------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Europeans Object To Bush Approach On Foreign Policy
Fog of Peace
India to Press on with Pakistan Talks Despite Rows
Protests Unleashed as Japan Marks War Surrender
Japanese Schools Rejecting Textbook
Lithuanian nuclear closure depends on EU funds - PM
Pentagon Harbors Antimissile Skepticism
Moscow in 'Awkward Position' on Missile Defense
Swedish N-reactor B2 halts production
Russia Sees No ABM Progress Before End of Year
Bush Urged Not to Scrap Recycle Ban

MILITARY
Chinese rebuff senators' queries
NATO Dispatching 400 British Troops to Macedonia
Colombia's President Signs 'War Legislation'
U.S. Funds Satellite TV to Iraq Opposition Group
Israeli military forecasts years of violence
Navy Divers Ready to Search for Ehime Maru Bodies
To the Navy's Ranks, Add Webmaster

OTHER
Voltwerk builds Germany's biggest solar plant
Mystery DNA Is Discovered in Soybeans by Scientists
Study Cites Air Pollution Deaths
GAO: FBI Doesn't Always Share Info
FBI Faulted on Counterintelligence Sharing

ACTIVISTS
5 More G - 8 Protesters to Be Freed
S.Africans in Race Protest Outside U.S. Embassy
Nuclear thaw


------- NUCLEAR

-------- europe

Europeans Object To Bush Approach On Foreign Policy
Poll Finds Dissent on Missile Shield, Kyoto

By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, August 16, 2001; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A15765-2001Aug15?language=printer

PARIS, Aug. 15 -- Citizens of Europe's four largest countries largely disapprove of President Bush's handling of foreign affairs, with huge majorities believing he knows less about Europe than his predecessors did and that he slights European interests in making decisions. These are the results of a new poll taken jointly by the International Herald Tribune and the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press in Washington.

The poll, conducted in association with the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, found that Britons, French, Italians and Germans overwhelmingly opposed Bush's decisions to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol on global warming and to develop a national missile defense system that might mean unilaterally abrogating the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia.

The poll also found that respondents in three of the countries, with the exception of Britain, overwhelmingly disapproved of the president's support for the death penalty, a thorny issue between Europeans and Americans. In Britain, however, 47 percent approved of Bush's stance, while 44 percent disapproved, with the remainder offering no opinion.

The poll was conducted between Aug. 1 and Aug. 9 in the United States and the four European countries after Bush visited the continent twice and respondents would have had an opportunity to assess his policies at closer hand. Administration aides label those trips successful, but the poll shows he did little to shift public opinion or win new support for his policies.

Conducted with the International Herald Tribune (which is owned jointly by The Washington Post and the New York Times), the poll of about 1,000 people in each country is believed to be the first of its kind measuring the attitudes of Europeans toward the new American president.

Europeans have been largely critical of Bush since he came to office in January, accusing his administration of a "new unilateralism" and a failure to consult with U.S. allies in Europe on issues such as the missile defense program and global warming. The sharp disagreement on issues such as the death penalty -- which Bush strongly supported when he was governor of Texas and the state led the nation in executions -- has led many European commentators to speak of a growing "values gap" across the Atlantic.

Andrew Kohut, of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, said the poll indicates "he hasn't gotten off to a good start in Europe, but there are still many people who haven't formed an opinion of him."

On many issues, opinions about former president Bill Clinton were not far from opinions about Bush. Thus, the high disapproval ratings of Bush may be as much because of a perception of the president's personality as his actual policies. For example, many Europeans seem to forget that Clinton also was a strong proponent of the death penalty, particularly when he was governor of Arkansas, and that Clinton did not submit the Kyoto accord for Senate ratification.

Kohut said Bush might also suffer, in European eyes, from his roots in Texas, which to many people in Europe is a state that carries many of their negative stereotypes about the United States. "He's a Texan -- that makes him an American squared," Kohut said.

The poll results also suggest that while Europeans have an unfavorable view of Bush more than six months into his term, they remain largely uninformed about his policies. A quarter of Italians and French, a third of Britons, and 12 percent of the Germans said they did not know enough about Bush's foreign policy to offer a viewpoint.

Overall, the poll found the Germans and French the most skeptical of Bush's handling of foreign affairs.

Asked about Bush's international policy, 49 percent of the British, 46 percent of Italians, 65 percent of the Germans and 59 percent of the French surveyed said they disapproved. Only 17 percent of British, 29 percent of Italians, 23 percent of Germans and 16 percent of French said they approved of Bush's handling of foreign issues.

By contrast, when Americans were asked the same question, 45 percent polled said they approved of Bush's overall handling of foreign issues while 32 percent disapproved, with 23 percent undecided.

Europeans are more familiar with Clinton's policies, the poll found, and overwhelmingly they liked what he offered. About 66 percent of Britons, 68 percent of French, 71 percent of Italians and a full 86 percent of Germans said they approved of Clinton's foreign policy, with much smaller numbers saying they had no view.

"Clinton was a known quantity," Kohut said.

Asked whether they had more confidence in the U.S. president than in Russian President Vladimir Putin "to do the right thing regarding world affairs," Bush outscored Putin -- but not by much. About 77 percent of French said they had little or no confidence in Putin, but 75 percent had little or no confidence in Bush. Among Germans, 55 percent had little or no confidence in Putin, while 46 percent had little or no confidence in Bush. Among Italians and British, more respondents expressed little or no confidence in Bush than they had in Putin.

----

Fog of Peace

By Jim Hoagland,
Thursday, August 16, 2001; Page A25
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17586-2001Aug15?language=printer

The Bush administration's plans for a sweeping overhaul of U.S. armed forces and their global missions take final shape as Western European nations push ahead with a military restructuring of their own. The two efforts risk stumbling into each other in the fog of peace that has settled over the Atlantic alliance since the Cold War ended.

Washington must be particularly wary of the unintended strategic consequences that could flow from the planning exercises ordered by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. They are now being pulled together in the four-year defense review that Rumsfeld must soon present to Congress.

One cost-cutting option being studied at the Pentagon -- the withdrawal of two U.S. divisions, or about 40,000 soldiers, from Germany -- has set off alarm bells on the Old Continent, which currently hosts 100,000 American military personnel.

Such a withdrawal would play into the hands of those Europeans who argue that the European Union must develop its own independent military force to offset growing American unreliability and unilateralism. Cuts of that magnitude would probably trigger efforts to expand the current plans for a modest EU-commanded rapid reaction force into something much larger and more likely to drain needed resources from NATO. That development, in the next turn of a self-reinforcing cycle, would intensify U.S. temptations to go it alone in the world.

Reports that Rumsfeld's planners want to shift emphasis and resources away from European defense to Asia have also unsettled America's NATO partners. So does the idea that America can no longer rely on having relatively easy access to foreign bases and must prepare to fight the wars of the future from its own territory.

To avoid widening transatlantic differences on defense, two planning processes that have run as far as they can independently should now be harnessed together in a candid evaluation of divergences that are reconcilable.

The Chinese describe an unsuccessful marriage as two people sleeping in the same bed but dreaming different dreams. They could have been speaking of NATO today. Without the immediate threat of Soviet invasion to unify and channel their responses, Americans and Europeans ruminate, seeking to identify and prepare for the new monsters that will come prowling to disturb their peace.

On both sides of the Atlantic the politicians and generals look into the future and see the past. They are transforming their military forces to fight tomorrow's wars in large part out of their very differing experiences with combat in the 1990s.

For the United States that means refighting the Persian Gulf War: moving large numbers of troops and war machines from the United States thousands of miles on short notice and employing space-age weapons, intelligence and command- and-control techniques to obliterate opposing forces with few if any allied casualties.

Fold in missile defense -- driven in part by concern over what Saddam Hussein did with Scuds against U.S. forces and Israel in 1991 -- and Rumsfeld's imaginative emphasis on satellites and other space-based defense projects, and you have a defense posture that will marginalize the need for allies.

The small, brutish wars of the Balkans have etched European perspectives on conflict in the 21st century as sharply as the Gulf War did for Americans. U.S. reluctance to become involved in the Balkans also pushed the Europeans toward seeking autonomous military options.

Out of their political mistakes and military inadequacies in fighting in Bosnia and Kosovo, the Europeans draw the conclusion that they need to field a crisis-management force that can carry out early, modest intervention to keep political collapse in Albania or turmoil in North Africa from exploding into bigger wars that will drown Europe with refugees.

Led by Britain and France, the 15 nations of the European Union have agreed to equip and train a 60,000-strong rapid reaction force that would draw on NATO assets even when the United States is not directly involved in the action. The Bush administration has indicated it welcomes Europe's taking on such defense responsibilities as long as they do not undermine NATO.

A new successful division of responsibilities in the Atlantic community will not be reached by default -- by each side pursuing its own fears and capabilities in ways that collide with and undermine the objectives and needs of the other.

Europe needs America's military might and professionalism to make its international ambitions more credible. The United States needs Europe's political experience and support to make its international ambitions more easily accepted. There is still plenty of life in, and need for, this partnership.

-------- india / pakistan

India to Press on with Pakistan Talks Despite Rows

August 16, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-india-pakistan.html?searchpv=reuters

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said on Thursday that talks with Pakistan would go on despite deep distrust and a decades-old feud over the Himalayan region of Kashmir.

One of the limited gains of last month's summit between the leaders of the two countries was a decision to stay engaged, Vajpayee told parliament a day after he slammed Islamabad for its intransigence over Kashmir in an independence day address.

He said he had accepted an invitation from Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to visit Islamabad and that foreign ministers of the two countries would meet.

No dates have been set.

The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, a regional grouping that had been sidedlined for two years due to tensions between India and Pakistan, was also being revived, Vajpayee told the upper house of parliament.

``I am happy that at least the process has begun,'' he said replying to criticism by opposition deputies over the failed first summit in over two years. ``There is too much distrust, we have to remove it.''

Vajpayee and Musharraf held two days of talks in the Indian city of Agra but failed to produce even a joint statement after the two sides stuck to their positions on Kashmir, over which they have twice gone to war.

Islamabad insisted the two sides set aside everything else and focus on tackling the 54-year-old dispute in Kashmir which it said lay at the heart of troubled ties with India.

India, which considers the whole of Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir an integral part of the country, said it had hoped to discuss a range of issues including nuclear security and trade, besides Kashmir.

``We are not shy of dialogue on Kashmir... our stand is just and fair,'' Vajpayee said. ``But he (Musharraf) was not ready to talk about anything except Kashmir.''

India has been struggling to quell a nearly 12-year-old revolt in Kashmir which it says is fomented by Pakistan. Islamabad denies direct involvement but seeks self-determination for the Kashmiri people.

``Killing women and children..is it a fight for independence or a death dance?'' Vajpayee said referring to Islamabad's description of guerrillas in Kashmir as freedom fighters.

Vajpayee said he had made it clear to the Pakistani leader that there would be no compromise on the status of Kashmir which he said lay at the core of India's identity as a secular nation.

``We will not let India be divided for a second time on religious lines...there is an unshakeable bond with Kashmir,'' he said.

India and Pakistan were born at midnight on August 15, 1947, when the former British colony was partitioned into mostly Hindu India and Muslim dominated Pakistan.

The Hindu ruler of Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir decided to join secular India rather than Islamic Pakistan and since then the two nations have been at odds.

More than 30,000 people have died in Kashmir since the revolt against Indian rule took off in late 1989.

-------- japan

Protests Unleashed as Japan Marks War Surrender
Views on History Fomenting Anger At Home, Abroad

By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, August 16, 2001; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A15776-2001Aug15?language=printer

TOKYO, Aug. 15 -- Fifty-six years after the fighting ended, Japan continued to wrestle today with its wartime history, as top government officials marked the anniversary of Japan's World War II surrender even as critics charged that the country has not squarely faced its past.

South Korea's president lashed out at the Japanese government, and protests continued to ripple throughout Asia over Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visit Monday to a shrine for the war dead. Koizumi appealed today for understanding and spoke strongly for peace, but his actions provoked scuffles and fistfights at the Yasukuni Shrine.

"How can we make friends with people who try to forget and ignore the many pains they inflicted on us?" said President Kim Dae Jung of South Korea, who had led his country toward closer ties with Japan in the last three years.

"How can we deal with them with any degree of trust?" he demanded, speaking in Seoul on Korean Liberation Day. He noted that "many conscientious Japanese watched with apprehension" as Koizumi visited the controversial shrine. "Some people in Japan are attempting to distort history, casting dark clouds over Korea-Japan relations," Kim said.

Koizumi later requested to meet with Kim and others to mend strained ties. He said he wanted to explain his actions to those who feel his visit to Yasukuni, the symbolic heart of Japan's nationalist right wing, was an insult to the people who suffered in the last century under Japan's conquests in pursuit of a "Greater East Asia."

"We have a responsibility to not be isolated from the international society. We must maintain and develop friendly relations with our neighboring countries to build eternal peace in the world," said Koizumi, speaking earlier in the day at an official ceremony attended by the emperor and empress, top government officials, and families of those killed in the war.

But Japan's Asian neighbors, who have long seethed at what they consider insufficient remorse on the part of the Japanese, raised criticism of Koizumi's visit to the shrine.

Protesters in South Korea burned posters of Koizumi, and North Korea called his visit a "criminal act." Diplomats in South Korea suggested they would challenge Japan at various forthcoming international meetings, adding their voice to protests from China, Taiwan and Vietnam.

Even as Koizumi spoke at the secular -- and comparatively noncontroversial -- formal ceremony today, the divisions caused by his visit were being played out at the shrine nearby. The shrine, which is run by nationalist Shinto priests, honors all of Japan's war dead since 1868, including 14 of the country's most notorious war criminals, who were hanged or died in prison after World War II.

Five cabinet members visited the shrine today, further fueling criticism from abroad that Koizumi's government is sympathetic to the political right wing. On the shrine grounds, ringed by police, right-wing politicians and academics alternately praised Koizumi for his visit and railed against him for backing away from his pledge to come to Yasukuni today, an emotion-laden anniversary throughout East Asia.

Some veterans strutted through the grounds in pieces of their military uniforms. Right-wing toughs, who flaunt their nebulous ties with the underworld, skirmished with police and with leftist and Korean demonstrators who dared to protest at the shrine. Several police officers and protesters were kicked and beaten, but there were no reports of serious injuries.

Right-wing activists then spread out in Tokyo in their trademark black, curtained buses, with nationalist music and slogans blaring from loudspeakers.

Some shouted justifications for the war. One slogan on a bus read: "It was not a war of aggression."

Others who gathered at the shrine said they rejected those politics, and came only to honor loved ones or colleagues who died in the war.

"I lost beloved soldiers," said So Takeya, 83, a captain at the end of the war. "Every country has its patriots. We have ours."

----

Japanese Schools Rejecting Textbook
War History Drew Outside Criticism

By Doug Struck and Shigehiko Togo
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, August 15, 2001; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A12270-2001Aug14?language=printer

TOKYO, Aug. 14 -- Local school districts in Japan are overwhelmingly refusing to use a controversial history textbook that South Korea and China say justifies Japan's wartime aggression.

The expected rejection by almost all of Japan's 542 school districts will relieve some pressure on the government of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who on Monday defied protests of Japan's Asian neighbors by paying homage at a shrine for the country's war dead.

The junior high school textbook, written by revisionist historians who said they wanted to engender more national pride, has led to angry demonstrations in South Korea and sharp rebukes from China. The book had been approved by the Education Ministry as one of eight choices for junior high school history classes.

The deadline for school districts to select textbooks is Wednesday. Surveys by news agencies and a group campaigning for rejection of the text say that only a few schools, some private and some for disabled children, have accepted the book.

"We know the result for 98 percent of the [public] schools, and none has adopted the textbook," said Yoshifumi Tawara, head of the Children and Textbooks Japan Network. "I think the belief that we cannot let this dangerous textbook be handed to our children touched the hearts of many people, and they worked against it."

In South Korea, which was under harsh Japanese occupation for 35 years and where anger against the text was high, Foreign Minister Han Seung Soo predicted in an interview last week that the action by local school boards would partly defuse the controversy.

"From the beginning of this issue we knew there were many Japanese who did not agree with this textbook," he said. "It shows the Japanese people are wise enough not to accept the Japanese government version."

South Korea has canceled dozens of private and public exchange programs -- ranging from elementary school visits to top-level political contacts -- to show its opposition to the textbook. Last month, a Korean rock band performing in Japan shredded a Japanese flag. And Korean officials warned that the controversy could sour the mood of the World Cup 2002 finals, which are being co-hosted by Japan and South Korea.

In April, after Koizumi's election, South Korea and China pressed the new prime minister to order revisions in the textbook. But Koizumi refused, fueling outside suspicions of his views on Japanese nationalism. Koizumi's visit Monday to the Yasukuni Shrine, where 14 of Japan's most notorious war criminals are enshrined, ensured that Japan's treatment of its wartime responsibility will remain a subject of dispute in the region.

The controversy centers on a text that critics say soft-pedals Japan's conquests in East Asia in the first half of the 20th century and suggests Japan was forced to go to war to defend itself. Critics have protested that the book omits reference to sexual servitude forced upon thousands of women under the Japanese military. They also said it minimizes atrocities committed by Japan in the war and softens the harsh reality of Japan's occupation.

"This book approves of war of aggression and beautifies it. It institutionalizes colonization and draws Japanese history with the emperor at its core," Tawara said. "The whole movement and content of this textbook are parts of an effort to shift Japan to become a country that can fight in wars."

There also has been pressure from those supporting the text. At a rally last week, more than 500 people jammed into a hall in Tokyo under a giant Japanese flag of the rising sun to support Koizumi's plans to visit Yasukuni Shrine and to applaud what speakers described as "a good move" by the government to approve the textbook.

The authors of the disputed text, the Japanese Society of History Textbook Reform, declined to comment, saying they would speak after the deadline.

Special correspondent Akiko Yamamoto contributed to this report.

-------- lithuania

Lithuanian nuclear closure depends on EU funds - PM

LITHUANIA: August 16, 2001
Story by Andrius Vilkancas
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12031/story.htm

VILNIUS - Lithuania's prime minister said this week the date the country closes its Chernobyl-style nuclear plant would depend on European Union funding.

Lithuania, hoping to complete EU membership talks next year, has already agreed to shut down the first of the Ignalina plant's two reactors by 2005, under pressure from the 15-nation bloc.

It has not set a closure date for the second one, but the EU has said it would like to see it shut down in 2009.

"The shorter the period set for Ignalina's closure, the larger the annual investment that has to be set," Prime Minister Algirdas Brazauskas told Reuters after talks with German Finance Minister Hans Eichel about Lithuania's EU preparations.

"(We ask) that Germany support our stand that special funds should be set aside for the closure of the plant and that (these funds) not be included in overall funding allocated to Lithuania," Brazauskas said.

The EU considers Ignalina a danger because it was built to the same design as Ukraine's Chernobyl, site of the world's worst civilian nuclear disaster in 1986.

It has said Vilnius must decide next year - two years earlier than Lithuanian originally planned - on a date to throw the final switch on reactor number two.

The Baltic state's top EU negotiator said two weeks ago Lithuania would adhere to the Brussels's timetable for making a decision, but this did not mean it accepted the 2009 date.

Brazauskas declined to give a date for Unit Two closure but reiterated that the country would fix on one before winding up EU entry talks, expected next year.

For Lithuania, closure of the plant is sensitive because of the costs associated with it and because the country gets most of its electricity from Ignalina.

Last year, Lithuania received pledges from the international community totalling 208 million euros ($186.4 million) to close Ignalina's first reactor.

"On the one hand (Ignalina) is an issue of safety and on the other it is a big economic problem...but, I think, we - Lithuania and the European Union - will find a way to settle that issue," Eichel told a news briefing in Vilnius.

-------- missile defense

Pentagon Harbors Antimissile Skepticism

August 16, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/16/national/16MISS.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, Aug. 15 - The head of the Pentagon's missile defense programs said today that he was not fully confident in the "basic functionality" of the antimissile system that successfully intercepted a mock warhead in space last month.

The official, Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, the director of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, said that because of the uncertainties the next test of the system, in October, would be a replay of the July 14 test, with no additional complexities like more decoys aboard the target missile.

The system is designed to destroy an intercontinental-range ballistic missile before its warheads re-enter Earth's atmosphere.

--------

Moscow in 'Awkward Position' on Missile Defense

August 16, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-arms-usa-russia.html?searchpv=reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Russia is helping Iran develop a nuclear arms program and aiding other states with dangerous technology, while opposing a U.S. plan to defend itself against missile attack, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld charged on Thursday.

``Now that's an awkward position, it seems to me, for them to be in,'' Rumsfeld said in a television interview.

``I know they make an argument of whether it is proliferation of certain types of weapons. But there is no question that they are working with Iran on their nuclear capability,'' he added on the PBS Television's The Newshour with Jim Lehrer.

Rumsfeld said Russia was also transferring technology to China, Iraq and other countries which have capabilities that could be dangerous to the world -- a charge Moscow has denied.

Rumsfeld was questioned on the program about thus-far unsuccessful efforts by the Bush administration to persuade Russia to drop its opposition to the U.S. plan to develop a missile defense system and Moscow's refusal to agree to changes in the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty.

That ABM treaty, between the United States and former Soviet Union, forbids national missile defenses by either country.

``COLD WAR MENTALITY''

In talks with Rumsfeld in Moscow, Russian leaders on Monday again rejected a U.S. call for the two nations to jointly abandon the ABM pact.

``Russia is still, I think, captured to a certain extent by the old Cold War mentality and fear and apprehension and concern about the West,'' the U.S. defense secretary said.

``The United States' position is that the treaty that is concerning us, which is 30 years old, is preventing us from defending the population centers here and our deployed forces and our friends and allies,'' he said.

``And the Russian position is that they want to be free to have us not develop a ballistic missile defense capability, although they have a missile defense capability around Moscow with nuclear-tipped interceptors right now.''

At the same time, Rumsfeld said Russia was adding to U.S. fears about emerging missile threats and weapons of mass destruction from ``rogue states'' like North Korea, Iran and Iraq.

``That (Russian) position ... is basically: 'Look America, you establish a policy of remaining vulnerable to ballistic missiles while we are protected by a missile defense system in Moscow and while we continue to work with other countries, like China and Iran and Iraq and various other countries, with respect to proliferating some technologies that are not very helpful to the rest of the world','' he said.

-------- sweden

Swedish N-reactor B2 halts production - Vattenfall

NORWAY: August 16, 2001
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12032/story.htm

OSLO - Swedish energy firm Vattenfall said this week production at 600-megawatt unit two of its nuclear power station Barseback would be halted until further notice due to problems with the reactor's generator cooling system.

In a statement to Nordic power bourse Nord Pool, Vattenfall said production on the reactor, which had been operating at 565 megawatts, had been stopped at 1330 GMT.

-------- treaties

Russia Sees No ABM Progress Before End of Year

August 16, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-arms-russia-usa.html?searchpv=reuters

MOSCOW (Reuters) - U.S.-Russian arms talks remain bogged down over the United States' missile defense plans, Russian diplomats were quoted as saying on Thursday ahead of the next round of arms talks.

The unnamed diplomats, quoted in two reports by the Itar-Tass news agency, said the deadlock could persist until Washington completes a security review near the end of the year.

Their remarks conveyed Moscow's frustration at the consultations ordered by Presidents Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush when they met in Italy last month.

U.S. Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton will visit Moscow on August 21 for the next round of arms consultations, Tass said.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was in Moscow this week for similar talks and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice visited last month.

But the flurry of meetings has not altered Moscow's staunch refusal to abandon the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, which bans a missile shield that Bush wants to build.

The previous meetings ``have yielded no significant results, because Washington still does not have precise parameters for the ABM system it is planning,'' one of the diplomats told Tass.

Moscow often uses such reports of unnamed officials through Russian news agencies to signal its policy ahead of talks.

U.S. officials say they will continue to test their missile defenses whether or not Russia agrees to ditch the ABM treaty, and will pull out of the pact unilaterally if Moscow refuses to go along with the plans.

The diplomat told Tass Moscow does not expect more concrete proposals from Washington until after the Bush administration completes a security review toward the end of this year, but Russia will maintain a ``non-confrontational position'' in talks.

In a separate Tass report, a diplomat said the decisive issue was the eventual size of both sides' nuclear arsenals after a future third START strategic arms reduction treaty. The United States has yet to commit to a target for cuts.

``The previous consultative meetings showed that the U.S. is not yet ready to deal with these concrete questions (of arsenal size),'' the diplomat said.

He also said Washington still aimed to keep the issues of missile defense and offensive stockpile reductions separate, ''although strategic stability is impossible without the tight link between changes to offensive and defensive systems.''

Russia has long said it cannot discuss changes to the rules on missile defense without tying them directly to firm agreements on further cuts to offensive arsenals.

Bush initially said he would make offensive weapons cuts unilaterally, without any binding agreements with Moscow. But he agreed with Putin last month that the United States and Russia would discuss the issues of offence and defense side by side.

-------- us nuc waste

Bush Urged Not to Scrap Recycle Ban

August 16, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Radioactive-Scrap.html?searchpv=aponline

ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) -- Environmentalists urged the Bush administration Thursday not to lift a Clinton-era ban on recycling scrap metals from Department of Energy nuclear facilities.

They say allowing the metals to be recycled into other items puts the public's health at risk.

``It's dispersing radioactivity into everyday items,'' said Diane D'Arrigo, radioactive waste project director at the Nuclear Information and Resource Service in Washington. ``It could be in the braces on your kid's teeth. It could be in the car you're riding in.''

Supporters of recycling say it is a useful way to dispose of materials as Cold War-era facilities are decommissioned. They argue levels of contamination are too low to pose a health threat.

Both sides were represented Thursday at the latest in a nationwide series of public hearings on the subject that the Bush administration is holding to gather testimony as it decides whether to lift the ban.

The Energy Department estimates surplus metals currently in its inventory and materials generated over the next 35 years will total more than a million tons.

The department could probably save money by recycling and selling the metals rather than disposing of them in some other way, said Richard Meehan, an Energy Department official at the nuclear facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

But Meehan said the savings wouldn't be so great as to give the agency a profit. ``Clearly there is not a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow,'' he said.

The Energy Department says the largest amount of surplus metals comes from uranium enrichment plants in Oak Ridge as well as Kentucky's Paducah plant and a Piketon, Ohio, facility. The agency says the most common types of metals found there are carbon steel, stainless steel and nickel.

Representatives of those metal industries also spoke out against recycling scrap metal from nuclear sites Thursday.

``While health physicists and government officials may be convinced that public perceptions of radioactive risk are exaggerated, these perceptions are very real,'' said Neil King, an attorney who represents the nickel industry. King added that such perceptions would influence consumer decision-making.


-------- MILITARY

-------- arms sales

Chinese rebuff senators' queries

August 16, 2001
By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010816-25123.htm

Senior Chinese leaders refused to talk in detail about Beijing's missile and weapons sales during a meeting with U.S. senators last week, a senior U.S. senator said.

Sen. Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Republican, said Chinese President Jiang Zemin and Prime Minister Zhu Rongji were "stonewalling" on discussions about Chinese arms and weapons-related exports to Pakistan, Iran and North Korea in violation of a pledge made last year to curb such sales.

"Their denials were flat-out wrong," Mr. Specter said in an interview following meetings he attended last week in Beijing with three other senators, led by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr., Delaware Democrat. "They were stonewalling."

Also present were Sens. Paul S. Sarbanes, Maryland Democrat, and Fred Thompson, Tennessee Republican.

Mr. Biden and Mr. Thompson went on a national television news show last night to demand sanctions against the Chinese companies over the weapons transfers.

"I think what we should do identify those entities within the Chinese government that have transferred whatever technology meets the requirement of breaching the deal that they have made with us and sanction those companies from being able to do business," Mr. Biden said in a joint appearance with Mr. Thompson on PBS' "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer."

Mr. Thompson added that Washington has hesitated too often to impose sanctions on Beijing.

"I think that we're going to have to take some action there because clearly do not believe they have to do anything differently. Just recently they were caught shipping additional missile components to Pakistan," he said.

The Tennessee Republican also expressed dissatisfaction with the explanations China's Communist leaders had given the Senate delegation.

"Sometimes they just gave a flat denial," Mr. Thompson said. On other occasions, they suggested "rogue companies" acted without Beijing's knowledge.

And at other times, Chinese leaders said "as long as [the United States has] a missile defense program and assist Taiwan, we're essentially going to continue doing what we want to do," Mr. Thompson said.

Mr. Specter said U.S. intelligence reports indicate that China is not abiding by a pledge made in November to halt exports of missiles and related equipment that can be used for nuclear-tipped missiles.

"We told them rather bluntly the evidence was powerful that came from our intelligence sources," Mr. Specter said.

U.S. intelligence officials disclosed to The Washington Times last week that China was supplying missile-related technology and components in Pakistan for Islamabad's Shaheen-1 and Shaheen-2 strategic missile programs.

The officials said a U.S. spy satellite detected the latest shipment from a Chinese company, the China National Machinery & Equipment Import & Export Corp., on May 1 as it crossed the border into Pakistan.

The Chinese company, known as CMEC, has denied sending any missile or military goods to Pakistan and said in a statement it has not used trucks to transport its equipment to Pakistan.

A senior Bush administration official, however, has said China's missile exports to Pakistan, in particular, are "serious" and could trigger U.S. economic sanctions required under laws aimed at halting the spread of missiles.

Mr. Specter said China's sales to Pakistan were the "big issue," but that China also was continuing to sell military goods and technology to Iran and North Korea.

The State Department announced on Monday that it would send a delegation to Beijing for talks with Chinese officials on the arms sales and the failure of Beijing to abide by its November pledge.

Mr. Specter said the congressional delegation that met with Mr. Jiang and Mr. Zhu did not get into specific cases of Chinese arms sales.

Mr. Biden last week said that Mr. Jiang gave the senators a curt assurance that China had "kept to the letter" on promises not to export missile technology to Pakistan and other countries.

Mr. Specter said he believes Chinese officials will be more forthcoming during the meeting of arms officials. "I think they will [be more open] when they get down to specifics and we present concrete evidence," he said of the U.S.-China weapons proliferation talks.

Chinese leaders complained to the senators about U.S. support for Taiwan and claimed the United States was "meddling" in China's internal affairs.

The Chinese also contend that their buildup of short-range missiles opposite Taiwan is needed to pressure the island Beijing views as a breakaway province, Mr. Specter said.

Mr. Specter said his overall impression of the visit was that Chinese leaders sought to present a "friendly posture" toward the United States and wanted good relations with Washington.

-------- balkans

NATO Dispatching 400 British Troops to Macedonia

New York Times
August 16, 2001
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/16/international/europe/16NATO.html

BRUSSELS, Aug. 15 - NATO decided today to send 400 British troops to Macedonia as the first wave of a contingent to disarm ethnic Albanian rebels and to try to prevent months of conflict from erupting into the fifth Balkan war in a decade.

The decision to send in just a British headquarters unit rather than the full complement of 3,500 troops from 12 nations was a compromise worked out this morning at a hastily called meeting of ambassadors from the 19 NATO countries.

A diplomat who went to the meeting described the 400 troops as a "down payment" to encourage Macedonian troops and ethnic Albanian guerrillas to stick to their fragile cease-fire. The British soldiers are most likely to be in place by the weekend. If the full force is approved, it will include about 300 Americans, some of whom are already in Macedonia helping the mission in neighboring Kosovo.

If all goes well, a spokesman for NATO, Yves Brodeur, said, a decision on sending the rest of the 3,500- member force could be made as early as Friday or Monday. Those soldiers would quite likely arrive in Macedonia over the next two weeks.

With the rival factions in Macedonia moving with surprising swiftness to follow up on an accord that they signed on Monday, the NATO secretary general, Lord Robertson, is clearly eager to sustain the momentum and end six months of conflict that has claimed 100 lives, left swaths of northern Macedonia under virtual rebel control and threatened to build into another conflict that would claim a heavy civilian toll.

Lord Robertson called a meeting at 11:30 on Monday night at NATO headquarters here just after flying back from witnessing the signing of the peace accord. He insisted on an additional meeting to make the decision today, although today is the Feast of the Assumption holiday here.

Members of Macedonia's ethnic Albanian minority, which is up to one-third of the population of two million, took up arms in February saying they were fighting to use their language and for other rights denied them by the Slavic majority.

The Slavs, whose parties have shared power with ethnic Albanian politicians in recent years, have voiced fears that the rebel demands are just a prelude to carving out their own territory in the fragile state that emerged from the breakup of Communist Yugoslavia in 1991.

The demise of the old Yugoslavia has led to four conflicts - in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo - that killed or maimed hundreds of thousands of people and made refugees of more than one million. NATO-led troops now maintain uneasy peace in Bosnia and Kosovo.

Because NATO does not wish to become involved in another open- ended mission, the Macedonia effort is scheduled to last a month from the first day of collecting weapons. The troops will not seize the arms, but destroy those turned in. The guerrillas are to disband after dropping their weapons at arranged sites.

Mr. Brodeur said that the mission was "limited in time, and we intend to keep it that way."

NATO had earlier made clear that it would send troops only if four conditions were met.

First, a political agreement to end the fighting had to be in place. That was signed on Monday. The ceremony was low key to avoid an outcry from nationalist hard-liners. But the government confirmed today that all guerrillas would be given amnesty.

Second, the guerrillas had to agree to turn over their weapons. Although there are factions among the ethnic Albanian fighters, their civil representatives agreed to do that on Tuesday, estimating that they would have 3,000 guns to turn in.

Third, Macedonia and NATO had to sign a "status of forces" pact that described the role of the NATO troops and what local laws would apply to them. That was signed today.

Fourth, an enduring cease-fire had to be in place.

That condition is the trickiest. It leaves NATO to make a potentially risky call. Government troops were still bombarding rebel-held villages after the signing of the accord. Rebels fired mortars at dug-in army tanks, and there were exchanges of fire in several towns.

About 30 of the 100 victims since February have been killed in the last two weeks. Guerrillas have ambushed army convoys and fought for control of a reservoir. The Macedonia Army has been accused of reprisal shootings.

There have also been ugly incidents like the kidnapping of a Macedonian road crew that was kicked, humiliated and had letters carved into their backs and the killing of an ethnic Albanian child in a drive-by shooting.

But the country was quieter today, and NATO decided that it was better to have neutral troops face a little risk than to let the whole country deteriorate further.

"In an ideal world, you'd wait three weeks and see that everything's pretty, then go in," a diplomat here said. "But President Trajkovski is presenting a package of constitutional reforms to Parliament, and there's a chicken-and-egg problem here. Both sides have to be convinced that the other is living up to its side of the bargain. The hope is that once the NATO troops get deployed, you'll get some disarmament, then some reforms, then some more disarmament, and so on."

Under the peace pact, President Boris Trajkovski is asking Parliament to amend the preamble to the Constitution so that it no longer implies that the Macedonian Slavs have pre-eminent status. Legal changes will make Albanian an official language wherever ethnic Albanians make up more than 20 percent of the population. The national police force will recruit 1,000 ethnic Albanian officers, and an Albanian-language university will receive state support.

Parliament has 45 days to pass the changes.

The rebels have said they will hand in their arms in three stages.

If the order for the full 3,500-troop mission is given, it would include 300 American troops who specialize in communications, satellite intelligence, military transportation and medicine.

The British, led by the 16th Air Assault Brigade, would command the mission, which would include troops from the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain and Turkey.

Despite Washington's perceived reluctance to become involved in another Balkan conflict, some of the American troops who would join the mission have actually been in Macedonia for months. Camp Able Sentry, an American support base for the Kosovo operation, is near the capital, Skopje, because Macedonia was neutral in the Kosovo conflict and its roads and airport are much better.

In late June, American troops from that base even helped separate ethnic Albanian and Macedonian forces. After a cease-fire had been called in fighting near Aracinovo, Mr. Trajkovski appealed for NATO help in moving the ethnic Albanians past his soldiers' lines. American and French soldiers drove the rebels out in trucks and buses.

Today, Dr. Aziz Holijani, a spokesman for the Party for Democratic Prosperity, one of the two main ethnic Albanian parties, sounded optimistic in a radio interview about the weapons-for-changes plan.

Despite "rumors" that Macedonian nationalists in Parliament would try to block the revisions, Dr. Holijani said, the president and parliamentary leaders would feel that their credibility was at stake.

"Both the Albanian and the Macedonian people need peace and are asking for peace," he said. "We have to make sure this opportunity does not disappear."

-------- colombia

Colombia's President Signs 'War Legislation'

By Ibon Villelabeitia
Reuters
Thursday, August 16, 2001; 1:49 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20426-2001Aug16?language=printer

BOGOTA, Colombia, Aug 16-Colombia's president Andres Pastrana, brushing aside concerns by human rights groups, has signed into law a bill that gives broad new powers to the military fighting a 37-year-old guerrilla war.

The so-called war legislation, signed on Monday, allows the Colombian army to detain civilians, conduct raids and carry out autopsies in war zones.

It also permits the president to grant special emergency powers to military commanders over civilian authorities during war operations.

Critics, including rights groups and two U.S. congressmen, said it would undermine human rights in Colombia. Supporters, among them military commanders, said the law would help combat leftist rebels and outlawed far-right militias in a war that has killed 40,000 civilians in the last decade.

"This is a setback for the rule of law in Colombia," said Jose Miguel Vivanco, head of the America's division for U.S.-based Human Rights Watch, told Reuters. "This law is going to make it more difficult to promote judicial investigations of human rights abuses by the army."

Under the previous law, Colombia's military could detain civilians and conduct raids only in conjunction with an accompanying team of prosecutors from the attorney general's office.

The new "war legislation" stipulates that when there are "well-founded reasons" prosecutors cannot accompany the armed forces; the attorney general can "temporarily" grant judicial powers to the military. It also empowers the military to perform forensic investigations of fighters and civilians.

Human rights groups say the army has been known to taint evidence, including planting weapons and dressing suspected civilian leftist sympathizers as rebels and then killing them to claim that they died in combat.

The government contends it has improved the military's human rights record, including severing alleged links between the security forces and right-wing paramilitary vigilantes blamed for the killings of thousands of suspected leftist collaborators.

Analysts said the law underscores growing frustration at the slow pace of peace talks with the guerrillas and Colombian leaders are taking a tougher stand against leftist rebels.

Last week, Pastrana, who has staked his career on ending the South American nation's war, broke off peace contacts with the National Liberation Army (ELN), Colombia's second-largest guerrilla group.

Pastrana, who steps down in August 2002, is engaged in slow-moving 2-1/2-year-old peace talks with the largest Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. But the talks have failed to end violence and FARC commanders have announced plans to carry Colombia's largely rural war to the cities.

Last May, two U.S. congressmen-Rep. William Delahunt, a Massachusetts Democrat who sits on the House of Representatives' International Relations Committee, and Rep. Sam Farr, a Democrat from California-warned Colombian legislators that the law would "turn back the clock" on Colombia's progress in human rights safeguards.

The United States is pouring $1 billion in mostly military aid into Pastrana's Plan Colombia, which is aimed at attacking cocaine production and hitting rebels economically.

-------- iraq

U.S. Funds Satellite TV to Iraq Opposition Group
Broadcasts World News, Soccer and Movies

The Washington Post
Thursday, August 16, 2001; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17613-2001Aug15?language=printer

The Iraqi National Congress, an umbrella for groups opposed to President Saddam Hussein, yesterday began U.S.-funded satellite television broadcasts designed to reach the population inside Iraq, INC adviser Francis Brooke said.

TV Liberty will be on the air 24 hours a day, offering eight hours of Arabic programming repeated three times daily, Brooke said. It will include world news and news about Iraq, based in part on the INC's own reports, as well as talk shows and international call-in programs. The station will also air entertainment, including coverage of soccer games unavailable in Iraq, and movies, in particular those that depict the struggle against dictators, he said.

The INC broadcasting program, approved earlier this summer by the Bush administration, will be run from studios in London, home to the group's exile leadership. The tab is $2.7 million a year, including $1.2 million for satellite time and $1.5 million for programming and studio use, Brooke said.

In addition to broadcasting, the INC is engaged in U.S.-funded programs to collect information for humanitarian and intelligence purposes, as well as to develop a program for relief assistance to Iraqis, he said.

The group's more ambitious aspiration, to mount a political and military challenge to Hussein's government, is on hold, pending the outcome of the Bush administration's review of its Iraq policy.

-- Alan Sipress

-------- israel

Israeli military forecasts years of violence

USA TODAY
08/16/2001 - Updated 12:16 PM ET
The Associated Press
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001/08/16/israel-violence.htm

JERUSALEM (AP) - Israeli-Palestinian fighting could go on for several more years and possibly escalate into a regional war, according to a five-year forecast by the Israeli military, cited Thursday by an Israeli newspaper. The military planners, quoted by the Haaretz daily, also believe that Israel could at best expect to negotiate a lull in fighting with Yasser Arafat, but that even this was unlikely. The Palestinian leader assumes time is on the Palestinians' side, the planners were quoted as saying.

Asked about the forecast, Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said it was "nonsense," but then acknowledged that the conflict with the Palestinians "is a problem that doesn't seem to have a solution in the foreseeable future."

Ben-Eliezer told Israel radio that the Israeli government was making every effort to end the fighting, now in its 11th month. More than 700 people have been killed since September, three-fourths of them Palestinians.

Haaretz said the five-year forecast was part of the military's annual strategic assessment and was still being completed.

The newspaper said the planners believed the Israeli-Palestinian fighting could go on for the duration of the planning period, until 2006. A major incident, such as large-scale terror attack, either on the Palestinian front or along Israel's tense border with Lebanon, could trigger a regional war, the report said.

Ben-Eliezer said he didn't believe a regional war was likely. Asked about the assessment of the military planners, he said: "It is our obligation to prepare for a long battle."

Meanwhile, Israeli troops maintained their positions Thursday on the outskirts of the Palestinian-controlled West Bank town of Beit Jalla.

Ben-Eliezer had sent soldiers and armored personnel carriers toward Gilo late Tuesday, in response to shooting from Beit Jalla at Gilo, a Jewish neighborhood built on land Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war and annexed to Jerusalem.

The defense minister confirmed Thursday that he called off an incursion into Beit Jalla at the last minute, after he was given assurances by the Palestinians that the shooting would stop.

Ben-Eliezer said Israel had no interest in reoccupying areas handed to Palestinian control, but that shooting attacks on Jerusalem would not be tolerated.

In other developments, an Israeli truck driver was wounded in a Palestinian shooting attack near Jerusalem late Wednesday, and five Palestinians were lightly hurt in a gun battle with Israeli troops near the West Bank town of Dura.

President Bush demanded on Wednesday that Mideast leaders "make up their mind that peace is preferable to war." Bush renewed his call for Israeli restraint in the face of suicide bombings, and he appealed to Arafat to "do everything he can" to halt such attacks.

At the United Nations, Islamic nations called for an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council to end the Israeli takeover of key Palestinian institutions and for international observers to calm escalating violence.

But the United States, which has blocked two previous attempts to get the council to send international observers to protect Palestinians, indicated it would oppose a third attempt - because of Israeli objections.

The Security Council is expected to discuss the request from the 50-member Organization of the Islamic Conference on Thursday, and schedule an open meeting on Friday or Monday for countries to express their views on Mideast conflict.

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

Navy Divers Ready to Search for Ehime Maru Bodies

August 16, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-crash-japan-usa.html?searchpv=reuters

HONOLULU (Reuters) - U.S. Navy divers said on Wednesday that they are ready to search for bodies trapped inside the wreck of a Japanese fishing vessel when it was rammed by a U.S. nuclear submarine.

Before the divers can descend to the sunken vessel, the Navy must try to raise the Ehime Maru where it rests on the sea floor at 2,000 feet to 115 feet. That could occur during the next 30 days.

Once moved, divers will enter the battered hull of the 830-ton ship and search for bodies.

The Ehime Maru, a 190-foot trawler used to teach Japanese high school students about the fisheries industry, was about nine miles south of Oahu on Feb. 9 when it was rammed by the USS Greeneville during an emergency surfacing drill. The trawler sank within minutes of being rammed.

The collision strained relations between the United States and Japan, particularly after it was disclosed that the surfacing drill was conducted in large part for the benefit of civilian VIPs on board the Greeneville.

Nine people from the Ehime Maru were killed in the collision and their remains may be inside the hull.

The divers, part of a 66-member contingent that will work seven days a week on recovery, have been training daily at their pier-side headquarters near the mouth of Pearl Harbor, said Cmdr. Rob Fink, commanding officer of Mobile Diving Salvage Unit 1.

``Our mission is to recover nine missing crew members and we will look stem to stern, top to bottom,'' Fink said.

SEARCH FOR BODIES

The Navy intends to raise the Ehime Maru to about 100 feet using cables suspended from a salvage ship, Rockwater 2, to create a giant sling, and tow it while still submerged and set it down in shallower waters of 115 feet. The move, which will take about three days, is planned to be completed by mid-September.

Engineers aboard the Rockwater 2 intend to blast water through coiled tubing to clear a space beneath the Ehime Maru so that flexible lifting plates can be placed beneath the ship.

Once the vessel is moved, the divers will search at least nine locations in the Ehime Maru where crew members were last seen, but the Navy officials have said they do not expect to find more than seven bodies.

Although lifting a ship from such extreme depths has never been done before, sending Navy divers into wrecks at 115 feet is practically routine, said Chief Warrant Officer 3 George Primavera, the senior diver overseeing the mission. Divers will wear one-piece ``dry suits'' with hard yellow helmets that are connected to a surface air supply, Primavera said. Their umbilical to the surface also allows them to communicate with supervisors and send back live video from helmet-mounted cameras, Primavera said.

Divers are prepared to cut or pry their way through obstacles as they negotiate the narrow passageways of the Ehime Maru, he said. But they will not be put in overly hazardous situations, he said.

There are risks, however, even in routine procedures. Divers will only have 90 minutes from the time they enter the water until the time they must begin a careful ascent to the surface. Returning from 115 feet creates a danger that nitrogen in the bloodstream could expand, leading to the bends and other problems, he said.

--------

To the Navy's Ranks, Add Webmaster

New York Times
August 16, 2001
By NANCY BETH JACKSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/16/technology/16NAVY.html?searchpv=nytToday

ABOARD U.S.S. KITTY HAWK, off Japan -- In their long stretches at sea on this storied aircraft carrier, Chief Petty Officer Lance Lindley and Petty Officer Third Class Jacob Hickman rarely meet face to face.

Chief Lindley, 36, works days in the public affairs office, just a ship's ladder from the flight deck. Petty Officer Hickman, 20, works nights in the print shop under the main galley below the waterline. But together they man www.kittyhawk.navy.mil, which can be boarded by any outsider at any time without requesting the captain's permission.

In the late 1990's the Defense Department embraced the World Wide Web as a powerful public information tool, cost-effective in reaching a global audience yet requiring a delicate balance between openness and military security. And so the Kitty Hawk went online.

"The families back home are the No. 1 target audience, with general U.S. Navy fans worldwide being secondary," Chief Lindley said.

But families and fans are not the only beneficiaries: Internet use, particularly e-mail, has also changed life for many crew members during their monthslong tours at sea. "Instant communication with folks back home is a huge morale boost over letters that took weeks and often came out of order," Chief Lindley said.

I can attest to its effect on my own morale. Thanks to the work of Chief Lindley and Petty Officer Hickman, I began making virtual visits to the Kitty Hawk last fall, shortly after my son, Ensign Nicholas Sherman, joined Carrier Air Wing 5, which divides its time between the Kitty Hawk and the United States Naval Air Facility in Atsugi, Japan. He was somewhere in the Sea of Japan when he sent a note from his Kitty Hawk e-mail account: "Not sure this will get through - just wanted to say hi. All is well. Working very long days. You can reach me at this address. I can check e-mail now and then."

But the messages didn't come as often as I would have liked. Connections at sea are limited and computers and time scarce, I found out later. I began logging on to the Web site daily just to know where Nicholas was. It warmed a mother's heart to see the Kitty Hawk icon, like a hurricane indicator, advancing steadily toward South Korea.

Then, suddenly, I could no longer call up the page. That's when I first encountered Petty Officer Hickman. Finding I could link to the site from another American military Web site in Japan, I urgently e-mailed a query to the Kitty Hawk Webmaster: "Where's page?" (though what I really meant was "Where's ship?"). Petty Officer Hickman responded immediately. E-mail servers go to sea with the Kitty Hawk, but the Web page works through a server in Japan. Petty Officer Hickman had redesigned the entire Web site while at sea, working 12- hour stretches over three nights, but he had been unable to put it online. Too many other ship activities were competing for the connection to the server back in Japan, he said, but he promised that the site would be up and running again within the week.

I met Petty Officer Hickman and Chief Lindley face to face when I boarded the ship in Guam on a four-day trip for family members toward the end of nearly four months at sea. I had followed the ship's journey closely on the Web site, reassured to see the ship continue toward Thailand in April while a United States Navy surveillance plane and its crew were held in China. The site told me about daily life aboard and activities like zoo visits, baseball games and volunteer work in ports visited along the way. Once I even found a photo of my son, who was quoted in an article about the air wing.

Chief Lindley and Petty Officer Hickman figure that their site, one of more than 2,000 unrestricted military ones on the Web, is in a class by itself if only because of the distinction of their vessel. The Kitty Hawk is the Navy's oldest warship, the world's first guided-missile carrier and the only American aircraft carrier that remains continuously overseas. Based in Yokosuka, Japan, since 1998, it entered the fleet 40 years ago when John F. Kennedy was president, and more than 100,000 Americans have served aboard it. With its air wing, its crew encompasses 5,500 men and women.

Like more and more of those serving in today's Navy, Petty Officer Hickman was no stranger to the computer world when he joined up. As a 14-year-old in Page, Ariz., he posted an online guide to body piercing, and he maintained it even after he enlisted. The son of a computer expert, he worked his way through community college as an assistant computer instructor.

In the Navy, though, he is no longer the Internet cowboy, always solo. "I've learned to do Webmastering as a team, a dread necessity in the real world," Petty Officer Hickman said. In addition to the Web site, he handles the night shift on the ship's two copying machines.

Chief Lindley is the journalist of the pair, the son of a sportswriter for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram. He also edits the ship's newspaper and runs its television station. He spent one semester as a computer science major back in 1982 but is self-taught when it comes to the Web. For fun - when not managing the ship's varsity baseball team - he builds computers and maintains his own Web site www.geocities.com/hagakure/) with tips on Japanese culture, like when and where to take off your shoes, and on kendo, or stylized Japanese swordplay.

"Hickman's a lot more knowledgeable than I am about the technical side of Web design and he's very creative," said Chief Lindley, who involved Petty Officer Hickman in the site after he noticed his computer proficiency. "Sometimes we collaborate to the point where I sketch out on paper in broad strokes how I want something to look and he turns it into code. Other times he just takes an idea from start to finish and I approve it."

The Secretary of the Navy issued guidelines for publicly accessible Web sites in 1999. Webmasters are given considerable leeway as long as they do not reveal classified information, endorse any product or sell souvenir ball caps. They also must include proper disclaimers and links to recruitment. The last item in the Kitty Hawk site's section of frequently asked questions is "How can I get a great high-tech job like Webmaster for the U.S. Navy?" Answer: "The adventure begins right here, shipmate!" The "here" is an active link to www.navyjobs.com.



-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

Voltwerk builds Germany's biggest solar plant

REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
GERMANY: August 16, 2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12033/story.htm

FRANKFURT - German renewable energy firm voltwerk AG said this week it would start building the country's biggest open-space solar power plant in Soechtenau, Bavaria at the end of August.

Voltwerk is a subsidiary of Conergy AG, one of Europe's leading suppliers of solar energy.

The 600 kilowatt unit, will be linked to the Isar-Amperwerke power grid from November.

Soctenau is one of the sunniest regions in Germany and is thus "an ideal location for a particularly efficient community solar plant," said Martin Bucher, head of voltwerk AG, in a statement.

The plant will produce around 600,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) of power a year, equivalent to a quarter of the electricity demand of 2,500 households in Soechtenau.

The firms benefits from Germany's Renewable Energy Law (EEG), according to which energy suppliers have to pay solar power generators a surcharge of 99 pfennigs per kWh of solar-generated electricity that is fed into the grid.

"Investment in solar energy is at present as attractive as never before," the statement said, adding that the new plant will yield around 590,000 marks a year from the surcharge.

Operation of the plant will cut emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide by around 600 tonnes a year, the firm said.

"Citizens can buy a share in the community plant for as little as 10,000 marks (and) additional payments are not necessary," Bucher said.

The firms is offering investors a pre-tax yield of 6.32 percent and a dividend of around 12.1 percent a year, for over 20 years.

Limited investors have reduced risk in that they are not liable to pay more than their initial share purchase should a company go bankrupt.

Voltwerk is using credit from the government for the construction of the plant, as part of the national climate protection programme's so-called "100,000 roofs" solar plan.

Hamburg-based SunTechnics Solartechnik GmbH will construct the plant.

-------- genetics

Mystery DNA Is Discovered in Soybeans by Scientists

New York Times
August 16, 2001
By ANDREW POLLACK
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/16/health/genetics/16CROP.html

The world's most widely grown genetically engineered crop contains some unexpected DNA next to its inserted gene, casting some doubts on the biotechnology industry's assertions that its technology is precise and predictable.

The mysterious DNA was found in the Monsanto Company's Roundup Ready soybeans by Belgian government and university scientists, who described their findings in a paper published yesterday in the journal European Food Research and Technology. Greenpeace called yesterday for countries to re-evaluate the regulatory approvals of the soybeans, saying that Monsanto did not know as much as it should about its product. The unknown DNA could possibly affect the safety of the beans, the group said.

"I don't think you can come out and say it's unsafe," said Dr. Janet Cotter-Howells, a scientist for Greenpeace in Britain. "You can just say it's unknown whether it's unsafe or not."

Monsanto acknowledged that the extra DNA was there, but it said it was confident that the soybean was safe and that the unknown DNA had no effect on the plant. Dr. Jerry J. Hjelle, the company's vice president for regulatory affairs, said the DNA segment had been in the crop since the beginning as it went through testing to prove its safety.

Products made from Roundup Ready soybeans have been eaten by people and animals for five years with no reports of health problems. Still, the findings could cause some embarrassment for Monsanto and the agricultural biotech industry because they raise questions about how well the molecular makeup of the products is characterized.

Roundup Ready soybeans contain a gene from a bacterium that allows the plants to withstand Monsanto's Roundup herbicide. Farmers can thus spray their fields with Roundup throughout the growing season to kill weeds without harming the crop. More than half the soybeans grown in the United States are now Roundup Ready. In Europe and Japan the beans are approved for use but not for planting.

This is the second time that scientists have found something in Roundup Ready soybeans that Monsanto did not seem to know was there and had not cited at the time of the product's approval.

Last year the Belgian scientists and Monsanto, working independently, found that the soybeans contained not only one complete copy of the bacterial gene, as intended, but two fragments of that gene. Monsanto filed reports with regulators around the world offering data to show that the fragments were not active genes and had no effect on the plant.

The paper now being published contains another revelation. Adjacent to one of those gene fragments is another stretch of DNA that Monsanto, in its report to regulators last year, had assumed was the soybean's native DNA.

But the Belgian scientists, led by Dr. Marc De Loose of the Center for Agricultural Research in Melle, said they could not find this stretch of DNA in the soybean that had not been genetically engineered.

They suggested that this unknown DNA is probably the plant's own DNA but that it was somehow rearranged, or scrambled, at the time the bacterial gene was inserted. Another possibility, they said, is that a portion of the plant's DNA was deleted, leaving other DNA in that position.

Dr. Hjelle, of Monsanto, said that the new paper by the Belgian scientists had been available online for some time and that Monsanto had already discussed the information with regulators. He said the unexpected DNA had been found because more sensitive techniques had made it practical for the first time to determine the sequence of the DNA flanking the inserted gene. "As methods improve," he said, "we can find things from a detailed perspective that we couldn't 10 years ago."

Dr. Hjelle said the unknown sequence was only 534 letters long out of a soybean genome of about 1.5 billion letters and was not meaningful. He also said that the jumbling up of DNA near the spot where a new gene was inserted was "expected by people who understand the science."

Dr. David Ow, a senior scientist at the Department of Agriculture's Plant Gene Expression Center in Albany, Calif., said that an inserted gene did not always integrate itself into a plant in a neat way.

"It's not so much that rearrangements occur, but what are the consequences of it?" he said. Dr. Ow said he did not think that this would pose a public safety issue, but he said it would pose a public perception problem for the industry.

"If one is submitting a product it has to be characterized to the extent required by the regulatory bodies," he said.

-------- health

Study Cites Air Pollution Deaths

August 16, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Greenhouse-Gases-Health.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- As nations debate the future effect on the climate of burning fossil fuels, a study finds no question that air pollution from exhaust pipes and smoke stacks already is killing people worldwide.

``It is our best estimate that more people are being killed by air pollution from traffic than from traffic crashes,'' said Devra Lee Davis, first author of the study appearing Friday in the journal Science.

Davis, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz School for Public Policy and Management in Pittsburgh, said ozone, particulates, carbon dioxide and other pollutants from the combustion of fossil fuels may affect the climate in coming decades. But she said her team found that they already are public health hazards.

``There are more than a thousand studies from 20 countries all showing that you can predict a certain death rate based on the amount of pollution,'' Davis said.

She said the burning of gasoline and coal are causing people to die prematurely from asthma, heart disease and lung disorders.

``We hope that policy-makers will understand that energy decisions and technology decisions are fundamentally public health decisions,'' she said.

In the study, Davis and four co-authors researched the health effects of pollution from fossil-fuels on the rate of death in four cities -- Sao Paulo, Brazil; Mexico City; Santiago, Chile; and New York -- and found that adopting greenhouse gas abatement technologies now available would save 64,000 lives over the next 20 years in those cities. It would also prevent 65,000 cases of chronic bronchitis and save about 37 million person-days of restricted or lost work, the researchers estimated.

Davis said although the study concentrated on just four cities, the conclusions probably could be applied to cities worldwide. She said the data are consistent with a World Health Organization study that estimated that air pollution would cause about 8 million deaths worldwide by 2020.

``Policies to mitigate (greenhouse gases) can yield substantive and immediate benefits to the 3 billion people currently residing in urban areas throughout the world,'' the study's authors claim.

``We're not talking about Buck Rogers-like, futuristic technologies'' to reduce pollution from burning fossil fuels, said Davis. ``If the technologies we now have on the shelf were adopted quickly, they would have an immediate effect on public health.''

Dr. Jonathan Patz of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health said the study by Davis and her co-authors draws ``an important conclusion.''

``They show that air pollution does have an important effect on the mortality and morbidity of urban dwellers,'' he said. ``It shows that there are significant health benefits to be had from reducing emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.''

Carbon dioxide and other gases from the burning of coal and oil have been blamed by many researchers for warming of the global climate. Some have predicted long-term and varied global effects, including such phenomena as the melting glaciers, rising sea levels and recurring weather extremes.

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GAO: FBI Doesn't Always Share Info

August 16, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-FBI-Spies.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- When the FBI investigates spy cases, it doesn't always tell federal prosecutors that it uncovered possible federal crimes, a government report said.

When the FBI does share the information, often it's too late to be of any use, concluded a report by the General Accounting Office released Wednesday.

Justice Department policies require the FBI to coordinate counterintelligence investigations involving suspected criminal violations with lawyers from the department's criminal division.

Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., who requested the report, said the problem hurts the government's chances of prosecuting spies.

``Opportunities may be lost to preserve and enhance the government's option of bringing criminal prosecutions against spies, terrorists or other criminals,'' said Thompson, a ranking member of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee.

The report comes at a sensitive time for the FBI, which has had a number of black eyes in recent months, including the arrest of an FBI spy, and the disclosure of hundreds of lost or missing weapons and computers.

The GAO findings also come on the heels of a Justice Department report, portions of which were released Monday, highly critical of the FBI's handling of the Wen Ho Lee case.

The department's report said the FBI did not provide the Justice Department with all the information it had collected when it requested permission to bug Lee's home and office. The department rejected the FBI request. Lee was never charged with spying and denied giving information to China.

The GAO report focused on intelligence gathered through surveillance allowed under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which authorizes wiretapping.

Evidence gathered under an FISA warrant may be used in a criminal proceeding as long as the primary purpose of the warrant was to obtain foreign intelligence information rather than to pursue a possible criminal prosecution.

Current Justice Department procedures require the FBI to notify the criminal division when wiretaps uncover facts ``that reasonably indicate'' a crime has been, is being or may be committed. The FBI is supposed to brief division officials on investigations that merit their attention.

But the FBI has been reluctant to share intelligence information gathered through wiretaps for fear that federal courts and a special court that approves wiretap requests would raise questions about the primary purpose of the surveillance, the report said.

The Justice Department's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, which must approve FBI requests for wiretaps, shared the bureau's concerns, the GAO reported.

Justice Department procedures ``led to a significant decline in coordination between the FBI and the criminal division,'' the GAO said, because of disagreements between the FBI and the criminal division about what potential criminal violations are significant enough to merit coordination.

The GAO recommended several steps to ensure that the FBI is alerting the criminal division of possible criminal violations it uncovers as part of its investigations.

Janis Sposato, acting assistant attorney general for administration, said the Justice Department, of which the FBI is part, has fully or partially implemented the GAO's recommendations.

Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson sent a memo to the criminal division, the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review and the FBI reiterating the department's policies for intelligence sharing. A spokesman said they were being followed.

``As part of a collaborative process, these procedures were developed and are now implemented by the FBI,'' bureau spokesman John Collingwood said. ``They were needed to bring further clarity in a sensitive area of operations.''

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FBI Faulted on Counterintelligence Sharing

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 16, 2001; Page A23
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17595-2001Aug15?language=printer

It's not much of a secret that the FBI and its parent, the Justice Department, haven't been getting along very well in recent years, in part because of tensions between former FBI director Louis J. Freeh and former president Bill Clinton.

A study released yesterday underscored the problem by finding that FBI counterintelligence officials were reluctant to share information with Justice. The study by the General Accounting Office also found that within Justice, attorneys at the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review were timid in sharing what they knew with prosecutors.

Sen. Fred D. Thompson (R-Tenn.), who requested the GAO inquiry in the wake of the Wen Ho Lee case and allegations of Chinese involvement in the 1996 elections, said the problem "was mishandled for several years under the Clinton administration" and limited the ability to prosecute "spies, terrorists or other criminals."

In an internal memorandum sent last week, Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson said Justice has adopted the GAO's recommendations for improvements, including procedures requiring the FBI to alert Justice whenever there is a "reasonable indication" that a crime was committed.

PRIVACY ADVOCATES are heartened by signals that Attorney General John D. Ashcroft is weighing tougher restrictions on Carnivore, the FBI's controversial e-mail snooping system.

Associate Deputy Attorney General Daniel P. Collins, the Justice Department's new "privacy czar," may develop recommendations "for further restrictions or modifications" to Carnivore above and beyond those recommended by an outside review panel, according to a Justice Department letter to House Majority Leader Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.).

The recommendations should be completed within several months.

Earlier in his career, Collins was a law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote the recent Supreme Court opinion barring police from using thermal imaging to probe a suspect's house without a search warrant. Armey and others say Carnivore raises the same kinds of constitutional issues.

The FBI, by the way, has had little luck banishing the aggressive Carnivore name by renaming the software "DCS1000." Given that the name is mysterious and hard to remember, most news organizations and government officials continue to use the old moniker.

Perhaps the Software Formerly Known as Carnivore?

ASHCROFT, launching an initiative begun under the previous administration, hopes that an infusion of federal funds will help ease a nationwide backlog in untested DNA samples.

A $30 million Justice Department program will provide grants to states to help process the tens of thousands of samples that remain to be tested in connection with criminal cases across the country. Some money will also be available to inmates seeking to overturn their own convictions.

An estimated 180,000 "rape kits" containing semen samples and other evidence still await testing nationwide, as do an additional 750,000 samples from criminal convicts. The new federal money should be enough to cover the costs of testing about 500,000 samples, Ashcroft said.

WORD HAS IT that former federal prosecutor Jay B. Stephens will be Ashcroft's pick for associate attorney general, a key post that oversees the Civil Division, antitrust regulation and other major policy areas.

Stephens, a prominent Republican who served as U.S. attorney for the District, made waves in 1993 when he strongly criticized the Clinton administration for dismissing him and other U.S. attorneys en masse.

After briefly weighing a run for the U.S. Senate in Virginia, Stephens was hired by the Resolution Trust Corp. to handle claims arising from the failure of Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan, a central event in the Whitewater scandal.

FBI HEADQUARTERS, in its weekly report to field offices on July 23, noted that two assistant directors, Bob Dies and Kenneth Senser, had testified the week before about shortcomings in the bureau's computers and security systems.

But the dispatch left unmentioned some of the other key witnesses who appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Four FBI agents testified that a double standard of discipline existed within the bureau, that those who investigated wrongdoing faced retaliation, and that the bureau was reluctant to face up to its mistakes.

The allegations have led to another investigation of the FBI by the Justice Department inspector general.


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5 More G - 8 Protesters to Be Freed

August 16, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Italy-Summit-Arrests.html

ROME (AP) -- A Genoa court ordered the release of five people arrested in connection with riots at last month's Group of Eight summit, lawyers said.

Those ordered released Thursday included three Austrians, an Australian and a Slovak. They had been arrested July 22, with other members of an Austrian theater group as they were leaving Genoa in a caravan of vehicles.

The five men were expected to leave a prison in Alessandria, 35 miles north of Genoa and be immediately expelled from Italy, lawyer Andrea Sandra said.

Twenty people belonging to the same group had been released on Tuesday, including American student Susanna Thomas, a Quaker who was traveling with the Austrian Publix Theater group.

Police allege that the theater group had conspired with the violent anarchists known as Black Bloc -- who were considered mainly responsible for the riots ---- before and during the July 20-22 summit.

Police seized jackknives, black clothes, cell phones and flagpoles in their vehicles.

The actors maintain that the items were used in their street performances.

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S.Africans in Race Protest Outside U.S. Embassy

August 16, 2001
By REUTERS
Filed at 10:52 a.m. ET

PRETORIA (Reuters) - Thousands of South Africans protested outside the U.S. embassy on Thursday to condemn Washington's support for Israel ahead of a U.N world conference on racism.

The United States may downgrade its participation over attempts by Arab states to have an anti-Israeli resolution adopted at the conference opening in the South African port of Durban on August 31.

About 3,000 protesters, mainly communists and trade unionists, took part in the demonstration and a petition was handed to the embassy in Pretoria urging Washington to acknowledge ``Zionist racism.''

``We can see what side of the racism debate they are on... that country (United States) is still full of racism,'' Blade Nzimande, general secretary of the South African Communist Party, told the demonstrators.

Speakers drew parallels between white-ruled South Africa under apartheid and Israel's policies toward the Palestinians.

``Viva Arafat, Viva PLO,'' one poster read in reference to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and his Palestine Liberation Organization.

Protesters blasted what they called U.S. complicity in Israel's ``apartheid, occupation, state terrorism, violent subjugation'' against Palestinians.

Scores of police kept watch over the demonstration.

``NAME AND SHAME'' DISPUTE

Apart from its close alliance with Israel, Washington's objection to any anti-Israel text in the Durban declaration is that the conference was not set up to pillory individual states.

``Every country has its own little problem. The conference will not single out China over Tibet nor India over its caste system, for example,'' a U.S. embassy official told Reuters.

The protesters also slammed Washington's objections to reparations for victims of centuries of slavery and colonialism.

``Zionist racism and reparations for victims of slavery and colonialism must be on the agenda at the world conference,'' the petition said.

The U.S. and some European countries have resisted moves, led mainly by African states, to get delegates at the conference to press for reparations and compensation.

``When the issue of reparations for the victims of Nazism was being debated, the U.S. was enthusiastically in support...There is a clear case of double-standards being applied,'' the petition said.

The U.S. has yet to decide what level of delegation -- if any -- it will send to the conference, which the U.N. wants to be a watershed in the fight against global racism and xenophobia.

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Nuclear thaw

Seattle Weekly
August 16 - 22, 2001
BY GEOV PARRISH
http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0133/news-parrish.shtml

LAST THURSDAY, the faithful gathered once again by the fences of the U.S. Navy's submarine base at Bangor, where the U.S. stores 1,536 nuclear warheads--enough firepower to turn the planet into a new asteroid belt. It was the 56th anniversary of the U.S. bombing of Nagasaki, Japan, the last time a nuclear weapon was deployed in war.

Each year, right around the anniversaries of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki--and at two or three other points in the year--supporters of the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action faithfully gather at Bangor's gates; sometimes in the hundreds, more often in the dozens. They are the anti-nuclear hard core: the pacifists, the Catholic worker types, the committed activists. They are appalled at the violence implicit in America's 18 Trident submarines, the deadliest weapons ever devised.

Eight of them--each with 24 missiles and 192 warheads, a single warhead far more powerful than the blast that leveled Hiroshima--are based in Kitsap County, a few miles west of Seattle. The Navy is currently spending at least $6.5 billion in tax dollars to upgrade the missiles. While the folks at Ground Zero pray, meditate, protest, and resist, over three million Western Washingtonians live their lives nearby without giving the whole thing much thought.

It wasn't always this way. The ascendancy of Ronald Reagan launched a movement that, only 15 or so years ago, was a force in mainstream American politics. Back then, the protests at Bangor were both enormous and so effective that the government stopped running its nuclear-laden "white trains." The freeze and disarmament movements, both here and in Europe, were almost entirely driven by millions of people's horrified fear of Reagan and his deranged "winnable nuclear war" rhetoric. Among activists, Aug. 6-9 became something of a national holiday, often celebrated with either family picnics at the local lantern-float ceremony or fence climbing at the nearest weapons facility.

When it became clear that the military-industrial complex was not so easily dislodged, the movement fizzled. But the threat never went away--even when the Cold War did. Today, the U.S. arsenal, though reduced, still contains insane numbers of insanely destructive weapons pointed at our allies and trading partners (especially Russia and China) and still on high alert. Worse, we now have in the White House a president who trumpets noisily what previous administrations pursued quietly: the expansion, in numbers and especially capacity, of a first-strike armada that explicitly aspires to rule the world through nuclear blackmail. National Missile Defense is only a very small, and not especially important, piece of a long-term Pentagon and U.S. Space Command strategy to encircle the globe with first-strike weaponry.

DR. STRANGELOVE AND DUBYA

Today, Seattle still holds a quiet Hiroshima commemoration at Green Lake each year, and Ground Zero anti-soldiers on. But otherwise, the nuclear anniversaries are largely forgotten. Reagan was bad; in many ways, Dubya is worse, having handed over command of the Pentagon, NASA, and the U.S. Space Command to Dr. Strangelove's brood. But unlike 20 years ago, no outcry has emerged.

If we were worried that, in Ronald Reagan, we had a commander in chief sufficiently stupid, arrogant, and detached from reality to use these weapons, George W. Bush doesn't exactly inspire confidence. But few people seem aware that he has the power to destroy the world instantly. Perhaps, 56 years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, too few can remember the horror--it all seems so unreal. It's not much of an exaggeration to say that I would not be writing this column for Seattle Weekly each week were it not for the bombing of Hiroshima.

While visiting the family of my then-wife--who is Japanese and hails from the area--we made our pilgrimage to the site of the nuclear detonation and to the nearby museum and memorials. For anyone who has never been there and gets the opportunity: Go. It is an incredibly powerful and moving experience , both for the suddenness and totality of the catastrophe and the fact that the weapons that caused it are so much more enormous and plentiful today. Hiroshima inspired me to help with translating when, a few months later, some hibakusha (atomic blast survivors) came through Houston, and from there, the descent into my ongoing career of political agitation was pretty quick.

The best rebuttal to today's nuclear complacency still lies in the heart of downtown Hiroshima--at the Atomic Bomb Dome, in the paper cranes and searing photographs of the dead and the living dead. It haunts me to this day. And if it is true that we're doomed to repeat the history that we have forgotten, I listen to George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Joseph Biden, Colin Powell, and the rest of America's circle of imperial military mandarins, and I look toward Kitsap County, and I am very, very afraid.

gparrish@seattleweekly.com

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