condition.
The project bespeaks an urgency that arises from ALS's current untreatability, and from the fact that it appears to be a good candidate for stem cell therapies.
The second point is a surprise because ALS is a disease in which cells die in the brain and all along the spinal cord -- across distances that, in cellular terms, span millions of miles. It would seem that more localized diseases -- those confined to one organ or to one part of one organ -- would be the ones for which transplanting stem cells might be a useful therapy.
That was Rothstein's assumption until two years ago. He was at a meeting of neurologists in Toronto when another researcher showed him a photograph of a microscope slide of a mouse spinal cord. A large nerve in the animal's leg had been cut, causing severe damage to the nerve cells in the spinal cord. It was an injury that, very crudely, mimicked ALS.
The researcher had injected stem cells into a different part of the animal's cord. Over time, they migrated through the dense tissue and came to rest at the site of injury. Stained black in the microscope slide, they looked like a swarm of bees ready to take up residence and go to work.
"It was amazing. We just knew we had to start something," Rothstein said.
One of the properties of stem cells that may greatly enhance their usefulness is the ability to go to where they are needed, at least in some cases.
To do that, though, stem cells must first be nudged toward differentiating into the type of tissue they are to repair or replace. That's done by exposing the cells, in culture dishes, to signaling molecules or growth factors that start a cascade of genetic events that "commit" each cell to one identity, forsaking all others. Alternatively, one can find the relevant genes and turn them on directly.
Many signaling molecules are known, and many remain to be discovered. The same is true of the genes involved in differentiation and development. This is a major focus of stem cell research.
In addition to their homing properties, another useful trait of some stem cells is their ability to form organs that contain multiple types of cells.
Neural stem cells, for example, can form both nerve cells (called neurons) and the nurturing cells that surround them (called glial cells). In most cases of ALS, a defect in glial cells is responsible for much of the damage suffered by the neurons. Theoretically, a stem cell therapy might replace both types of cell from the same starting material.
Similarly, it's now clear that at least some of the body's most architecturally complex organs arise from a single precursor stem cell. This is true of the liver and the pancreas.
Stem cells, however, may also develop unwanted properties as they grow.
In their primitive form, stem cells lack the molecular identifiers that alert the immune system and telegraph their "foreignness" (assuming they are introduced into an animal different from the one where they arose). When the cells differentiate, however, their inborn identifiers appear.
Consequently, stem cell transplants will probably be like whole-organ transplants. Patients will have to take drugs that suppress the immune system -- drugs that can cause substantial problems themselves. Researchers are working on ways to delete immunity genes from transplanted stem cells to blunt or eliminate this problem of rejection. If this is not possible -- or even if it is -- a menu of far more than 60 lines of embryonic stem cells may be useful to accommodate the vast immunological variety of human beings.
Practically speaking, these problems lie far in the future. Most scientists doubt that embryonic stem cells will be tested in people within the next five years. Many believe the first trials are a decade away.
The more immediate concern is how to get hold of the cells Bush says will now be available for taxpayer-supported research. What the mechanism will be -- as well as whether the federal government will facilitate it -- is perhaps the most immediately pressing question.
Melton, the Harvard researcher, said the process of obtaining living material from foreign sources is one that sets every biologist's teeth on edge. It requires things called "material transfer agreements" that take months, and sometimes years, to execute.
If most of the 60 embryonic stem cell lines mentioned by Bush are overseas, his decision may result in far less loosening of the bonds of research than people imagine.
"If these 60 cell lines are going to be the target of inquiry for federal support, then it behooves the government to help researchers get access to the material," Melton said. "But if it says, 'There are these 60 cells somewhere in the world at these various addresses, now you're on your own; go and get them,' then it's going to be very, very difficult."
-------- imf / world bank
World Bank, IMF cut meetings for security
August 12, 2001
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010812-53013508.htm
Security concerns have prompted the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to sharply scale back next month's scheduled meeting in the nation's capital.
The two lending organizations said in a statement Friday that their annual autumn meeting would be confined to the weekend of Sept. 29-30. Originally, they had planned to meet a few days before that weekend and conclude on Oct. 3.
The IMF and World Bank said they "fully share the interest of the U.S. authorities" in ensuring the least possible disruption to the people who live and work in Washington.
Protests in connection with the meeting had been planned for Sept. 28 through Oct. 4, and Washington police have been preparing a massive security operation. Officials said they were expecting as many as 40,000 demonstrators.
District of Columbia officials planned to go to the White House tomorrow to ask that the federal government underwrite the security operation. Executive Assistant Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer said the decision to shorten the meeting would reduce the request for federal funds from $50 million to about $38 million.
Security concerns were heightened by the death of a protester at the Group of Eight summit in Genoa, Italy, last month.
-------- activists
15 Antimissile Protesters Face Felony Charges
August 12, 2001
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/12/national/12PROT.html?searchpv=nytToday
A federal grand jury has charged 15 Greenpeace activists and two foreign journalists arrested in a protest of the Star Wars program last month with felonies in the disruption of the Pentagon's antimissile defense test at the Vandenberg Air Force Base near Lompoc, Calif. Their arraignment is scheduled for Monday in a Los Angeles federal court.
The defendants are six Americans, two Germans, two Britons, two Australians, one Indian, one Canadian and one Swede. They are charged with conspiracy to violate a safety zone. A lesser count of trespassing and one count of failure to obey an order have also been brought against most of the defendants.
A Spanish videographer with a United States green card and a British photographer, both freelance journalists, face similar charges.
The charges, made recently, carry a maximum sentence of more than 11 years in prison and fines totaling $505,000 and are among the stiffest ever handed down to nonviolent protesters arrested in conjunction with antimissile defense rallies at the air base, antimissile defense campaigners said.
Greenpeace has not disputed the presence of protesters in restricted areas during last month's test, when activists delayed the launching by 40 minutes after riding inflatable rafts into the test site's safety zone in the Pacific Ocean beneath the rocket's flight path. But the group contends the charges are unduly harsh.
"This is the first time that people engaging in nonviolent protest have been charged with a felony for simply bearing witness at Vandenberg Air Force Base," said Katya Komisaruk, a lawyer representing the defendants.
In recent years, the military has conducted many missile defense operations at the base to test its ability to shoot down an intercontinental missile, including a similar missile launching in July 2000.
In response, protesters have increased their activities. As a result, more than 50 arrests were made at protests at the base from October 2000 through May of this year, said Carah Ong, the director of research and publication at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, which tracks protests at Vandenberg.
But in previous cases, charges amounted to little more than misdemeanor trespassing, which carries a maximum sentence of six months, Ms. Ong said.
Prosecutors maintain the recent charges reflect the severity of the crimes.
"This is a safety issue," said Tom Mrozek, a spokesman for the United States attorney's office in Los Angeles, which is prosecuting the case. "The grand jury made a determination using a probable cause standard that these were the appropriate charges to be made in this case," Mr. Mrozek said.
No plea arrangement has been considered, Mr. Mrozek said.
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