------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
US Punishes China Arms Co. for Sales
White House to Let China Build Up Its Nuclear Fleet

MILITARY
NATO Envoy Warns on Macedonia Peace
Bogota Gunmen Kill Gov't Prosecutor

OTHER
Denver Closes In on Clean - Air Status
Racism Conference Addresses Mideast
New Zealand and Nauru to Take 460 Refugees at Sea
States Easing Stringent Laws on Prison Time
Couple charged as spies

ACTIVISTS
U.S. Student Decries Brutal Genoa Raids



-------- NUCLEAR

-------- china

US Punishes China Arms Co. for Sales

September 1, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-China-Sanctions.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration imposed sanctions Saturday on a Chinese arms producer for selling missile technology to Pakistan, a State Department official said.

China is not supposed to export missile technology to nations developing nuclear missiles, according to an agreement with the United States. State Department officials long have accused Beijing of ignoring the accord.

The Chinese company is China Metallurgical Equipment Corp., which has worked with the Chinese government, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. Also punished was the National Development Complex of Pakistan.

``The sanctions were imposed on these entities for their involvement in the transfer ... of missile technology that contributed to Pakistan's missile program,'' the official said.

The penalties will keep U.S. companies from issuing licenses to launch satellites on Chinese rockets and, in most cases, will make it illegal to provide technology to China's satellite industry.

The technology the Chinese arms dealer is accused of exporting is considered category 2 technology, which includes flight-control systems for missiles and rocket components.

The announcement comes in the month before President Bush's planned trip to China. State Department officials are hoping his visit will help ease tensions after the crash of a U.S. spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet in April.

U.S. suspicions of arms deals between China and Pakistan have been building for months.

Talks between U.S. and Chinese weapons experts last week over whether China is helping other countries develop missile technology ended with the American side wanting more answers, U.S. officials said.

The officials said they worried that Chinese firms provided missile technology to Pakistan and helped Iraq rebuild air defenses. Vann Van Diepen, an acting deputy assistant secretary of state who specializes in nonproliferation issues, led the U.S. negotiators.

In July, Secretary of State Colin Powell met with Chinese leaders and said that the U.S. felt China was not following the arms agreement.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Sun Yuxi, responded that China was making an earnest effort to comply with its obligations.

Sun contended that the United States has failed to comply with its commitments -- an apparent reference to the absence of cooperation on commercial satellite launches.

--------

White House to Let China Build Up Its Nuclear Fleet

New York Times
September 2, 2001
By DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/02/international/02CHIN.html?pagewanted=all

WASHINGTON, Sept. 1 - The Bush administration, seeking to overcome Chinese objections to its missile defense program, intends to tell Chinese officials that it has no objections to the country's plans to build up its relatively small fleet of nuclear missiles capable of striking the United States, according to senior administration officials.

One senior official said that, in the future, the United States and China may discuss resuming underground nuclear tests if they are needed to assure the safety and reliability of their arsenals.

Such a move, however, might also allow China to improve the quality of its nuclear warheads and lead to the end of a worldwide moratorium on nuclear testing.

Both messages mark a significant reversal from previous American policy. For years the United States has discouraged China and all other nations from increasing the size or capability of their nuclear arsenals, and from nuclear tests of any kind.

The purpose of the new approach, administration officials say, is to convince China that the administration's plans for a missile shield are not aimed at undercutting China's relatively small nuclear arsenal, but rather intended to counter threats from so-called rogue states.

The administration decided on the reversals during a review this summer by officials preparing for Mr. Bush's trip to China next month. The president's top advisers concluded that China's nuclear modernization is inevitable in any case and that they might as well gain advantage by acquiescing in it.

"We know the Chinese will enhance their nuclear capability anyway, and we are going to say to them, `We're not going to tell you not to do it,' " one senior administration official deeply involved in formulating the strategy said in an interview last week. "Why panic? They are modernizing anyway."

Currently, Beijing has a fleet of fewer than two dozen nuclear missiles capable of reaching the United States, as part of a minimal deterrent that Mao created in the 1950's and 1960's. China is now developing mobile, solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missiles that would be far more likely to withstand a first nuclear strike to replace those aging missiles.

Though Beijing has long planned to build up its arsenal, outside experts and a review last year by the Central Intelligence Agency have warned that an American missile shield could prompt China to expand its deterrent even further, possibly setting off an arms race across Asia.

And a report to Congress last year noted that intelligence officials predicted in 1999 that by 2015 China was likely to have " `a few tens' of missiles with smaller nuclear warheads" that could hit the United States.

One of those new missiles, the DF- 31, may be able to reach northwestern edges of the United States, though it is designed primarily to hit Russia and Asia; the longer-range DF-41, still under development, could reach much of the continental United States.

Some in the Bush administration now believe that the Chinese buildup may be larger - and that by acquiescing to it, Washington may defuse objections to its missile defense plans. If the missile defense plan is causing any change in Chinese nuclear strategy, administration officials insisted in interviews, it is only at the margins.

"At most, missile defense might speed up their program slightly, or prompt them to build a few more missiles," one official insisted. "But they are on that path anyway, and may add only modestly to it."

A number of China experts disagree. Robert A. Manning of the Council on Foreign Relations, who published a lengthy study last year of China's nuclear ability, said on Friday: "It's hard for me to accept the idea that what we do is totally irrelevant. If you are a Chinese military planner, your architecture and force structure depend on what the United States is doing, first and foremost."

In an interview last month with the publisher, editors and reporters of The New York Times, China's president, Jiang Zemin, deflected a question about China's response to the missile defense plan and suggested that his visitors knew more about the size and abilities of China's fleet than he did. "I hope he was joking," one of Mr. Bush's top aides said.

As for the ban on nuclear testing, both the United States and China have signed but not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and the Bush administration has made clear that it wants that accord to remain in indefinite limbo in the Senate, which rejected it two years ago.

One senior official said this week that China may, in future years, be given the go-ahead by the United States to resume underground tests of its nuclear weapons, and suggested that the United States might also someday want to resume such testing.

"We don't see the need for any tests, by anyone, in the near future," the official said. "But there may, at some point, be a need by both countries to make sure that their warheads are safe and reliable."

Whether the administration's new approach to China is considered a change in American policy or simply, as the administration insists, a recognition of nuclear reality, the implications could be enormous.

At home, Mr. Bush risks angering the right wing of his own party, which has long protested any buildup in Chinese arms.

And Democratic critics of the missile defense plan, like Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, have also argued that even before the technology for a missile shield is proven, Mr. Bush may set off an arms race that could include China as well as the world's newest nuclear states, India and Pakistan.

"The question is, can you accept another 50 or 60 nuclear-tipped missiles aimed at the United States at a time that Americans believe that they are no longer being targeted?" asked Bates Gill, an expert in Chinese nuclear strategy at the Brookings Institution.

Mr. Gill, who says he believes the administration is "right to acknowledge the practical inevitability" of the modernization of Chinese nuclear forces, also warns of a possible side effect should China incorporate new technologies to defeat the missile shield.

"We shouldn't be sanguine about the possibility of China proliferating antimissile defense technology in the future, if the U.S.-China relationship goes badly," he said. "That could include basic decoy and shrouding technology for Pakistan, and potentially Iran and North Korea."

The new American stance could also have a major impact on the nuclear politics of Taiwan and Japan. Every major nuclear advance on the mainland leads to renewed calls in Taiwan for an independent nuclear force - a movement that the United States quashed during the cold war. American intelligence agencies keep a close eye on Taiwan to make sure its program is not resuscitated.

As the only country ever to have suffered the devastation of nuclear attacks, Japan has long renounced nuclear weapons, and it is almost inconceivable that it would reverse that policy as long as it can depend on American nuclear protection.

But Japanese officials have said privately that while they endorse missile shield research, they worry that it would only encourage China to speed its positioning of both medium- and long-range nuclear missiles. They fear that any placement of theater missile defenses in Japan - where 60,000 American forces are based - could provoke China to increase the number of weapons targeted there.

In interviews, administration officials dismiss the argument that the missile defense would set off any kind of arms race in Asia.

"The Indians know what the Chinese are doing, and so does everyone else," a senior administration official said. "If we canceled the whole missile defense program tomorrow morning, China would still build more and better missiles, and other countries would figure out their response."

Until now, there have been few discussions between China and the Bush administration about missile defenses.

In the late spring, James A. Kelly, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, was sent to Beijing to give a rough outline of the administration's plans to his Chinese counterparts.

Instead, the administration's focus has been on talking to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, and winning his agreement to abandon the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, which bars most of the tests for a missile shield that Mr. Bush hopes to begin in Alaska next year.

American officials have raised with Mr. Putin and his aides the possibility that Russia could contribute to the missile shield project, and that some of its technology might be incorporated in it.

So far, though, that has not resulted in any significant progress in the talks. American officials speculate that serious negotiations will not begin until Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld comes up with a plan for deep, mutual reductions in American and Russian forces.

But there have been no equivalent conversations with China. That will have to change now that Mr. Bush's trip is only six weeks away. Mr. Bush has made it clear he plans to spend a considerable amount of time on that trip trying to allay Chinese fears about his plans, much as he has tried, with mixed success, in Europe.

But because China has such a minimal deterrent, he cannot make the kind of offer that he has made to Russia for a joint reduction of nuclear forces. The offer to allow China to improve its nuclear fleet - and perhaps test it - amounts to what one senior defense official calls "the incentive package" for the Chinese leadership and its military.


-------- MILITARY

-------- balkans

NATO Envoy Warns on Macedonia Peace

SEPTEMBER 01, 15:57 EDT
By KATARINA KRATOVAC
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_package.html?FRONTID=WORLD&PACKAGEID=macedonia&STORYID=APIS7E8JRC00&SLUG=MACEDONIA

SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) - A NATO envoy warned Saturday that the alliance's role in Macedonia's peace process could be in jeopardy after parliament suspended debate on reforms to grant greater rights to ethnic Albanians.

NATO's ambassador to Macedonia, Hansjorg Eiff, told Macedonian officials that parliament cannot put up new conditions that would stall a step-by-step deal to end the six-month insurgency.

He spoke after parliament speaker Stojan Andov adjourned debate saying that discussions of proposed constitutional changes could not be held while barricades remained on roads and protesters pressured parliament.

In exchange for restarting the session, Andov demanded a promise from Macedonia's president that all people who fled fighting be allowed to return home. The U.N. refugee agency estimates up to 125,000 people remain displaced.

The demand appeared to put NATO and hard-liners in parliament on a collision course. Under a Western-backed peace plan, parliament must back the package before NATO resumes collecting weapons from ethnic Albanian rebels.

``The conditioning of this process would certainly be risky,'' Eiff said after speaking to Macedonia's president and others. ``We are concerned about the continuation of our action.''

Outside parliament, about 15 angry Macedonians shouted ``NATO terrorists, go home!'' and denounced the planned constitutional changes.

The first day of debate ended on a jarring note late Friday with several radical deputies from VMRO, the top Macedonian government party, rejecting the proposed changes.

``Macedonia is under the gun to pass constitutional changes, and those who oppose them are falsely accused of promoting war,'' Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski, a top VMRO member, was quoted as saying in the Vecer newspaper.

Georgievski urged a nationwide referendum on the constitutional changes, suggesting that would relieve legislators of the burden of responsibility.

But Macedonia's top ethnic Albanian leader, Arben Xhaferi, said he would not support a referendum.

``The Macedonians are now playing a game of always blaming others for their responsibilities so they will always appear as victims,'' Xhaferi told The Associated Press.

The changes would make Albanian an official language in areas where ethnic Albanians comprise more than 20 percent of the population, and provide a degree of self-rule for them there. It would also ensure ethnic Albanians proportional representation in the government, police and Constitutional Court.

Angry Macedonians kept up the blockades. One, on the border with neighboring Kosovo, was to protest the arrival of NATO troops. Elsewhere, Macedonians from the village of Dzepciste set up another barricade, demanding rebels release five of their countrymen allegedly held as hostages.

Ethnic Albanian villagers from the northwestern village of Poroj prevented a refugee convoy of Macedonians from nearby Vratnice from returning to the capital, Skopje. The convoy was let through late Saturday.

Andov claimed that blockade was organized by the rebel National Liberation Army, or NLA.

``The parliament showed readiness to debate the peace accord, but this cannot take place as long as there is mass harassing of civilians by the NLA,'' he said.

Before NATO can begin the second phase of weapons collection next week, 80 deputies in the 120-seat assembly must vote in favor of amending the constitution.

As planned, the alliance stopped collecting arms on Thursday after culling about a third of the 3,300 weapons offered by the rebels. The 1,210 arms included 69 anti-tank pieces, three surface-to-air missiles, 194 machine guns and 944 assault rifles.

-------- colombia

Bogota Gunmen Kill Gov't Prosecutor

September 1, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Colombia-Assassination.html

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- Gunmen on a motorcycle assassinated a government prosecutor investigating one of Colombia's bloodiest paramilitary massacres in years, and a U.S. human rights group said Saturday that two of her colleagues are missing and feared dead.

Yolanda Paternina, 50, was shot twice as she was returning home from work Wednesday in the city of Sincelejo, 330 miles northwest of the capital, Bogota, according to police.

Two investigators working with Paternina on the case disappeared in June and are feared dead, said Robin Kirk of Human Rights Watch.

The three were probing allegations of state complicity in a massacre in which dozens of paramilitary gunmen hacked to death 26 people in the northern village of Chengue after accusing them of collaborating with leftist guerrillas.

Even though residents in the region pleaded for protection from the paramilitary army months before the January massacre, authorities failed to prevent the killings.

On Friday, Human Rights Watch sent a letter to Colombian Attorney General Luis Osorio urging him to investigate the crimes and to protect the prosecutor now heading the investigation.

The massacre raised fresh doubts about the government's willingness to rein in the paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC. Curbing paramilitary violence is a key condition for continuation of military aid and training from the United States under a $1.3 billion regional anti-drug package.

The 8,000-strong AUC is responsible for the most of the human rights atrocities committed in Colombia. The South American nation is embroiled in a 37-year civil conflict pitting the guerrillas against the government and the paramilitary army


-------- OTHER

-------- environment

Denver Closes In on Clean - Air Status

September 1, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Denver-Pollution.html?searchpv=aponline

DENVER (AP) -- An intense battle against air pollution is finally paying dividends for officials in Denver, which will likely soon have the distinction of being the first major city to achieve compliance with the Clean Air Act.

Denver was once among the worst-polluted cities in the country, with a brown cloud a constant reminder of its pollution woes. In 1977, only Los Angeles had worse air quality.

But Denver has been turning its pollution woes around in recent years, and the Environmental Protection Agency has approved the state's request to redesignate Denver a clean-air city for ozone. Last week, federal air-quality officials also proposed designating Denver a clean-air city for carbon monoxide.

If the EPA accepts a plan submitted this summer to limit particulate levels, Denver will be the first city in the country to come all the way back to clean-air status. Officials say approval is likely.

``We're finally eliminating the stigma of Denver being a dirty-air city,'' said Doug Benevento, manager of the state's environmental programs. ``Nobody can say that about us anymore.''

Tim Russ with the EPA's air and radiation division said the designations are significant and set Denver apart from other major metro areas.

``Denver had extreme difficulty with all three pollutants back in the 1970s and 1980s,'' Russ said. ``Cities like Atlanta and Houston are still violating the ozone standard, so they're not even in the ballgame yet.''

Gov. Bill Owens has made the clean-air designations a priority, but Benevento said the success took widespread cooperation.

Reduced driving, oxygenated fuels, public awareness campaigns and enforcement of smokestack emission limits are all considered important factors in the pollution progress.

``All this took real effort,'' Benevento said. ``People did real things to get us here.''

-------- human rights

Racism Conference Addresses Mideast

September 1, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Racism-Conference.html

DURBAN, South Africa (AP) -- Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat condemned what he called Israel's racist practices Saturday but declined to label Israel a racist state, an apparent compromise in how Palestinians would criticize Israel at the World Conference Against Racism.

In earlier speeches, African heads of state addressed the gathering on the legacy of slavery and colonialism, some demanding an apology from the West and others calling for reparations.

Negotiations leading up to the conference have been marked by strong debate over its draft declaration and its draft program of action.

``Two issues threaten consensus: the Middle East and compensation for slavery,'' U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said.

The U.S. government, which has called parts of a draft declaration anti-Semitic, said American diplomats would leave the eight-day U.N. summit if the provisions condemning Israel weren't removed.

The Palestinian leader's main speech to the conference came a day after the Rev. Jesse Jackson announced Arafat had agreed to lobby to have language removed from a draft declaration that called Israel a racist state and condemned Zionism as racism.

Arafat did not mention the word Zionism -- the religious and philosophical underpinning of the movement that founded Israel as a homeland for the Jewish people. But while he did not condemn Israel as a racist state, he did say the Israeli occupation ``embodies racial discrimination in its ugliest forms.''

``Israeli occupation ... represents a dangerous and flagrant violation of (the U.N.) charter, international human rights and human law. The Israeli occupation is a new and advanced type of apartheid,'' Arafat said. ``Israel, the occupation authority, has pursued policies of racial discrimination.''

Jackson said he considered Arafat's speech a compromise.

``My point was for him to focus on practices and policies, not on labeling and blaming,'' the American civil rights leader said.

But Israeli delegate Ran Cohen, a dovish lawmaker, said he thought Arafat's speech was ``very, very negative'' and full of ``foolish lies.''

Arab foreign ministers met Saturday morning to coordinate their position on the final declaration. Amr Mousa, Secretary-General of the Arab League, said the section condemning Israel's treatment of the Palestinians and the recognition of the Holocaust were both open to negotiation.

``There are racist policies and practices by Israel and they have to be addressed (just) as Israel wants us to address the problem of the Holocaust and anti-Semitism and so on, so its a package,'' he said.

Annan said delegates working on the documents were ``making serious efforts to find compromise language'' and that he sensed ``a mood and a willingness amongst the delegations to be flexible.''

Annan also harshly warned against countries planning to hold the conference hostage to their causes.

``Those who allow one issue to derail this conference would also be held accountable for the failure of the conference,'' he said.

As the Arab leaders met, several African heads of state addressed the conference on the legacy of slavery and colonialism.

An apology for those crimes would recognize the wrong that was committed against Africans and constitute a promise that such an atrocity would never happen again, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo said.

With an apology, ``the issue of reparations ceases to be a rational option,'' he said during his formal address to the conference Saturday morning.

But other leaders, including Togo's president, Gnassingbe Eyadema, said the slave trade and colonialism were so horrific they demanded reparations, which should include the cancellation of African debt.

In a rousing speech frequently interrupted by applause, Cuban President Fidel Castro called on the United States to pay slavery reparations, a stronger United Nations and an end to consumerism.

``After the purely formal slavery emancipation, African-Americans were subjected during 100 more years to the harshest racial discrimination, and many of its features still persist,'' Castro said. ``Cuba speaks of reparations, and supports this idea as an unavoidable moral duty to the victims of racism.''

--------

New Zealand and Nauru to Take 460 Refugees at Sea

September 1, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/01/international/asia/01AUSS.html

CHRISTMAS ISLAND, Australia, Saturday, Sept. 1 (AP) - The 460 asylum seekers stranded on a ship near here will go to New Zealand and the Pacific island nation of Nauru, the prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand announced today.

The agreement breaks a six-day diplomatic deadlock over the fate of the refugees, most of whom are from Afghanistan.

"I am announcing today that we have reached agreement with the governments of New Zealand and Nauru for processing of the people rescued by the MV Tampa," Australia's prime minister, John Howard, said at a news conference in Sydney, referring to the Norwegian freighter that picked them up.

Australia, Norway and Indonesia had been debating where the refugees should go after Mr. Howard refused the boat entry into Australian waters on Monday.

The prime minister said that about 150 of the refugees would go to New Zealand and the remainder to Nauru, a tiny island east of Papua New Guinea near the Solomon Islands.

New Zealand's prime minister, Helen Clark, said in a statement that those sent to her country and found to be genuine refugees would be allowed to resettle as part of the nation's annual refugee quota. Those going to Nauru and found to be genuine refugees could be resettled in third countries, she said.

Mr. Howard said the agreement satisfied Australia's determination to ensure that the asylum seekers would not set foot on Australian soil.

"I should emphasize that this agreement and this potential solution to this very difficult issue does not involve the people being taken on to Christmas Island or on to Australian territory or any part of the Australian mainland," he said.

-------- police / prisoners

States Easing Stringent Laws on Prison Time

September 2, 2001
New York Times
By FOX BUTTERFIELD
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/02/national/02PRIS.html

Reversing a 20-year trend toward ever-tougher criminal laws, a number of states this year have quietly rolled back some of their most stringent anticrime measures, including those imposing mandatory minimum sentences and forbidding early parole.

The new laws, along with a voter initiative in California that provides for treatment rather than prison for many drug offenders, reflect a political climate that has changed markedly as crime has fallen, the cost of running prisons has exploded and the economy has slowed, state legislators and criminal justice experts say.

After a two-decade boom in prison construction that quadrupled the number of inmates, the states now spend a total of $30 billion a year to operate their prisons, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. And with voters saying they are more concerned about issues like education than street violence, state legislators are finding they must cut the growth in prison inmates to satisfy the demand for new services and to balance their budgets.

"I think these new laws are pretty significant, with legislators taking politically risky steps that would have been unthinkable even a couple of years ago," said Michael Jacobson, a former corrections commissioner for New York City who is now a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

"When the spigot stops, you are forced to look at the items that have grown the most, and inevitably, in every state, it is corrections," Professor Jacobson said.

With several states re-examining their criminal laws, including New York, Alabama, Georgia, New Mexico and Idaho, these changes are likely to hasten a decline in the number of state prison inmates, which began to fall in the second half of last year for the first time since 1972, the experts and lawmakers say.

Perhaps the most significant changes, the experts say, occurred in four states that this year dropped some 1990's sentencing laws that required criminals to serve long terms without the possibility of parole. The four are Louisiana, Connecticut, Indiana and North Dakota.

Iowa passed a similar law last spring, giving judges discretion in imposing what had been a mandatory five-year sentence for low-level drug crimes and certain property crimes, including burglary.

In May, Mississippi passed a law making first-time nonviolent offenders eligible for parole after serving only 25 percent of their sentences, instead of the 85 percent required under a law enacted in 1994. Since the earlier law went into effect, the number of prison inmates in Mississippi jumped to 37,754 this year, from 10,699 in 1994, according to state figures.

And West Virginia, which has had one of the fastest-growing prison systems, enacted a law to reduce the number of inmates by giving money to local counties to develop alternatives to prison, like electronic monitoring of people on probation and centers where probationers would report each day.

"These may be small states, and the new laws are not comprehensive reforms, but it is very significant that these are not just liberal Northeastern states," said Nicholas Turner, director of the State Sentencing and Corrections Project at the Vera Institute of Justice in New York, a research organization that is working with a number of the states to reduce prison costs and explore options instead of prison. "What has happened this year in these states implies a lot about a change in the political culture."

Some lawmakers and lobbyists say such a shift is looming in New York, where Gov. George E. Pataki has proposed softening the state's notoriously tough Rockefeller-era drug laws, and the Democratic-controlled State Assembly has insisted on even more far-reaching changes.

Perhaps the most surprising change has come in Louisiana, which has the highest per capita incarceration rate in the nation and has long had a reputation for brutal prison conditions and wide racial disparities in who is sentenced to prison.

Louisiana's new law, strongly supported by Gov. Mike Foster, a conservative Republican, and the state district attorneys' association, eliminates mandatory prison time for crimes like burglary of a residence, possession of small amounts of drugs, Medicaid fraud, prostitution, theft of a firearm and obscenity. Since Louisiana imposed mandatory minimum sentences six years ago, its prison population has increased by 50 percent, to 38,000 from 25,260, and was projected to grow to 46,000 by 2004. Under mandatory minimum sentences, state expenditures for prisons have soared 70 percent, state figures show.

"This is an attempt to bring under control a system that was bankrupting the state and was not reducing crime," said State Senator Donald R. Cravins, a Democrat who was one of the law's prime supporters.

The situation had reached a point in Louisiana, Senator Cravins said, that "we had half the population in prison and the other half watching them," while the state spent $600 million a year on corrections and was facing a budget deficit.

"We were pouring money into a bottomless pit, but we couldn't address the real causes of crime like the lack of early childhood education," he said, a particular problem in Louisiana, which has the lowest per capita income in the nation.

Under the new bill, the state may now save $60 million a year, Senator Cravins said.

Not everyone has supported the revised laws. Some legislators have been accused of being "soft on crime" and prosecutors have complained that scrapping mandatory minimum sentences takes away one of their best tools to get street criminals to plea bargain and trade information about other criminals in exchange for lesser sentences.

Stephen Mallory, a former deputy director of the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics who is now chairman of the department of criminal justice at the University of Southern Mississippi, opposed his state's new law restoring eligibility for parole for first- time nonviolent criminals.

"It's a joke," Professor Mallory said, because "anyone in law enforcement knows these are not first- time offenders."

"There is a strong likelihood that they've committed 30 or 40 crimes before and just finally got caught."

The change in the law will be costly for society, Professor Mallory said. "If you turn out someone who is a real career criminal, you will save $30,000 in prison costs, but he will do $100,000 worth of property and emotional damage in more crimes."

But State Representative Michael P. Lawlor, a Democrat who is chairman of the Connecticut House judiciary committee, says he sees another advantage to the new laws, including the one sponsored in his state by Gov. John G. Rowland, a Republican, that ends a decade-old system of mandatory prison terms for nonviolent drug offenders. He said the changes would help reduce huge racial disparities in who goes to prison.

Nine out of 10 people in jail and prison in Connecticut for drug offenses are black or Hispanic, Mr. Lawlor said, but half of those arrested on drug charges are white. Part of the problem, he said, is a Connecticut law that established a mandatory sentence for selling or possessing drugs within two-thirds of a mile of a school, day care center or public housing project.

The result, Mr. Lawlor said, is that 90 percent of cities like Hartford or New Haven are within these areas, and so poor and minority people who live in these areas end up in prison for any drug charge.

"I think this is the most significant change in criminal justice policy we have made in more than 10 years," Mr. Lawlor said. "Two or three years from now you are going to be able to look back and see the new law has made a tremendous impact on who is in prison."

And there are more states where change may soon come. The sponsors of the California referendum that was approved by voters last November mandating drug treatment instead of incarceration for first- and second-time offenders convicted of drug possession, are pushing to get a similar initiative on the ballot in Florida, Ohio and Michigan for the 2002 election.

-------- spying

Couple charged as spies

September 1, 2001
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010901-2113607.htm

Two Cubans suspected of trying to infiltrate U.S. military installations and Cuban exile groups were arrested yesterday by the FBI as members of what authorities said was the largest Cuban spy ring ever detected.

Taken into custody by FBI agents in Orlando, Fla., George Gari and his wife, Marisol, were charged as members of "La Red Avispa," or the Wasp Network, five members of whom were convicted in June of conspiring to spy on the United States for Fidel Castro's regime.

Mr. Gari, 40, and Mrs. Gari, 42, were named in a three-count indictment on charges of conspiracy to act as agents of a foreign government without proper identification or notice to the attorney general. Facing 15 years in prison if convicted, they are being held without bail. No court date has been set.

FBI Agent Hector M. Pesquera, who heads the bureau's Miami field office, announced the arrests. In July, in the wake of the convictions of the five Cuban spies, Mr. Pesquera pledged that additional arrests would be made in what he described as a continuing inquiry. He told reporters at the time that his office had "not finished the investigation."

Federal authorities said that the espionage by the Garis occurred between 1991 and 1998, and that Mrs. Gari used her U.S. Postal Service job to gain access to mail sent by and intended for Cuban Americans.

The couple also are suspected of conducting surveillance on the Cuban American National Foundation, an influential exile group, and of unsuccessfully trying to infiltrate the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Caribbean and Latin America.

Mr. Gari, who worked for Lockheed Martin in Orlando, had been ordered by his Cuban handlers to apply for work at the Southern Command, according to authorities, although they did not elaborate.

Known by the code names "Luis" and "Margot," authorities said, the Garis received training by the Cuban Directorate of Intelligence before their 1990 arrival in the United States and, together, used advanced encryption technology to transmit information about anti-Castro exile organizations between the Cuban government and other agents.

The couple also were accused of surveying the interior layout and security measures at Cuban American National Foundation's Miami headquarters.

The five Cuban spies -- Rene Gonzalez Sehwerert, Ramon Labanino Salazar, Fernando Gonzalez Llort, Antonio Guerrero Rodriguez and Gerardo Hernandez Nordelo -- are awaiting sentencing. They were found guilty of monitoring U.S. military installations, including the U.S. Southern Command and a Key West air base, and of infiltrating Cuban-American exile groups.

Convicted on June 8 by a Miami jury that included no Cuban-Americans, three of the five face life in prison. A sentencing date is scheduled for later this month. Prosecutors said during trial that the five had conspired to pass U.S. defense-related information to the Castro regime.

Federal authorities said Hernandez, Labanino and Fernando Gonzalez were high-level intelligence officers who reported directly to Havana command and control centers.

Five other spy suspects -- also members of La Red Avispa -- had earlier pleaded guilty. Four other members of the organization fled to their homeland and were not charged. Authorities believe the organization has since been dismantled.

Prosecutors said La Red Avispa took part in a wide range of activities, including locating vulnerable points of entry into Florida for the importation of arms and explosives.

Following the arrest in September 1998 of the five who later were convicted, FBI agents collected more than 10,000 pages of information concerning its activities. Agents discovered that, among other projects, the organization counted planes outside a military base, attempted to send a letter bomb to an anti-Castro activist, and infiltrated the Boca Chica base of the Southern Command to observe military activity there.

La Red Avispa's reputed spymaster was Hernandez, who also was found guilty of contributing to the death of the four Brothers to the Rescue members who were shot down by a Cuban MiG fighter jet in international airspace in February 1996.

Prosecutors said he warned two of his colleagues who had infiltrated the Brothers' organization not to fly with the group during the period when the shooting down occurred. Hernandez has been described as a captain in Cuba's military intelligence.

Relatives of the four Brothers to the Rescue fliers who died during the 1996 shooting down, along with the organization's leader, Jose Basulto, who survived the incident, have asked the government to pursue indictments of Mr. Castro and at least eight others suspected of having taken part in the shooting incident.

Federal authorities have not said whether any such decision is being considered.


-------- activists

U.S. Student Decries Brutal Genoa Raids
G-8 Summit Sparked Violent Clashes

By Glenda Cooper
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 1, 2001; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A27527-2001Aug31?language=printer

The American college student imprisoned in an Italian jail for three weeks after the protests surrounding July's G-8 summit in Genoa spoke out yesterday against the "terrible brutality" that left one protester dead and hundreds injured.

Susanna Thomas, 21, of Warren, N.J., said in a statement e-mailed to The Washington Post and other media organizations that she is praying for the Italian authorities to "remember their democratic heritage" and "honor the continued political dissent that is so vital to any democracy."

"Nobody who was at Genoa will ever be the same," said Thomas, a student at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania who had traveled to Italy with the Austrian Publix Theatre Caravan company, a street theater group that deals with political issues.

"The effects of Carlo Giuliani's death and the imprisonment and injuries of hundreds are still being felt around the world," she said, referring to the protester who was shot to death by the Italian police.

"Certainly nobody who was in either of the A. Diaz schools on 5 and 6 via Cesare Battisti on the night of July 21st will ever forget the terror of the raids there," she added. "Thankfully, I was never beaten."

Thomas was arrested July 22 after police alleged that the theater group had conspired with the violent anarchists known as Black Bloc, who were considered mainly responsible for the riots. She was held in the women's wing of the Voghera prison outside Milan until her release Aug. 14.

The riots were the most violent since the anti-globalization movement erupted at the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle. But Italian police have been criticized for allegedly overreacting and engaging in brutality. Some of the worst reports of police brutality stemmed from the July 22 nighttime raid on a school where protesters were sleeping. Many were beaten, with 60 reported injured and 92 jailed.

Last week, the Los Angeles Times reported that 20 police officers -- including Arnaldo La Barbera, then head of Italy's anti-terrorism department -- had been placed under criminal investigation as part of a probe into the raid.

Thomas, a Quaker, said she was praying for all those who were beaten and for the police officers who inflicted the injuries. "As Quakers say, 'There is that of God in everyone,' " she said.

"The work of the Publix Theatre caravan for freedom of movement and the rights of migrants and refugees is never more important than now," said Thomas. She said she had gone to Italy to learn about nonviolent social activism. "As capital crosses borders with ever-increasing ease, people as well must reach across borders with ever-increasing bonds of friendship and trust."


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