------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
New Nuclear Waste Transport Starts
Kobe Formula under seige
Bush Missile Defense Plan Eyed
Kazakhstan: Nuclear Fallout Still Signals Health Hazards
Russia wants to delay plans to halt plutonium production
Treaties Don't Belong to Presidents Alone
Bush seeks to delay payments to sick uranium workers
Yucca hearings to be televised

MILITARY
U.S. Backs Lifting of Yugoslavia Arms Ban
Bush tries to steer course in rocky Colombia
Air Attacks on Iraq Intensifying
U.S. and British Jets Attack 2 Iraqi Military Command Posts
Suspected Israeli Gunmen Kill Palestinian
Israeli Forces Take Over Arab Areas in West Bank
U.S. legislator sentenced for Vieques protest
New Funds For Defense In Danger

OTHER
Hungary opens first wind power plant
Small Lab in Sweden Holds a Huge Trove of Stem Cells
Scientists Wipe Out Mouse Tumors
IMF Protesters Demand Reforms
Spy Probe Seeks Cache Of Classified Documents

ACTIVISTS
The Danish Dillemma
Edith Villastrigo; Political Activist



-------- NUCLEAR

-------- germany

New Nuclear Waste Transport Starts

August 29, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Germany-Nuclear-Waste.html?searchpv=aponline

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) -- A transport of nuclear waste set out by rail from western Germany for reprocessing in France Wednesday morning without any disturbance from anti-nuclear protesters, police said.

The shipment from the Biblis plant in Hesse state was expected to cross the border later Wednesday, bound for France's La Hague reprocessing plant in Normandy.

Greenpeace protesters had blocked rail tracks heading out of the Biblis plant Tuesday evening by chaining themselves to the rails. Police ended that protest after several hours.

Protests regularly mark transports of atomic waste out of Germany by anti-nuclear activists, who argue that shipping the nuclear material endangers the public.

Germany sends spent nuclear fuel from 19 power plants abroad for reprocessing under contracts that oblige it to take back the resulting waste for storage. After a break of several years, waste shipments resumed in March.

In June, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and leading energy companies signed an agreement to shut down Germany's nuclear power plants. The pact limits nuclear plants to an average of 32 years of operation, with the first plant scheduled to shut down in 2003.

-------- japan

Kobe Formula under seige:
First visit by US warships to Himeji and Wakayama

From: "kugimiya nobue" <kbnobu@fantasy.plala.or.jp>
Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2001 19:02:24 +0900

Five naval ships of the US 7th Fleet made simultaneous visits to four civilian ports in Japan on August 28. They entered the ports of Himeji (Hyogo Prefecture), Wakayama (Wakayama Prefecture), Nagoya (Aichi Prefecture) and Shimizu (Shizuoka Prefecture).

This was the first visit by US warships to Himeji and Wakayama.

Himeji Port is in the same prefecture as Kobe Port, better known as the Nuclear-free Kobe Formula. Himeji City has also declared itself nuclear free, but the port's authority is the prefectural government, not the city government, while Kobe Port is under the city government's control. The prefectural government, after being urged by citizens, asked the vessel if it respected the three Non-nuclear Principles (not to manufacture, not to possess, not to allow the entry of nuclear weapons). The vessel didn't respond whether or not it carried nuclear weapons on board and came straight into the port.

After entering the port, Robert Rudan, US Consulate General to Osaka, stated at a press conference on board that he hoped that eventually US warships would be allowed to enter the Port of Kobe. He also said that this port call was aimed at improving mutual friendship between Japan and the US, and said that Kobe was losing the opportunity to strengthen ties between our two countries.

No US warship has entered any ports in the prefecture since the Kobe Formula was inplemented in 1975. This portcall is obviously aimed at putting pressure on Kobe to abandon its nuclear-free Kobe Formula.

Five hundred protesters gathered at the port early on the morning of August 28 to protest against the entry of the US missile cruiser "Vincennes." Shortly before 8 am, the Vincennes entered the port to a chorus of protest. "We do not want US warships to use our civil ports," "Vincennes go home! Get out of our port!" were some of the slogans hurled at the ship.

Protests and demonstrations also took place in Nagoya, Wakayama and Shizuoka.

Nobue Kugimiya (Hyogo Gensuikyo) kbnobu@fantasy.plala.or.jp

-------- missile defense

Bush Missile Defense Plan Eyed

August 29, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Missile-Defense.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- It's probably just as well that Paul Maginot, French war minister in the late 1920s, never lived to see the sad result of what he thought was a surefire plan to protect his country from a German invasion.

His Maginot Line, stretching the length of the French-German border, was regarded as the most technologically advanced homeland defense in history. In 1940, eight years after Maginot's death, the Germans indeed invaded France but simply drove around the line, using Belgium as the entry point. Maginot's creation was reduced to irrelevance.

Robert Sherman, an arms expert at the Federation of American Scientists, believes President Bush's proposed missile defense system is no less fanciful than was the Maginot Line.

He poses the not-so-illusory hypothesis of a nuclear-equipped foreign aggressor who wishes to kill a large number of innocent Americans. The despot has the option of using an ICBM or clandestine delivery.

As for the latter, the aggressor could put the bomb in the hold of a merchant ship and explode it in an American harbor. Or he could put it in an airliner destined for a large city, or have it driven there in a rental truck.

``The ICBM would be more expensive, less accurate and much less reliable than clandestine delivery,'' Sherman writes in the federation's journal, Public Interest Report. ``Even more important, the ICBM would leave an unmistakable return address, while clandestine delivery offers at least the possibility of anonymity.''

Sherman's message: The ICBM threat is overstated so why should the United States, by developing a national missile defense, encourage aggressive tyrants to seek the safer, more effective clandestine alternative for striking at U.S. population centers?

Ah, but suppose the objective of enemy countries is not to kill innocent Americans but to alter U.S. foreign policy? Given the choice, perhaps most hostile governments would prefer the latter.

John E. McLaughlin, deputy director of the CIA, said in a speech in Alabama last week that an aggressive despot doesn't actually have to use his ICBM in order to extract political gains from the United States.

He notes that Iran, Iraq and North Korea are developing such weapons and suggests that the mere possibility of their use would complicate American decision-making in a crisis. He says it could -- as a form of blackmail -- prevent the United States from coming to the aid of friends and allies in such a situation.

These ICBM countries, McLaughlin says, may not even have to test their missiles in order to have the desired political impact.

``For them, it may be enough to demonstrate their capabilities in the form of a space launch vehicle -- a strategy that could achieve the twin goals of deterrence and prestige without the political and economic costs that a long-range ballistic missile test might bring.''

McLaughlin predicts that the United States has some breathing room, but not much.

``The intelligence community continues to project that as we progress through the next 15 years, our country most likely will face ICBM threats from North Korea, probably from Iran and possibly from Iraq'' -- barring significant changes in their political orientations.

Of these three, North Korea is the most likely to renounce the ICBM option. Pyongyang indicated to the United States last fall a willingness to curb missile development in exchange for economic benefits. But now it seems hesitant.

It has yet to respond to an offer by Bush almost three months ago to resume the discussions. Secretary of State Colin Powell says the administration is ready to resume the talks any time, any place.

Whatever the North Korean decision, the United States faces a long, bitter debate over the pluses and minuses of missile defense.

-------- russia

Kazakhstan: Nuclear Fallout Still Signals Health Hazards

By Bruce Pannier
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
August 29, 2001
http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2001/08/29082001120947.asp

Ten years ago today, Kazakhstan announced an end to nearly 40 years of nuclear tests and the closure of all testing sites on its territory. The Kazakh government would later voluntarily give up all its nuclear weapons as well. The damaging effects of hundreds of nuclear tests had already been done, however, and Kazakhstan is still living with the fallout. So yesterday's announcement by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev that the country is considering allowing other nations to bury their nuclear waste on its territory came as something of a surprise. RFE/RL correspondent Bruce Pannier examines the issues.

Prague, 29 August 2001 (RFE/RL) -- On 29 August 1991, Kazakhstan declared that it was ending nuclear testing at its northern Semipalatinsk range. The announcement halted nearly four decades of explosions that have left scars both on the landscape and the people of the region.

The timing of the announcement by Kazakhstan was interesting, coming as it did eight days after the failed coup in Moscow. Kazakhstan would later receive more attention for announcing that it was decommissioning the nuclear arsenal it had inherited from the Soviet Union.

The missiles and warheads are gone now, but the effects of the testing will be with the people of Kazakhstan for many years to come.

Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbaev spoke yesterday at a ceremony in Almaty marking the release of his new book about the topic of nuclear weapons testing, titled "Peace Epicenter." The title, Nazarbayev explained, comes from the fact that "Kazakhstan found itself at the epicenter of global confrontation...."

There is a certain logic to the title. At the start of the Cold War, the Soviet government needed testing sites for its nuclear weapons program. Northern Kazakhstan was one of two sites chosen in the Soviet Union -- the other was the virtually uninhabited island of Novaya Zemlya in the Arctic Circle. And it was in northern Kazakhstan -- on 29 August 1949 -- that the first Soviet nuclear test was conducted.

More than 450 nuclear tests had been carried out in Semipalatinsk -- most of them above ground -- by the time Mikhail Gorbachev declared a moratorium on such testing shortly after he became Soviet leader in 1985. A 1992 study estimated that 1.6 million people in Semipalatinsk had been affected by the radiation released during the nuclear testing.

While Semipalatinsk -- an area roughly half the size of Switzerland -- was the most active nuclear testing site in Kazakhstan, Nazarbaev said yesterday that nuclear testing was conducted over almost half of present-day Kazakh territory.

At his book launch, Nazarbaev said: "Kazakhstan was the only country in the world where an inhumane totalitarian regime carried out experiments without regard for the ecology or the health of the population, even though the problems were known."

Studies of the region indicate higher rates of cancer and other diseases than in most of the rest of the world. Lakes near where the tests were carried out have an eerie glow. Television and photo-journalists traveling in the region, including those from "National Geographic" magazine, have documented shocking images of deformities among the local population. The respected U.S. television news program "60 Minutes" broadcast the image of a baby still-born with a Cyclops-like eye, which became a symbol of just how serious the situation had become in Semipalatinsk.

Roald Sagdeev is the director of the center for space research at Kazakhstan's East-West Institute and attended yesterday's ceremony in Almaty. Sagdeev says the temperature in the Semipalatinsk region is now about 10 degrees Celsius higher than historic norms and has remained so for the last four years. He attributes this rise in temperatures to the nuclear testing.

Despite the harm to the environment and the local population, Kazakhstan's decisions to close the testing sites and give up its nuclear arsenal were not easy to make. Its nuclear arsenal had originally been put into place to protect the Soviet Union from neighboring China. Some Muslim nations had even been quick to congratulate Kazakhstan on becoming the "first Islamic nuclear state."

The United States helped Kazakhstan destroy its nuclear missiles. Russian technicians dismantled the warheads and sent them back to Russia, while U.S. specialists removed the weapons-grade uranium.

Kazakhstan was nuclear-free by the mid-1990s. President Nazarbaev said yesterday that Kazakhstan will remain a nuclear-free zone and urged other Central Asian nations not to pursue their own nuclear weapons programs.

Of course, for anyone who lived or still lives around Semipalatinsk, or near other former testing sites in Kazakhstan, the damage is done. Every common cold brings the suspicion of something much worse. Every pregnancy is a gamble.

So it came as a surprise that at yesterday's presentation of his new book, President Nazarbaev announced that Kazakhstan is considering a plan to allow low- and medium-grade radioactive waste from other countries to be buried in Kazakhstan.

Experts of the national Kazakhatomprom company believe the country can bring in $30 to $40 billion over the next 25 to 30 years by allowing the burial of such waste on its territory.

Those experts say the waste could be safely buried in old uranium mines in western Kazakhstan's Mangistau region -- or, ironically, in the former Semipalatinsk nuclear testing range.

(Edige Maguin of the Kazakh Service contributed to this report.)

--------

Russia wants to delay plans to halt plutonium production

Aug. 29, 2001
Lincoln Journal Star
BY VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV
The Associated Press
http://www.journalstar.com/nation?story_id=5793&date=20010828&past=

MOSCOW - A long-discussed U.S.-Russian plan to stop production of weapons-grade plutonium in Russia has been stalled by funding shortages, and the government said Monday that it wants the United States to agree to postpone its implementation.

The agreement, signed in September 1997 by Vice President Al Gore and Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, was hailed at the time as a historic event and a big step in U.S. efforts to ensure that Moscow safeguards and reduces its vast nuclear stockpile.

But it has already been delayed by disagreements over audits meant to ensure U.S. money would be spent properly. Now Russia wants to push back the schedule of the project to convert three plutonium-making reactors to production of uranium for civilian power plants.

As it stands, the plan calls for two nuclear reactors in the Siberian city of Seversk, once a closed city known as Tomsk-7, to stop producing plutonium in 2002 and 2003, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

A third reactor in Zheleznogorsk - another formerly top-secret Siberian city, called Krasnoyarsk-26 in Soviet times - was to stop in 2004.

But amid persistent funding problems, Russian Cabinet's information department said Monday that Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov has ordered the Nuclear Power Ministry to negotiate an amendment to the deal with U.S. officials.

It said the Seversk reactors would keep working through 2005, and the one in Zheleznogorsk until the end of 2006.

In addition to producing plutonium, the reactors also provide electricity and heat for residents of the cities, and the U.S.-Russian deal called for the two countries to share the costs of building replacement power facilities.

The proposed amendment, authorized by Kasyanov, also included a stipulation that the United States would help modify reactors or build alternative power facilities if funds are available. The government statement didn't say when the amendment is expected to be signed.

Officials at the U.S. embassy in Moscow declined to comment.

Also Monday, Sen. Richard Lugar - a chief architect of deals to reduce and safeguard nuclear stockpiles following the 1991 Soviet collapse - was visiting Severodvinsk, a naval port on Russia's northern coast that is the focus of efforts to dismantle scores of aging nuclear submarines with the help of U.S. funding.

The Indiana Republican, who arrived in Russia on Sunday, has complained of massive cuts in the programs designed to help Russia secure its vast cache of nuclear weapons and material, which environmental groups have said pose a major threat to the surrounding area.

He inspected a maintenance plant, U.S.-financed disposal projects and a shipyard before heading back to Moscow. He planned to visit the Volga River cities of Nizhny Novgorod and Kazan before leaving for neighboring Ukraine later this week, the U.S. Embassy said.

-------- treaties

Treaties Don't Belong to Presidents Alone

August 29, 2001
By BRUCE ACKERMAN
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/29/opinion/29ACKE.html?searchpv=nytToday

NEW HAVEN -- President Bush has told the Russians that he will withdraw from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, which gives both countries the right to terminate on six months' notice. But does the president have the constitutional authority to exercise this power without first obtaining Congressional consent?

Presidents don't have the power to enter into treaties unilaterally. This requires the consent of two-thirds of the Senate, and once a treaty enters into force, the Constitution makes it part of the "supreme law of the land" - just like a statute.

Presidents can't terminate statutes they don't like. They must persuade both houses of Congress to join in a repeal. Should the termination of treaties operate any differently?

The question first came up in 1798. As war intensified in Europe, America found itself in an entangling alliance with the French under treaties made during our own revolution. But President John Adams did not terminate these treaties unilaterally. He signed an act of Congress to "Declare the Treaties Heretofore Concluded with France No Longer Obligatory on the United States."

The next case was in 1846. As the country struggled to define its northern boundary with Canada, President James Polk specifically asked Congress for authority to withdraw from the Oregon Territory Treaty with Great Britain, and Congress obliged with a joint resolution. Cooperation of the legislative and executive branches remained the norm, despite some exceptions, during the next 125 years.

The big change occurred in 1978, when Jimmy Carter unilaterally terminated our mutual defense treaty with Taiwan. Senator Barry Goldwater responded with a lawsuit, asking the Supreme Court to maintain the traditional system of checks and balances. The court declined to make a decision on the merits of the case. In an opinion by Justice William Rehnquist, four justices called the issue a political question inappropriate for judicial resolution. Two others refused to go this far but joined the majority for other reasons. So by a vote of 6 to 3, the court dismissed the case.

Seven new justices have since joined the court, and there is no predicting how a new case would turn out. Only one thing is clear. In dismissing Senator Goldwater's complaint, the court did not endorse the doctrine of presidential unilateralism. Justice Rehnquist expressly left the matter for resolution "by the executive and legislative branches." The ball is now in Congress's court. How should it respond?

First and foremost, by recognizing the seriousness of this matter. If President Bush is allowed to terminate the ABM treaty, what is to stop future presidents from unilaterally taking America out of NATO or the United Nations?

The question is not whether such steps are wise, but how democratically they should be taken. America does not enter into treaties lightly. They are solemn commitments made after wide-ranging democratic debate. Unilateral action by the president does not measure up to this standard.

Unilateralism might have seemed more plausible during the cold war. The popular imagination was full of apocalyptic scenarios under which the nation's fate hinged on emergency action by the president alone. These decisions did not typically involve the termination of treaties. But with the president's finger poised on the nuclear button, it might have seemed unrealistic for constitutional scholars to insist on a fundamental difference between the executive power to implement our foreign policy commitments and the power to terminate them.

The world now looks very different. America's adversaries may inveigh against its hegemony, but for America's friends, the crucial question is how this country will exercise its dominance. Will its power be wielded by a single man - unchecked by the nation's international obligations or the control of Congress? Or will that power be exercised under the democratic rule of law?

Barry Goldwater's warning is even more relevant today than 20 years ago. The question is whether Republicans will heed his warning against "a dangerous precedent for executive usurpation of Congress's historically and constitutionally based powers." Several leading senators signed this statement that appeared in Senator Goldwater's brief - including Orrin Hatch, Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond, who are still serving. They should defend Congress's power today, as they did in the Carter era.

If they join with Democrats in raising the constitutional issue, they will help establish a precedent that will endure long after the ABM treaty is forgotten. Congress should proceed with a joint resolution declaring that Mr. Bush cannot terminate treaty obligations on his own. And if the president proceeds unilaterally, Congress should take further steps to defend its role in foreign policy.

We need not suppose that the president will respond by embarking on a collision course with Congress. His father, for example, took a different approach to constitutionally sensitive issues. When members of Congress went to court to challenge the constitutionality of the Persian Gulf war, President George H. W. Bush did not proceed unilaterally. To his great credit, he requested and received support from both houses of Congress before making war against Saddam Hussein. This decision stands as one precedent for the democratic control of foreign policy in the post-cold war era. We are now in the process of creating another.

Bruce Ackerman is a professor of constitutional law at Yale and co-author of "Is Nafta Constitutional?''

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

Bush seeks to delay payments to sick uranium workers

By Robert Gehrke,
Associated Press,
8/29/2001
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/241/nation/Bush_seeks_to_delay_payments_to_sick_uranium_workers+.shtml

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration wants to delay compensation for some former workers who developed illnesses after participating in Cold War-era nuclear weapons programs.

The administration says more study is needed to determine whether some workers who helped mine uranium actually qualify for a federal compensation program. Critics say further delay means more eligible workers will die before getting any money.

''They've been stonewalling, and it's a crying shame,'' said Ed Brickey, president of the Colorado Uranium Workers Council. ''We have people who are dying because of where they worked.''

The administration wants to delay the payments until the completion of three ongoing studies, said Chris Ullman, spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget.

William Lambert, an epidemiologist at the University of Oregon working with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, said the studies are looking at whether exposure to uranium and silica dust in certain situations caused the illnesses.

It could be a year before the studies are finished, Lambert said.

''The administration is shirking its moral and legal responsibility to a segment of society that is powerless because they're old and sick. It's a total disgrace,'' said Lori Goodman, spokeswoman for Dine CARE, which represents Navajo Indians who worked in the mines.

The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act was passed by Congress in 1990 to compensate below-ground uranium miners and people exposed to radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons tests.

Above-ground uranium miners, ore-haulers, and millers were added to the program last year and could begin applying for $100,000 payments in January.

At least 141 ore-haulers and millers applied for compensation, but none has been paid.

Now the administration wants to remove those workers from the program until the studies are finished. OMB officials met with staff for several senators earlier this month, briefing them on the administration's position.

Steve Bell, chief of staff for Senator Pete Domenici, a New Mexico Republican, said Domenici and other supporters of the sick workers plan to fight the delay.

-------- nevada

Yucca hearings to be televised
Nevada officials' angry demands met

Wednesday, August 29, 2001
Las Vegas Review-Journal
By KEITH ROGERS REVIEW-JOURNAL
http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Aug-29-Wed-2001/news/16876129.html

With their confidence in "sound science" all but evaporated, Nevada officials have fired off a flurry of letters that call for televising next month's Yucca Mountain hearings and that set the stage for the state to file another lawsuit over federal plans to bury nuclear waste there.

"I request that you provide video conferencing at the Sept. 5 public hearing," Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., wrote in a letter Tuesday to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham.

"Remote video sites should be provided around the State of Nevada for interested members of the public, local governments, and other affected parties to participate in the hearing and to comment on this very important decision which impacts all citizens of the state," Reid's letter said.

Three hearings are scheduled to field comments on the recently released Yucca Mountain Preliminary Site Suitability Evaluation and related federal documents.

The first one is Sept. 5 in Las Vegas.

Late Tuesday, an Energy Department spokesman said the agency would grant Reid's request and go beyond what the senator asked by providing live, Web camera coverage on the Internet.

"We are going to do videoconferencing in Reno, Elko and Carson City and we're also going to try to do the Web cam," said Yucca Mountain Project spokesman Allen Benson.

Meanwhile, State Nuclear Projects Agency chief Bob Loux has written the Energy Department's waste-manage- ment head, Lake Barrett, arguing that the public participation process is flawed. The evaluation of the Yucca Mountain site should be conducted under existing guidelines, not ones that haven't been finalized, he said.

The Energy Department in 1996 proposed amendments to make the siting process consistent with current scientific knowledge in assessing how the repository would perform, according to the site evaluation document.

But Loux's letter argued that "changing regulations for the Yucca Mountain site at the eleventh hour not only violates the public trust, but it also shows the lengths to which the department is prepared to go in attempting to salvage a project that, under any truly objective and scientific criteria, would have long since been abandoned."

"They're denying the public meaningful opportunity to participate," Loux said in a telephone interview from Carson City. He said under existing guidelines the site would be disqualified.

"We believe these hearings legally can't take place until after the final environmental impact statement is out and the final guidelines are published," he said.

Loux said state lawyers have sought answers from federal officials about whether next month's public hearings will be the final opportunity to comment on the government's plans to entomb 77,000 tons of high-level radioactive waste in Yucca Mountain.

"Depending on what those answers are, we may or may not litigate. If we're right about our belief and successful in a court case, that could force DOE to do this (public hearing) process over in the future," Loux said.

Benson said the DOE intends to have its siting guidelines published "in the next couple weeks," preceded by final siting guidelines from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the agency that would conduct a licensing review. He said the process being followed is consistent with federal nuclear waste laws.

The volcanic-rock ridge, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is the only site federal scientists are studying to dispose of the nation's most lethal radioactive waste, most of which are rods of spent nuclear fuel pellets currently stored at commercial power reactor sites across the nation. Abraham is expected to decide late this year or early next year whether to recommend that a repository be constructed at Yucca Mountain.

But Loux said if the Energy Department follows its current course for public participation, the state could sue in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco on grounds that Abraham's expected recommendation is based on a faulty environmental impact statement, faulty siting guidelines, faulty radiation protection standards "and hearings that were done prematurely."

Nevada's Nuclear Projects Agency and a consortium of environmental groups filed separate federal lawsuits against the Environmental Protection Agency in June challenging the adequacy of the EPA's standards for the proposed repository.

Anti-nuclear groups Tuesday called the scheduled hearing in Las Vegas "a kangaroo court" and said it should be canceled because citizens don't have enough time to prepare for it.

"The Department of Energy has abandoned all pretense of integrity and objectivity in announcing these crucial hearings at such short notice during a holiday season," according to Wenonah Hauter of Citizen Alert, a Washington, D.C.-based government watchdog that released a statement.


-------- MILITARY

-------- arms sales

U.S. Backs Lifting of Yugoslavia Arms Ban

By Colum Lynch
The Washington Post
Wednesday, August 29, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10856-2001Aug28?language=printer

UNITED NATIONS -- The United States announced today that it supports lifting the three-year-old U.N. arms embargo on Yugoslavia, ensuring a speedy end to nearly a decade of U.N. sanctions against the government in Belgrade.

The 15-nation Security Council imposed the arms embargo in March 1998 to protest a crackdown by the former Yugoslav leader, Slobodan Milosevic, on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

The United States and European governments began lifting diplomatic and economic sanctions on Belgrade after Milosevic was voted out of power in October. Now that the newly democratic Yugoslav government has turned him over to an international war crimes tribunal in the Netherlands, U.N. diplomats said, the Security Council is likely to vote to end the arms embargo early next month.

"This is the end of U.N. sanctions," Yugoslavia's ambassador to the world body, Dejan Sahovic, said after the U.S. announcement. "It is for us an important political acknowledgment of a new, more positive relationship with the whole world."

French and Russian diplomats have been pressing their counterparts on the council for months to end the embargo. Cameron Hume, the deputy U.S. representative to the United Nations, told the council for the first time today that the United States will back the move, removing the last major obstacle.

"I would like to note my government's full support for the lifting of the arms embargo at this time," Hume said.

Critics said the United States is acting prematurely and relinquishing a bargaining chip that could help compel Belgrade to aid international efforts to arrest Serbian war criminals in Bosnia.

"By removing international sanctions and lifting the arms embargo, we're giving up leverage that could be useful in encouraging the Serbs to be more helpful," Nancy Soderberg, director of the New York office of the International Crisis Group, said.

-------- colombia

Bush tries to steer course in rocky Colombia

USA TODAY
08/29/2001
The Associated Press
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001/08/29/columbia.htm

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - A high-level U.S. delegation arrived in Colombia on Wednesday to try and steer a course for the Bush administration in a nation whose drug trade is fueling Latin America's longest-running civil war.

The U.S. group - including Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman and Gen. Peter Pace, the commander of U.S. military forces in the region - is arriving amid rising anger here at leftist guerrillas, increasing support for the military and calls for President Andres Pastrana to take a tougher stance in peace talks.

"I have come to try to convey that Colombia matters very much to the United States," Grossman told reporters outside the foreign ministry in Bogota's colonial downtown, before heading into meetings.

Moments before the Americans touched down, a U.N. peace envoy appealed for dialogue instead of what he called growing sentiment in favor of military solutions to the 37-year conflict.

"Those who criticize the search for peace should carefully consider the alternative," the diplomat, Jan Egeland of Norway, told a press conference in the capital, Bogota. "You cannot shoot your way to reconciliation."

Recent criticism from the State Department about rebel activities in a safe haven Pastrana granted to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, has prompted speculation that the Bush administration is considering widening its assistance to help the Colombian army battle the rebels directly.

Currently, U.S. aid supports a controversial aerial fumigation program against coca and poppy plantations. The guerrillas and a rival right-wing paramilitary militia tax the drug crops to fund their operations.

Many Colombians welcome aid from Washington. But about 70 protesters gathered Wednesday outside the fortress-like U.S. Embassy, where they unfurled a huge Colombian flag and chanted slogans against Pastrana's U.S.-backed drug-fighting strategy.

The protesters, many of them college students, said the fumigation campaign is harming Colombia's environment and is unfair to farmers who scratch out a living growing coca, from which cocaine is made, or heroin-producing poppies.

Demonstrators also said the United States should be supporting peace efforts, not criticizing them.

Pastrana faces political pressure to take back the Switzerland-sized safe haven in southern Colombia unless peace talks taking place inside the zone begin yielding results.

State Department officials last week accused the FARC of abusing war prisoners, storing kidnap victims and engaging in drug operations inside the area.

The rebels have also staged attacks from the zone and allegedly received training in explosives there from three suspected Irish Republican Army members, who are currently in a Bogota prison.

After meeting with Pastrana on Wednesday, the American delegation is scheduled to tour military bases Thursday near rebel territory, where U.S. Special Forces have trained Colombian army units and where aerial drug eradication operations are based.

The visit is also aimed at helping set up a trip to Colombia by Secretary of State Colin Powell on Sept. 11-12.

Colombia is the world's leading cocaine-producing nation and a top supplier of heroin to the United States. The country's long war claims at least 3,000 lives a year, is crippling the country's economy and has displaced some 2 million people in the past decade.

-------- iraq

Air Attacks on Iraq Intensifying

August 29, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Iraq.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. and British attacks on Iraq's air defenses have intensified in recent days, indicating the Pentagon's growing concern about the risk to pilots enforcing ``no-fly'' zones in the north and south.

On Tuesday, U.S. and British fighter jets attacked two military targets in southern Iraq, one day after an unmanned U.S. Air Force reconnaissance aircraft was lost near the southern city of Basra. The Pentagon has acknowledged losing the Predator drone but is not sure whether Iraq shot it down.

Tuesday's targets were facilities that provide command, control and communications support for Iraqi air defense fighter aircraft, one U.S. official said. More than a half-dozen U.S. and British strike aircraft carried out the attacks, accompanied by more than a dozen jammer and other support planes.

The Iraqi News Agency, offering the Iraqi government's first reaction to the raid on al-Ahrar in Nasiriya province, said two civilians were killed and accused U.S. and British pilots of aggression. ``This peaceful village was far away from any military site,'' the agency said.

Army Col. Rick Thomas, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for U.S. military operations in the Persian Gulf area, said Wednesday that the sites were legitimate military targets.

``We don't track civilian casualties, or casualties of any kind, but what we targeted and what we struck yesterday were military targets,'' Thomas said. His office issued a statement Tuesday evening saying ``command and control sites'' in southern Iraq were attacked, but it provided no details.

The attack was planned in advance, unlike many previous strikes in which U.S. or British pilots encounter Iraqi anti-aircraft artillery or surface-to-air missiles while on patrol and fire back in self-defense, officials said.

The officials discussed the attacks on condition they not be identified.

They described the attacks as part of a continuing effort to counteract Iraq's improvements to its air defenses. Last Saturday U.S. and British planes attacked a mobile early warning radar in southern Iraq. And on Monday allied pilots bombed a surface-to-air missile site in northern Iraq.

Iraq considers allied flights in its airspace to be illegal and has vowed to shoot down a U.S. or British pilot.

If the Predator drone was shot down by Iraqi air defenses -- as opposed to having crashed due to mechanical failure -- it would be Iraq's first success against a U.S. or British aircraft since the air patrols began in 1991.

The drone's wreckage was located near the city of Basra, about 30 miles north of the Kuwaiti border. Pentagon officials said a Predator was operating in that area at the time its controllers lost contact on Monday.

Images of the wreckage were broadcast on Iraqi state television, and government newspapers trumpeted the crash as a shoot-down.

``Iraqi skies are a death zone for the enemy,'' said the Al-Jumhuriya newspaper.

A photograph released by the Iraqi News Agency on Tuesday showed a purported piece of wreckage that bore two tags. A red label said ``Property of U.S.A.F.'' A blue tag on an adjacent panel of the wreckage said ``U.S. Navy Prop.''

The Predator is an Air Force plane, but some contain Navy components.

Also visible from Iraqi TV images was a piece of wreckage displaying the name ``Sierra Monolithics.''

A California company, Sierra Monolithics Inc., makes communications components for unmanned aerial vehicles. Calls to the company's headquarters in Redondo Beach, Calif., seeking details were not returned Tuesday, and Air Force officials at the Pentagon said they did not know whether Sierra Monolithics makes parts for the Predator.

Army Col. Rick Thomas, spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for U.S. military operations in the Persian Gulf area, said no sensitive technology was compromised by the loss. http://www.af.mil/news/factsheets/RQ--1--Predator--Unmanned--Aerial.ht

--------

U.S. and British Jets Attack 2 Iraqi Military Command Posts

New York Times
August 29, 2001
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/29/international/middleeast/29IRAQ.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, Aug. 28 - United States and British fighter jets attacked two military command posts in southern Iraq today in the latest attempt to debilitate Iraq's increasingly aggressive air defense system.

The strike came one day after Baghdad said it had shot down an unmanned American reconnaissance plane near the port city of Basra. But military officials asserted that the attack today had nothing to do with the loss of the drone, which they said may have crashed due to a technical malfunction.

"Today's strikes are in response to hostile threats and acts against coalition aircraft," said Col. Rick Thomas, a spokesman for the United States Central Command.

The attack, which began shortly after nightfall in Iraq, involved only about a dozen fighters, which included American F-16's and British Tornadoes.

Pentagon officials said all of the planes returned safely.

The officials declined to identify the bases where the attack originated. But the Air Force typically uses bases in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia for operations in the no-flight zone over southern Iraq, which American and British warplanes have patrolled since 1992.

Colonel Thomas said the allied jets struck command and control sites near the cities of Basra and Tallil. He said the posts provided essential communications links in Iraq's sophisticated air defense system.

Since the beginning of the year, Iraqi forces have fired antiaircraft guns or surface-to-air missiles at allied jets over the southern no-flight zone 390 times, nearly twice as often as all of last year.

By contrast, Iraqi attacks on allied warplanes in the northern no-flight zone are lagging behind last year's totals.

The intensified Iraqi attacks have placed allied pilots at greater risk, commanders say, and spurred a debate within the Pentagon over whether the United States should scale back or intensify its patrols.

The issue is being reviewed by an interagency panel that is expected to make broad recommendations on Iraq policy later this year.

After the unmanned spy plane, known as a Predator, crashed on Monday, Iraqi state television broadcast images of the wreckage and Iraqi officials claimed credit for shooting down the unarmed drone.

But Pentagon officials said today that it would be virtually impossible to determine whether the Predator, which cost $3.2 million, had been shot down or simply malfunctioned.

"All we know is that it lost its data link," one officer said. "But was that because of a technical glitch, or because a 50-millimeter round went through it? We can't send a crash investigation team to find out."

If the aircraft was shot down, it would have been no great feat, the officials asserted.

The Predator cruises at low speeds, around 100 miles per hour, and at relatively low altitudes, 10,000 feet or lower.

But Iraqi air defenses have surprised allied commanders recently.

Last month, an Iraqi antiaircraft missile narrowly missed an American U-2 spy plane.

-------- israel

Suspected Israeli Gunmen Kill Palestinian

August 29, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast.html?searchpv=reuters

RAFAH, Gaza Strip (Reuters) - Israeli tanks thrust into Palestinian-ruled territory in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, sealing off a town, destroying police outposts and raising the Israeli flag, witnesses and Palestinian officials said.

The Israeli army denied its forces had entered Palestinian- controlled areas near Rafah on the Egyptian border, but Reuters correspondents on the scene saw tanks penetrating several miles into southern Gaza.

The latest incursion, little more than a day after Israeli forces reoccupied part of the Palestinian-controlled West Bank town of Beit Jala, and new violence raised the temperature in an 11-month-old conflict that has killed about 700 people.

At least three Palestinians and an Israeli were killed on Wednesday in the latest bloodshed in the Palestinian uprising that began last September after peace talks deadlocked.

But in a sign that both sides may be looking to pull back from the brink, Israeli and Palestinian officials agreed to a cease-fire in Beit Jala that would be followed by an Israeli pullout from the mostly Christian town.

The deal, brokered by the European Union, appeared on shaky ground after heavy shooting erupted as night fell.

But following up the initiative, an EU spokesman said Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel had been in contact by letter and telephone with U.S Secretary of State Colin Powell and Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov on ways to try to end the violence.

Michel, whose country hold the rotating EU presidency until the end of the year, had also been in contact with Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, the spokesman said.

ARAFAT ORDER

Palestinian President Yasser Arafat ordered his security forces to stop firing on Israeli troops as of 3 p.m. (8:00 a.m. EDT) in an area of the hilltop town seized on Tuesday in response to Palestinian shooting against a nearby Jewish settlement.

Palestinian security officials said the agreement called for Israeli forces to pull out on Wednesday night from Beit Jala, on the outskirts of Bethlehem, revered as the birthplace of Jesus.

But Raanan Gissin, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said the timing of a withdrawal would be dependent on whether Palestinian gunmen stopped firing on Gilo, a settlement Israelis consider a neighborhood of Jerusalem.

Israel had called the incursion a ``limited'' operation but had vowed to remain there in defiance of international condemnation until the shooting on Gilo was silenced.

Long after Arafat's deadline, Beit Jala echoed with shooting and Gilo, which lies across a shallow valley, was also targeted. Gilo was built on land occupied by Israel during the 1967 Middle East war.

Israeli troops continued occupying several houses and buildings in the mostly Christian town, in some cases dividing and trapping families in their own homes.

``We're prisoners in our own home,'' said Berta al-Alam as Israeli soldiers lounged on the top floor of her modest two-story house.

Palestinian gunmen in camouflage uniforms ran through the streets, occasionally exchanging bursts of gunfire with Israeli troops, as residents took cover behind trees and walls.

SHOW OF FORCE IN GAZA

Reuters reporters saw Israeli tanks and bulldozers, in a show of force after an overnight shooting attack on one of its posts in the Gaza Strip, rumbling into the Rafah area to seize a main road and seal off the town.

During the operation in territory handed over to the Palestinians in 1994, Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian policeman, who local officials said also belonged to a guerrilla group.

Calling the incursion a reoccupation, Palestinian officials said Israeli forces had burst out of the narrow corridor of land they control along the southern border Gaza shares with Egypt.

Witnesses said Israeli tanks and bulldozers cut off the main east-west road to Rafah, destroyed three Palestinian police outposts and raised the Israeli flag over one of the buildings.

At one of the outposts, tanks moved in and out against the backdrop of a large mural of Arafat.

``The area occupied by Israeli forces today in Rafah is 100 percent under Palestinian rule. Israel has neither civil nor military control there,'' Mohammad Dahlan, Palestinian preventive security chief in Gaza, told Reuters.

But Israeli officials contradicted the accounts.

``The Israeli army spokesman completely denies the Palestinian claims that an Israeli army force entered today Palestinian-controlled territories in the Rafah area not far from the Israel-Egypt border,'' the army said in a statement.

WEST BANK AMBUSHES

In the West Bank, gunmen believed to be Israelis fired at a Palestinian car, killing a Palestinian and wounding two others, police said. Hours later an Israeli truck driver was shot dead on a road near the Palestinian city of Nablus.

Two groups claimed responsibility for the shooting of the driver. One group said it was part of it campaign of retaliation for Israel's killing on Monday of Abu Ali Mustafa, leader of a radical Palestinian group.

Israel said Mustafa had masterminded attacks on its citizens and soldiers.

Palestinian officials said Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian farmer near the Arab town of Tulkarm. The army said it had exchanged fire with Palestinian gunmen in the area.

At least 543 Palestinians and 156 Israelis have been killed since a Palestinian revolt against Israeli occupation flared last September after peace talks had become deadlocked.

--------

Israeli Forces Take Over Arab Areas in West Bank

New York Times
August 29, 2001
By CLYDE HABERMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/29/international/29MIDE.html?searchpv=nytToday

BEIT JALA, West Bank, Aug. 28 - Israeli tanks and soldiers took control of parts of this Palestinian town south of Jerusalem today in an operation that Israel called necessary to protect its citizens but that Palestinian officials denounced as a "reoccupation" of areas supposedly under their control.

The foray into Beit Jala was the first time that Israel had entered a Palestinian-ruled zone for an indefinite stay, a new benchmark in a Middle East crisis that has been deteriorating by the day, with no hint of imminent political talks that might put a lid on the violence.

Israeli forces took over at least five buildings that the army said had been used for months by snipers firing on Gilo, a neighboring Israeli area on Jerusalem's southern edge.

Soldiers also moved into a Lutheran church compound, using its top floors to shoot at Palestinian gunmen who, despite the Israeli assault, fired throughout the day on both Gilo and the Israeli troops here. Tonight, a mortar round landed near an unoccupied community center in Gilo. In the fighting here today, a Palestinian security officer was killed and more than half a dozen Palestinians were wounded.

Just outside the Lutheran church, an Israeli tank took up a position on Virgin Mary Street, in the heart of town. Church officials said that some 45 children living in an orphanage on the grounds were forced to seek safety all day in a basement.

"The situation now is very dangerous for us," said Albert Hani, a teacher at the compound. "There is a lot of firing from our church."

On Monday, Israel took its policy of pinpoint killings to a new level by firing airborne missiles that left the head of a radical Palestinian faction dead in his office in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Thousands of people in Ramallah, vowing revenge and firing guns in the air, formed a funeral procession today for Mustafa Zibri, the most prominent Palestinian killed by Israel in years.

Israeli officials said that Mr. Zibri, 63, known as Abu Ali Mustafa, was a sponsor of car bombings and other terrorist acts. Therefore, they said, he was a legitimate target in what they call their "active self-defense," just like other Palestinians killed for the same reason, and in much the same way, in recent weeks.

But Mr. Zibri, whose Arabic name can be rendered several ways in the West, was not just another "missile on two legs," as suicide bombers have been called here. He was also a man of high political standing as leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and as a senior figure in the Palestinian Liberation Organization, led by Yasir Arafat.

His killing - Palestinians call it an assassination - raised the stakes, people on both sides agreed. In Washington, the State Department cautioned that the Israeli tactic was inflaming the conflict, which entered its 12th month today.

In the West Bank and Gaza Strip, there were vows of anti-Israel reprisals from an array of Palestinian factions, including Islamic groups who had little use for Mr. Zibri's Marxist views.

The Israeli army's move on Beit Jala signaled another turning point in a tactic that itself is relatively new: thrusts into autonomous Palestinian areas that are supposed to be fully under the control of Mr. Arafat and his Palestinian Authority.

Those forays became standard policy a few weeks ago, a reaction to a string of killings of Israelis by Palestinians, including suicide bombers. But until now, the targets tended to be police headquarters and other official buildings that the army knew had been evacuated. And the raids were in-and-out operations lasting only a couple of hours.

This time, the army seized parts of Beit Jala with no indication of when it intended to leave. The action raised the possibility that if the situation deteriorates even further, Israel is prepared to take over other autonomous Palestinian areas, at least for a while.

Israeli army officers and government officials insisted that they had no intention of once again occupying Beit Jala. "Reoccupation" was a word used today by several officials in the Palestinian Authority, which gained control of stretches of the West Bank and Gaza Strip under now-tattered peace agreements signed in the mid-1990's.

The Israeli cabinet secretary, Gideon Saar, said that "there is no intention of staying in Beit Jala." Nonetheless, he and other officials said that the army would stay put until there was no more shooting at Gilo, a constant Israeli problem for months.

"The Palestinian Authority did not do its job in this area," said Brig. Gen. Gershon Yitzhak, the army commander in the West Bank. "Therefore, after restraining ourselves for a very long period of time, we were forced to penetrate Beit Jala."

Dore Gold, an adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said that "no nation could accept a situation by which its very capital came under repeated fire, day in and day out - not once, not twice, but dozens of times."

The battle for Beit Jala overshadowed other fighting today, including a brief army lunge into a refugee camp at Rafah, at the southern end of the Gaza Strip. Twelve people were wounded and 15 buildings were knocked down in that maneuver.

Late tonight, Israeli tanks were reported to have entered another Gaza refugee camp, Deir el Balah, touching off gunbattles.

Earlier today, at least three Palestinians were reported killed in several clashes with Israelis. During the weekend, it was Israelis who were dying in larger than normal numbers - seven killed in drive-by shooting and a Palestinian raid on an army base in Gaza. The seesaw nature of death has been a steady feature of the conflict.

Beit Jala, next door to Bethlehem, is a predominantly Christian, relatively prosperous town of about 10,000 people. With the gunbattles that have raged between here and Gilo, many residents have fled to safer precincts.

Jalil Abu Dayyeh had enough after Israeli tanks rolled in today. He and his wife, Claudette, put their two children in the family car and headed toward a nearby village. "I will take them to their grandparents," Mr. Abu Dayyeh said. "It is safer there. My kids were scared. Not only them. I'm scared, too."

This has been a troubled place since Palestinians from outside the town took up positions in buildings and began using Gilo for target practice.

To most Israelis, Gilo is another Jerusalem neighborhood. And its people have their own fears. "I'm a human being," an elderly man in Gilo said this evening. "And I'm scared."

But Gilo sits on land that was captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war, and so, to Palestinians, it is a settlement on occupied territory and therefore a legitimate target in this conflict.

Weeks ago, Mr. Sharon warned that he had had enough of the shooting and that he would take serious action if it did not stop. For a while it did. But it resumed Monday night, heavily, after the killing of Mr. Zibri. That made the strong Israeli response today almost inevitable.

Those who were not looking to get out of town stayed indoors, a result of both a curfew and a three-day mourning period for Mr. Zibri.

In her house, Razan Rabiyeh, 12, held a Bible and a small wooden cross. She said she had also clutched them during the night when the Israeli attack began. "I lay on the ground carrying them in order to feel protected," she said.

While many Beit Jala residents have long been upset with the Palestinian gunmen who made them vulnerable, the raid today produced nothing but anti-Israel solidarity. Asked if he was angry with the gunmen, Bashia Rabiyeh, Razan's father, said: "What are you talking about? You're talking about a rifle facing a tank. It's not fair to compare."

Concern was also raised about Israel's seizing of the Lutheran church compound.

General Yitzhak said that Israel's "goal is to complete the operation without hurting innocent Palestinian people or the religious sites, which we are sensitive to." But that phase of the Israeli attack especially outraged some Palestinians.

Bishop Munib A. Younan, the Lutheran Bishop in Jerusalem, said no shooting at Israelis had ever taken place from the church's buildings in Beit Jala, and he demanded that the army withdraw. In Jerusalem, the Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel, an interfaith group, also expressed concern about Israel's presence in the church compound, and urged "both sides to return to the path of sanity and negotiations through dialogue."

-------- puerto rico

U.S. legislator sentenced for Vieques protest

USA TODAY
08/29/2001
The Associated Press
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001/08/29/vieques.htm

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - A federal judge in Puerto Rico sentenced a U.S. congressman to a three-hour prison term and probation on Wednesday for trespassing during protests against Navy bombing on Vieques Island.

Rep. Luis Gutierrez, a five-term Democrat from Illinois, was allowed to serve his three hours at the U.S. Marshals office within the U.S. District Court building in San Juan, the capital.

"I don't like breaking the law, but there is no alternative left to us besides peaceful civil disobedience," said Gutierrez in court before sentencing. He was to be released Wednesday afternoon.

He was released Wednesday afternoon after serving his hours, embracing supporters as he left the court building. He was accompanied by his parents, 68-year-old Ada and Luis, 70.

Anti-Navy sentiment on Vieques swelled after a civilian guard was killed by off-target bombs in 1999, prompting the Navy to switch to inert ammunition. President Bush has promised to end the maneuvers by 2003, but anti-Navy activists want the bombing halted immediately.

Judge Salvador Casellas also sentenced Gutierrez to six months probation.

The sentence was among the most lenient handed down by the federal courts in Puerto Rico against Vieques protesters.

Navy sailor Paulo Fleurant testified that Gutierrez resisted arrest after breaking through a fence into Navy lands on April 28. But under cross-examination, Fleurant said that he never registered a complaint on the alleged incident.

Judge Casellas said there was no hard proof that Gutierrez was uncooperative with Navy security.

Gutierrez was one of some 180 people - including politicians and several celebrities - arrested during Navy exercises in April and May.

Gutierrez had claimed he was mistreated after his arrest, saying he had his feet kicked out from under him by Navy security on Vieques. He said he was held overnight on Vieques before being processed by U.S. authorities in Puerto Rico.

The Navy said security acted with restraint in all cases and said any delay in processing was due to the large amount of detainees.

Civil rights leader the Rev. Al Sharpton, environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy and actor Edward James Olmos were sentenced to 20- to 90-day prison terms for trespassing in protests during the April and May exercises. All have been released.

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

New Funds For Defense In Danger
Shrinking Surplus May Force Cuts in Spending

By Glenn Kessler and Dan Morgan
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, August 29, 2001; Page A01
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10487-2001Aug28?language=printer

The shrinking federal budget surplus has imperiled congressional spending plans, with President Bush's midsummer request for $18 billion in additional defense money the most likely target, lawmakers and aides said yesterday.

The Democratic Budget Committee chairman in the Senate and his Republican counterpart in the House said they are not prepared to release the funds for the initial phase of the president's defense buildup, effectively blocking it for now.

Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said his hands were tied because the defense request would eat into Medicare surplus funds, and Rep. Jim Nussle (R-Iowa) complained the administration had not adequately explained why the funds were necessary in the absence of a plan to overhaul the military. "I am very concerned about the fiscal responsibility behind continuing to fund the defense of the past," he said.

The original budget blueprint included an increase for defense and allowed for a bigger boost as long as it did not breach the Medicare surplus. Although the $18 billion defense request appears to be in the most trouble, the new estimates also appear to complicate efforts to boost long-term spending for education and farmers.

The battle over whether lawmakers can spend Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes for other priorities also risks splintering a Democratic caucus that, until now, was mostly unified against Bush's tax cut. Several Democrats said the party appeared to have no strategy for the fall endgame beyond daring the president to acknowledge he faced a crisis.

Rep. Norman D. Dicks (D-Wash.), a member of the national security appropriations subcommittee, adamantly insisted yesterday that concerns about using the Social Security surplus are misguided. "I am very worried that in all this rhetoric about the budget, we're not going to take care of national security when we have a surplus. It should be the number one priority of this nation," he said. "Nussle and Conrad are budget guys. Their expertise is on the budget, and both of them are wrong."

Dicks described the proposed $18 billion add-on as "the bare minimum needed to keep us limping along."

The Congressional Budget Office officially released updated projections yesterday showing the federal government would have an overall surplus of $153 billion in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30. But the government appears likely to tap all of the surplus Medicare payroll taxes and $9 billion of Social Security payroll taxes to fund federal programs. The same forecast suggested only a $2 billion surplus outside Social Security in 2002, leaving little wiggle room for lawmakers to meet their pledge to not touch Social Security funds while accommodating additional spending on defense, education and other programs.

Many Democrats have pounced on the new estimates, contending they show the administration's tax cut was a reckless gamble that is crowding out other priorities. Conrad demanded yesterday that the administration come forward with a new budget, including possible additional revenue sources, to accommodate the new fiscal math.

"They prevailed. They won. This is their plan. They've got an obligation now to come forward and say what they're going to do," he said, suggesting Democrats could do little unless the GOP recognized it faced a serious problem.

"They control the White House," he said. "They control the House of Representatives. We have a narrow edge in the United States Senate. So we are not in a position to dictate outcomes."

But White House officials said there were no plans to reconsider the budget. "Good heavens, no," said Lawrence B. Lindsey, Bush's chief economic adviser. "That doesn't make any sense."

Lindsey said the dip into Social Security in the projections is so small as to be almost meaningless and that it made little sense to adjust policies to account for the changes. "Is the economy radically different if the number is plus one or minus five? The answer is no."

Democrats in the Senate have planned to take up the bills funding defense and education programs at the end of the legislative process, because those bills would technically push the government into spending Medicare and Social Security funds.

Bush plans to use a speech today in San Antonio to insist that Congress should take up defense and education spending bills "at the front of the line, not at the back of the line, where they can be used for partisan maneuvering," an administration official said.

"The president will say the important priorities of the American people should not be held hostage by the legislative process, or because of old battles of the past," the official said. "He wants to rise above partisan politics." The official said Bush plans to list his five priorities for fall -- Medicare, "faith-based" legislation, education, defense and a patients' rights bill.

Although Democrats have been eagerly attacking the White House over the new budget projections, several officials conceded they had no strategy beyond the attacks. "There are two ways to get out of this mess: raise taxes or cut spending. And no one wants to admit it," a Democratic aide said. On defense, few Democrats want to appear to be undercutting the military, especially those with military bases in their districts.

Aides said one compromise would involve trimming money for missile defense from the president's military plan while retaining popular items for readiness and hardware. Sixty votes are needed in the Senate to overcome the budget rule prohibiting release of the funds if it would require using Medicare payroll taxes, and lobbyists are already beginning to target pro-defense Democrats.

Meanwhile, officials involved in writing the annual spending bills for 2002 said there still appears to be enough money to fulfill Bush's initial budget request.

The fiscal 2002 budget blueprint, approved while Republicans still controlled both houses of Congress, allowed $661.3 billion for discretionary spending, almost identical to the $660.6 billion requested by the White House. Congressional aides said they had received no signals from the White House that they want to force cuts in those figures because of the new surplus estimates. In fact, several GOP congressional officials said they were mystified by the recent attacks on congressional overspending by Bush and White House officials.

Nonetheless, GOP aides expressed concern that the heated rhetoric from both parties could spill over into the year-end scramble to approve spending bills.

"My concern is that the level of rhetoric is reaching such a pitch it could make it harder for us to get our work done here," said James W. Dyer, staff director of the House Appropriations Committee. In the context of the $2 trillion federal budget, Dyer added, the differences over spending amount to "small beer."

Staff writers Mike Allen and Thomas E. Ricks contributed to this report.


-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

Hungary opens first wind power plant

HUNGARY: August 29, 2001
Story by Tunde Kaposi
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12181/story.htm

KULCS, Hungary - Hungary opened its first wind power plant yesterday, a first step in promoting renewable energy sources ahead of European Union membership.

The plant, close by the River Danube some 60 kilometres (37.28 miles) south of Budapest, was built by the First Hungarian Wind Power Plant Company (EMSZET), part of the Hungarian unit of Germany's E.ON , at a cost of some 200 million forints ($713,000).

The 600 kilowatt plant expects to produce around 1.2 million kilowatt hours a year, enough to provide energy for 750 families, said EMSZET, a 74 percent unit of E.ON Hungaria Rt.

"This is just the first small, but very significant, step," EMSZET Managing Director Balazs Stelczer told reporters.

He told Reuters that Hungary expected to have as many as 400 wind power plants by 2006. Hungary hopes to join the EU by 2004.

Renewable energy sources account for just three percent of output in Hungary, a figure that has to be doubled in 10 years as part of Hungary's EU entry requirements, Stelczer said.

The EU Renewables Directive, which the European Parliament approved last month, aims to double the share of renewable power in European Union's energy consumption to 12 percent by 2010 and increase the proportion of renewables in electricity production to 22.1 from around 14 percent now.

Konrad Kreuzer, Chairman of E.ON Hungaria, said the Hungarian government helped fund the project, providing around 40 percent of the total investment.

Both the economy and environment ministries put in 32.5 million forints towards construction costs, while the latter also provided a similar interest-free loan.

Bela Glattfelder, political state secretary at the Economy Ministry, who attended the launch, said the new wind plant would help Hungary cut carbon dioxide emissions by 1,700 tonnes a year.

Stelczer told Reuters he hoped EMSZET, which sells power to regional electricity distributor Dedasz - also owned by E.ON - would be profitable within six to eight years.

"But it all depends on the wind," he said.

-------- genetics

Small Lab in Sweden Holds a Huge Trove of Stem Cells

August 29, 2001
New York Times
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/29/health/genetics/29CELL.html

GOTEBORG, Sweden, Aug. 28 - The Lab That Shot to the Top of the Charts, turning out to have more embryonic stem cells than anyone else, is actually a warm little closet in Building 9A of Sahlgrenska University Hospital here.

Inside a room that is roughly 10 feet long and 7 feet wide, Ulf Dahl spends up to two days each week hunched over a microscope with his remarkably steady fingertips and the tiny glass knives he makes over a hot flame. Slicing up each sample crosswise, like a Sicilian pizza, into clumps of a mere 30 or so cells, he picks out and keeps the squares that do not seem to be metamorphosing into anything particular.

These clumps of human cells - not yet shifting toward life as a liver or a spinal column, nor degenerating into a tumor - are a sort of family tree, one made more precious by President Bush's Aug. 9 announcement that only lines already created will be eligible for federal research funds.

On Monday, the National Institutes of Health announced that there were 64 such lines in the world. Of those, the agency said, 24 are in Sweden - 19 here at the University of Goteberg's hospital.

In fact, nearly all the cells are in the refrigerator-sized incubator that divides the tiny room, ``except for the ones we freeze,'' Professor Henrik Semb said. ``You can't work on all of them at once. It's too much.''

The university's scientists are cautious about the statement by the American government that they have 19 cell lines. They say they have 3 established ones, 4 that are being studied and described, and 12 that are still in early stages.

``Those 12 perhaps ought to be called potential cell lines,'' said Professor Lars Hamberger, a group leader. ``If we get 3 good lines out of them we'll be satisfied.''

All, however, are surviving, and all met President Bush's criteria. They came from embryos made by in- vitro fertilization clinics in Goteborg and Upsala, said Dr. Hamberger, who in 1982 performed the first successful in-vitro fertilization in Scandinavia.

Some were from embryos frozen for the five-year legal limit; some were donated ``fresh'' by parents who did not like the idea of freezing any embryos for future use. The donors all signed consent forms allowing the blastocysts - a five-day stage when one cell has become a couple of hundred - to be used for stem cell research.

Also, at the moment, though Professor Dahl looks sheepishly at the floor as he admits it, they are all named Ulf: ``Ulf's Human Blastocyst No. 1'' for example.

``We'll change that soon,'' he says hastily. ``Actually, we must, because some of them are female. But we use only numbers in the computer, not names.''

The program here is quite new. It was begun only last fall, with little fanfare. Approval from hospital and university ethics committees came late last year. Some government funds are involved. The cell lines, by coincidence, all easily met President Bush's Aug. 9 deadline - the team wanted the summer off, so they finished by June.

The goal, said Dr. Anders Lindahl, the chairman of the team's corporate entity, was to establish many cell lines for their own clinical work.

``It just happened that President Bush making this decision made us suddenly very interesting,'' he said.

The Bush decision presumably means that the Goteberg cell lines will be in great demand by federally financed researchers in the United States. The Goteborg team put out a statement saying its cells ``cannot be purchased, but will be accessible in the future to collaborating researchers in the U.S., Europe and other countries where a mutual collaboration agreement can be made.''

Dr. Lindahl could not say exactly what would be in those agreements. ``It's too early to say we have any criteria yet,'' he said.

The project has six joint chiefs leading a total of 30 scientists, and they represent the whole spectrum in what might be the plot of ``I Am Joe's Stem Cell'' - the life of any cell manipulated for medical purposes:

some like Professor Hamberger harvest cells, some like Professors Semb and Dahl keep them alive,

some like Dr. Lindahl use them in patients.

Human embryonic stem cells are not yet ready for use in clinics, of course, but Dr. Lindahl has done pioneering work on injecting humans with adult stem cells that produce cartilage. Professor Semb's bad knee even made him one of Dr. Lindahl's patients.

The other six cell lines in Sweden are at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, according to the National Institutes of Health.

The Goteborg team does not, by any means, plan to stop at 19.

``We won't be satisfied until we have 100-plus,'' Professor Hamberger said. ``We have a lot of things we want to do with them.''

Many of the world's cell lines, including the Goteborg ones, are grown on mouse cell mediums, beds of ``feeder cells'' that secrete a signal that prevents embryonic cells from maturing. They can be used for research but probably can never be implanted in humans for fear of mouse diseases or mouse genes, Dr. Semb said.

``The goal is to get cells to grow on mediums from no animal sources,'' Dr. Semb said. Since mouse embryonic cells already can, he said, it is theoretically possible.

More lines will be needed, Dr. Hamberger said, because cell lines may not have always been grown in complete sterility.

To ever consider using any line on patients, ``you have to know there's no hepatitis, no H.I.V.,'' Dr. Hamberger said. ``I mean, you have to really be sure.''

Also, more cell lines means more assurance that there will not be flaws in the number or shape of chromosomes. And more lines means more alternatives if tissues or organs made by one line are rejected by a human recipient.

The team soon plans to begin collecting more fertilized embryos from clinics in two other cities in Sweden, Dr. Hamberger said. Right now, it has about a 10 percent success rate

- 1 out of 10 blastocysts yields stem cells that can be coaxed into reproducing themselves. He hopes to raise that to 15 percent. The rest die for unknown reasons, but Dr. Hamberger said it may be an indication that recent research suggesting that a surprisingly large percentage of embryos in real life are not viable is correct.

Sweden's political climate is benign for the team's work, Dr. Lindahl said.

In-vitro fertilization came here early, and there has been public debate over stem cell research without much loud objection from opponents of abortion, as has been the case in the United States. Human cloning has been banned by government advisory ethics panels, and consideration of ``therapeutic cloning,'' in which an embryo would be created from a patient's cells to make life- saving tissue, has been put off for now because it is not seen as useful. But in general, ethics committees favor stem cell research.

The government raises no political objections, Dr. Lindahl said, but its budget for basic science was drastically cut during Sweden's economic difficulties in the 1990's. Besides government financing, the team gets money from foreign donors like the American Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, and it has created an off-campus corporation, the Stem Cell Research Center, to raise venture capital by licensing the potential uses of the cells.

The team has not really tackled legal issues yet. Its cell-culture techniques, Professor Semb said, are essentially the same as those developed at the University of Wisconsin, which are under an American patent. The American rights to develop them into liver, muscle, nerve, pancreas, blood and bone were sold to the Geron Corporation of Menlo Park, Calif.

Professor Semb noted there were many other tissue types and said it would be impossible for one entity to control all of the research.

``They can have all the patents they want, but they are not going to be able to generate all these cell types,'' Professor Semb said. ``This patent business is a jungle.''

-------- health

Scientists Wipe Out Mouse Tumors

August 29, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Cancer-Killing-Virus.html

Scientists have wiped out tumors in mice using a common virus that apparently tricks cancer cells into self-destructing.

It is too early to know if the approach might work in humans. Many treatments that look promising in mice prove disappointing when they are tested on people.

However, the research sheds light on something scientists have noticed for years: Some viruses harm cancer cells but leave normal, healthy cells unscathed.

The research involves a virus that is believed to be harmless to humans, and a gene called p53 that normally suppresses tumors. In most cancer patients, the p53 gene is defective. The virus apparently zeroes in on that flaw.

Peter Beard, a professor of virology at the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research in Epalinges, said his team found that the explanation involves an unusual hairpin-like portion of the virus' DNA.

When a cancer cell encounters the virus, it apparently interprets the hairpin structure as damage to its own DNA. The cell tries to rid itself of the damage and ends up self-destructing.

As part of their research, the Swiss team injected human colon cancer cells into a group of laboratory mice, followed by the virus two days later. Only two of the 12 rodents later formed tumors.

In mice with existing colon cancer tumors, injections of the virus eliminated tumors in six of the 10 rodents.

The findings were reported in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

Beard said his team hopes to pinpoint the precise feature on the hairpin structure that sends cancer cells to their death. If they can do that, he said, it may be possible to specially engineer the virus or even develop a drug mimicking its effects.

The virus tested is one of six known adeno-associated viruses, a group of viruses that are among the smallest that exist. Some of those viruses have been used many times by scientists for gene therapy, in which a virus delivers a healthy copy of a gene to a patient. Such experiments have had mixed results.

Cancer researcher Arnold J. Levine, co-discoverer of the p53 gene in 1979 and president of Rockefeller University in New York, said the Swiss team's approach is a long way off from ever being tried in humans.

He said scientists pursuing therapies using viruses to target the p53 defect, including gene therapy, all face the same problem: how to efficiently deliver the therapy to every cancer cell in the body.

One problem with adeno-associated viruses is that they cannot reproduce without the help of another virus.

Levine said the research's main contribution is explaining why certain viruses can damage cancer cells while sparing normal cells.

``What this paper does is actually explain for the first time why cancer cells are preferentially knocked off by these viruses -- because they mimic DNA damage,'' Levine said. ``The cell apparently doesn't have the proper safeguards in place and it dies.''

The p53 gene mutation that the virus exploits is present in nearly 60 percent of all human cancers. It is the same vulnerability that also makes cancer cells prone to chemotherapy and radiation treatment, Beard said.

A scientist who helped develop an engineered virus, ONYX-015, that has shown promise in human clinical trials in destroying tumor cells with the mutated p53 gene called the new research ``very inventive.''

``The biggest question now is, can these viruses be grown in sufficient quantity to make human clinical testing possible? That will be the next step,'' said Frank McCormick, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of California at San Francisco.

-------- imf / world bank

IMF Protesters Demand Reforms
Claims Distort, Institutions Say

By Manny Fernandez
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 29, 2001; Page B03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10853-2001Aug28?language=printer

Organizers with Mobilization for Global Justice, one of the main groups planning demonstrations late next month against the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, sent four demands for reform to the institutions yesterday. The demands were faxed to officials of the world bodies and discussed at a news conference at the National Press Building.

Demonstrators asked the institutions to open their meetings to the public; to cancel the debt of the world's impoverished countries; to end policies that they say hinder access of the poor to food, health care and education; and to stop funding socially and environmentally destructive projects. "These demands are crucial and urgent," said Liz Butler, an organizer.

The District-based group is made up of a broad range of activists protesting the world groups' annual meetings, scheduled for Sept. 29 and 30. Demonstrators of all stripes are using the meetings as a backdrop to rally for a variety of causes and to protest corporate influence on the global economy.

IMF spokesman William Murray said the demands mischaracterize the institutions. He said the fund provides billions in debt relief to poor countries, maintains meetings open to the media and members of non-governmental organizations, and has never opposed expenditures in health care and other social services.

World Bank spokeswoman Caroline Anstey said the demands present an inaccurate image of the bank. "I don't think it's in any way correct to characterize our policies as anti-poor," she said, adding that the bank is open to sitting down with the protest group's members to discuss their concerns.

-------- spying

Spy Probe Seeks Cache Of Classified Documents

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 29, 2001; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10293-2001Aug28?language=printer

The investigation of Brian P. Regan, the retired Air Force master sergeant arrested last week on espionage charges, has been widened to determine whether he assembled a large trove of secret documents with the intention of selling them gradually to various countries, government officials said yesterday.

Regan, 38, spent the last four years of his 20-year military career at the National Reconnaissance Office, the agency responsible for the nation's intelligence satellites, where he had daily access to Intelink, a computer system used by U.S. intelligence agencies to store and share highly classified information. If he was spying during most or all of that time, the damage to national security could be far greater than previously thought, the officials said.

Regan was arrested at Dulles International Airport last Thursday as he was about to board a flight for Switzerland via Germany. He had been under intense FBI surveillance since June, and officials believe that he was caught before he could provide significant secrets to a nation identified in a 19-page FBI affidavit as Country A, which sources said was Libya.

But officials said they fear that Regan may have begun stealing and setting aside secrets some time ago. "He may have been preparing for retirement, planning to sell the material off over the years," a senior government official said.

Less than a month before his Aug. 30, 2000, retirement from the Air Force, Regan established an e-mail address under a pseudonym -- Steven Jacobs of Alexandria -- which he planned to use for surreptitious contacts with foreign governments, according to the FBI affidavit.

In addition, a search this year of the computer that Regan used during the four years when he was an Air Force cryptanalyst, or code breaker, at the NRO shows that he accessed and may have downloaded much more secret information than the few samples he allegedly passed to Libya to establish his bona fides, according to government officials.

As a result, investigators are concerned that he may have created a cache of classified documents somewhere, perhaps in computer files or on disks. The investigation is now focused on determining when he began collecting documents, what he did with them, and whether he started peddling them prior to leaving the service, the officials said.

Nina Ginsberg, Regan's court-appointed attorney, declined to comment.

Regan was arraigned Friday and was ordered held without bond pending a preliminary hearing in U.S. District Court in Alexandria. That hearing, originally scheduled for today, has been postponed until Sept. 28. In addition, Judge Claude M. Hilton yesterday gave the government until Oct. 19, a month longer than usual, to file an indictment because of the "complex nature of the investigation and the classified nature of much of the material involved."

After retirement, Regan was hired last October by TRW, which does work for the NRO. Since he had lost access to top-secret data when he retired, his initial job at TRW was as a military liaison and did not involve highly classified data.

By April 2001, when Regan's old office and computer were searched, the FBI had begun to focus on him as the possible source of secret documents that had been passed to Libya and turned over to U.S. government officials, presumably by an American agent.

In June, the FBI began full-scale surveillance of Regan. According to the current issue of Newsweek, the FBI sent an e-mail to the Jacobs address purporting to come from a Libyan spy and induced Regan to fly to Munich. There, a U.S. operative posing as a Libyan met Regan and encouraged him to provide information, the magazine reported.

Although senior U.S. officials declined yesterday to confirm that account, the FBI affidavit says that Regan flew to Munich on June 26, 2001, and that before the trip he used the Internet to get the diplomatic address of an unnamed country in Switzerland, said by sources to be either Iraq or a former Soviet republic.

In July, with the approval of the FBI, Regan's top-secret clearance was restored, and he was moved to a TRW office at NRO headquarters. That office had been wired by the FBI, under a court-authorized warrant, with a hidden video camera.

According to investigative sources, prosecutors wanted visual proof that Regan was taking classified information, rather than depending upon computer data that could have been accessed by someone else using Regan's password.


------- activists

The Danish Dillemma

By Jørgen Dragsdahl
http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/2001/so01/so01dragsdahl.html

He dreams of returning to his birthplace, Uummannaq, in northwest Greenland. The only problem with Uussaqqak Qujaukitsoq's dream is that it conflicts with U.S. plans for national missile defense. In May, after traveling three days across a glacier in a dog sledge, the 53-year-old hunter visited Uummannaq-but his stay was brief. In 1953 he and approximately 100 other Inuits were told to leave because Thule Air Base wanted to install a U.S. anti-aircraft battery in their village. They were given four days to abandon a home that had been theirs for almost 4,000 years. They have never been allowed back.

"What are they doing on our lands?" Qujaukitsoq asked, gesturing toward the huge base. A man of few words, he spoke softly and in broken Danish. "I am now standing with both of my feet on the hunting grounds of my forefathers. I want to return and move freely in the area. If nothing is done, we will as hunters become extinct."

Next year the Danish supreme court will hear his case. A victory by the polar Eskimos in the Thule area or, as they call themselves, the Inughuits (a distinct tribe among the Inuits of the Arctic) would be "irreconcilable" with the continued presence of the U.S. air base, his attorney, Christian Harlang, acknowledges.

But according to current plans for a national missile defense, Thule is slated to host an X-band radar to help detect and target warheads taking a polar route toward the United States. The existing radar at the base, once upgraded, will track missiles until the new facility is built.

During a visit to Denmark in April, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Strategic Affairs Lucas Fischer called Thule a "unique asset" because "it is a good radar, and it lies where it lies." While the Bush administration has not decided on a plan for Thule, Fischer added that "most experts probably agree with me" that ground-based radars like Thule's are of critical importance to a U.S. missile defense system.

Shifting attitudes

U.S. and Danish officials are concerned, but the Inughuit lawsuit isn't their only headache. During the 1990s, Denmark was what Danish scholar Peter Viggo Jakobsen has called "a loyal ally, uncritically following the American lead." But this pattern has been shattered by U.S. missile defense plans. Even a spokesman for the conservative opposition party, Per Stig Moeller, said during a May 3 parliamentary debate that he could imagine opposition from both Denmark and Greenland. A couple of weeks later a poll showed that a majority of Danes, 52.7 percent, objected to Thule being part of a U.S.-based "missile shield." Only 19.9 percent expressed support.

Like many U.S. allies in Europe, Denmark has officially taken a wait-and-see attitude. The government argues that taking a stand would be premature because Bush administration plans are not yet clear, the international security framework not known, and a "precise" official request about Thule has not been received. But this could just be a cover. Minister of Foreign Affairs Mogens Lykketoft has on numerous occasions voiced Danish concerns and made de facto demands on the Bush administration.

In a May 3 speech to parliament, Lykketoft said a U.S. missile defense system could generate anything "between an incalculable arms race and the most extensive disarmament seen so far." If a new arms race is to be avoided, he said, "the main perspective" in a missile defense effort must be nonproliferation agreements and deep "agreed" cuts in strategic nuclear weapons. He also called for "an active and focused dialogue" with would-be nuclear weapon states.

Unlike other European officials, Lykketoft did not focus on the possibility of adverse Russian reactions. He believed a U.S.-Russia accommodation is a realistic possibility because the planned missile defense system will not neutralize the Russian deterrent. But with China the case is different, he said, and for the sake of peace and stability it is "far, far more important that the United States and China do not collide." Lykketoft noted that in the coming decades the world is likely to have two superpowers again, and one of them will be China. An "orderly and positive dialogue" between the United States and China, he concluded, is "absolutely decisive" for Denmark's position on missile defense.

Back in Greenland

The Thule case illustrates the strength of Danish concerns. Even if the Danish supreme court rules against Qujaukitsoq, he will have represented his people's political and moral case. And if Denmark rules against the Inughuit but fails to present a persuasive argument, the "Old Kingdom" could lose the last of its North Atlantic empire along with a good deal of its already tattered self-respect.

Qujaukitsoq was in Uummannaq in May to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of a Danish-American treaty that led to U.S. occupation of hunting grounds considered the most important for his tribe-its "larder," as a Danish official called it at the time. As sad as the occasion was, it was also an opportunity to engage in a two-track strategy, political and legal, to try to get the area back. In addition to a few hunters and journalists, Qujaukitsoq was accompanied by Hans Pavia Rosing, a member of the Danish Parliament elected from Greenland, and Aqqaluk Lynge, president of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, an organization uniting the aboriginal populations of Greenland, Northern Canada, Alaska, and Russia. Attorney Harlang was also there.

The 1951 agreement "concerning the defense of Greenland" gave the United States extensive powers. It established "defense areas" that the United States was entitled "to improve and generally to fit . . . for military use." No substantial restrictions were included. In an important 1997 study commissioned by the Danish government, years of U.S. pressure to gain these rights were described as "a classic clash between a great power and a small state." Denmark had legal arguments on its side but lacked the political and military power to prevail. The United States wanted Thule as a staging base for nuclear bombers because of the region's proximity to the Soviet Union. Denmark tried to hide this purpose by talking about the common defense of Greenland.

But local observers knew better. On July 9, 1951, a U.S. armada of 120 ships, with about 12,000 men, arrived at Thule in what some called the largest operation since the invasion of Normandy.

The stone age meets the nuclear age

The Inughuits, or the "Great Humans" as they call themselves, arrived in northwest Greenland around 2,000 B.C. The rest of Greenland was populated in another wave of immigration, and to this day significant language differences exist. The Inughuits lived in isolation until the polar expeditions of the early 1800s. Robert Peary led several expeditions between 1891 and 1909, claiming to have reached the North Pole. In 1909 the Danish explorer Knud Rasmussen established a missionary station and a trading post at what he called Thule, which in Greek and Celtic mythology describes the most distant northern lands.

For Rasmussen, however, protecting the ancient Inughuit culture was a matter of honor. That obligation, at least in theory, was later taken over by Danish colonial administrators, and as late as 1950 French scientist Jean Malaurie found the Inughuit culture largely intact. He wrote about his 14-month stay in the region in a 1985 book, The Last Kings of Thule, in which he admired the Inughuit's ability to survive in such an adverse climate.

Malaurie also witnessed the U.S. invasion. At first the inhabitants of Uummannaq were excited, enjoying tin cans of food, chewing gum, and seeing strange sights. He reported that some of the Inughuits expressed confidence that the Danish king would protect them. But within days other tribe members began to fear that the encroaching world of metal and noise would change them. "What will become of us?" they asked. Malaurie lamented that "harpoon man is condemned to extinction."

Disaster struck two years later. After their eviction from Uummannaq, most inhabitants traveled 150 kilometers north to an old settlement, Qaanaaq. The Thule base hurt hunting, and conditions at Qaanaaq soon were problematic as well. Complaints by hunters started soon after relocation. A quest for compensation began, but it did not get very far. In 1996 Qujaukitsoq created the organization Hingitaq 53 to bring suit against Denmark on behalf of the Inughuit, with 610 individual co-sponsors.

During a subsequent hearing of the case at a high Danish court, many of the former Uummannaq inhabitants provided moving testimony. On August 20, 1999, the court found that their removal had been "an unlawful violation done to the population of Uummannaq . . . [and] contrary to the actual facts"-Danish authorities had claimed the relocation was requested by the population.

The court granted financial compensation for the lost hunting rights, but based on Danish law the court saw "no evidence to prove that Thule Air Base is illegally established." If the Inughuit were given back their full rights, the Danish government would "be obliged to demand the base to be dismantled," the court stated, but added that the plaintiffs did not have legal grounds to "succeed in their claim in that respect."

This latter judgment has been appealed to the supreme court. Harlang sees the lower court's verdict-which found the aboriginal peoples of the Thule district to be "a population" as defined in an international convention from 1989-as at least a partial victory. Article 16.3 of the convention, which was negotiated through the U.N. International Labor Organization and ratified by Denmark, states: "Whenever possible, these people shall have the right to return to their traditional lands, as soon as the grounds for relocation ceases to exist."

Danish legal scholars do not want to comment on the record as long as the case is pending. A verdict in favor of the Inughuit is considered possible if the court relies on the growing global trend to uphold the rights of aboriginal peoples. The Danish state could still preserve Thule Air Base, but it would require a law on expropriation to be passed in the parliament that establishes a "common good" of higher priority than the rights of the natives. This introduces an interesting question into the missile defense debate: If Thule is used to violate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM), can it really be based on "the common good?" Or have the grounds for establishing Thule ceased to exist?

Ancient history and very ancient history

The 1951 defense treaty between the United States and Denmark refers to their common defense through NATO and to the defense of Greenland. The way missile defense is enacted could raise questions about whether the treaty's provisions are still valid in the new context being pushed by the Bush administration. Nikolaj Petersen, the leading Danish scholar on Greenland security issues, believes that "a unilateral American missile defense cannot in the same way be said to be part of an alliance project and cannot in the same way be said to be covered by the defense treaty of 1951." Use of Thule "must be part of a common American-European understanding within NATO on . . . how the rogue state problem should be handled politically and technologically."

Since 1979 Greenland has had a home-rule government, but its sovereignty is limited to mostly domestic affairs. Denmark sets foreign policy and sees to defense. The 1951 treaty with the United States is a thorn in the flesh of home rule. Jonathan Motzfeldt, the premier of Greenland, recently said that if the Bush administration can call the ABM Treaty "ancient history," then the Danish-American defense agreement, made in colonial times, must be called a "very ancient treaty." His coalition government wants the treaty renegotiated, this time with Greenland having "a seat at the table." Motzfeldt and his party, the social democratic Siumut, have not called for an end to the U.S. military presence, but its more left-wing coalition partner, Inughuit Ataqatigiit, has been a vocal opponent.

A history of secrecy and deception surrounds the Thule base. The court case has documented a pattern of lies and disinformation spread by the Danish government in connection with its establishment, in the relocation of the Uummannaq community, and in the handling of their claims. A secret understanding in 1957, only discovered in 1995, gave the United States a green light to station nuclear weapons at Thule-despite the official government policy that nuclear weapons could not be based on Danish territory. In 1968 a B-52 bomber carrying four 1.1 megaton bombs crashed on the ice near Thule. Claims that pollution has sickened local hunters who participated in the cleanup have stalked the incident ever since.

In 1987 a new scandal broke when the old ballistic missile early-warning radar, in operation since 1960, was replaced with a phased-array radar. Several U.S. negotiators of the ABM Treaty suggested that the new radar might be a violation of the terms of the treaty limiting such radars to U.S. territory. That controversy was handled poorly by Greenland's Motzfeldt. His government fell, and for a period he was replaced as premier and chairman of the Siumut party. Since then Denmark has been increasingly careful to keep the home-rule government fully informed on matters concerning the air base.

Courting Greenland

Foreign policy committees in Denmark and Greenland were secretly told about Clinton administration plans for Thule in 1999. That November, after a Danish newspaper revealed this information, Greenland's home-rule government issued a statement saying that if the ABM Treaty were to be violated and if the United States proceeded "unilaterally," then Greenland would not "agree to an upgrade of the Thule radar." Greenland expected to be directly involved in talks on the matter, the statement said, and an upgrade of the radar "must not in any way impact negatively on the existing world peace."

During two debates last year, all of Greenland's parties supported the statement. But it is open to interpretation. In one spectacular clash, Josef Motzfeldt, chairman of the Inughuit Ataqatigiit party and a government minister, accused Jonathan Motzfeldt (no relation) of being willing to sell out for "a bag of dollars."

The premier strongly denied the charge. But top Danish officials privately speculate that he might accept a deal if it involved a higher profile for Greenland security issues as well as greater access for the Inughuit to hunt near the base and financial compensation. Such an arrangement, however, would still have to be sold to the other Motzfeldt, his party, and other skeptics in Greenland's parliament.

Several factors would influence the likelihood of a deal. Greenland has warm feelings for the United States, which fed and protected the island during World War II. The Clinton administration carefully cultivated relationships with Greenland's key decision-makers by sending a high-level delegation to the capitol at Nuuk and by inviting politicians to the United States for missile defense briefings. Many politicians would like the Americans to stay at Thule, and U.S. officials have played on that through leaked threats about the possibility of moving the whole base to Canada. A move would cut off a significant source of tax revenue and would place the burden of keeping an air link open on the Danish government, if it were willing to pay.

Still, a unilateral U.S. decision to deploy missile defense and upgrade the Thule radar in defiance of broad international opposition would preclude a deal with Greenland. Even if the United States and Russia come to an agreement regarding the ABM Treaty, Greenland's acceptance cannot be taken for granted. Public opinion matters in Greenland, and although debates in parliament have not reached high levels of sophistication, the country's most pressing concerns have moved beyond the whereabouts of whales and seals. Nuuk has already held its first hearing on missile defense and a second is scheduled for this fall. The Internet has also given residents of Greenland access to news, analysis, and opinion put out by missile defense opponents. As these groups begin to address themselves directly to the people of Greenland-as Greenpeace has promised to do-international concerns will have even more of an impact.

Power to the people

The Inughuits too should not be ignored. Although they number only a few hundred, these rugged people from the far north greatly influence Greenland's popular identity in an almost mythological sense. Only about 5 percent of Greenland's total population still hunts as its main livelihood, but more than half of the Inughuits depend on harvesting seals, walrus, whales, foxes, birds, polar bears, and fish. To a considerable extent these hunters still use harpoons, kayaks, and dog sledges, which the general public admires and respects. Sympathy for letting them return to their Uummannaq hunting grounds has recently been fueled by extensive television coverage of the trip Qujaukitsoq and others made in May.

The Inughuits have lately expressed concern about a possible "seven-missile" attack on nearby Thule Air Base. News stories have suggested Chinese threats against the site, and British concern about their radar facilities at Fylingsdales being targeted has raised alarm in Greenland. During the May parliamentary debate in Denmark, Greenlander Ellen Nielsen used a large part of her time to talk about these concerns, although she remains sympathetic to U.S. use of Thule. The Inughuit are also supported by the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, a group that advocates demilitarization of the Arctic, and this allows them to present their issues to an international audience. Aqqaluk Lynge, the president of the conference, called U.S. plans for Thule "totally unacceptable."

For Denmark-which until the nineteenth century also ruled Norway, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands-the missile defense debate has added new uncertainty to its future relationship with Greenland. In 1814 Norway was lost to Sweden. In 1944 Iceland was proclaimed a sovereign republic. Lately the Faroes have pushed hard for total independence, and similar aspirations are gaining strength in Greenland. A commission on self government is preparing proposals for a new division of power between Nuuk and Copenhagen. Jonathan Motzfeldt recently warned that if a decision on Thule is taken without Greenland's participation, that "some people say you can just as well get the divorce papers for Greenland and Denmark ready."

Relations with Greenland and respect for a very small people with a unique culture are just two of the issues in what Motzfeldt calls "an extremely complicated problem" for Danish decision-makers. They are caught in "a strong crosscurrent of contrary interests and considerations," he says.

Danish unpredictability

In addition to wanting to preserve its relationship with NATO, Denmark's motivation for a strong link to the United States can also be found in the country's tortured relationship with the European Union (EU). Although a member since 1973, Denmark has elected to stay outside common EU security and defense agreements and depend on NATO and the United States. But Petersen warns it would probably be a mistake for Denmark to position itself too far from the skeptical European view of missile defense and alienate the country's likely future partners.

Russian opposition is a factor. The Danish no longer see Moscow as a heavyweight geopolitical actor, but neither do they feel that Russia should be ignored, says Petersen. Russian cooperation in the Baltic region on security and economic development is desirable, and Russia is also a significant future partner for the EU.

Few in Denmark regard the ABM Treaty as ancient history, but the Danish foreign ministry sees a unilateral U.S. abrogation as not only an arms control issue but also an issue of international law. Respect for treaties and international law are sacrosanct to the Danes. The United States, as the world's only remaining superpower, might be able to "go it alone," but for a small country whose very existence is based on a network of treaties, international conventions remain essential.

In policy decisions, the Danish world view deemphasizes military solutions. Jeppe Kofoed, spokesman for the ruling Social Democratic party, has noted that "inequality" and the lack of "sustainable development" are the real security threats of this century. If the United States had used its creativity and the billions of dollars it invested in missile defense technology for economic and social development, he says, today's world would be in much better shape.

How will all these concerns play out? During an international hearing in the Danish parliament, missile defense skeptic Sir Timothy Garden of King 's College in London predicted that in the end Europe will support U.S. missile defense plans. The tradition of transatlantic solidarity will be decisive, he argued.

But Danish support should not be taken for granted. Denmark has not always acted predictably in the past. During the 1980s the parliament repeatedly voted in favor of arms control resolutions certain to anger the Reagan administration and displease NATO. In 1987 a huge majority voted to prohibit use of the new phased-array radar in Thule in connection with a "Star Wars" anti-ballistic missile system. In the 1990s Danish voters repeatedly voted against further EU integration despite strong elite support.

"We have a reputation as an unpredictable, even unreasonable, country," one high-level Danish official said. "And that reputation gives us some influence."

And if Thule Air Base should be shut down, at least the Inughuit would be happy. They talk about a revival of their hunting culture and imagine a day when the Thule airstrip might finally do them some good: as an international airport bringing tourists into one of the Arctic's most beautiful regions.

Jørgen Dragsdahl, a Danish journalist with more than 25 years experience covering security policy, has visited the Thule area.

--------

Edith Villastrigo; Political Activist

By Graeme Zielinski
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 29, 2001; Page B07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10897-2001Aug28?language=printer

Edith Brisker Villastrigo, a longtime Washington area resident and an activist who had served in the leadership of Women Strike for Peace since the early 1960s, died of pneumonia Aug. 26 at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring.

From marching on the Mall to protest nuclear testing in the 1960s to erecting Styrofoam tombstones near the Washington Monument to dramatize the toll of the Vietnam War in the 1970s and creating a mile-long chain of postcards to draw attention to the Reagan administration's approach to nuclear disarmament in the 1980s, Mrs. Villastrigo employed a theatrical flair in the pursuit of her liberal group's agenda.

She was a volunteer in local League of Women Voters activities and a veteran of peace organizations in the Washington area when she and a small number of others, including Dagmar Wilson, conceived the group that led to massive Washington rallies for nuclear disarmament in the 1960s. Those protests contributed to passage of the partial nuclear test ban treaty of 1963.

Mrs. Villastrigo was among 20 women from Women Strike for Peace who refused to testify after they were were subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1960s. She went back to Capitol Hill, however, to publicize the group's activities as its national legislative director.

She was among those who filled the galleries in 1972 when Rep. Bella S. Abzug (D-N.Y.) introduced a resolution proposed by Women Strike for Peace to censure President Richard M. Nixon over continuation of the Vietnam War.

In 1979, when 53 Americans were taken hostage in Iran, Mrs. Villastrigo called on the administration of President Jimmy Carter to investigate the U.S. role there and congratulated a hostage's mother for apologizing to Iran.

In the 1980s, Mrs. Villastrigo continued as a vocal critic of the Reagan administration and its nuclear arms and Central American policies. She played down the value of high-level summit meetings between President Ronald Reagan and Soviet chief Mikhail S. Gorbachev, saying, "A cultural agreement can be signed any day of the week. Our idea is to stop the threat of nuclear war."

When the group came under attack by conservative groups for its alleged communist sympathies, Mrs. Villastrigo said, "We will not be intimidated."

Mrs. Villastrigo was a native of Gomel, Russia. She immigrated to the United States in the 1920s, settling in Washington. She was a 1929 graduate of Central High School. She was a union organizer in Chicago and Pittsburgh before returning to the Washington area in the 1940s, settling in Silver Spring.

Mrs. Villastrigo's husband of 60 years, Peter Villastrigo, died in 1993.

Survivors include a daughter, Judy Villastrigo of San Francisco; a son, Richard Villastrigo of Port Matilda, Pa.; a sister; and two grandchildren.


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

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