------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
U.S. cool to nuclear test-ban conference
EU report calls for close look at Czech nuke plant
Rumsfeld says missiles proof of China's global ambitions
China's Nuclear Agenda
China Disclaims Arms Test Plans
EU report calls for close look at Czech nuke plant
Pakistan Hopes India Peace Dialogue Can Begin
U.S. Envoy Extols India, Accepting Its Atom Status
Ballistic missile defences in South Asia
Pak.- India : Militarization, Nuclearization, & the Quest for Peace
Israel Plans Anti - Missile Defense
Pyongyang accepts Seoul's talks proposal
Markey's N-alert: We could be toast'
Rumsfeld Warns On Missile Cuts
Russians flee raising of "radioactive" sub Kursk
Kremlin Willing to Review Missile Accords, Aide Says
New Test Makes Spotting Deadly Beryllium Dust Easier
Con Edison Sells Indian Point 2, Its Last Major Electricity Plant
Kucinich to Introduce Congressional Bill to Ban Space-based Weapons
WHITE HOUSE REFUSES TO RELEASE ENERGY DOCUMENTS

MILITARY
President taps Danforth as peace envoy to Sudan
Israel buys 52 more US jet-fighters
Europe Ponders New Force for Macedonia
NATO troops in Macedonia collect weapons
Court rules no genocide in Kosovo
Secret Weapon Research
U.S. Prepping for Possible Germ Warfare
Gunmen Kill Leader of Peace Panel in Colombia
Pastrana urges Bush to extend drug war
A Cycle of Death in West Bank
Army to retire 1,000 helicopters
Senate Approves New Base Closings
Secret War Game Eases Concerns Over Readiness
Cleanup Slow, Erratic at Closed U.S. Military Sites

OTHER
Cheney Defies GAO's Disclosure Demand
GAO May Sue White House to Get Energy Information
White House Sets Up Clash Over Congressional Inquiry
For the Record
NEMATODE WORM CAN DETOXIFY HEAVY METALS
NAFTA USED TO CHALLENGE ENVIRONMENTAL LAWS
Trying to Get Past Numbers on Stem Cells
Cellphone Health Risk Needs More Research
Starving peasants descend on Guatemalan town
E.U. agrees to apology for slavery
IMF says nasty things about protesters
House panel slams Ashcroft for withholding documents
F.B.I. Arrests 13 in Connection With Miami Police Corruption
Committee Approves Intelligence Bill
Americans in Japan warned of possible terror attack

ACTIVISTS
News Conference: Star Wars Returns
PHILADELPHIA GROUPS TO HOLD 33 HOUR PEACE VIGIL
ENDING GLOBAL APARTHEID
Action for UN Renewal
Greenaction Update
DIRTY TRICKS OVER DU CAMPAIGN



-------- NUCLEAR

U.S. cool to nuclear test-ban conference
The Pentagon wants a boycott of the U.N. meeting; the State Dept. wants only low-level participation.

Friday, September 7, 2001
By Jonathan S. Landay
INQUIRER WASHINGTON BUREAU
http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/2001/09/07/national/NUKE07.htm

WASHINGTON - The civilian leadership of the Pentagon wants the United States to boycott a U.N. conference later this month on accelerating a global ban on nuclear test explosions, senior administration officials said yesterday.

These Defense Department officials want to kill any chance for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty to take effect, an official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The State Department, however, is pushing to send a "fairly junior" U.S. diplomat to the conference to air U.S. objections to the treaty, the official said. President Bush will probably make the final decision, the official said.

If Bush decides to skip the conference or send a low-level representative, it is likely to invite new criticism at home and abroad that he is curtailing U.S. cooperation in international efforts to address some pressing issues.

Bush has repudiated the Kyoto pact on reducing pollution to reverse global warming; has said the United States will pull out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty so it can develop a missile defense; and has rejected as unworkable a draft agreement on enforcing an international ban on biological weapons.

The U.N. conference on the treaty to ban nuclear tests is set for Sept. 25-27 in New York and is to examine ways to put the treaty into force. The pact cannot take effect until all 44 countries with nuclear reactors ratify it.

The United States was the main force behind the treaty and signed it in 1996 during the Clinton presidency. The Senate refused to ratify it in 1999. Twelve other nuclear nations, including China, North Korea, India and Pakistan, have not ratified it, either.

Bush argues that the treaty cannot be verified because small-scale nuclear tests are impossible to detect. He has said that he has no plans to end a 1992 U.S. moratorium on nuclear test explosions but that the issue was under review. Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld have said the United States must be free to conduct nuclear test blasts to ensure the safety and reliability of the aging U.S. nuclear arsenal.

Dozens of foreign ministers are expected to attend the U.N. conference. It will coincide with the opening of the U.N. General Assembly, where Bush will speak Sept. 24.

Some State Department officials believe other countries could infer from a U.S. boycott that the administration has decided to repudiate the treaty.

Even low-level U.S. participation "will reinforce the idea that . . . we are not fulfilling our responsibilities to the rest of the world," said Daryl Kimball, director of the Arms Control Association, an advocacy group.

Another senior administration official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said the fact that the administration believed the treaty was flawed did not mean Bush thought the United States should abandon its global commitments. "The notion that we are turning our backs on the world is nonsense," the official said. " . . . Many people in this country and world would like to ignore the fact that the Senate turned this treaty down."

Jonathan S. Landay's e-mail address is jlanday@krwashington.com.

Warren P. Strobel of the Inquirer Washington Bureau contributed to this report.

-------- czech republic

EU report calls for close look at Czech nuke plant

FRANCE: September 7, 2001
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12316/story.htm

STRASBOURG - The European Parliament this week called for a careful examination of the environmental impact from a controversial Czech nuclear plant, potentially paving the way for its closure.

The Temelin plant has been at the centre of a heated debate between the Czech Republic and Austria, which opposes nuclear power and views the plant - located near its border - as an environmental threat.

The Czech Republic is one of the candidate countries keen to join the 15-nation European Union. The European Parliament adopted a broad report assessing progress made by the Czechs in all fields to achieve its candidacy, including a call for a new analysis of risks posed by the nuclear plant.

The report suggests that the new analysis, to be conducted by the EU, consider closing the plant. The shutdown should be considered because of concerns about the safety of its structure and a worrying lack of data on its environmental impact.

Green party members who have successfully fought for the inclusion of the Temelin issue in the country report, welcomed the Parliament's vote.

"Temelin is an EU problem. This is an offer to the Czechs to find a EU solution," Austrian parliamentarian Mercedes Echerer told Reuters. "One way of doing it could be shutting it down."

The Parliament's vote means that the Czech Republic will have to respond to concerns about the safety of the plant when it starts incorporating the EU legislation for energy and environment.

The report also calls for an international forum to evaluate the price-tag for closing the plant, suggesting it may be possible to hold a donors' conference to help the Czech Republic meet the costs.

The Greens said they hoped the Temelin debate would spark a broader discussion on the state of nuclear plants in the accession countries, most of which are former Soviet satellites.

Many of the plants were built during the years of communism and do not meet strict EU safety standards. Closing them would be costly to the 12 countries which are candidates to become EU members.

-------- china

Rumsfeld says missiles proof of China's global ambitions

September 7, 2001
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010907-2129994.htm

China's strategic missile buildup reflects Beijing's "seriousness of purpose" in becoming a global power, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday.

"We know that they have been investing in various types of weaponry, including ballistic missiles of varying range," Mr. Rumsfeld told reporters at the Pentagon. "We know that they have been deploying various types of weaponry, including ballistic missiles. And we know that they have been acquiring a number of types of weapons from Russia and from other countries.

"It is a long pattern that reflects a seriousness of purpose about the People's Republic of China with respect to their defense establishment," he said.

The defense secretary was commenting on a report in yesterday's editions of The Washington Times that China was set to deploy its newest long-range missile, the Dong Feng-31, as soon as the end of the year.

U.S. intelligence officials told The Times that China's military has begun "crew training" for new DF-31 road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles.

The missile is the first of China's new generation of long-range nuclear missiles, and U.S. intelligence agencies believe the first units of the DF-31 are being prepared for deployment.

Mr. Rumsfeld said that intelligence reports and press reports show that China has been building up its military forces with spending increases for defense in "double-digit" percentage ranges of its overall government spending for the past several years.

Mr. Rumsfeld said Chinese writings and statements about their military show a "high degree of compatibility between what they're saying and what they're doing" militarily. Asked if he is concerned about the military buildup, Mr. Rumsfeld said China is "navigating along a path that is uncertain ... as to where it's going to end. I don't know. I don't know that they know."

The defense secretary said China's government is trying to feed two impulses.

"One impulse is to preserve the regime roughly in its current form, one would think, which is not a free system, not a democratic system, not an open system; and simultaneously to achieve economic prosperity," he said.

The two directions "are clearly putting stresses against the ... first goal they have, namely of preserving the regime and being able to continue with the political system that they have."

The United States is trying to encourage China to move toward greater economic relations with the world so that "the thing that gives, is the nature of its system, its regime," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

A senior Chinese diplomat said on Wednesday that military modernization "is one of the government's four modernizations."

"The objective is to organize the country on a more modern basis," said the diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The diplomat told reporters in Washington that military modernization is not linked to U.S. missile-defense efforts. "No country can rely forever on tanks and weapons that date in some cases from the 1950s," the diplomat said.

"But there is a huge difference between modernization and the expansion of China's nuclear forces that would be needed to overcome any threats to our deterrence" from missile defense, he said. "Missile defense is very much relevant" to how fast and how much China's defense capability will expand, the diplomat said.

"There are no enemies that China is considering as it pursues military modernization," the diplomat said. "It is a normal process, just as, if you can afford it, you buy new clothes for yourself each spring. It has nothing to do with any perceived enemies China has identified."

Chinese strategists fear the U.S. missile-defense plan would "upset the international strategic balance of the past 50 years," the diplomat said.

•David Sands contributed to this report.

--------

China's Nuclear Agenda

New York Times
September 7, 2001
By BATES GILL and JAMES MULVENON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/07/opinion/07GILL.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON - What had been an internal debate in the Bush administration about the strategic nuclear relationship between the United States and China went public last week, when troubling statements attributed to "senior administration officials" suggested that they were not opposed to China's increasing its nuclear stockpile. Then came White House backpedaling. At the heart of these mixed signals is the question of how the United States should counter China's small nuclear force, in the context of China's abilities to develop new weapons and its opposition to missile defense.

As the Bush administration prepares for a more serious strategic dialogue with China, this process must be informed by certain uncomfortable truths.

First, for the past 20 years or more China has had the ability to incinerate at least a handful of American cities. Unpleasant, but true. Its nuclear force, however, has remained comparatively small since its inception. In its early years, China couldn't detect incoming missiles, had only a fledgling nuclear command and control system, and had very slow preparation and launch times for its missiles, making it highly vulnerable to a first strike by either the Soviet Union or the United States.

China now has about 20 long-range nuclear missiles with sufficient range to reach the continental United States, and while it apparently has the ability to place multiple warheads on its missiles, it has so far chosen not to do so. The Chinese continue to rely on a "minimal deterrent" and the barest of abilities to retaliate with nuclear force should they come under nuclear attack. So while China has basic deterrent capability against the United States, that capability is fragile compared with the nuclear forces of the United States and Russia.

Second, while we may not like Chinese missiles pointing at our cities, the current nuclear balance between the United States and China is nevertheless strategically stable. Neither side would dare initiate a nuclear attack against the other for fear of the damage the other would inflict in response. The overwhelming nuclear superiority of the United States - a single American nuclear- armed submarine carries more warheads than the entire inventory of Chinese warheads capable of reaching the United States - means that even if China were to triple its current number of nuclear missiles, the strategic balance would not be fundamentally altered.

Third, like it or not, we should expect China's ongoing nuclear weapons modernization to continue. China's second-generation nuclear force, to be deployed over the next 10 to 15 years, will be far more mobile, accurate and reliable than its current force. Yet this force will almost certainly remain small in comparison to the American nuclear arsenal, even if the Bush administration unilaterally reduces United States nuclear forces.

But numbers of missiles alone don't fully determine the nuclear threat. There are plenty of steps China could take that would be very damaging to American interests. It could decide to accelerate its modernization program, in response to the Bush administration's missile defense plans, by adding several hundred nuclear-tipped missiles aimed at the United States, developing and deploying sophisticated decoys to foil missile defenses or mounting multiple warheads on its missiles. An aggressive modernization effort would spread alarm among China's neighbors, spurring a nuclear build-up in South Asia. China might also move to export antimissile defense technology to North Korea, Iran, Iraq or Pakistan.

It is clearly in the interests of both nations that China maintain the smallest effective nuclear deterrent possible. But that means the United States must give China incentive to show restraint. The administration is more likely to get what it wants from Beijing - minimal nuclear buildup, no resumption of nuclear testing and tacit acceptance of missile defense - if it begins a frank and realistic dialogue that takes the realities of China's capabilities and interests into account.

Bates Gill is a senior fellow in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution and director of the Brookings Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies. James Mulvenon is an associate political scientist at RAND.

---------

China Disclaims Arms Test Plans
U.S. Statements Are Rejected

International Herald Tribune
Jane Perlez
New York Times Service
Friday, September 7, 2001
http://www.iht.com/articles/31782.htm

WASHINGTON China has no plans to test its nuclear weapons, a Chinese diplomat said here, responding to statements by Bush administration officials that tests were likely.

The diplomat, speaking to reporters at a background briefing, said China was a signer of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and would stand by the intent of the treaty. The official said China had some capacity to test the safety of its weapons by computer simulation.

The issue has arisen in the last several days because administration officials said that as China builds up its nuclear arsenal it may want to resume underground nuclear tests as a way to determine the safety and reliability of the weapons. The officials have been quoted as saying that the United States may want to resume testing in the future, too.

"China is a signatory to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, even if China has not ratified the treaty, and China is not going to test nuclear weapons," the Chinese diplomat said Wednesday. "There are other ways you can prove the reliability of nuclear weapons, through computer simulation," he said.

[China said on Thursday that its foreign minister would pay an official visit to the United States on Sept. 20 and 21 to discuss missile proliferation and to prepare for a Chinese-U.S. summit meeting in October, Reuters reported from Beijing.

[The minister, Tang Jiaxuan, is to meet Secretary of State Colin Powell and other American officials before attending the United Nations General Assembly, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.]

According to U.S. intelligence estimates, China has from 20 to 24 long-range nuclear missiles created in the 1950s and '60s as a minimal deterrent. China is now in the process of replacing those missiles with mobile, solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Bush administration officials predicted that as China built these new weapons it would have to resume underground testing because its computer simulation ability was inadequate to assure the reliability of the new arsenal. Critics of the Bush administration's plans for missile defense contend that the plan will serve to encourage China to modernize its nuclear arsenal faster than it might otherwise feel compelled to do.

The Chinese diplomat said that it was reasonable for China to go ahead with the modernization of its military, including its nuclear weapons. "Every country is doing that," he said. It was as normal, he said, as "buying new spring clothes if you can afford it." As China's economic situation improved, the military would be modernized, he said. The Bush administration's plans for missile defense will be a major topic on the agenda of the meeting next month between President George W. Bush and President Jiang Zemin.

Chinese officials have said privately that in the long term they believe missile defense is directed at China and not, as the Bush administration maintains, at the so-called rogue states, like North Korea and Iraq.

Beijing Angered by Sanctions on Company

China expressed "strong indignation and resolute opposition" to U.S. sanctions against a Chinese arms maker accused of transferring sensitive missile technology to Pakistan, Reuters reported Thursday from Beijing, citing a report in the official China Daily.

It quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying that Washington had acted on erroneous intelligence against China Metallurgical Equipment. The sanctions, imposed last week, bar the company from importing U.S. items that the State Department and Commerce Department deem as having possible military use. The company said on Monday that its exports to Pakistan were machine tools and parts for civil use only.

-------- europe

EU report calls for close look at Czech nuke plant

FRANCE: September 7, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12316/story.htm

STRASBOURG - The European Parliament this week called for a careful examination of the environmental impact from a controversial Czech nuclear plant, potentially paving the way for its closure.

The Temelin plant has been at the centre of a heated debate between the Czech Republic and Austria, which opposes nuclear power and views the plant - located near its border - as an environmental threat.

The Czech Republic is one of the candidate countries keen to join the 15-nation European Union. The European Parliament adopted a broad report assessing progress made by the Czechs in all fields to achieve its candidacy, including a call for a new analysis of risks posed by the nuclear plant.

The report suggests that the new analysis, to be conducted by the EU, consider closing the plant. The shutdown should be considered because of concerns about the safety of its structure and a worrying lack of data on its environmental impact.

Green party members who have successfully fought for the inclusion of the Temelin issue in the country report, welcomed the Parliament's vote.

"Temelin is an EU problem. This is an offer to the Czechs to find a EU solution," Austrian parliamentarian Mercedes Echerer told Reuters. "One way of doing it could be shutting it down."

The Parliament's vote means that the Czech Republic will have to respond to concerns about the safety of the plant when it starts incorporating the EU legislation for energy and environment.

The report also calls for an international forum to evaluate the price-tag for closing the plant, suggesting it may be possible to hold a donors' conference to help the Czech Republic meet the costs.

The Greens said they hoped the Temelin debate would spark a broader discussion on the state of nuclear plants in the accession countries, most of which are former Soviet satellites.

Many of the plants were built during the years of communism and do not meet strict EU safety standards. Closing them would be costly to the 12 countries which are candidates to become EU members.

-------- india / pakistan

Pakistan Hopes India Peace Dialogue Can Begin

September 7, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-pakistan-india.html?searchpv=reuters

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan and arch-rival India must first agree on a clear format for future talks if the two sides are to reach a mutually beneficial and comprehensive peace settlement, Pakistan's foreign minister said on Friday.

But Abdul Sattar stressed that while Pakistan was willing to talk on a broad range of topics, the long-standing dispute over the Himalayan territory of Kashmir was at the root of differences and must remain central to any future discussions.

``We have to return from the path of violence toward a path of dialogue and peaceful process of a settlement,'' Sattar told Reuters Television in an interview.

``Pakistan has never put forward a one-item agenda. We are willing, prepared to enter into a broad dialogue process, keeping in mind the centrality of the Jammu and Kashmir issue,'' he added.

Sattar said he was hopeful that Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf and Indian Premier Atal Behari Vajpayee would meet in New York later this month on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.

``I am quite optimistic about not only the meeting, that it will take place, but also that the conversation...will be constructive, positive and oriented toward building a future better than the past,'' he said.

``Our president looks forward very eagerly to this meeting because we all recognize that there should be no military solution to differences.''

Military ruler Musharraf and Vajpayee held two days of talks in the Indian town of Agra in July, but the high-profile summit -- the first talks between leaders of the two countries in more than two years -- collapsed on differences over the 54-year Kashmir dispute.

Sattar said it was too soon to expect the nuclear-capable rivals to reach a comprehensive peace settlement.

``What we can look forward to (in New York) is some progress between our president and the prime minister of India toward establishing a dialogue process,'' he said.

RHETORIC HOTS UP

Since Agra the rhetoric has hotted up, with New Delhi, which claims the whole of Kashmir as an integral part of India, insisting talks be broad-based and slamming Islamabad for its insistence in trying to place Kashmir at the top of the agenda.

``We regret some of the acerbic statements that have come, we would not like to engage in recriminations. It will be our effort to contribute to a conducive atmosphere for the talks,'' said Sattar.

Pakistan says people in Muslim-majority Kashmir should be included in a consultation process and have the final say over their destiny. India has rejected including Kashmiris in the peace process.

Hindu-dominated India controls about 45 percent of Kashmir, comprising the regions of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh. Pakistan holds just over a third of the territory and China the remainder.

``Any objective reading of history cannot but reach the conclusion that Jammu and Kashmir has been the main cause of tension between the two countries,'' Sattar said.

``That should lead to the next conclusion that its settlement will be conducive to improvement of relations...between the two countries.''

Pakistan and India have fought two of their three wars since independence from Britain in 1947 over Kashmir and came to the brink of another in 1999.

More than 30,000 people have been killed since the start of a rebellion against Indian rule in late 1989.

India accuses Pakistan of arming and training Kashmiri separatists, a charge Islamabad denies saying it just offers diplomatic and moral support.

Sattar said he was pleased to say that firing over the Line of Control separating India and Pakistan in Kashmir had decreased since late last year after New Delhi imposed a unilateral cease-fire and Pakistan said it would exercise maximum restraint.

India dropped the cease-fire before the Agra summit, and since the failed talks there have been more artillery exchanges, while separatist violence has surged.

``Surely it would be illogical to assume that the Kashmiri people would give up their struggle so long as there is no hope of a settlement in accordance with their wishes,'' said Sattar.

----

U.S. Envoy Extols India, Accepting Its Atom Status

New York Times
September 7, 2001
By CELIA W. DUGGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/07/international/asia/07INDI.html?searchpv=nytToday

NEW DELHI, Sept. 6 - Robert D. Blackwill, the new American ambassador to India, today offered the fullest description yet of the Bush administration's drive to turn India and the United States into "fast friends and international partners" after decades of strained relations.

What he did not say was as revealing as what he did say. In a 45-minute address to business leaders in Bombay, Mr. Blackwill, a former Harvard professor who was one of several advisers to Mr. Bush on foreign policy during the presidential campaign, never criticized India for beginning nuclear tests in 1998.

Instead, he extolled the common ground that the two nations have recently found on nuclear issues, strongly suggested that the administration would soon approach Congress on the lifting of sanctions imposed on India after the tests and pledged that the United States "will not be a nagging nanny."

The tenor and substance of the ambassador's remarks signaled a calm acceptance of India's nuclear status. And that is a change.

Even when Bill Clinton visited India last year on a presidential tour that was more lovefest than slugfest, he gently scolded India, saying its decision to conduct the tests had eroded barriers to the spread of nuclear weapons. He also urged India to sign the nuclear test ban treaty, another issue Mr. Blackwill did not mention.

The Bush administration's respectful treatment of India's nuclear ambitions is part of a broader diplomatic strategy to engage India on a range of issues, including liberalized trade, counterterrorism, Mr. Bush's missile defense initiative and collaborative efforts to ensure the uninterrupted flow of oil from the Persian Gulf.

"President Bush has a big idea about India-U.S. relations," Mr. Blackwill said. "My president's big idea is that by working together more intensely than ever before, the United States and India, two vibrant democracies, can transform fundamentally the very essence of our bilateral relationship and thereby make the world freer, more peaceful and more prosperous."

Mr. Blackwill recalled a day in 1999 in Austin, Tex., when he asked Mr. Bush why he had a special interest in India. "He immediately responded: `A billion people in functioning democracy. Isn't that something? Isn't that something?' "

In coming months, the ambassador said, a stream of cabinet members and administration officials are already scheduled or likely to visit India. They include Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill and Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser.

Those visits will certainly be a change from the first two years of the first Bush administration, from 1989 to 1991, when not a single cabinet-level officer working for Mr. Bush's father visited India, according to Dennis Kux, an historian on Indian-American relations.

"India was really off the radar scope then," Mr. Kux said today. "There was practically no American investment in India. The cold war was ending, and the focus was there. And Pakistan was the main plank of our interest in South Asia because of the Afghan war.

"Daddy ignored India," Mr. Kux said. "Junior is embracing it."

Despite the upbeat nature of the ambassador's speech, several contentious issues may elude the search for common ground between the United States and India.

For instance, Robert B. Zoellick, the United States trade representative, came to India last month and sought to convince the government here that it was in India's interests to join a new round of international trade talks. But India has continued to be the leader of a group of developing countries, including Pakistan, Indonesia and Egypt, that say a host of issues from the last round of talks should be resolved first.

Mr. Blackwill also offered a note of warning on an issue that is dear to the heart of Kenneth Lay, the chairman of Enron who is also one of Mr. Bush's close friends and important campaign fund-raisers.

The ambassador said the American government hoped that a fair solution could be found soon to a messy dispute over a financially troubled $3 billion power plant - by far India's largest foreign investment - that Enron largely owns. The Maharashtra State Electricity Board has defaulted on payments for the power, and Enron is now trying to get the bills paid.

"I want to be frank," Mr. Blackwill said. "These disputes have darkened India's investment climate. I know this personally from speaking with some of the premier American business executives with major investments in India."

But over all, Mr. Blackwill's message was optimistic, and he said he even recently saw a headline in a national Indian newspaper that said, "U.S., India on the Same Side."

----

Ballistic missile defences in South Asia
Ejaz Haider looks into the implications for Pakistan if India acquires missile defence systems

The Friday Times (Pakistan)
7 September 2001
From: Harsh Kapoor <aiindex@mnet.fr>

While the technical feasibility of the US Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) programme remains in grave doubt and its strategic and policy details have still to be worked out, there is not much doubt about the course the Bush administration is likely to take on the issue despite open hostility from China and Russia and reservations from its NATO allies.

Are there any policy and/or strategic implications of the issue for Pakistan?

The answer is in the affirmative for two reasons. One, India was the first country that extended near unqualified initial support to Washington on the BMD issue following President George Bush's speech at the National Defense University. It did not extend that support without reason. Two, increasing Indo-Israeli defence cooperation, especially India's interest in acquiring the Israeli TMD (Theatre Missile Defence) "Arrow" technology as part of its IGMDP (Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme) is a source of concern for Pakistan.

India seems to have assessed that if the US goes ahead with its BMD programme its TMD component is likely to push Washington to co-opt Tel Aviv, which already has an advanced "Arrow" anti-missile programme. And this Indian estimation is based on information gleaned from Israeli experts. Any such US-Israel cooperation would involve sharing of technology. The Indo-Israel defence cooperation in the field bilaterally or in overt or covert collaboration with the US would obviously have its dividends for India.

Secondly, India desperately wants to add value to its nuclear and missile capabilities by getting the US to agree to transfer dual technologies. The strategy to that end involves identifying areas of mutual interest. India has a huge consumer market, it is a democracy and it is a secular, non-obscurantist status-quo power with good military capabilities. Its economy, despite its current doldrums, is likely to show good growth. Thus packaged, the image can be used to make a good sales pitch and India has done exactly that. Its relations with the US are on the up and are likely to remain so in the coming decade.

While the US justifies its BMD programme on the basis of perceived threat from "states of concern", the fact is that it is in no danger of being attacked with weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) mounted on missiles, a fact pointed out by various experts. The mutual deterrence equation between the US and China and Russia is well in place while the states of concern cannot factor out the inevitable massive retaliation by the US in case the latter is attacked by WMDs. That situation does not obtain in other regions of conflict, notably South Asia.

For instance, South Asia remains in a twilight nuclear zone. Despite their tests, Indian and Pakistani arsenals are not deployed and the extent of weaponisation remains a matter of conjecture. To that extent, and because there is evidence that both sides may be planning for "limited war", one can argue that the mutual deterrence equation that held the peace in the East-West conflict is not fully in place in South Asia.

In the event, acquisition by any side of an anti-ballistic missile defence system could go a long way in further destabilising the power balance in the region. The point here does not relate so much to the technological feasibility or otherwise of TMD/BMD systems, though that could become an issue of concern for a state (for instance, Pakistan) possessing a limited arsenal comprising first-generation weapons, but to strategic-political perceptions.

Two points need to be made here. One relates to the assessment that acquisition of certain military technologies (weapon systems) may be more important in safeguarding one's interests than any bi- or multi-lateral efforts to address security concerns on both or all sides with a view to changing the strategic environment in which such concerns might have evolved. This assessment, as seems to the case with the US, is likely to push a state into unilateralism. Moreover, its logic seems to focus more on the actual or perceived capability of a potential adversary rather than his intentions.

It is largely true that military preparedness is the function of adversary's capability rather than its intentions and the latter cannot be quantified. Still, in the case of WMDs, it is dangerous to take the capability argument without references to the multilateral arrangements and international treaties that seem to have served a useful purpose of not only clarifying intentions but have also managed with a fair degree of success the task of nonproliferation.

The second point relates to the fact that states trying to acquire such systems would employ the argument (as indeed the US has done) that these are defensive rather than offensive systems and the capability would in fact allow them to cut down on their offensive capability. The fact is that this argument is not sustainable and overlooks certain important considerations.

For instance, if adversary x's sense of security springs from the real or perceived effectiveness of its nuclear arsenal, x would find the acquisition by y of missile defence systems threatening in the same proportion in which x would perceive the BMDs to cut into its offensive capability. So, far from stabilising relations, y's capability would force x into improving its nuclear arsenal. Moreover, as experts have noted, no weapon system can intrinsically be termed defensive in nature. Defence and offence are integrated functions in the overall strategic environment in which conflicts take place and BMDs are no exception to that rule.

Nonproliferation, for all its problems, has acquired a normative value since the late sixties. Introducing a weapon system that threatens to undermine the value of that concept can only result in instability. It can destabilise existing deterrence equations in a number of ways and it can induce non-nuclear weapon states into seriously re-considering their earlier decisions to not acquire nuclear weapons capability. The second possibility presents itself ever more strongly in a world where a certain state with nuclear offensive and defensive capabilities is also perceived to increasingly act unilaterally as seems to be the case with the US.

While the concept of mutual assured destruction (MAD) may come across as inhuman, it did hold the balance during the Cold War, and continues to do so. The logic of getting rid of MAD lies in more arms control and disarmament rather than in creating perceived fortresses while everyone or a large majority holds on to their WMDs and strategies are worked out on how to overwhelm the adversary's defences. That is an inherently unstable scenario.

In the case of South Asia, any effort by India to introduce missile defences in the region is likely to push the two countries into an arms spiral. That could lead to not only more tests and acquisition of second-generation weapons but also overt deployment. It remains to be seen whether or not raising the salience of nuclear weapons thus would actually help India and Pakistan to stand down and resolve their outstanding issues.

----

Pak.- India : Militarization, Nuclearization, & the Quest for Peace
Presentation made to 2nd INSAF (international south asia forum) Conference in Vancouver (August 2001)

From: Harsh Kapoor <aiindex@mnet.fr>
Fri, 7 Sep 2001 18:28:05 +0100

MILITARIZATION, NUCLEARIZATION, AND THE QUEST FOR PEACE
By Parvez Hoodbhoy

Five decades of conflict between India and Pakistan has solved nothing, brought nothing but misery to their peoples, and offers nothing but more of the same in years to come. A hard line Hindu nationalist government is in power in India for the first time, infatuated by dreams of national grandeur and dismissive of the real problems of the people. On the Pakistani side there is a government headed by soldiers, and obsessed with Kashmir to the exclusion of all else. The two states are rapidly creating the conditions for an apocalyptic nuclear showdown.

A full-fledged confrontation cannot fail to be catastrophic. Yet, the failure of the Musharraf-Vajpayee talks in July 2001 is one more lesson that the hawks are incapable of making peace. These meetings bring together men of two tribes who can barely conceal their mutual animosity, but whose mind-sets and perceptions are cloned from the other. They can generate no recommendations, no discussions of relevance and substance, and no good will for future initiatives.

The Indo-Pak conflict has strong negative implications for the region in general, and Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka in particular. SAARC has been rendered ineffective, trade between states is very limited, and fundamentalist religious and ethnic forces have thrived because of overt and covert assistance.

Making peace will therefore have to be a task for the people of the subcontinent and its diaspora, now spread far and wide. Only activists, scholars, journalists, and others who feel the urgency for breaking with the past, can generate the goodwill needed for peace efforts to eventually succeed.

The most urgent Indo-Pak issues today, none of which were successfully addressed by the two leaders, are:

* Kashmir continues to bleed. The daily casualty count for militants, Indian security forces personnel, and civilians has now been maintained for years. Pakistan officially denies that it maintains camps for training jihadists for fighting in Kashmir, but the evidence is out in the open. They are thought to be behind the massacres of Hindus that occur from time to time in Kashmir. Indian security forces, on the other hand, are hated by the Kashmiris and are responsible for horrific brutalities.

* Nuclear weapons are multiplying. There are an estimated 90-100 atomic fission weapons in the Indian nuclear arsenal, and 30-50 similar sized weapons possessed by Pakistan. Each of these can devastate a medium-sized city and produce hundreds of thousands of deaths. India, after the May 1998 nuclear tests, declared that it had successfully weaponized its earlier device tested in 1974 and that it was now developing a much more destructive weapon, the fusion (or hydrogen) bomb. Pakistan responded by testing its own devices only 17 days later, and its bomb-making facilities are in full-production now.

* Missiles production is in full swing. India and Pakistan have extensive missile programs. India has the short-range Prithvi (with a range of 150-350 km) and the intermediate range (1200-2400 km) Agni ballistic missile. Both missiles can, in principle, be fitted with nuclear warheads. Pakistan has responded by building its own long-range Ghauri and Shaheen missiles, as well as by purchasing Chinese M-11 missiles with ranges of a few hundred kilometers. If missiles are deployed, they will need only a few minutes to cross the contiguous border before reaching a city in the other country. Warning and response times are extremely small. Geography also ensures that aircraft pose a similar danger. In August 1999, India announced its draft nuclear doctrine. The doctrine advocates a triad of aircraft, mobile land-based missiles and sea-based assets to be "fully employable in the shortest possible time".

* Limited wars are now much more attractive and possible. With nuclear weapons, it is presumed that wars will not escalate. Kargil offers the very first example in history where nuclear weapons, by creating a presumed shield for launching conventional covert operations, were responsible for having initiated a war rather than deterring one. It was precisely the unrestrained propagation of false beliefs in nuclear security that brought India and Pakistan to the brink of a full-blown confrontation in 1999, which indeed could have been the very last one. After the smoke had cleared, it turned out that Pakistan had been severely humiliated and damaged. But, India lost over a thousand men and suffered much trauma. Perversely, it was actually the BJP that, by ordering Pokhran-II, actually fathered Kargil.

* Unauthorized and accidental use of nuclear weapons pose a significant threat. The poor quality of information from the early warning systems available to Indian and Pakistani military commanders means that any warning of an attack would be undependable. In such circumstances, accidental nuclear war becomes a real possibility. If missiles are deployed in the field, dangers will multiply many-fold because missiles, once launched, cannot be recalled.

* The minimal deterrence concept is breaking down. During these decades of arms racing, India and Pakistan have acquired some of the most extensive and sophisticated armed forces in the world. Successive Indian governments have claimed a Chinese "threat" based on the border war with China in 1962, which India lost. Prior to this war, however, India and China had very good relations, and they have been making significant efforts in recent years to resolve their territorial issues. In 1993 an "Agreement on the Maintenance of Peace and Tranquility Along the Line of Actual Control in the India-China Border Areas" was signed, and this was followed up with a 1996 agreement on military confidence building measures, which included reductions in the numbers of troops, tanks, infantry combat vehicles, heavy artillery and missiles deployed by both states along the border

However a new arms build up has begun. In 1999-2000, India increased military spending by 10%. In its 2000-2001 budget, India increased military spending by 28%. This 130 billion rupee increase was equivalent to Pakistan's total military budget. In its 2001-2002 budget, Indian military spending increased another 7.7%. The military budget is now about $14 billion. Pakistan has not been able to keep up. Its military budget is about $ 3 billion. Some selected military statistics are given below:

Selected military statistics for India and Pakistan, 1996-1997

*India Pakistan Active armed forces 1,145,000 587,000 Tanks 3,500 2,050 Artillery 4,355 1,820 Aircraft carriers 2 0 Submarines 19 9 Destroyers and frigates 24 11 Attack helicopters 309 32 Combat aircraft 846 434 *The Military Balance 1996/1997, International Institute for Strategic Studies, London, 1996

* A pointless and bloody war on the icy wastes of the Siachen Glacier continues unabated, where death by freezing and lung-damage from breathing cold air competes with casualties from bullets.

* Poisonous propaganda is regularly used by both countries against the other. Textbooks filled with historical distortions, exaggerations, and lies, are used as tools to create generations that will ensure conflict for decades to come.

* Militant religious fundamentalism is growing in all countries of the region - India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh have seen an upsurge of violent forces struggling to establish their supremacy.

Who Pays The Price?

The answer is obvious: it is the people who must pay for the grand illusions of their leaders. Nothing can fairly indicate how great the price has been, and how much could otherwise have been saved in human and material terms. Nonetheless, some grim statistics indicate where things stand for India and Pakistan:

Human development indicators for India and Pakistan.

India Pakistan life expectancy, years 61 62 infant mortality rate, per 1,000 births 79 95 child (under 5 years old) mortality, per 1,000 births 119 137 Malnourished children, % 53 40 without access to health services, % 15 45 without access to safe water, % 25 50 without access to sanitation, % 71 67 Literacy rate, % 51 36 Source: Haq. M., Human Development in South Asia 1997, Oxford University Press, Karachi, 1997

In recent years, Pakistan's military expenditure has typically been about one-third that of India. The smaller size of Pakistan's economy has meant that its annual military spending now exceeds $3.5 billion - about a quarter of its total government expenditure - and consumes about 6% of its gross domestic product (GDP). India's $13 billion annual military budget consumes almost 3% of its GDP. Finding the resources for maintaining such a drain on resources has been, and will continue to be, an increasingly acute problem for Pakistan in particular, given a total debt equal to 93% of its GDP and a growing debt service. Currently, Pakistan's budget allocates 37% to defense, 44% to debt-servicing, and only 19% is left for all other functions of government, education, health, etc.

WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE?

A Draft Resolution

1. Recognizing the immense destruction that will be caused by a nuclear war, India and Pakistan must agree not to deploy their nuclear forces and work towards their eventual elimination.

2. Recognizing that nuclear war may be caused by unauthorized use or accidental detonation of nuclear weapons, India and Pakistan must immediately engage in talks on nuclear risk reduction measures. They must implement existing confidence building measures in good faith, and seek further measures as well.

3. All states of the region must recognize that any claim to possession of a territory can be legitimate only if it has the collective consent of the people inhabiting that territory. It is a fundamental right of a people to choose association with any given state, or to terminate that association.

4. All states of the region must forthwith end their covert wars, and stop using tools of terror against another state.

5. India and Pakistan must immediately end their pointless and costly battle on the Siachen Glacier.

6. All states of the region must end visa and travel restrictions, enabling free exchange of the people and goods.

7. All states of the region must allow and encourage academic and cultural exchanges. Such exchanges will enrich each state and be to the benefit of all.

8. All states of the region should immediately remove those materials from school textbooks that serve to create or incite religious or ethnic hatreds. Hostile propaganda on television should be curbed forthwith.

9. All states of the region must recognize the equality of all their citizens, and in no matter discriminate between them on the basis of religion, gender, or ethnic origin.

-------- israel

Israel Plans Anti - Missile Defense

September 7, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-Israel.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Israeli officials said Friday they hoped to blanket most of the country with three batteries of Arrow anti-missile installations by the end of the decade.

In Washington to brief Bush administration officials on a successful Aug. 27 test, the Israelis said they would spend $2 billion to $2.5 billion on the Arrow missile shield by the end of the decade.

The Bush administration has promised $65 million to support the project this year, but the officials said Israel was seeking an increase in order to cope with an accelerating missile threat.

Besides Iran and Iraq, on which Israel and the United States keep a close eye, they said Syria now has hundreds of missiles. Arieh Herzog, head of the Israel Missile Defense Organization, said Syria last year tested an advanced Scud-D missile.

Dan Peretz, director of the Arrow program, said Israel was preparing for an attack of hundreds of missiles.

``The process is accelerating,'' Peretz told reporters at the Israeli Embassy. ``It is not a hypothetical threat. We know that we need it and we know that we need it fast.''

The first of the three batteries has been deployed, Herzog said. ``The threat we face in the Middle East is a real one. We are emphasizing the readiness of the Israeli Arrow project to counter this threat.''

The officials said Arrow technology eventually may be sold to Turkey, India and other countries, provided the United States approved.

Peretz called the Arrow, which is being developed partly with U.S. support, the cutting edge of anti-missile technology.

He said Israel had conducted nine tests of the Arrow so far.

``We had our share of failure so we know how to deal with success,'' he said.

In the successful test, an Arrow missile intercepted and destroyed a simulator rocket fired from an F-15 warplane off of Israel's Mediterranean coast.

The Arrow missile, designed to blow incoming missiles out of the sky, was launched from the Palmachim testing range south of Tel Aviv and destroyed a small, high speed missile fired from the plane.

The missile is the world's only operational anti-ballistic missile system. It is designed to intercept incoming missiles in the stratosphere, far from their targets.

-------- korea

Pyongyang accepts Seoul's talks proposal

September 7, 2001
By Christopher Torchia
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010907-91258898.htm

SEOUL - North Korea accepted a South Korean proposal yesterday to hold talks next week, clearing the way for a resumption of the stalled reconciliation process after a six-month chill.

The development came as a relief for South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, whose government was under pressure to show results from his "sunshine" policy of engaging the communist North.

Opposition leaders had dismissed Mr. Kim's approach as one-sided appeasement, and the National Assembly voted earlier this week for the ouster of the Cabinet minister in charge of North Korea policy. The entire Cabinet then offered to resign, and the president was expected to choose new ministers as early as today.

South Korea yesterday proposed a resumption of talks with the North, from Sept. 15 to Sept. 18. The proposal came in a telephone call through its liaison office at the border village of Panmunjom and followed a North Korean offer last weekend to restart talks.

North Korea, which broke off talks in March because of tension with the new administration of President Bush, accepted the South Korean suggestion hours later.

"We hope the upcoming talks will produce good results respecting the spirit of the June 15 [2000] summit agreement and living up to the expectations of the whole nation," the South's government quoted a North Korean telegram as saying.

The telegram was referring to a summit last year between leaders of the two Koreas that led to a series of exchanges, including reunions of separated family members and a plan to reconnect a cross-border railway.

The North's foreign news outlet, KCNA, confirmed the telegram had been sent.

On a visit to Tokyo, Yim Sung-joon, South Korean deputy foreign minister, said yesterday that the two sides should discuss "easy" issues such as family reunions and economic issues, the Yonhap news agency reported.

The two sides have a vast array of firepower along the demilitarized zone, which separates the two nations, and troop and weapons reductions or withdrawals are likely to be far trickier issues to resolve.

Some 37,000 U.S. military personnel are stationed in South Korea as a deterrent against the North. In recent months, the North has stepped up demands for the U.S. troops to withdraw.

Mr. Kim got another boost yesterday when Prime Minister Lee Han-dong agreed to stay in office, defying an order to leave from the leadership of his small party, the United Liberal Democrats.

Mr. Lee's party, formerly the junior partner in Mr. Kim's ruling coalition, had sided with the opposition and backed the vote against the unification minister. The coalition collapsed because of the vote.

-------- missile defense

Markey's N-alert: We could be toast'

Boston Globe
By Jim Geraghty
States News Service, 9/7/2001
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/250/nation/Markey_s_N_alert_We_could_be_toast_P.shtml

WASHINGTON - The next time you butter a piece of toast, think of the hair-trigger alert status of the American nuclear arsenal.

That was the message this week from scientists and US Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Malden, as they sent toasters to all 535 members of Congress. Markey and an alliance of nuclear activists and scientists wanted to remind policy makers that ''in the time it takes to make toast, we could all be toast.''

''In 2001, we face the same danger we did 20 years ago, with thousands of Russian and American weapons standing in a launch-ready posture,'' Markey said at a news conference yesterday. More than 4,400 nuclear weapons are on alert to be launched by Russia and the United States.

In a false alarm, the missiles would leave their silos in only three to four minutes, creating circumstances conducive to an accidental nuclear war.

Markey and Representative Ellen Tauscher, a California Democrat, have introduced legislation that would remove all warheads from America's 50 MX missiles and take additional measures to lengthen the amount of time for launch of US missiles, consistent with national security needs.

President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld have indicated that they will seek to retire the MX missiles over three years.

The issue of the US alert status has become closely tied to the debate about a national missile defense system. Markey and other Democrats ripped into the Bush administration's commitment to that system, while not taking clearer steps to take the missiles off the highest alert status.

''Could national missile defense guard against a large attack by advanced Chinese missiles? I'm not interested in betting my life on that,'' Markey said. ''Our security can only be increased by standing down our nuclear forces and negotiating arms control agreements that reduce, and ultimately eliminate, nuclear weapons.''

----

Rumsfeld Warns On Missile Cuts

WASHINGTON IN BRIEF
Friday, September 7, 2001; Page A05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54853-2001Sep6?language=printer

Cutting the Pentagon's $8.3 billion request for missile defense spending in 2002 would undermine and delay important research and testing, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday.

Some Democratic lawmakers are pushing for a $1.3 billion reduction in the Pentagon's request for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.

The $8.3 billion for missile defense is $3 billion more than this year's amount. It is, by far, the largest increase in the Bush administration's defense program over the Clinton administration's.

-------- russia

Russians flee raising of "radioactive" sub Kursk

RUSSIA: September 7, 2001
Story by Konstantin Kozyr
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12321/story.htm

ROSLYAKOVO, Russia - Russian naval officer Alexei Zaishely picks up a bag and walks with his wife and baby to the bus stop in their remote Arctic village, where the Kursk submarine will be hauled into dry dock later this month.

Zaishely is one of several men sending their families away from run-down Roslyakovo on the Barents Sea, to escape the radiation risk they fear from the return of the 18,000-tonne wreck from the seabed.

"I'm not afraid for myself, you see," said Zaishely's wife Nina, as she left to stay with relatives in central Russia. "I fear for my baby, who has his whole life ahead of him and I'm responsible for his health.

"That is why we decided to leave this place and stay away until the situation becomes clear."

President Vladimir Putin has pledged to raise the Kursk to allow decent burials for the 118 crewmen who died on board and to try to find out what sank one of the Russia's most advanced submarines last August.

He also says Russia has an obligation to get the Kursk's two nuclear reactors off the seabed and out of busy fishing lanes used by Russia and its Scandinavian neighbours.

But the people of tiny Roslyakovo and many of the 380,000 residents along the coast in Murmansk - the largest city above the Arctic Circle - say the salvage jeopardises their future.

"There have been several emergency situations during ordinary repair work on ships and submarines in dock," Zaishely said. "But to move a submarine with such damage to the dock safely... well, I think it could be dangerous."

Officials insist the project is safe and have erected an electronic sign in Roslyakovo to display radiation levels. They say they have a contingency plan to bus residents to Murmansk should any radiation problems arise.

But the locals are unconvinced.

"What that electronic board shows is rubbish," said local man Edik Kononchuk. "The real levels are different."

RELATIVES WANT ACTION ON BOTCHED RESCUE

Russia has promised to make the salvage a model of media openness, after facing withering criticism last year for its confused handling of the nation's worst submarine disaster.

The navy initially took two days to reveal a "malfunction" on board Kursk, then delivered a rash of contradictory statements while refusing to accept foreign help in the attempted rescue of any surviving crew.

A note found on the body of Dmitry Kolesnikov, one of a dozen men whose bodies were brought to the surface last autumn, showed that some of the crew had survived for at least a few hours after two explosions in the Kursk's torpedo bay.

"The people guilty of not saving them should be punished," Kolesnikov's father Roman told Ekho Moskvy radio this week, adding that many victims' relatives had signed a letter to Putin and the Prosecutor General asking them to open a criminal case over the matter.

Some in Roslyakovo said the authorities were taking more risks to try to atone for last year's mistakes.

"We fear for our kids but where could we go?" said resident Anna Zvezdina, adding that not everyone could afford to leave town like the Zaishely family.

Olga Lapina, another local woman, said the future was bleak.

"Soon people in this town will start dying off like flies and no one will tell us the reason."

-------- treaties

Kremlin Willing to Review Missile Accords, Aide Says

New York Times
September 7, 2001
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/07/international/europe/07MISS.html?searchpv=nytToday

MOSCOW, Sept. 6 - A senior Russian official said today that Moscow was willing to consider amendments to the "present-day system of agreements on strategic stability" with the United States, but he insisted that the Antiballistic Missile Treaty of 1972 had to be preserved in negotiations that were quite likely to be long- term and complex.

The statement, carried by the Interfax news agency, was in response to reports from Washington that quoted a senior administration official who suggested that Russia was on the verge of accepting an American proposal to amend the ABM treaty and allow more rigorous American missile shield tests.

The back-and-forth megaphone diplomacy between Moscow and Washington over Mr. Bush's plans and the constraints imposed by the treaty have been increasing against the backdrop of intense pressure from the White House to win Russian concessions on the treaty in a matter of months. Concessions would spare Mr. Bush the risky step of withdrawing from the treaty unilaterally, an act that many European leaders and members of Congress oppose.

In recent days, Russia has avoided repeating earlier warnings that a decision to withdraw would negate 30 years of arms control accords and force Russia to maintain multiple warheads on its current arsenal of strategic missiles, as well as planning a new generation of missile with multiple warheads.

Experts here said Moscow's restraint was intended to keep international attention focused on the choice facing Mr. Bush to go it alone in the new strategic era or to work jointly with Europe, Russia and China to build a new strategic framework.

A senior administration official, briefing reporters on Wednesday in Washington, asserted that the Russian leadership saw the American deployment of missile defenses as inevitable and that therefore President Vladimir V. Putin and President Bush might reach a tentative agreement by November that would allow the Pentagon to go ahead with new missile defense tests.

Russia made clear today that this was not likely to be the case. Rather, the senior official said, time-consuming consultations "to clarify each other's positions on security matters of the 21st century" and for jointly drafting proposals for a new strategic framework lie ahead, to be followed by concrete negotiations. The talks would have to take into account the concerns of the other major nuclear powers, China, France and Britain, he said.

Since mid-August, Russian officials have said they did not think such negotiations on a strategic framework could even begin until the end of the year, after Washington had completed a review of its strategic forces and after a full-scale consultation on strategic issues had been completed between Russia and the United States.

A Kremlin aide, Oleg Chernov, reiterated that position on Wednesday in an interview with The Washington Post, saying it would be impossible for the United States and Russia to complete both consultations and then negotiations by November, when Mr. Bush will be host to Mr. Putin at his ranch in Crawford, Tex.

Russian officials first elaborated their view of that timetable three weeks ago in meetings with the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, John R. Bolton, when he visited Moscow for a round of consultations set out by Mr. Bush and Mr. Putin in their summit meetings this summer.

"A specific talk with Washington" on strategic arms reduction "and ABM issues can be started no earlier than the end of this year," a Foreign Ministry official told reporters upon Mr. Bolton's arrival.

By the time Mr. Bolton left Moscow, he had tried to push this time frame forward, telling Russian officials that the Bush administration wanted an agreement from Moscow to amend the ABM treaty by the time the presidents met in November. The next day, Mr. Bolton said that he had not meant to impose any deadline.

But Mr. Bush said two days later that the United States would "withdraw from the ABM treaty on our own timetable at a time convenient to America." He added that he had no "specific timetable in mind."

The Americans have also said they do not want to be accused of violating the treaty as they plan radar complexes and silos for missile interceptors in the spring in Alaska. The treaty requires six months' notice by the party wishing to withdraw.

The senior Russian official who responded today was identified only as a "highly placed military-diplomatic" official by Interfax.

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

New Test Makes Spotting Deadly Beryllium Dust Easier

September 7, 2001
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/sep2001/2001L-09-07-03.html

LOS ALAMOS, New Mexico, Detecting hazardous beryllium on surfaces is now as simple as testing the acidity of a swimming pool, due to the work of scientists at the Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

Beryllium is a rare element that is extracted from the earth, refined and reduced to a very fine powder. Because of the dangers associated with inhaling beryllium dust, the Department of Energy (DOE) has adopted a limit for workplace beryllium exposure.

Los Alamos researchers Tammy Taylor and Nan Sauer have developed a test for beryllium that compares a color change to known standards, similar to the common litmus test for measuring the acidity of a water solution. The test allows real-time detection of beryllium contamination on surfaces.

The new beryllium detection technique involves wiping the surfaces of the lab with a prepared pad and then adding a solution. If the pad turns blue, beryllium is present; if it remains orange, then the surface is free of significant contamination.

Worker holds up a swipe that is free of beryllium contamination. (Photo courtesy Los Alamos National Laboratory)

Keeping workplace surfaces clean helps minimize the potential for worker exposure. People exposed to beryllium dust or fumes can develop chronic beryllium disease, an incurable lung ailment.

Taylor presented details of the new swipe detection method at the 222nd national meeting of the American Chemical Society in Chicago late last month.

Beryllium is widely used in aerospace, computer, sporting goods, electronics and in nuclear weapons applications because of its unique materials properties. The metal is lighter than aluminum, stiffer than steel, remains solid at high temperatures and can absorb large amounts of heat.

Breathing fine particulate beryllium triggers an autoimmune response in an estimated one to six percent of exposed individuals that can result in chronic beryllium disease (CBD), a debilitating and sometimes fatal disease. Currently there is no cure for CBD. The dust is generated from the handling of beryllium powder or from the grinding of beryllium ceramics.

There is no known safe level of beryllium exposure and minimal exposures to beryllium have been shown to cause chronic beryllium disease in susceptible individuals. Even household family members of individuals who work with beryllium can develop CBD from exposure to dust on a worker's clothing. So people working with beryllium must minimize exposure and establish rigorous housekeeping practices.

Taylor and Sauer realized in order to do their research efficiently and with the highest degree of safety they needed to develop a rapid test to assess beryllium contamination.

"When we began working with beryllium in our labs, we wanted to take every safety precaution because of the risks associated with beryllium work," said Taylor, who developed the beryllium swipe technique. "We wanted to develop a quick test to say whether our area was clean and it was safe to perform experiments. The beryllium swipe technique will permit beryllium workers to monitor surfaces in their work environment thoroughly on a regular basis at minimal expense and without delays or excessive lost work time due to waiting for test results."

Beryllium copper and beryllium nickel golf clubs (Photo courtesy )

The present method for detecting beryllium in the workplace is costly and time consuming. It may take days or weeks to obtain results of laboratory analysis. In many cases work cannot be performed until results come back indicating beryllium levels are below the acceptable surface contamination limit.

Taylor's beryllium colorimetric test is not meant to replace the existing method that can quantify the amount of beryllium on a surface, but to allow a worker to get a quick, qualitative result indicating the effectiveness of housekeeping efforts and contamination control. The new method is expected to cut down on the number of samples sent for costly quantitative analysis.

Gary Whitney, an industrial hygienist at Los Alamos who conducts beryllium monitoring, said, "This test has the potential to give us preliminary information very quickly and at low cost. We are in the process of seeing if this could be developed into a more quantitative method and not just a quick screening method. I have conducted some preliminary side-by-side tests using Taylor's technique and the quantitative analytical technique. The initial results look promising."

Preparing the pads and performing the detection test for beryllium are simple tasks. The pads are soaked in two solutions, dried and then used to wipe the potentially contaminated surface. After wiping, the pad is treated with another solution and formation of a blue color indicates beryllium. The whole process takes less than an hour and the materials for each test cost less than a dollar.

"We've conducted this test with a variety of potential interferences like cutting fluids [used in machining metals], mineral oil, common household cleansers and dust to see if they interact with the beryllium and give a false negative," said Taylor. "We've also done the test with other metals that may be present in the machine shops or at beryllium contaminated sites to make sure that the pads don't register false positives."

The beryllium test developed at Los Alamos builds upon an earlier beryllium measuring technique developed by Russian scientists.

Electronics components containing beryllium (Photo courtesy Leader Tech)

Department of Energy rules on beryllium have established surface contamination limits for beryllium work areas and equipment. The detection technique developed by Taylor is sensitive enough to allow detection of beryllium on surfaces within these limits.

The test may also save the government money that might otherwise have to be paid to workers exposed to beryllium under The Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act signed into law last year. The program, established after the Energy Department accepted responsibility for exposing thousands of workers to radioactive materials during the Cold War, covers workers who came in contact with beryllium.

The program offers one time $150,000 payments and lifetime medical coverage to nuclear workers and others made ill by the government's nuclear weapons program. Any workers who developed chronic beryllium disease after working at any Energy Department sites where beryllium was used will get coverage if they died or were disabled. Those found to have beryllium sensitivity will be covered for regular medical screenings, but not for the $150,000 pay out.

Eligible to apply for benefits are workers at Department of Energy facilities; atomic weapons employers involved in the production of nuclear weapons under contract to the Energy Department or its predecessor agencies; and beryllium vendors, companies that sold beryllium metal or parts to the Department of Energy or its predecessor agencies.

Los Alamos National Laboratory is operated by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration.

DOE Chronic Beryllium Disease Prevention Program: http://www.tis.eh.doe.gov/be/index.html-ssi
DOE Office of Worker Advocacy: http://www.eh.doe.gov/advocacy/
Beryllium Support Group: http://www.dimensional.com/%7Emhj/index.html

-------- new york

Con Edison Sells Indian Point 2, Its Last Major Electricity Plant

New York Times
September 7, 2001
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/07/nyregion/07NUKE.html?searchpv=nytToday

WHITE PLAINS, Sept. 6 - The Indian Point 2 nuclear plant, owned for nearly 30 years by Consolidated Edison, was officially sold today to the Entergy Corporation. Entergy promptly installed new managers and weighed the possibility of shutting the troubled plant for repairs.

Indian Point 2 was the final major power plant to be sold by Con Edison under the state's plan to create a competitive wholesale electricity market. Con Edison is now largely a distributor of power to its 3.1 million customers in New York City and Westchester. It buys power from an array of private companies.

The deal was concluded around noon at a Manhattan law office, where executives and lawyers from Con Edison and Entergy signed about 200 documents closing the sale. The 800 union workers at the plant in Buchanan, N.Y., 35 miles north of Manhattan, then became Entergy employees.

Entergy immediately addressed the management of the plant, which regulators had criticized for tardy repairs and lax maintenance. The company put in place two top managers from its other nuclear plants. Fred Dacimo, who was plant operations manager at Indian Point 3, will be the vice president at Indian Point 2 in charge of overall operations. Larry Temple, who had worked at the Millstone plant in Connecticut, will be the manager of Indian Point 2.

They replaced three Con Edison managers who had been offered other positions with Entergy but declined to take them, said Larry Gottlieb, a spokesman for Entergy. He added that Entergy is considering other management changes as well.

Mr. Gottlieb said Entergy was also considering a shutdown of the plant, for an unspecified short period of time, in the near future to make repairs. The plant is scheduled for a shutdown next year for refueling, which would normally be an opportunity to make major repairs. But Entergy engineers who have been monitoring the plant have listed projects that the company should consider doing sooner.

The New York Public Service Commission and the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved the transfer of the plant's license last week. The commission, however, has scheduled a hearing for late next month in response to critics of the sale who have questioned Entergy's financial means to operate the plant.

An administrative law judge will take testimony at the hearing that will be sent to the commission for a decision, probably in early 2002. If the commission rules against Entergy, the license for the plant could revert to Con Edison, making it legally responsible for the plant's operation, said Diane Screnci, a spokeswoman for the N.R.C.

Entergy, which paid a total of $528 million - down from the original price of $602 million - for Indian Point 2, the long-dormant Indian Point 1, and nuclear fuel and fuel oil, has said that it has the wherewithal to operate the plant. It said it would share resources with the eight other nuclear plants it operates, including two it bought from the New York Power Authority last year, Indian Point 3 and James A. FitzPatrick, near Scriba, N.Y.

Although Con Edison has maintained that Indian Point 2 is safe and has saved consumers millions of dollars in fuel costs, the plant has encountered a string of accidents and mishaps since it went into operation on June 26, 1973.

Five months after the plant opened, it was shut down, after engineers discovered buckling in the steel liner of the concrete dome in which the nuclear reactor is housed. More recently, in the most serious incident at the plant, a small radioactive leak from a steam tube forced the plant to close in February 2000 for 11 months. In recent months, a series of leaks have sprung up in nonnuclear parts of the plant.

That troubled history has long concerned antinuclear groups, environmentalists and elected officials. The N.R.C. hearing was urged by an antinuclear group, the Westchester Citizens Awareness Network; the town of Cortlandt; and the Hendrick Hudson school district.

Con Edison has sold all but a few of its power plants. The remaining plants, which are all in New York City and which will remain in Con Edison's hands, primarily serve its steam customers, but they also generate modest amounts of electricity, which will be sold on the wholesale market, said Michael Clendenin, a spokesman for Con Edison.

-------- us nuc politics

Kucinich to Introduce Congressional Bill on October 2, 2001 to Ban Space-based Weapons

From: "ICIS - institute for cooperation in space" <csr@peaceinspace.com>
Fri, 7 Sep 2001 13:42:54 -0700
CONTACT: Dr. Carol Rosin TEL: 805-641-1999

WASHINGTON, D.C. - On Tuesday, October 2, 2001 Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio) will introduce into the U.S. Congress land-mark legislation to ban space-based weapons.

About his space-based weapons bill Kucinich says, "We signed the ABM treaty nearly 30 years ago; which requires a reduction in strategic arms, nuclear disarmament and general and complete disarmament. Weaponization of space clearly violates that treaty. My bill will call for an immediate and permanent termination of research, testing, manufacturing, production and deployment of all space-based weapons systems and components by any person, agency or contractor of the U.S. government."

A ban on space-based weapons is supported by three long-time proponents of peace in space, all directors of the Institute for Cooperation in Space (ICIS), a nonprofit foundation. ICIS was formed: (1) to focus attention on this legislation and a forthcoming world treaty to ban all space-based weapons, (2) to transform the space-based weapons industry into a world cooperative space industry, (3) to apply alternative energy and other technologies to solving urgent and potential human and the environmental problems, and (4) to educate about who we are in relation to the universe though the MISSION POSSIBLE plan of action.

Dr. Carol Rosin, President of ICIS, a former educator, space and missile defense consultant, aerospace executive and spokesperson for the late Dr. Wernher von Braun, "father of rocketry," has testified before the US Congress and international leaders. According to Military Space (July '84) "Rosin is regarded to be the original political architect of the move to stop the SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative) and ASATs (Anti- satellite weapons)."

Rosin says, "We've learned that stating the dangers, costs, and fallacies of the space-based weapon system will not stop them from being researched and developed, whether it is called the SDI, NMD, BMD or Star Wars. We've heard the ever-changing rationales for why this system is supposedly needed. In fact, under the guise of 'national security' and 'it's only research(!)' this has become the largest R&D program in history. We are calling for just the removal of the mandate to weaponize space and, simultaneously, for continued non-space- based weapons civil, military and commercial space R&D, applications and exploration."

"This bill will soon become U.S. law, and a forthcoming world treaty will enact the world law to ban space-based weapons," Rosin says. "The timing is right. Everyone and everything is in place. It will be easy to transform the space-based weapons industry into a cooperative world space industry that will stimulate the economy, create new jobs and training programs, and expand a strong national and global security system based on a world cooperation.

"We can have space battle stations and weapons pointed towards earth and into space, or we can build space habitats, hospitals, schools, farms, laboratories, industries, hotels and resorts, elevators and craft that will free us to explore the universe to find out more about ourselves and our neighbors. Imagine the exciting opportunities and benefits that will be made available to all. It's our choice," Rosin concludes.

ICIS Co-Director and General Counsel, Daniel Sheehan, a Harvard Law School graduate, is famous for an impressive body of legal work including the Karen Silkwood case, Pentagon Papers case, Three Mile Island, and the Iran Contra case, and Mr. Sheehan successfully represented Harvard psychiatrist John Mack in a tenure review process.

Commenting on a ban on space-based weapons, Sheehan says, "During my thirty years in the field of public interest law and public policy, I have supervised professional investigations into the illegal smuggling of weapons-grade plutonium, the illegal supply of arms to terrorist organizations by covert operations and government agents, and into ultra-"black" weapons programs unknown even to the most trusted congressional officials," says ICIS General Counsel and Co-Director Daniel Sheehan. "I have come to believe that keeping weapons out of inter-planetary space is the most important contribution we can make to the future of this planet. The time to begin this task is now."

ICIS Co-Director Alfred Webre, a Yale Law School graduate and former delegate to the UNISPACE Conference in Vienna, Austria, says "The forthcoming Kucinich legislation represents a major cooperative world space development."

Webre adds, "On July 26, the same date that Congressperson Kucinich announced his forthcoming bill to ban space-based weapons, the Foreign Minister of Canada, John Manley, announced in Hanoi that 'Canada would be very happy...to launch an initiative to see an international convention preventing the weaponization of space.' Congressman Kucinich reciprocated the Canadian initiative stating, 'I am pleased with the recent news from our neighbor to the north that Canada is ready to join an international effort to prohibit weapons in space.' "

CONTACT: Dr. Carol Rosin, ICIS - Institute for Cooperation in Space A (501-C-3) non-profit Foundation P.O. Box 25040, Ventura, CA. 93001 Tel: 805-641-1999 Fax: 805-641-9669 Email: rosin@west.net Website: http://www.peaceinspace.com

KEY LINKS:
Peace Action Center: Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich website http://www.house.gov/kucinich/action/peace.htm

----

WHITE HOUSE REFUSES TO RELEASE ENERGY DOCUMENTS

September 7, 2001
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/sep2001/2001L-09-07-09.html

WASHINGTON, DC, The Bush administration confirmed Thursday that it will not cooperate with Congressional efforts to learn who Vice President Richard Cheney met with while crafting the administration's national energy plan.

In July, the General Accounting Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, demanded that Cheney release the names of everyone he consulted during the development of the Bush administration's energy plan.

In April, the GAO was asked by Democratic Representatives John Dingell of Michigan and Henry Waxman of California to look into the process Cheney used to solicit comments during the formation of the Bush administration's national energy plan. Congressional Democrats and environmental groups have criticized the planning process for catering to energy industry representatives and largely excluding environmental interests.

The demand letter issued by the GAO is one of just 31 ever issued by the GAO to an administration, and is the first to be sent to a vice president or president. Cheney's office was given 20 days to produce the information or offer a statement that releasing the requested information would "impair substantially the operations of the government."

The GAO is now likely to sue the White House for the documents, although it is not clear whether the agency would win the suit. The vice president's lawyer has questioned the GAO's authority to demand the information, and the authority of the two Congress members to request the GAO investigation.

The White House could also argue that releasing the requested information would "impair substantially the operations of the government."


-------- MILITARY

-------- africa

President taps Danforth as peace envoy to Sudan

September 7, 2001
By Joseph Curl
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010907-673356.htm

President Bush yesterday appointed former Sen. John C. Danforth of Missouri to be America's peace envoy to warring Sudan, the oil-rich North African country ravaged by an 18-year civil war that the president has called a "disaster area for all human rights."

In a Rose Garden ceremony that included a former Sudanese slave, Mr. Bush said the world can no longer ignore the atrocities occurring in Sudan.

"The [Sudan] government has targeted civilians for violence and terror. It permits and encourages slavery. And the responsibility to end the war is on their shoulders. They must now seek the peace, and we want to help," Mr. Bush said.

By appointing Mr. Danforth, a 65-year-old ordained minister, Mr. Bush said he hoped to bring "some sanity" to the crisis in Sudan, where Christian and animist groups have been fighting the Muslim government for autonomy.

Mr. Danforth acknowledged he is not an expert on Sudan, but said his mission is to encourage - not dictate - peace.

"The possibility of peace depends on the will of combatants, not on the actions of even the best-intentioned outsiders, including the United States. Perhaps America can encourage peace; we cannot cause it," said Mr. Danforth, who last year ended an inquiry into the 1993 deaths of 80 Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, that concluded the FBI did not start the fatal fire.

He plans to visit Sudan by November and hopes to decide within six months whether detailed peace talks - or stronger actions - are necessary.

Critics say the appointment falls short of what is needed: A firm demand that the northern Khartoum regime stop ethnic cleansing in the south and that China be held accountable for its involvement in the war, which has left nearly 2 million people dead.

"There's concern that this will be just another peace process. ... I didn't hear [Mr. Bush] say today in the Rose Garden exactly what Danforth is going to Sudan to say," said Charles Jacobs, president of the American Anti-Slavery Group.

"I did not hear him say, 'Go there to Khartoum and say "Free the slaves."' I just heard talk, envoys," Mr. Jacobs said.

He said the real target in Sudan are the Iranians and Chinese, who are providing weapons to the armies in the north to protect Petro China's oil interests in the south.

Mr. Jacobs also faulted the Bush administration for opposing legislation that includes an amendment to bar foreign oil companies doing business in Sudan from listing on U.S. stock exchanges. The amendment, sponsored by Rep. Spencer Bachus, Alabama Republican, is part of the Sudan Peace Act, passed by both chambers and now in conference.

"Wall Street has organized a tremendous attack on the Bachus amendment, and we're afraid if it loses, then Danforth will have nothing in his back pocket to press Khartoum about. Now it's time for the stock market to say we will not allow American capital to be used for genocide and slavery," he said.

Sen. Sam Brownback, a Foreign Relations Committee member and a leader on issues involving Sudan, said Mr. Bush must take a firmer hand with China than the previous administration.

"That involves really stepping up your China policy, and not being afraid to confront the Chinese. ... If you don't do it now, you're going to pay for it more later."

Still, Mr. Brownback said he is pleased the White House has raised the stature of the envoy to Sudan in the appointment of Mr. Danforth.

"We've had several special envoys on the Sudan, and it's just not elevated the discussion in this country or internationally to the degree we need to. I think this is an important step."

-------- arms sales

Israel buys 52 more US jet-fighters

Friday, 7 September, 2001,
BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_1531000/1531098.stm

Israel has signed a contract to receive 52 F-16I fighter-bombers from the US firm Lockheed Martin having bought 50 of the aircraft last year.

The deal comes as an amendment to the original January 2000 deal, which gave Israel the option to purchase more of the planes.

Lockheed Martin will deliver the same two-seat F-16I configuration as in the previous order, with deliveries expected to start in 2006 and end in 2009.

The funding for the $2 billion contract will come from the US military aid budget, which awards that amount to Israel on an annual basis.

Correspondents say the F-16I is considered one of the most advanced fighter-bombers in the world and has been equipped with advanced fuel tanks that extend its range.

Major importers

With an aerial arsenal already including an estimated 250 F-16s, Israel has the largest fleet of of the aircraft outside of the US. Egypt has the second-largest foreign F-16 fleet.

"Israel's sixth acquisition of F-16s demonstrates their continued confidence in the F-16I to satisfy their future defence needs," Lockheed Martin president Dain Hancock said.

The first planes from the earlier order are due to be delivered in 2003.

The agreement covers aircraft, logistics support, training, and other services.

The new planes will include a number of systems produced by local Israeli companies, Lockheed Martin said.

-------- balkans

Europe Ponders New Force for Macedonia
NATO Reluctant to Extend Its Mandate After Rebels' Weapons Are Collected

By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, September 7, 2001; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54538-2001Sep6?language=printer

PARIS, Sept. 6 -- European diplomats and military planners have concluded that some kind of foreign troop presence in Macedonia will probably be needed after the NATO disarmament mission there ends late this month. Otherwise, they fear, the Balkan country's shaky peace deal could unravel and civil strife may resume.

Officially, NATO is still committed to ending its operation based on a strict 30-day deadline, once weapons have been collected from ethnic Albanian insurgents and Macedonia's parliament approves a new power-sharing accord.

But in European capitals, the question has largely moved on from whether there will be a post-NATO presence to what kind, under what flag, for what duration, and with what mandate. Among the options is a force assembled by the European Union or United Nations.

The U.S. position on what could become a third long-term peacekeeping force in the Balkans remains unclear. But a Bush administration official said today that Washington might be willing to continue the logistical support it is giving to the disarmament mission.

"What is clear is that the European Union and the international community will remain engaged in Macedonia," said a spokeswoman for Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief. "The discussion of flags depends on what needs to be done." She said that there was no European agreement yet on what to do.

The 4,000 NATO troops now in Macedonia are led by a British contingent. The force has already taken custody of about 1,100 of the 3,300 weapons the rebels have declared they have. Today the Macedonian parliament, after days of divisive debate, voted to begin constitutional changes aimed at increasing ethnic Albanian rights; under the peace plan, the rebels are meant to respond to that vote by handing over to NATO the second of three installments of 1,100 weapons.

The end of the collection is supposed to set off a lengthy reconciliation process to be monitored by observers from the European Union and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Those observers will be unarmed in a potentially still dangerous country, raising the question of who will provide for their security.

This week the U.S. envoy for Macedonia, James Pardew, told BBC Radio that under the peace agreement, the monitors "would not be armed, and that does raise the question . . . whether there should be an extension of the military mandate."

The Bush administration official said the focus now is on ensuring that the current operation is completed successfully. But there is no reason why the intelligence, airlift and logistical support the United States is now providing could not be continued if necessary, the official said.

"I haven't heard anyone say -- absolutely no way, no how," the official said, adding that consultations must take place with NATO to "see what's required."

A senior Defense Department official said that so far no one at the Pentagon had been asked to consider a contribution to a peacekeeping force in Macedonia.

NATO remains publicly opposed to extending its operation, called Essential Harvest. It is reluctant to be dragged into another open-ended stay in the Balkans. NATO now leads 20,000 peacekeeping troops in Bosnia and another 40,000 in Kosovo with no prospects for an early exit.

The guerrillas in Macedonia have let it be known they want NATO troops to stay to help protect the minority ethnic Albanian communities from a feared government assault, and one rebel leader threatened to remobilize if the Western troops pull out. Macedonia's hard-line interior minister, Ljube Boskovski, has hinted of a new crackdown after the NATO arms-collection mission.

According to reports from Macedonia today, British troops intervened to prevent a paramilitary unit of Macedonian Slavs from clashing with armed ethnic Albanian civilians, following an incident in which an ethnic Albanian police officer was fired on.

One frequently mentioned idea is for forces from interested countries -- a "coalition of the willing" -- to be deployed using NATO assets, so the mission would not technically be a NATO operation.

The most concrete proposal so far has come from the EU representative for Macedonia, Francois Leotard, who was quoted during a visit to Moscow as calling for a pan-European force of 1,500 troops and saying he had already suggested the idea to several European countries. But a top EU diplomat cautioned that there is no decision.

Another option might be for the United Nations to replace NATO in a security role. Francois Heisbourg, a French defense expert, recalled how the world body's 1,100-member Preventive Deployment Force helped keep Balkans violence out of Macedonia in the 1990s.

Foreign ministers will meet informally this weekend in Brussels to begin talks on several possibilities.

In the meantime, political leaders from NATO countries are hedging about what will come next. Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, visited Macedonia last week and said the plan was still for the troops to leave once the rebel arms were collected. But he added: "Nothing, particularly in the Balkans, is inevitable. If you are asking me whether that NATO decision may change, well, it could change."

"There's almost a consensus that there will be a need for a continuing international presence -- the question is which one," said a Danish Foreign Ministry official. Among the unknown factors weighing on any decision, he said, was how the situation develops on the ground in Macedonia. A Danish general commands the current mission.

Col. Konrad Freytag, a spokesman for the Allied headquarters in Brussels, said in a telephone interview that NATO was ready to do what its governments decided. "We tell our political masters, 'If you want us to do something after 30 days, tell us soon.' "

Staff writer Vernon Loeb contributed to this report from Washington.

--------

NATO troops in Macedonia collect weapons

09/07/2001
The Associated Press
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001/09/07/macedonia.htm

SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) - NATO resumed collecting weapons from ethnic Albanian rebels Friday after Macedonia's parliament overwhelmingly backed a peace plan to end the armed conflict in return for upgrading minority rights.

There were no immediate details on the number or type of arms being surrendered in the second phase, which aims to take about 1,100 weapons, said a NATO spokesman, Maj. Barry Johnson.

British and Dutch troops with NATO's Operation Essential Harvest set up a collection site in the rebel-held village of Radusa, nine miles northwest of Skopje and close to the border with Kosovo. Maj. Johnson said the arms gathering was "running smoothly."

The peace plan is a Western-sponsored, step-by-step process that involves rebels' voluntarily surrendering arms to NATO in phases, to be followed by parliamentary approval of legislation to grant more rights to the ethnic Albanians.

The rebels, known as the National Liberation Army, began an insurgency in February that they said was aimed at winning more rights for the ethnic Albanians, a third of the country's 2 million people.

Lawmakers on Thursday finally buckled to international pressure and voted 91-19 in favor of changing the constitution to improve ethnic Albanian rights. The vote ended a weeklong, impassioned parliamentary debate that had threatened to stall the peace process.

The alliance has already taken more than a third of the 3,300-piece rebel arsenal to be surrendered this month. In the second phase, NATO plans to collect another third of the arsenal, or about 1,100 weapons.

After that comes what many see as the deal's main hitch. Lawmakers must wrestle with 36 specific constitutional amendments for greater political and language rights for the ethnic Albanians. The final cache of rebel weapons will not be taken until after parliament passes the constitutional changes.

Hardline Macedonian legislators are expected to push for changes in the draft amendments that could undermine the extent of planned reforms.

"There is a new tendency in the second phase, some people want to change the meaning, the contents of the amendments," said ethnic Albanian leader Arben Xhaferi. "We will not accept this game."

Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign affairs chief, urged "as few changes as possible."

"The agreement should be considered as a whole. ... The most intelligent thing would be that no changes are made," Solana said Friday in Skopje.

Earlier, the assembly vote drew only praise. NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson called it a "historic decision" that helps "bring their country back from the brink of war."

The peace process also calls for an amnesty for demobilized rebels, excluding those who could face war crimes prosecution. The rebels, now in control of large swaths of the dominantly ethnic Albanian northwest, are meant to disband and return to normal life.

EU Commissioner Chris Patten predicted the parliament decision would help boost EU aid and encourage pledges at donor conferences.

The EU has already put together $27 million to repair damage caused by the recent fighting and is considering speeding up the handover of an additional $44 million package to bolster state finances.

Patten on Friday signed a separate financial agreement with Macedonian officials for a $38 million aid package for 2001, mainly for infrastructure projects, agriculture, economic and judiciary reforms and the environment. Some of the funds will go to emergency reconstruction of villages damaged in recent fighting.

Many Macedonians believe the ethnic Albanian rebels are only handing in outdated hardware to NATO. On Friday, some of them mocked the NATO mission in a street performance.

Sticking fuses into giant watermelons to represent their most powerful weapon, the protesters said they would hand over the fruit to the alliance in a symbolic show of disarmament.

--------

Court rules no genocide in Kosovo

KATHIMERINI (Greece)
ATHENS, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2001
SOUTHEASTERN EUROPE
http://www.ekathimerini.com/news/content.asp?id=98639

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AFP) - Kosovo's highest legal body has ruled that genocide was not committed during the 1998-99 Serbian crackdown on the breakaway province, according to a court decision released yesterday. The UN-supervised Supreme Court, however, ruled that crimes against humanity and war crimes had been carried out during "a systematic campaign of terror, including murders, rapes, arson and severe maltreatments." "The exactions committed by (former Yugoslav president Slobodan) Milosevic's regime cannot be qualified as criminal acts of genocide, since their purpose was not the destruction of the Albanian ethnic group... but its forceful departure from Kosovo," said the province's Supreme Court. The ruling overturns an earlier genocide conviction by a district court in Mitrovica, northern Kosovo, handed down to Serb Miroslav Vuckovic for atrocities committed against ethnic Albanians during NATO's bombing campaign in the spring of 1999. That was the first guilty genocide verdict in Kosovo but it was called into doubt by Europe's security body, the OSCE, which called for a review, while Vuckovic also appealed against the conviction. The Supreme Court is under the authority of the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and the five-member panel that issued the decision is presided over by an international judge. The Mitrovica District Court found Vuckovic, a member of a Serb paramilitary group, guilty of having "sacked and burnt houses and shops in the villages of Gusavac and Gornjisuvido and of having expelled the Albanian population," according to UNMIK. Vuckovic, 52, was given a 14-year jail term and has been behind bars in Mitrovica since August 23, 1999. He was remanded in custody and will be given a retrial by the Mitrovica court. The 1948 United Nations Convention defines genocide as the intent "to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such."

-------- biological weapons

Secret Weapon Research

New York Times
September 7, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/07/opinion/L07WEAP.html?searchpv=nytToday

To the Editor:

Your revelations about the United States' secret biological weapons research (front page, Sept. 4) recall the most tragic chapters in the development of nuclear weapons. Once again, in the name of pursuing a worst-case scenario of what an enemy could do to us, we ourselves take the lead in developing new weapons that endanger all. Our program only legitimizes others.

There is a particular fallacy in genetically engineering new strains of disease. Biological diversity makes it unlikely that an enemy's creation would exactly match ours. Thus, any vaccine we develop will be useful only with our own germ - for example, protecting our troops if we used the germ offensively.

Whatever its intent, the military's program is objectively offensive and indefensible.

DAVID KEPPEL Bloomington, Ind., Sept. 4, 2001

--------

U.S. Prepping for Possible Germ Warfare

Friday September 07 06:13 AM EDT
By John McWethy ABCNEWS.com
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/abc/20010907/wl/germwarfare010904_1.html

In a remote corner of the Nevada desert, a highly restricted area once used to test nuclear bombs, the U.S. government has been running a secret experiment called Project Bachus.

It is a small germ warfare factory, set up inside an abandoned government building. U.S. officials say they built it to better understand how to detect similar operations in places like Iraq or Afghanistan (news - web sites) or even by terrorists here at home.

The factory, built by the Pentagon (news - web sites)'s Defense Threat Reduction Agency, has been brought to full production for several weeks on two occasions - in 1999 and again in 2000. Technicians grew several pounds of a harmless bacterium with characteristics similar to deadly anthrax.

"A terrorist could easily grow anthrax in a facility like this," Jay Davis, who was DTRA director at the time the factory was built, said in an interview at the one-time classified facility, "and produce enough quantity in a covert delivery to kill, say, 10,000 people in a large city."

The DTRA team bought all materials for the small-scale laboratory from local hardware stores and the Internet. Included in their shopping list was a 50-liter fermenter purchased "used" from overseas. "Commercial item. Off the shelf," Davis said. "Easy to find."

At no time did any of the purchases cause law enforcement to be suspicious, Davis added.

'Fairly Concealable'

Asked if this was how a terrorist group might put together such a laboratory, Davis said: "A terrorist group would choose to do this, yes ... This is the size of thing you would be afraid a non-state group would do, either people in our country or people in some other country. This is fairly concealable."

The primary reason for conducting the experiment was to place sensors outside of the building to create what the intelligence community calls a "signature," according to intelligence sources. Once in operation, technicians measured heat changes, emissions that could be sampled in the air and soil as well as patterns of energy consumption.

"The ultimate product is knowledge," Davis said. Other officials say the primary customers for the knowledge were the CIA (news - web sites) and Defense Intelligence Agency, both agencies responsible for detecting an operation like this in other countries. Officials say the FBI (news - web sites) also was given data from the project.

And according to officials who supervised the project but asked not to be identified, what is so frightening about this top-secret project is that it shows that with the right technical knowledge, it is surprisingly easy to build and operate a small germ warfare factory. And worse, even with the most sophisticated sensors, it is extremely difficult to detect.

Proving Preparedness

The project was conducted in such extreme secrecy that some worry it might be misunderstood and seen as a violation of the international treaty that bans making germ weapons.

"I think there is a very delicate line that has to be drawn between the need to keep some kinds of information secret and the need to allay suspicions about what the country is up to," said Judith Miller, a reporter for the New York Times and co-author of a new book on biological warfare called Germs .

"People overseas will think that the United States may be secretly conducting an offensive weapons program, that we may be secretly trying to develop biological weapons," she said.

As for the Bush administration, Miller said: "I think that this administration wants to not only expand these projects, but intends to keep most of them secret."

Miller and other experts on biological weapons have been concerned that the supersecret U.S. projects would be misunderstood by other governments and might lead those governments to develop offensive biological weapons.

But the Pentagon agreed to show ABCNEWS this once-secret project. Sources say it's part of an effort to anticipate a threat that has the potential to kill on a scale only nuclear weapons could match.

-------- colombia

Gunmen Kill Leader of Peace Panel in Colombia

Reuters
Friday, September 7, 2001; Page A26
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54930-2001Sep6?language=printer

BOGOTA, Colombia, Sept. 6 -- Unidentified gunmen killed the leader of a Colombian congressional peace commission, shooting him at point-blank range in his garage after chasing him through the nation's capital, police said today.

Jairo Rojas, 37, who had set up the first meeting between President Andres Pastrana and the leader of Colombia's largest guerrilla force, the FARC, in 1998, was killed just two hours after sending his police bodyguards home on Wednesday evening.

"From the information I have, it appears that he realized they [the gunmen] were following him. He drove through the [closed] gates of [his garage] with his vehicle and they killed him," said Bogota's police chief, Gen. Jorge Linares.

An assistant of Rojas, a member of Pastrana's Conservative party, said the lawmaker had received multiple death threats.

"He had been the object of threats," said the assistant, Alberto Almonacid.

Rojas had taken over the peace commission following the December assassination of its president, Diego Turbay.

--------

Pastrana urges Bush to extend drug war

September 7, 2001
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010907-70369318.htm

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - President Andres Pastrana called yesterday for a review of the global war against drugs, saying it should extend beyond the U.S.-backed spraying of drug crops.

Mr. Pastrana - who is to meet here with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell next week - also said Washington's suspension of joint interdiction of drug flights with Colombia and Peru "has allowed a lot of drugs to pass over our territory because there is no control of our airspace."

The program was suspended after the accidental shooting down of a U.S. missionary plane over the Peruvian jungle in April. Mr. Pastrana urged the United States and its allies to establish a policy on interdiction.

"I think we can truly hit the heart of the [drug] business, through interdiction and not simply through fumigation," Mr. Pastrana told a small group of foreign reporters.

The fumigation of drug crops - mainly coca, from which cocaine is made - by U.S. State Department crop-dusters is the linchpin of Washington's $1.3 billion counternarcotics policy in Colombia, which makes most of the world's cocaine. But it has come under increasing fire recently amid allegations it is killing corn, potatoes and other crops that peasants grow for food.

Mr. Pastrana gave no indication that he would backtrack on the spraying, but said he wanted to focus on coca plantations that are protected and taxed by Marxist rebels and right-wing paramilitaries in Colombia.

Speaking with the reporters in the presidential palace, Mr. Pastrana said President Bush should organize an international conference to re-evaluate anti-drug strategies.

Wiping out drug crops has had some success, Mr. Pastrana said. But he said high drug demand in the United States and Europe makes the global narcotics business one of the largest in the world, worth some $500 billion annually.

Mr. Pastrana said the conference should look at past successes and "errors" of the global anti-drug strategy and should also focus on money laundering and nations that supply chemicals used to process cocaine.

-------- israel

A Cycle of Death in West Bank
Town Missile Attack, Shooting Are Latest in a Series of Revenge Killings

By Lee Hockstader
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, September 7, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54562-2001Sep6?language=printer

TULKARM, West Bank, Sept. 6 -- Raed Karmi's cell phone rang shortly after noon today and the news was dire: Israeli tanks were moving toward a nearby Palestinian refugee camp and a fight was underway. Karmi, 27, grabbed an M-16 assault rifle, jumped into a four-wheel drive vehicle with three friends and sped toward the camp.

About five minutes later, a pair of Israeli helicopter gunships hovering two miles away fired three antitank missiles at the vehicle. The first missed. Karmi and the driver leaped from the front seat and ran. The next two missiles were direct hits, demolishing the vehicle, tearing the two other passengers to pieces and sending shrapnel flying into Karmi's eye.

The attack, which Karmi survived, was the latest of several dozen Israeli operations to assassinate Palestinians accused of organizing or carrying out attacks against Israelis. Eleven months of clashes between Israelis and Palestinians have in large measure degenerated into an ugly back-and-forth of killings and retribution.

In and around this West Bank town, the string of revenge killings stretches back to last fall. They include the point-blank killing of two Israeli civilians in January, the assassination of a prominent local Palestinian politician on New Year's Eve and a smattering of ambushes and other incidents nearly a year ago. By this evening, yet another killing was added to the cycle: Palestinian gunmen avenging the attack on Karmi killed an Israeli soldier driving on a road just north of Tulkarm and injured a female soldier traveling with him.

Karmi, an official in Fatah, the main component of Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization, had no apologies for his part in the bloody exchanges. Tall and lanky, Karmi lay in his hospital bed a few hours after his scrape with death and described how he and three other gunmen kidnapped two Israelis as they finished lunch at a Tulkarm restaurant in January, drove them to a remote field and killed them execution-style.

That helped put Karmi on Israel's hit list. His name was prominently featured on a list of seven most-wanted Palestinians announced by Israel this summer.

In killing the two Israelis, Karmi and his companions were avenging the killing of Thabet Thabet, a prominent local political leader who was gunned down by Israeli soldiers in front of his home on New Year's Eve. One of Karmi's accomplices was Thabet's nephew, Masalma.

Karmi said the killings were justified. The two Israelis must have been special forces soldiers, he said, reasoning that they could not have entered Tulkarm otherwise. In fact, the two men owned a restaurant in Tel Aviv and had come to Tulkarm to buy supplies.

Israeli officials, for their part, said they were justified in killing Thabet. As head of the local Fatah chapter, he had been involved in organizing Palestinian fighters and terrorists who attacked Israelis last fall, the Israeli officials said. But Palestinians described Thabet, a dentist, as a voice of moderation and said he had a history of friendly relations with Israeli peace groups.

"Before the assassination of Dr. Thabet Thabet, it would've been difficult for us to do such a thing," Karmi said this afternoon, referring to the killings of the two Israelis. "He had asked us to use peaceful means. But after he was killed, we felt able to do it."

Not far from the medical clinic where he lay with bandages on his eye and hand, a loudspeaker blared from the window of a white sedan containing several bearded men.

"Israel's latest crime will be avenged!" cried one of the men.

The threat was not in vain. By 7 p.m. came news of the Israeli soldier's death.

An informal armed group affiliated with Fatah claimed responsibility in an announcement broadcast over loudspeakers in Tulkarm. The group said it shot the two soldiers inside Israel "to avenge the killing of the two martyrs in Tulkarm today."

And so it goes. After nearly a year of bloodshed, every action triggers a reaction, and each side is adamant that the other started it and perpetuates it.

Israel says its policy of assassination, which it prefers to call pinpoint liquidations, is designed to preempt further attacks by Palestinian gunmen and terrorists. Yet government officials acknowledge that the line between revenge and preemption can be imperceptible.

"If some guy is killing Israelis, we have to do something," an Israeli official said recently. "You can call it reprisal or justified killing or get him before he gets you or get even or anything you want. The point is, we can't do nothing."

Karmi was a prime target. After the two Israeli restaurateurs were killed, Palestinian authorities jailed him for four months. After his release, Israeli officials said, he went on a spree of violence, killing four other Israelis including a man buying groceries in a Palestinian town in May and a driver killed in June in a West Bank ambush.

"I will continue attacking Israelis," Karmi said evenly this afternoon, lying on a cot with portraits of Arafat and Thabet at his bedside.

As he greeted well-wishers and answered questions from two American reporters, Karmi fielded calls on his cell phone, giving brief interviews to Arab journalists. Inside the small clinic room, one bodyguard glanced through the window blinds toward the street, cradling his assault rifle. Two others kept watch over Karmi's visitors.

"I was at a friend's house when I got the phone call that the Israelis were attacking the Nur Shams refugee camp" just east of Tulkarm, he said. "The attack was a ploy aimed at getting me out into the open."

Karmi and his squad had driven scarcely a mile when the Israeli missiles struck. One of them missed the vehicle and struck the road with such force that it gouged a cylindrical hole in the pavement about eight feet deep. The others left the vehicle a barely recognizable heap of twisted metal and decapitated the two gunmen in the back seat, Omar Subuh and Mustafa Unbouth, both about 20 years old.

The blast also blew out the windows of shops and apartments for a half a block, sent shrapnel flying and badly injured at least one store employee who was sitting outside perhaps 30 yards from the point of impact.

"Tulkarm has been very quiet for several days. Everything was fine," said Mahmoud Jallad, 30, an American-educated manager for the local phone company. "But now the Israelis have started again, and someone on our side will react. The Israelis have some interest in doing this, some political need."

Israeli officials acknowledged that Karmi was the principal target and expressed their dismay at missing him. "Unfortunately, we did not achieve our main goal," Gideon Meir, an Israeli Foreign Ministry official, told the Associated Press.

The tit-for-tat killings cast a pall over the latest efforts to achieve a cease-fire. Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said in Italy that he would hold a long-postponed meeting with Arafat next week in the Middle East, a meeting that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell helped instigate with phone calls to both men. But few people here held out much hope that such a meeting could halt the violence anytime soon, least of all Karmi.

"Today it was not my day to die," he said. "After this I don't know. I'm not the only one who's targeted. All my brothers and comrades are targeted."

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

Army to retire 1,000 helicopters

09/07/2001
USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/sept01/2001-09-07-army.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Army is accelerating the retirement of its Vietnam-era attack and utility helicopters and will use the savings to improve the readiness of the remaining fleet.

The Army will retire about 400 helicopters from the active-duty force and about 600 from the National Guard and Army Reserve, Brig. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno said Friday.

All AH-1 Cobra helicopters will be out of the force by the end of this year and all UH-1 Hueys will be gone by 2004, he said. They are the oldest, least reliable and most expensive to maintain, he said. The Hueys are being retired six years earlier that previously planned.

Odierno said some details are yet to be worked out, including an estimate of how much money the Army expects to save by reducing the total fleet from 4,500 helicopters to 3,500.

By the end of 2004, the fleet will consist of four types: the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter, the UH-60 Blackhawk utility chopper, the OH-58 Kiowa scout helicopter and CH-47 Chinooks, used for airlift missions.

The Army also will restructure its aviation units so that National Guard and Reserve units will focus mainly on airlift missions and the active duty force will focus mainly on attack missions, Odierno said.

"These adjustments will improve our posture as a warfighting force," said Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff.

Some Apaches will be shifted from the active-duty force to the Guard and Reserve, Odierno said.

Odierno said the savings from eliminating hundreds of helicopters will be used to modernize the remaining fleet and to accelerate the timetable for buying the new-generation Comanche reconnaissance helicopter. He said details of the Comanche procurement plan are still being worked out, but the current goal of buying 62 per year will be expanded significantly. The first Comanches are due to come off the assembly line in 2006.

By ridding itself of its least reliable helicopters, while keeping the same number of helicopter maintenance people, the Army expects to greatly increase the readiness rate of its fleet, Odierno said. The Army current seeks to keep 75% of its helicopters available for flying each day, and it now hopes to increase that to 90% by 2004, he said.

--------

Senate Approves New Base Closings

September 7, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Defense-Budget.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Senate Armed Services Committee approved a new round of base closings in the face of certain opposition from the House, where members are wary of the disruption caused when an area loses a base.

Working behind closed doors, the committee on Friday approved on a rare, party-line, 13-12 vote a Democratic-written defense spending bill for fiscal year 2002, which begins Oct. 1. The bill would authorize President Bush's request for $328.9 billion for the Defense Department, an 11 percent increase over the current year.

But it would cut $1.3 billion out of Bush's $8.3 billion proposed missile defense budget, which is up $3 billion over this year's budget. In another party-line vote -- unusual in a committee that prides itself on its bipartisanship -- Democrats defeated an amendment by Sen. John Warner, R-Va., the panel's top Republican, to restore $1 billion to missile defense, said Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn.

The House Armed Services Committee's version of the bill, completed last month, left in the full $8.3 billion for missile defense as it authorized spending $328.9 billion for the Defense Department.

The measure also includes Democratic language that attempts to assert congressional control over spending on any activity that might violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty. Republicans derided the language but did not try to erase it in committee, vowing to fight it on the Senate floor instead.

``We need to affirm the president in his bipartisan foreign policy to proceed with a national missile defense and help him to succeed promptly in negotiations with the Russians,'' said Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala. ``I'm afraid we may wind up with language that would hamper'' that effort.

The committee approved one round of base closings, to occur in 2003, said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a supporter of such closings. The round would follow the same procedure as previous closings, with a special commission established to decide which bases should close. The vote was 17-8, with Democrats and Republicans voting on both sides of the issue, said Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo.

Pentagon officials have pleaded all year for more base closings, saying anywhere from 20 percent to 25 percent of military facilities are no longer needed and that the nation could save billions by closing them, but even they have acknowledged how unpopular they can be.

``As little stomach as I have for it, we're going to come at you'' for base closings, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told one congressional panel. ``We have simply got to turn waste into weapons.''

Making the case tougher is lingering Republican resentment over the last round of closures in 1995, when President Clinton moved to ease the economic impact from two base closings in vote-rich California and Texas.

The House Armed Services Committee, which worked in public last month as it finalized its bill, deliberately omitted any mention of base closings, thinking that was the best way to try to derail it.

As for the missile defense spending cut, Rumsfeld said Thursday that it would undermine and delay important research and testing.

``If you take $1.3 billion out of some portion of it, it's big,'' Rumsfeld he said. ``As a percentage, it's enormous, it's very harmful.''

Yet he expressed confidence Congress ultimately will provide the full $329 billion requested for the Defense Department, including $8.3 billion for missile defense. The total is $18.4 billion more than Bush proposed in February and $33 billion more than the 2001 budget.

The $8.3 billion missile defense proposal is $3 billion more than this year. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the Armed Services Committee chairman, said that even with a $1.3 billion cut, ``We're giving him the largest increase of probably any program in the defense budget.''

Levin also called for legislative language to deal with the Bush administration's failure to tell Congress -- despite repeatedly requests -- which planned missile defense activities would conflict with the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty.

The proposal would require the president to tell Congress in advance when a planned activity would violate the treaty. That would set off a 30-day clock, during which Congress would be required to vote on whether to release the money for that activity if any member called for spending it despite its impact on the treaty, Levin said.

``I want to give Congress a voice,'' he said.

Some Republicans said the language would give the Russians control over development of a missile defense system, since they could refuse to amend the ABM treaty to accommodate some activities and thus force a vote by Congress.

The provision ``is an absolute encouragement to the Russians to be obstructionist and to demand more of the president before they give in on this issue,'' Sessions said.

Levin rejected that argument.

``We're not going to give the Russians a veto,'' he said. Instead, he said, it would give the power to Congress. ``This is the power of the purse.''

There was no attempt Friday by Republicans to change that language in the committee. Sessions said, ``We'll just deal with that issue on the floor.''

Even if Bush withdraws from the treaty, as he has said he will, the provision would still require him to contact Congress of any upcoming violations of the treaty, Levin said.

The administration is trying to strike a deal with the Russians to replace the ABM treaty with an arrangement that allows for national missile defenses.

---------

Secret War Game Eases Concerns Over Readiness

New York Times
September 7, 2001
By THOM SHANKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/07/politics/07MILI.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, Sept. 6 - A classified war game conducted by the nation's senior commanders has determined that even with the current levels of troops and weapons, the American military could topple one adversary while halting an offensive by a second aggressor, officials said today.

These results from Positive Match, the computer-generated simulation of military operations, have calmed the internal debate between Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and some officers over strategy and budgets, a dispute that had prompted questions about Mr. Rumsfeld's stewardship of the Pentagon.

Senior civilian and military officials said the war game showed that the new, reduced military requirements set by Mr. Rumsfeld and senior commanders can be met without subjecting the current force of fighters to unacceptable risk, usually measured in casualties. These officials, who spoke on condition that they not be identified, said the agreement on matching the strategy to current force levels was a breakthrough and might allow the Pentagon to present a unified front in arguing with Congress and the White House for higher military spending.

The war game indicated that if the armed forces are relieved of the decade-old requirement to prepare to win two major regional wars simultaneously, the current military could carry out the new set of combat missions. "We found our current force structure can handle it," a senior military officer said.

Today, Mr. Rumsfeld met for two hours with the senior military leadership and reviewed the results of Positive Match, which was carried out over four days in August, a senior Pentagon official said.

Under the new military strategy developed by Mr. Rumsfeld and the military leadership, the armed forces must prepare to win decisively against one enemy, which includes fighting all the way to an aggressor's capital and toppling the government. Should a second adversary try to challenge the United States at the same time, American forces must be prepared to halt that enemy's offensive, but not necessarily fight to a conclusive victory, as well as carry out other duties, including homeland defense and peacekeeping.

Bringing military strategy and force structure into line has a significant political impact for civilians and the military at the Pentagon. "The building is loudly in agreement," one military officer said, as it argues for full financing of the 2002 military budget now before Congress.

Still, some difficult decisions have been postponed.

Although a sweeping military review required by Congress every four years is due by Sept. 30, Mr. Rumsfeld has given the services until March to answer questions about joint training, money for housing and other personnel issues. The fate of several major weapons programs also remains undecided.

And even before Congress has approved a military budget for 2002, the Pentagon is busy writing its budget request for 2003, which President Bush will propose in January. The armed services are writing that budget under fiscal guidance signed by Mr. Rumsfeld last month that suggests military spending in 2003 of $339 billion to $348 billion, rising to more than $400 billion by 2007, officials said.

The administration is requesting $329 billion for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. Many Democrats have already said that the figure is too high; many Republicans, on the other hand, want to spend the money on different parts of the military, and many at the Pentagon say the figure is tens of billions shy of what they need to modernize the military and build a missile defense system.

Although the results of Positive Match are contained in a report stamped "Secret," a half-dozen senior Defense Department and military officials agreed to discuss the war game on the condition that they not be identified.

Among the situations in the war game, commanders tested whether the armed forces could decisively defeat one potential adversary, North Korea, while repelling an attack from Iraq. The planners also looked at how military operations would be affected if another event, such as terrorists attacking New York City with chemical weapons, took place at the same time.

The official report on Positive Match said the men and women of the armed forces were subject to "a high level of moderate risk" in carrying out the new strategy, which was acceptable to the commanders.

Had they been ordered to carry out the old strategy - to win decisively in two theaters almost simultaneously - the risk would have been extremely high and would have been unacceptable to the commanders. Lowering the risk would have required increasing the budget to pay for more troops and weapons, or finding some significantly new, efficient way to fight.

To be sure, Positive Match, which was conducted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff with the war fighting commanders, found serious shortages in strategic lift to move forces around the globe and in the broad area of communications and intelligence, officials said. Even so, the findings have allowed a consensus to emerge, with all parties to the debate able to claim victory.

For several months, the central argument at the Pentagon had been over whether America could risk cutting its forces now to finance expensive new weapons the administration says would counter threats emerging in decades to come.

Today, the military can claim success that the imbalance between strategy and force size is being rectified - and through downsizing the strategy, not downsizing force levels, or at least not in this budget cycle.

And Mr. Rumsfeld can claim success that the right questions are being asked about how best to prepare the military for all these risks anticipated decades ahead, and that the vast bureaucracy of the Pentagon is being pointed in that new direction.

The only public statement on Positive Match was a passing reference by Mr. Rumsfeld today in a Pentagon news conference.

"There was recently a war game that was conducted that used some different approaches that we've been working with," he said. "And there isn't a doubt in my mind but that that approach is going to create some significant changes as to how we arrange ourselves, how we size our force, how we arrange war plans. And that is, I think, something that will be - when we look back, we'll see it as being very significant."

----

Cleanup Slow, Erratic at Closed U.S. Military Sites

By Cat Lazaroff
September 7, 2001
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/sep2001/2001L-09-07-06.html

WASHINGTON, DC, The United States is making poor progress at cleaning up contaminated former military sites, a new Congressional report reveals. The year long study, requested by two Democratic Representatives, found that the Army Corps of Engineers' goal of cleaning up contaminated munitions sites by 2014 will fall short by more than 50 years.

Groundwater investigations are still underway at the Plum Brook Ordnance Works in Ohio, which produced TNT, DNT and nitric and sulfuric acids during World War II (Four photos courtesy U.S. Army Corps of Engineers)

The General Accounting Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, spent a year investigating efforts to clean up so called "Formerly Utilized Defense Sites" (FUDS) contaminated by toxic, hazardous, and radioactive wastes. The Army Corps is charged with cleaning up the FUDS, at a cost of about $200 million per year, by 2014.

The Corps will fall decades short of that goal, the GAO learned. In fact, it may take up to 70 years longer, and cost billions more, than the Defense Department has projected.

The report contradicts a recent Pentagon review of the cleanup program, which concluded that more than half of the needed cleanup work had already been completed. In fact, only about a third of the work has been done, the GAO said.

The Pentagon's "misleading" report relied on inflated Corps figures, in which the agency listed as "completed" hundreds of projects on which no cleanup work was ever performed - either because no such work was needed, or because a study or other administrative action determined that cleanup was not warranted.

Some of the munitions retrieved by the Army Corps from the Badlands Bombing Range in South Dakota (Photo by Robert Etzel)

"As a result, it appears that after 15 years and expenditures of $2.6 billion, over 50 percent of the FUDS projects have been completed," the GAO said. "In reality, only about 32 percent of those projects that required actual cleanup actions have been completed, and those are the cheapest and least technologically challenging."

The GAO also reported that the Corps cost estimate of $13 billion to complete the cleanup of all FUDS properties does not account for cleanup of unexploded ordinance on these properties, which the Corps estimates will cost more than an additional $5 billion.

"The Corps estimates that the remaining projects will cost over $13 billion and take more than 70 years to complete," the GAO added.

Representatives John Dingell of Michigan and Tom Sawyer of Ohio requested the GAO report due to their concerns about ongoing contamination of former munitions dumps and other military sites which are no longer under military control.

The Corps is responsible for removing unsafe buildings and other hazards from former military sites, like the Dolly Sods Wilderness Area in West Virginia, which was used as a bombing range during World War II

"The Corps' work to date has principally focused on the 'cheapest and least technologically challenging' work such as tearing down buildings and pulling tanks while many high and medium risk properties with toxic groundwater contamination or unexploded ordinance have been left to percolate," Dingell said on releasing the GAO report. "These seriously contaminated sites must be addressed in a timely manner before this dangerous brew threatens public health and safety."

The properties may contain contaminated soil and water, or hold hazardous wastes in containers such as underground storage tanks. Other hazards, including unexploded ordnance and unsafe buildings, may need to be removed from the properties or demolished.

As of October 1, 2000, the Corps, states and other parties had identified 9,171 properties as potential candidates for the FUDS cleanup program, the GAO reported. The Corps has determined that about 2,700 of those properties are actually eligible for cleanup, with one or more areas containing environmental hazards.

"According to the Corps' database, 2,382 of these projects were considered complete as of the end of fiscal year 2000," the GAO reported. "However, over 57 percent of the projects reported as complete were closed as a result of a study or administrative action without performing any actual cleanup action."

This building in Point Pleasant, West Virginia was used to manufacture TNT during World War II

"In fact, nearly 800 of these projects were ones that the Corps initially thought were eligible but later determined were ineligible, usually because the contamination was caused by other parties after DOD relinquished control of the properties," the GAO said. "The Corps classified these projects as complete as a way of closing them out."

In some cases, the Corps may have been wrong about the presence of contamination on sites the agency listed as ineligible for cleanup. The GAO found that the Corps did not seek input from state or federal regulatory agencies, which may not agree with the Corps' conclusions.

In December 1998, the Association of State and Territorial Solid Waste Management Officials conducted a survey of 39 states and found that "over half indicated that they had reason to believe that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has not made sound environmental decisions regarding no further action determinations at FUDS."

The GAO is conducting a separate investigation of 4,070 sites at the request of Representatives Dingell and Sawyer.

Representative John Dingell is the ranking Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee (Photo courtesy Office of the Representative)

"As evidenced by the notorious Spring Valley site in Washington, D.C., the Corps' determination can be very wrong," Representative Dingell noted. "I hope a similar mistake is not played out on a national scale."

The GAO recommended that the Department of Defense separate projects that did not require cleanup from those projects where actual cleanup actions were required in its annual reports to Congress.

In oral comments to the GAO, the Defense Department "generally agreed with the need to clarify reporting on the status of the FUDS program," but "did not agree with the need to exclude from the list of completed projects those projects closed either as the result of a study or because they were determined to be ineligible," the GAO said.


-------- OTHER

-------- energy

Cheney Defies GAO's Disclosure Demand
Information on Energy Policy Sought

By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 7, 2001; Page A27
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54495-2001Sep6?language=printer

Vice President Cheney yesterday continued to defy U.S. Comptroller General David M. Walker's demand that he disclose information on the development of the administration's energy policy, setting up a possible court showdown between the executive and legislative branches.

Cheney's counsel instead sent a letter to Walker's counsel, "as a courtesy," listing the employees of the vice president's energy task force -- a list that had been provided earlier as information the administration believes the comptroller general is entitled to, said Cheney spokeswoman Juleanna Glover Weiss. She reaffirmed Cheney's stance that Walker has no legal authority to demand much more.

"We're confident in the strength and persuasiveness of our position," Weiss said. "We believe that the matter can end today. But that's up to the comptroller general."

Walker, who heads the General Accounting Office, had no comment yesterday on Weiss's statement or on the letter, which sources said did not satisfy Walker's request for information on who attended each meeting, who met with task force members and the costs incurred in developing the energy policy. He sought the records in May at the behest of two Democratic lawmakers. Walker is expected to release a statement today.

But in an earlier interview, Walker made clear that he considered Cheney's resistance "a broad-based, frontal assault" on the GAO's statutory authority.

Walker stressed that he preferred to avoid taking legal action -- the GAO has never before sued another federal entity -- but he added: "We definitely believe we're on the right side of this issue, and if we go to court, we believe we'll win."

Yesterday was the last day in which the White House could use its statutory power to halt Walker's bid to win release of the records. In April, Reps. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.) and Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) asked the GAO, the watchdog agency of Congress, to investigate the energy task force, whose closed-door meetings with industry representatives fueled suspicions that they had played too strong a role in shaping the policy.

The administration could have stopped Walker by officially declaring that any disclosure "reasonably could be expected to impair substantially" government operations. But aides said the administration did not do so because it is confident that it has a strong legal position.

The White House's adamant stance, congressional sources said, is a reflection of its desire to reclaim the powers of executive privilege that it feels the Clinton administration had squandered in various investigations, including those dealing with the Monica S. Lewinsky matter and the case of former agriculture secretary Mike Espy.

"I regret that the president seems intent on forcing this matter to court," Waxman said yesterday, "but I'm confident that GAO will act properly to ensure there's proper oversight of this administration."

----

GAO May Sue White House to Get Energy Information

By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 7, 2001; 12:59 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A56909-2001Sep7?language=printer

The General Accounting Office, Congress's investigative arm, is on the verge of an unprecedented lawsuit against the White House. The case, which is narrowly over information on the formation of the administration's energy policy, is also broadly seen as a test of the power balance between the executive and legislative branches.

U.S. Comptroller General David M. Walker, the GAO's head, today said Vice President Cheney and his lawyers "have not attempted in any meaningful way" to resolve the standoff, which began in May when Walker requested disclosure of records relating to Cheney's national energy task force.

Cheney's energy task force issued a report in May, aimed at increasing the nation's energy supply. The plan called for expanded oil and gas drilling on public land as well as more nuclear power use.

"It's time we saw action rather than words," Walker said in an interview.

There still are "things that could happen that would keep us from having to go to court," he said. "However, I think at this point in time it looks likely that it will end up in court."

The administration could have a change of heart and release the information sought - who was involved in the task force, with whom members consulted and how much the work cost. A congressional committee could decide to intervene and issue subpoenas. Or the White House could invoke executive privilege and Walker would give up his quest.

But the vice president's office Thursday reiterated its stance that it believed it had strong legal grounds to withhold much of the information Walker has sought, at the request of two Democratic lawmakers.

Walker has consulted regularly with key congressional leaders on the matter and will turn to them again before deciding ultimately to sue, in U.S. District Court. If he does sue, it will be the first time in the GAO's 80-year history that it has taken legal action against another federal office - the White House.

----

White House Sets Up Clash Over Congressional Inquiry

September 7, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/07/politics/07CHEN.html

WASHINGTON, Sept. 6 - The Bush administration affirmed today that it would not cooperate with a Congressional inquiry into the preparation of the president's energy plan, setting up a possible court battle that would test the right of lawmakers to investigate details of White House policy making.

The rebuff makes it likely, though not certain, that the General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, will sue the White House to force it to surrender documents first requested in April.

The accounting office is investigating how the administration drafted its energy plan and has demanded the names of business executives and lobbyists who visited the White House to express their views. Congressional Democrats have argued that industry executives had great influence on the administration's energy task force, which was headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, a former energy company executive.

Though President Bush had vowed to avoid the tense relations with Congress that plagued the oft-investigated Clinton administration, his administration has made clear that it intends to fight Congressional interference into what it considers to be presidential powers, much as Mr. Clinton did.

In a separate matter, some members of Congress expect Mr. Bush to invoke executive privilege for the first time to avoid complying with possible subpoenas to turn over memorandums sought by a House committee. The committee is looking into three Clinton-era cases, including campaign finance irregularities.

Unlike the inquiry into the energy plan, the investigation of Clinton-era cases appears to have no political downside for the administration. It is being conducted by Representative Dan Burton, an Indiana Republican who heads the House Government Reform Committee.

Mr. Burton has expressed frustration at the administration's reluctance to cooperate with his investigation and said that he might issue subpoenas to obtain the memorandums if the White House refuses to turn them over.

The Bush administration appears intent on preserving the confidentiality of communications regarding legal matters as a matter of principle.

The administration has not fought all Congressional inquiries. It has agreed to cooperate with an investigation by Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, who is looking into how cabinet agencies re-evaluated Clinton-era orders on arsenic levels in drinking water, mining on public lands and road- building in national forests.

But the administration has repeatedly rejected demands by the General Accounting Office, which is pursuing a broad investigation that focuses on policy making within the White House. The accounting office began its inquiry at the request of two House Democrats, Representatives Henry A. Waxman of California and John D. Dingell of Michigan.

The White House rejected many of the accounting office's demands on the grounds that the office exceeded its authority by requesting information that had no connection to Congressional spending. The administration did turn over financial information involving the energy task force.

"We remain confident of the strength and persuasiveness of our position," Anne Womack, a White House spokeswoman, said.

David Walker, the comptroller general, has argued in legal communications that his office has the authority to obtain all the information it requested because it has the power to review not only how the task force spent money but also the results of the task force's work.

Mr. Walker declined to comment on the White House's rejection of his agency's request. But with today's development, the accounting office has exhausted the usual channels for obtaining information from the executive branch. The lawmakers whose request first prompted the accounting office inquiry expect the Congressional body to test its powers by taking the White House to court.

"I regret that the president seems intent on forcing this matter to court but am confident that the G.A.O. will act properly to ensure there is careful oversight of this administration," Mr. Waxman said today.

-------- environment

For the Record

WASHINGTON IN BRIEF
Friday, September 7, 2001; Page A05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54853-2001Sep6?language=printer

A group of refiners and petrochemical companies has agreed to pay $120 million for cleaning up a contaminated dump site in Texas, the Justice Department announced. The second-largest settlement in the history of the federal environmental Superfund program will go to the U.S. government and the state of Texas to cover cleanup costs.

----

NEMATODE WORM CAN DETOXIFY HEAVY METALS

September 7, 2001
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/sep2001/2001L-09-07-09.html

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania, Biologists at the University of Pennsylvania have discovered the first biochemical pathway in animals responsible for the detoxification of heavy metals such as arsenic, mercury and cadmium.

The team has learned that the enzyme phytochelatin synthase, which had been found only in plants and some fungi, is also present in some animals.

A research team led by Philip Rea, professor of biology, and including plant scientist Olena Vatamaniuk and animal cell and developmental biologists Elizabeth Bucher and James Ward made the discovery in work with the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans. They reported their results in the "Journal of Biological Chemistry."

"Despite two decades of research into the biochemical basis of heavy metal detoxification in animals, never before had the involvement of phytochelatins been even cursorily mentioned or speculated," said Rea, a member of Penn's Plant Science Institute. "Discovery of this pathway in C. elegans establishes a firm basis for determining its ubiquity in other animals and for clarifying how animals eliminate, sequester and metabolize heavy metals."

The works suggests that genes encoding PC synthase may also be found in parasitic invertebrates, so the findings of Rea's group could help guard against growing resistance to certain heavy metal based drugs. Diseases caused by these parasites, which include elephantitis and lymphatic filariasis, kill millions of people worldwide each year, but physicians have noted with some alarm that traditional treatments are waning in effectiveness.

Researchers say it is rare for a genetic find originating in a plant to shed light on such fundamental processes in animals.

"Often studies in animals and microorganisms have tended to inform our understanding of many aspects of plant biology," said plant geneticist Chris Cobbett of the University of Melbourne, an expert on plant processing of heavy metals. "The particularly satisfying aspect of this work is that studies in plants have led to the identification of a previously unsuspected mechanism of heavy metal detoxification in some animal species."

----

NAFTA USED TO CHALLENGE ENVIRONMENTAL LAWS

September 7, 2001
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/sep2001/2001L-09-07-09.html

SACRAMENTO, California, Corporations are using new rights and privileges granted under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to challenge a variety of national, state and local policies and decisions, a new report has found.

The report, "NAFTA Investor to State Cases: Bankrupting Democracy," documents the track record of cases brought under NAFTA's investment chapter, which granted expansive new rights and privileges to foreign investors operating in the three NAFTA signatory nations: Mexico, Canada and the United States. State lawmakers joined Public Citizen in releasing the report in Sacramento on Tuesday.

Since NAFTA was implemented in 1994, corporate investors in all three countries have used these new investor rights to challenge a variety of national, state and local policies and decisions. Corporations claim that these governmental regulatory policies are "tantamount to" an expropriation of private property and therefore they deserve compensation from the taxpayers of the country in which they are investing.

Of the 15 cases reviewed in the report, companies have claimed more than $13 billion in compensation for actions that many consider to be normal regulatory activity.

"U.S. law does not allow companies to seek compensation for the cost of complying with government health and environmental regulations," said Mike Dolan, deputy director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch. "U.S. companies can't appeal jury verdicts, state or U.S. Supreme Court decisions to a secret trade tribunal to escape liability. There is no U.S. law providing corporations with legal powers to attack public services to garner a larger share of the market, but that is what foreign corporations are doing under NAFTA."

One of the best known NAFTA cases involves the state of California. Methanex Corporation of Canada has filed a NAFTA case for $1 billion over California's decision to phase out the gasoline additive MTBE, which has contaminated drinking water supplies across the nation.

"Methanex company is attempting to hold taxpayers hostage to the tune of nearly $1 billion, or 1.2 percent of our state budget, because we had the nerve to ban a product that was contaminating water supplies all over the state," said Martin Wagner of Earthjustice, who has attempted to intervene in this NAFTA suit on behalf of California environmentalists. "This is not what California was promised when NAFTA passed."

-------- genetics

NEWS ANALYSIS
Trying to Get Past Numbers on Stem Cells

New York Times
September 7, 2001
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/07/politics/07STEM.html

WASHINGTON, Sept. 6 - In science, the term "embryonic stem cell line" has a specific meaning: a self- perpetuating colony of cells, grown over a period of months, that exhibit biological characteristics showing they can become any tissue or organ. In announcing his plan for federal financing of stem cell research, President Bush used a looser definition.

Now that language may come back to haunt him.

Opponents of Mr. Bush's policy today seized on the administration's acknowledgment on Wednesday that only about two dozen of the 64 cell lines that Mr. Bush says are available for federal research are fully developed. The rest are still growing and may not prove useful to scientists who hope to use stem cells to develop replacement body parts.

"The president's credibility on the whole issue of allowing stem cell research is open to question," said Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California. "He predicated his decision on information that turns out not to be accurate. I think that is a real problem for him."

The administration, insisting that the information is accurate, still apparently recognizes the problem. Today, Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of health and human services, invited a reporter to his office for a chat. Seated in a wingback chair, a coffee cup in his hand and a briefing book on stem cell research in his lap, Mr. Thompson said he wanted to steer the discussion away from numbers and back toward science.

"There are plenty of cells available to do the basic research," he said. "Let's get on with it, and stop quibbling about the numbers."

Actually, many scientists agree. "I don't think it makes a difference whether there are 64 or 24," said Dr. James A. Thomson, the biologist at the University of Wisconsin who first isolated human embryonic stem cells in 1998. "A couple of dozen is enough to get the research started."

But in the long term, to develop the basic research into therapies, Dr. Thomson said, "64 is not enough."

Some scientists, particularly overseas, are a bit amused by the semantics. "To us it doesn't matter at all, how the Americans define a line," said Dr. Henrik Semb of Goteborg University in Sweden, which by Mr. Bush's broad definition has 19 lines but only three that can be classified as fully developed. "We are moving ahead with our work."

But in Washington, the quibbling, to use Mr. Thompson's term, has only escalated since Wednesday, when the secretary appeared before the Senate to defend Mr. Bush's plan. The president had hoped the plan would solve a moral quandary: whether taxpayers should pay for studies on stem cells, which may one day lead to life-saving treatments, even though the cells are derived from human embryos, which are destroyed by the experiments.

Mr. Bush, who says he is deeply uneasy about the work, struck a careful compromise. He confined federal financing of research to those stem cell lines that had been created by 9 p.m. on Aug. 9, when he announced his decision in a televised address to the nation. To meet his criteria, the cells had to have already been extracted from embryos and the embryos already destroyed.

In his speech, Mr. Bush said more than 60 such lines existed; the White House later put the number at 64.

"There are 64 lines that met the president's qualification," Mr. Thompson said. "They met them the night of Aug. 9; they meet them today."

That figure came from a survey conducted by Lana Skirboll, director of the office of science policy at the National Institutes of Health. In an interview last week, Dr. Skirboll said that administration officials knew before Mr. Bush's speech that some lines were more mature than others, and some were not yet fully "characterized" - that is, they did not exhibit the biological signs of a fully developed stem cell line.

"Some are very far out in the characterization stage, ready for distribution," she said. "Some are earlier, and have just been derived. We counted both because we wanted to include all of the cells that were potentially available for federal funding. Not all of those cells that are in the early stages of derivation may go all the way to usefulness."

But at a news conference the day after Mr. Bush's speech, Mr. Thompson said of the lines that "They're diverse, they're robust, they're viable for research."

In the interview today, Mr. Thompson said that, while he knew the lines were in various stages of development at the time of those remarks, he did not understand the nuances of the science as well as he now did. Still, he said, he did not regret his comments, and insisted they remain true.

"They're diverse," he said, noting that the lines come from research in five countries. As to robustness and viability, he said: "They're alive. That's what viable means."

Asked if the administration was trying to inflate its numbers, he replied, "Absolutely not."

Still, that impression now exists among some lawmakers, scientists and patients, many of whom were initially prepared to give Mr. Bush's policy a chance but now are not so certain.

Among them is Christopher Reeve, the actor, who suffered a spinal cord injury in a horseback riding accident and who is hoping scientists might some day use stem cells to help him walk.

"When it came out in yesterday's hearing that only 24 cell lines are fully developed and not 64 as the president claimed, I felt misled and deceived," Mr. Reeve said today. He described it as "a sleight of hand."

Others were slightly more forgiving, but no less skeptical.

"I am deeply concerned about what the real facts are," said Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York. While Mrs. Clinton said she would not "impute any kind of bad faith," she said she was troubled by the administration's "unwillingness to revisit any aspect of this decision as more and better information becomes available."

The real problem with Mr. Bush's policy, many scientists said, was not that only 24 fully developed lines exist, but that the president has cut off the ability of American scientists to create and study new ones. That task will now fall to private companies, or laboratories overseas.

"I think it is very dangerous to select a few cell lines and consider them good lines, and then do all work" on those lines, said Dr. Semb, of Goteborg. "We want to learn more about these cells, and we want to establish more cell lines. We will not stop doing that until we feel that we have learned everything we can."

-------- health

Who: Cellphone Health Risk Needs More Research

September 7, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/technology/tech-health-mobiles.html?searchpv=reuters

HELSINKI (Reuters) - A link between mobile phone usage and cancer can not be dismissed without further research, an official at a World Health Organization (WHO) agency said on Friday.

``More research is needed,'' Elisabeth Cardis, Chief of Radiation and Cancer at the WHO's International Agency for Research in Cancer, told a conference in Helsinki.

The explosive growth in mobile phone usage, particularly in Europe and the United States, has increased the public debate over possible health risks linked to mobile phones.

While a few studies claim there is a connection, most authoritative studies have not been able to conclude that regular mobile phone usage could damage a person's brain.

``Based on current epidemiological evidence, there is no evidence of a strong association between RFexposure and cancer,'' said Cardis, referring to radio waves emitted from devices like mobile phones.

``One can't rule out that there is a risk, but if there is a risk to mobile phone users it would be very small.''

Mobile phones are tiny radio stations that send and receive.

Last year, a UK government-sponsored scientific inquiry, chaired by Sir William Steward, concluded that while there was no evidence of danger to health, it would be wise to discourage children from using mobile phones excessively.

It concluded that the radio frequency signals emitted by phones generated heat in the brain, but said it was not clear whether this could have other biological effects, such as triggering cancer.

European and U.S. authorities have now asked mobile phone manufacturers, such as Nokia (news/quote), Motorola (news/quote) and Ericsson (news/quote), to label their phones with the level of radiation, or Specific Absorption Rate (SAR), they emit -- the best way of measuring radiation -- partly in response to consumer demands.

The SAR safety limit agreed in Europe is 2.0, while most phones on the market are now showing values between 0.5 and 1.0

There are currently over 800 million mobile phone users worldwide, and about 400 million handsets are expected to be sold this year. By early next year as many as one billion people are expected to own a handset.

NEW FOUR-YEAR STUDY TO GIVE ANSWERS

Cardis, in Helsinki attending an international conference on the biological effects of exposure to electromagnetic radiation said research by the INTERPHONE study group would focus on a link between cancer and phones.

She said this would be more thorough than previous studies, such as the Cohort study into cellular phone users in the United States, because it would span a period of three years and would go into more detail, such as research into lower frequency electromagnetic fields to and from phones.

Cardis said one reason previous studies, particularly on the link between brain tumors and phones, had proved inconclusive was because brain tumor cases often had not used phones much.

Widespread mobile phone usage is relatively new.

The INTERPHONE study should be ready in 2004.

``At present, possible effects on cancer initiation cannot be studied due to the short follow-up times,'' concluded a recent Finnish study into phone use and the risk of brain cancer.

Nokia, the world's largest mobile phone maker, addresses the issue of mobile phone safety on its Web site.

``Scientific research conducted all over the world over many years demonstrates that radio signals within established safety levels emitted from mobile telephones and their base stations present no adverse effects to human health,'' Nokia said.

U.S. neurologist Christopher Newman last year filed a lawsuit against leading U.S. phone companies, including Motorola, saying that the use of his mobile phone had caused a malignant brain tumor.

-------- human rights

Starving peasants descend on Guatemalan town

By Greg Brosnan
From: "GHRC" <ghrc-usa@ghrc-usa.org>
Sun, 9 Sep 2001 08:21:13 -0400

JOCOTAN, Guatemala, Sept 7 (Reuters) - Mayan peasants, reeling under the effects of a drought-triggered famine sweeping Central America, walked for hours in blazing sun to a Guatemalan town on Friday in the hope of receiving food.

More than a thousand mostly Chorti Indian peasants whose corn crops withered during a prolonged dry season descended on the dirt streets of Jocotan from impoverished surrounding villages and hamlets following local radio announcements that the government was handing out emergency supplies.

But the only immediate aid they received was bags of fertilizer and inedible seed corn and beans for planting.

Guatemalan newspapers last week published photographs of emaciated babies with protruding stomachs in a Jocotan health clinic. Until then, international aid officials had thought the country had escaped the worst effects of the drought in Central America, which ended with recent rains.

At least 46 people have died so far this year from malnutrition in Jocotan and Camotan -- two neighboring municipalities on Guatemala's eastern border with Honduras -- according to local health officials.

On Friday, men wearing sandals, threadbare shirts and cowboy hats and women in florescent-colored home-stitched dresses streamed into Jocotan's main square clutching forms entitling each family to a government ration of fertilizer and corn and beans for planting.

The seed was not edible, having been specially treated for fungi and pests. Bags were marked with the word "poison" alongside a skull and crossbones sign.

Speaking to a crowd gathered in nearby Camotan on Friday, Guatemalan Vice-President Francisco Reyes told villagers food was on the way. He said the treated seed would benefit them in the medium term but warned them not to eat it.

"This seed has poison in it," he told the crowd. "Please do not eat it. It will do you a lot of harm."

Reyes said that in any case the 25-pound (11 kg) bags of beans if cooked would last families only 10 days.

"It's good that they are giving us these things to plant," said 40-year-old Chorti farmer Davino Ramirez from Guareruche village, three hours walk away, as he stood in line for the fertilizer and seeds.

"But we need things to eat right now. Corn, beans and medicine," he said. "There's nothing, nothing, nothing to eat in the village."

ISLAND OF MAYAN CULTURE, POVERTY

Maya Indians, mostly poor peasant farmers who make up the majority of Guatemala's 12 million inhabitants, dominate the country's jagged-peaked western highlands.

The predominantly Chorti Indian municipalities of Jocotan and Camotan form an isolated pool of Mayan culture -- and grinding poverty -- in eastern lowlands dominated by Guatemalans of mixed Mayan and Spanish blood.

As well as suffering from the drought, the Chorti of Chiquimula are facing high unemployment as low coffee prices force coffee producers -- traditional seasonal employers in the area -- to cut back on farmhands.

Most poor Guatemalans survive mainly on flat corn cake tortillas -- a basic food staple in Mexico and Central America. With the harvest in ruins many Chortis cannot afford to buy increasingly expensive corn needed to make tortillas from local markets.

----

E.U. agrees to apology for slavery

09/07/2001
The Associated Press
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001/09/07/racism-conference.htm

DURBAN, South Africa (AP) - The European Union agreed to an apology for slavery and colonialism in the final declaration of the World Conference Against Racism, resolving one of the issues deadlocking the U.N. meeting, a spokesman for the EU said Friday.

The apology is expected to be adopted officially later Friday.

"There was a breakthrough on the notion of an apology," said Koen Vervaeke, spokesman for Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel, who is leading the EU delegation.

The debate over an apology for slavery and colonialism, along with language regarding the Middle East, have been the conference's chief stumbling blocks.

The agreement, however, did not completely solve the issues still in contention on the last day of the meeting.

African countries still were pushing for slavery and colonialism to be labelled "crimes against humanity" and for Western countries to pay reparations. The EU rejected both calls, Vervaeke said.

The issue of how to deal with the Middle East conflict in conference documents also remained in limbo.

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

IMF says nasty things about protesters
Transcript of a Press Briefing by Thomas Dawson,
Director, External Relations Department, International Monetary Fund

From: Robert Weissman <rob@essential.org>
Friday, September 7, 2001 Washington, D.C.
http://www.imf.org/external/np/tr/2001/tr010907.htm

Meanwhile, this year's meetings are fast approaching, and as I've said, we all know, we've taken steps to consolidate the meetings. These steps were driven by concern about the safety of the people attending the meeting, the safety of the local community, and while we fully understand the long tradition of peaceful demonstrations in the nation's capital and elsewhere, we do urge people, who intend to exercise their right to protest, to also understand that there are valid security concerns.

And I have to say I'm a little struck at the lack of reporting, I guess I would say, on some aspects of the Movement for Global Justice that is organizing many of these demonstrations. I would suggest that many of you may wish to visit their websites, which is open in the spirit of globalization, and notes some of the descriptions that they have made about things such as unpermitted activities and the possibility of opening up the meetings wherever they may be, or confronting delegates wherever they may be. I would just suggest you go and look at the website yourself to see that, for those who think that security concerns are perhaps overstated, there really are quite a few indications that people are planning activities that do not fit in the peaceful category.

QUESTIONER: Mr. Dawson, my question really relates to the coverage of the meetings. The year before last, despite the fact that I had the press credentials, the D.C. Police would just not let me through. I got through the demonstrators somehow, talked my way past them, but the D.C. Police stopped me. They said, "We couldn't give a damn about your press credentials." So, you know, obviously, the liaison, at least the year before, was quite poor, or at least there were people and I ran into the wrong guy. But I'm not the only one to whom this happened. There were a number of other journalists who were unable to gain access to the conference because of D.C. Police.

MR. DAWSON: Well, I think, as I recall, we suggested people come in very, very early in the morning, and that I think that will be the likely recommendation again. We are quite sorry about that, but unfortunately, these things happen when you have people who are trying to shut down meetings, and I think it's inevitable that these difficulties will happen.

We, of course, do try to learn lessons, both in this matter as well as in other matters in the Fund, and we are trying to learn lessons from those previous experiences, but there is quite clearly a serious security threat, and I think that anyone who thinks that access is going to be easy, may well wind up being disappointed.

But we did have a few complaints in that regard last time, not only from journalists, from Governors of the Fund, who were blocked by demonstrators blocking their buses and access, and this is very, very regrettable, but I'm not quite sure what we can do about it, other than to do our best. The reality is, people are trying to make your life inconvenient. It's not us. It's the consequence of people who are trying to shut the meetings down.

QUESTIONER: There have been suggestions by some members of the Congress, as well as some other organizations, that the meetings of the Boards of the IMF and the World Bank should be held in public. I was wondering if you regard the Board of the IMF and the World Bank like a bank board, not open to the public, or they should be treated like the U.N.Security Council, where you decide things in public. What's your feeling on that?

MR. DAWSON: Well, these are decision-making meetings of lending organizations, and I'm not familiar with any organization, public or private, that has public meetings of their decision-making meetings. At the same time, I would note we publish our schedules in advance. You know when our Board meetings are taking place. We put up summaries in a timely fashion immediately afterwards. The loan documents, which is sort of a letter of intent, are in general published ahead of time.

So I think that's a record of quite substantial transparency and openness. Remember, we are an governmental organization, 183 member governments, and the governments choose the context in which they meet, but I would again note, compared to, say, three or four years ago, the degree of openness in this institution is the difference between night and day, so I am--I think my own view is that some of these calls--I mean if we started having the meetings open, I suspect they'd be asking to have their own Board seats.

QUESTIONER: Members of the Mobilization for Global Justice has sort of insisted over and over again that they are a completely peaceful organization, I suppose, implying that the more violent elements that travel to these meetings are completely unrelated to them. Can you talk about some of the evidence that you've seen to the contrary?

MR. DAWSON: Sure. Here's the evidence right here. Mr. Robert Naiman, who is a prominent member of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. This photograph is from February of last year-of Mr. Naiman being apprehended, having thrown a pie at Michel Camdessus, the then Managing Director of the IMF. Mr. Naiman is the individual, who last week, organized the demonstrations in front of the Bank on disclosure policy. He is a member of this group. This group claims to be nonviolent. I believe that's evidence of a violent act.

QUESTIONER: Any other examples?

MR. DAWSON: There are many examples. I suggest you look at the websites. I shouldn't be doing your reporting. You should be doing your own reporting.

QUESTIONER: What's the name of the group?

MR. DAWSON: The Mobilization for Global Justice is the umbrella group, but this is an interesting group, actually, now that you ask. The Center for Economic and Policy Research which is often referred to as CEPR. It's a Washington-based group. They have a website, and I suggest you take a look at it. It is, however, quite coincidental that it has the same acronym, CEPR, as the Center for Economic Policy Research, an organization that's based in London, has some 378 research fellows, according to their website. This group seems to have a slightly different orientation. It was founded, I believe, in October of 1999, unless I'm mistaken. It says so on the website. You know, we have a problem on occasion with these groups, where these coincidences seem to happen.

Mr. Naiman's group seems to have this double identity. Mr. Naiman happened to be on the local Channel 7 News, what, about 2 weeks ago. Asked a question about the Gary Condit affair, and launched into an attack on the World Bank. He didn't identify, nor was he identified as being that. The next speaker just happened to be the head of media relations for the Mobilization for Global Justice.

We had the letter in The Washington Post a couple weeks ago by Soren Ambrose, also a leading member of--in his case, 50 Years is Enough, which is also part of this coalition. He wrote a letter to the editor, attacking, complaining about the cost of the meetings to the D.C. Taxpayer, without quite disclosing that he was in fact one of the organizers of the demonstrations that were incurring the costs.

So these is examples of, I think, where the media has a certain obligation to do its own due diligence. We are an open organization, and we would expect to be scrutinized, and we would expect you to carry out at least the same scrutiny of other organizations.

-------- police / prisoners

House panel slams Ashcroft for withholding documents

September 7, 2001
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010907-81829976.htm

A House committee, angry over Attorney General John Ashcroft's refusal to turn over documents showing why some cases were not prosecuted, has raised the stakes with a new round of subpoenas.

In what has become a bitter battle between the Republican-controlled House Government Reform Committee and Republicans at the Justice Department and the White House, the committee yesterday expanded its list of subpoenas to include the FBI's handling of more than a dozen cases involving Boston area mobsters and informants. Meanwhile, sources say the White House is considering a claim of executive privilege to protect the records.

Committee Chairman Rep. Dan Burton, Indiana Republican, had asked Mr. Ashcroft for records showing why the Justice Department failed to pursue several high-profile cases, including two involving suspected campaign-finance abuses during the 1996 presidential election.

Mr. Burton said there was "no valid legal" reason why the records were being withheld and compared Mr. Ashcroft's actions to the "stonewalling" tactics of his predecessor, Janet Reno. He said Mr. Ashcroft, a former U.S. senator who chided Miss Reno for refusing to make records available, had "one standard for a Democrat attorney general and another standard for yourself."

"It is hard to believe that public confidence in our investigators and prosecutors can be restored by an inflexible policy that prevents Congress from discharging a constitutionally mandated duty. If this unprecedented policy is permitted to stand, Congress will not be able to exercise meaningful oversight of the executive branch," Mr. Burton said.

Congressional sources confirmed yesterday that President Bush has told White House Counsel Al Gonzales to be ready to invoke executive privilege over the issue of whether the documents should be released.

The privilege claim, recognized by the courts, ensures that a president can receive candid and private advice without fear of it becoming public. The White House, according to the sources, has concluded that advice given to the attorney general about pending investigations should remain private.

Mr. Ashcroft has said through a spokesman that while Mr. Burton's desire to gain additional information about past decisions is "understandable," the department would resist any request that could "undermine its mission to protect and defend justice."

"The oversight responsibility of Congress is fundamental to the constitutional system of checks and balances," said Justice Department spokeswoman Susan Dryden.

"However, the types of memoranda being sought by Chairman Burton contain advice to the attorney general and other senior officials, and are among the most sensitive deliberative documents, precisely because they pertain to prosecutorial decision-making," she said.

In a 1998 CNN interview, Mr. Ashcroft - then a senator - said Miss Reno was obligated to turn over prosecutorial records sought by Senate and House committees since Congress was entitled to see them. He said Miss Reno had "learned from the president a technique we call stonewalling."

Mr. Burton referred to this statement in a letter to the attorney general last week.

"Your position in 1998 was unambiguous, and it was correct. Thus, I am at a loss as to why you would take a contradictory position just a few years later," Mr. Burton said.

--------

F.B.I. Arrests 13 in Connection With Miami Police Corruption

September 7, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Miami-Police-Corruption.html

MIAMI (AP) -- Thirteen current and former Miami police officers were accused in an indictment unsealed Friday alleging they helped cover up wrongdoing in police shootings in which three people died.

All were veteran officers assigned to special enforcement teams at the time of the shootings, which resulted in three deaths and one injury during the late 1990s. At least three shootings involved police planting guns at the scene, and officers are charged with lying, prosecutors said.

Eleven were arrested or surrendered Friday on an indictment charging them in a plot to obstruct justice and violate civil rights. Two retired officers pleaded guilty at sealed hearings earlier in the week to conspiracy. They are cooperating with the investigation.

"These officers put a stain on the badge of every hardworking, honest, faithful, honorable police office who puts his or her life on the line every single day," U.S. Attorney Guy Lewis said.

Miami police responded by asking the Justice Department for a top-to-bottom review of departmental procedures. Similar investigations were launched after police came under scrutiny in Los Angeles, Cincinnati and the District of Columbia.

Court appearances were expected later Friday in downtown Miami.

The arrests expanded on a March indictment charging five Miami SWAT officers with conspiracy to obstruct justice for allegedly lying to investigators after a 73-year-old man was killed in a hail of 123 bullets during a 1996 drug raid.

Shots narrowly missed his 14-year-old granddaughter. Police said the man fired first. No drugs were found in the house, but some were found outside a window.

The FBI said the investigations also involved gun "throw-down" cases involving the fatal shootings of two young black men after a smash-and-grab purse snatching on a downtown expressway ramp, a fatal inner-city shooting and the wounding of a homeless man who officers said was holding a weapon to the head of a friend. It actually was a small radio.

Lewis said the indictments reveal the officers "planted weapons, they lied about their roles in the shootings, they lied about what they saw, they falsified reports, they tampered with crime scenes."

He also said the officers stole money, guns and other property from people in unrelated cases and later used the guns to plant as phony evidence at police-involved shootings.

Though the latest police scandal involved 13 officers, it pales in comparison to the "Miami River Cops" case that grew out of the drowning of three drug-boat guards in the early 1980s.

Two dozen Miami officers eventually were convicted of charges that police formed their own drug-ripoff ring, and as many as 100 officers were disciplined in a wider review as the department put its own under scrutiny.

Five of the 13 were on duty early Friday when they were called to the chief's office and relieved of their guns and badges and arrested.

-------- spying

Committee Approves Intelligence Bill

WASHINGTON IN BRIEF
Friday, September 7, 2001; Page A05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54853-2001Sep6?language=printer

The Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday approved the fiscal 2002 intelligence authorization bill, putting total spending by the Pentagon, CIA and other intelligence agencies around $30 billion, according to congressional sources.

Although intelligence spending figures are classified, sources indicated the Bush administration's proposed increases totaled more than $1 billion over the Clinton budget submission. Added funds will help pay for continued modernization of electronic intercepts by the Pentagon's National Security Agency; expanded recruitment, training and support for CIA intelligence activities overseas; and additional people and equipment to permit analysis of the increased amounts of data being collected.

Committee Chairman Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) said in a statement that the funding increases represent just "the first installment of a multi-year effort to correct serious deficiencies that have developed over the past decade."

-------- terrorism

Americans in Japan warned of possible terror attack

09/07/2001
The Associated Press
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001/09/07/japan-terror-warning.htm

TOKYO (AP) - The U.S. Embassy warned Americans living in Japan to be on guard against possible terrorist attacks.

In a statement issued Friday afternoon to all resident Americans, the embassy said it had unconfirmed information that terrorists may strike U.S. military facilities or places frequented by U.S. military personnel.

Embassy spokesman Patrick Linehan described the threat as "credible" but could not give other details such as when or where a possible attack might occur. He also did not say when the warning would be lifted.

It was unclear whether the warning was specific to Japan or whether Americans in other countries had been warned too, Linehan said.

Such terrorist warnings are rare in Japan, Linehan said, adding that the last he remembered was a worldwide warning issued by the U.S. State Department last New Year's Eve.

Roughly 120,000 Americans live in Japan, according to the embassy's figures. Nearly 48,000 are active members of the U.S. military.


-------- activists

News Conference: Star Wars Returns

From: Sam Husseini [mailto:sam@accuracy.org]
Friday, September 07, 2001
Subject: Star Wars Returns

Media Advisory

Contact: Diane Hatz Global Resource Action Center for the Environment 212-726-9161 www.gracelinks.org

News Conference: Star Wars Returns

Monday, September 10, 2001 at 2:00 Lisagor Room National Press Club Washington, D.C.

Alice Slater, President, Global Resource Action Center for the Environment

Karl Grossman Investigative Environmental Journalist, Professor of Journalism and author of the newly-released book, Weapons in Space

----

PHILADELPHIA GROUPS TO HOLD 33 HOUR PEACE VIGIL

Non-violent "Witness for Peace" at Willow Grove Open House and Air Festival on September 8 and 9

American Friends Service Committee 1501 Cherry Street Philadelphia, PA 19102-1479 Phone: (215) 241-7060 Fax: (215) 241-7275 e-mail: jshields@afsc.org

For Immediate Release Contact: Janis D. Shields, (215) 241-7060 August 30, 2001 John W. Haigis, (215) 241-7056

Philadelphia, PA - A coalition of Delaware Valley peace groups will join in a non-violent Witness for Peace beginning Saturday, September 8, 2001 at 9:00 a.m. and continuing until Sunday, September 9, 2001 at 6:00 p.m. The peace vigil will take place outside the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania during the Willow Grove Open House and Air Festival. The groups include the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) , the Brandywine Peace Community, Catholic Peace Fellowship, Delaware County Pledge of Resistance, House of Grace Catholic Worker, Martha House Catholic Worker, New Jerusalem, Philadelphia Catholic Worker, School of the Americas Watch-North East, the simple way, Veterans for Peace, and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF).

"Despite the end of the cold-war, an enormous portion of the US budget continues to go to military expenditures," said Shannon McManimon, with the National Youth and Militarism Program of the AFSC. "Airshows such as this are designed to help military recruiting by celebrating war as 'family entertainment.' Showcasing stealth bombers and fighter aircraft tells only one side of the story."

Among the planes to be showcased are the F-117A Nighthawk and the F-15, both responsible for many deaths in Iraq. Events will include an appearance by the Blue Angels precision flight team and a simulated WWII "dogfight" where spectators can cheer on their favorite combatants. Willow Grove is also home to A-10s, responsible for firing tons of depleted uranium and used in the wars in Kosovo and Iraq.

"For us, it's a recruiting opportunity. It's a requirement," stated Navy Lt. Rob Webster of the Blue Angels in a newspaper article 2 days after a crash in which 2 pilots were killed at Willow Grove. "If recruiting efforts lag in a given area of the county, an appearance by the Blue Angels is a guaranteed way to boost the numbers."

"We believe violence and the celebration of violence create more violence," McManimon emphasized. "Our voices can and must be raised for peace."

The Witness for Peace vigil will feature speakers, song and prayer on Saturday at noon and Sunday, 3:00 p.m. The public is cordially invited to celebrate and work for peace.

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ENDING GLOBAL APARTHEID: TEACH IN FOR ACTION ON THE WORLD BANK AND IMF Washington, DC, Sept. 27-29, 2001

Date: Fri, 7 Sep 2001
From: Robert Weissman <rob@essential.org>
http://www.essentialaction.org/wbimf/

During the Joint Annual Meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) this September, tens of thousands of people will converge in Washington, DC to be a part of the growing Global Justice Movement. They will be calling for an end to the policies and practices of the IMF and World Bank that have caused widespread poverty, inequality, and suffering among the world's peoples and damage to the world's environment.

As part of this movement, Fifty Years is Enough, Jobs with Justice, Global Exchange, Essential Action and World Bank Bonds Boycott/Center for Economic Justice are organizing a Teach In on the global impact of the World Bank and IMF.

Thursday, Sept. 27, 7 pm, Opening Event, National Baptist Memorial Church, 16th St and Columbia. Sept. 28 and 29, Plenaries all day, at National Baptist and Casa del Pueblo Methodist Church, 1459 Columbia Rd., NW, Washington, DC

Plenary sessions will address the true global impact of the World Bank and IMF (on labor, environment, debt, the HIV/AIDS crisis, and more). The Teach In will also discuss active national and international campaigns against these institutions. Speakers will be primarily from the Global South to discuss their experiences and campaigns first hand in countries such as India, the Philippines, South Africa, Senegal, Brazil, and many more....

For latest information ... please visit www.essentialaction.org or contact Monica Wilson at 202-387-8030.

----

Action for UN Renewal

3 Whitehall Court,
London SW1A 2EL
Tel: 020 8399 2547 Fax: 020 7930 5893

Email: info@action-for-un-renewal.org.uk
Web Site: www.action-for-un-renewal.org.uk

Support the Arms Reduction Coalition (ARC)

We; Action For UN Renewal; are launching an international campaign calling for the United Nations (UN) to agree a legally binding Instrument requiring States to reduce the amount of resources spent on arms by a set percentage per year. This is based on Article 26 of the UN Charter which states "In order to promote the establishment and maintenance of international peace and security with the least diversion for armaments of the world's human and economic resources, the Security Council shall be responsible for formulating, with the assistance of the Military Staff Committee referred to in Article 47, plans to be submitted to the Members of the United Nations for the establishment of a system for the regulation of armaments"

The campaign for arms reduction under Article 26 of the UN Charter will be formally launched at a meeting organized by Action for UN Renewal in the Autumn of 2001. The new campaign, which is open to individuals and organisations, will be called the Arms Reduction Coalition (ARC). Action For UN Renewal invites you to join with us in this important initiative.

ARC is concerned that the world is awash with weapons. Around 500 million small arms and 30,000 weapons of mass destruction (i.e. Nuclear, Biological, Chemical) are threatening international peace and security, and hindering the work of many Non-Governmental Organisations and UN departments. These weapons cause death and destruction. 90% of all war casualties are civilians. They are produced at the expense of the world's peoples. Some 30% of the loans made to the highly indebted nations is spent on arms. ARC is seeking a world wide gradual, long term reduction in the resources spent on weapons; with a transfer of those resources to humanitarian, social and environmental uses. The value of the world's arms trade is currently about $800 bn (Billion Dollars) per year. A one percent year on year reduction on the previous year's expenditure would make $8bn available. Over ten years this would total $73 bn available for the improvement of humankind and preservation of our common home - Earth. During the same ten years $7,573 bn would still have been spent on things to kill people.

Action for UN Renewal (ACT-UN) is a network of organisations and individuals campaigning for a more effective United Nations. We co-operate with other UN-related NGOs, in particular the United Nations Association, and our primary role is to monitor and enhance the United Kingdom's contribution to the renewal and reform of the United Nations System. For more details visit the Campaigns section of Action For UN Renewal's web site at : www.action-for-un-renewal.org.uk.

Attached please find the ARC resolution, endorsement and membership form. Please return with your membership subscription and a donation (if possible) to the address above. We look forward to receiving your endorsement and working with you to achieve a successful campaign and a more just world.

For further information, please contact:
Karl Miller Secretary Vijay Mehta Vice Chair
Email: actun@btinternet.com Email: vijay@anglosphere.com
Tel: ++44 (0) 20 8241 2483 Tel: ++44 (0) 20 7702 7633

A Note for International / Non - United Kingdom Individuals and Organisations

As this ARC campaign will require agreement by member states of the United Nations we hope that similar ARC campaigns will be set up in many of the states of the UN. Please inform us if you wish to be put in touch with other organisations in your country that support ARC and are interested in setting up a national Arms Reduction Coalition.

ARC Endorsement Form V1.1 6 Sep 01
Join the campaign for a more effective United Nations

-- Action for UN Renewal

3 Whitehall Court, London SW1A 2EL Tel: 020 8399 2547 Fax: 020 7930 5893

Email: info@action-for-un-renewal.org.uk Web
Site: www.action-for-un-renewal.org.uk

Arms Reduction Coalition (ARC) Resolution
The Arms Reduction Coalition (ARC)

Concerned by the obstacles, threats and difficulties that the large amounts of arms in circulation pose to the maintenance of peace and security and to Non-Governmental Organisations and UN departments in carrying out their work;

Concerned by the disproportionately large amount of the world's human and economic resources being expended on arms;

Recalling that Article 26 of the United Nations (UN) Charter calls for "the least diversion for armaments of the world's human and economic resources";

Calls upon the United Nations General assembly, to agree, and for all signatory States of The United Nations to ratify, a legally binding instrument:

a) for reducing the diversion for armaments of their State's human and economic resources by between one and five percent per year;

b) to establish and maintain systems that enable annual independent verification and auditing of their States compliance;

c) to establish a United Nations mechanism to facilitate implementation; dealing with such matters as non-compliance, concessions, reporting and auditing standards, and the publication of targets and achievements annually;

d) that specifies how amounts diverted from armaments are to be used on State and UN programmes such as poverty reduction, sustainable development, conflict prevention, peaceful resolution of conflict, protecting the vulnerable, maintaining the environment; and effective and efficient implementation of the legally binding Instrument;

e) that gives full opportunities to non-governmental organizations and other non state actors to make their contributions in implementation, compliance and allocation of resources;

f) that requires review and re-commitment by the States to the legally binding Instrument after a period of between 10 and 25 years.

Complete, photo copy or Tear off and return to address below

1. I / We support and endorse the Arms Reduction Coalition (ARC) Resolution.

[ ] Endorse. (please tick to endorse the ARC Resolution)

2 I/We wish to be a member of the Arms Reduction Coalition (ARC).

Name: Signature: Date: . Organisation (if Any): Address: Country . Postcode: Telephone: . Email: Web Site: .

Where did you get this leaflet?

Please return to: Richard Pryor, Treasurer, Action for UN Renewal, 3 Whitehall Court, London SW1A 2EL.

ARC Endorsement Form V1.1 6 Sep 01

Join the campaign for a more effective United Nations

----

Greenaction Update

Date: Thu, 6 Sep 2001 08:47:47 -0800
From: Bradley Angel <bradley@greenaction.org>

Dear friend of Greenaction,

Please visit the Greenaction website for updates on: * yesterday's blockade of the IES incinerators in Oakland, CA * Cancer Industry Tour protest on October 3 * toxic coverup at Midway Village housing project * the latest on the Green Energy Environmental Justice campaign

Here is today's Oakland Tribune story on yesterday's successful action at IES. Two Greenaction activists (Heather and Dave) remain in jail with high bail. Charges include unlawful assembly and the ridiculous charge of failing to leave the scene of a "riot"!! Seems the powers that be in Oakland are more concerned with nonviolent community protest than dioxin and mercury emissions poisoning the community.

GREENACTION URGENTLY NEEDS FINANCIAL SUPPORT TO CONTINUE THIS CAMPAIGN. PLEASE SEND DONATIONS TODAY TO GREENACTION, 1540 Market Street, Suite 325, San Francisco, CA 94102. Thank you!

Oakland Tribune, September 6, 2001

Four activists held in protest at medical waste incinerator By Douglas Fischer STAFF WRITER

Police arrested four activists Wednesday after three chained themselves to the front gate of an East Oakland medical waste incinerator.

The arrests, the first in the long-running battle between the High Street incinerator and protesters, came as activists vowed to step up their opposition to the state's only commercial medical waste furnace.

Fueling that escalation were recent revelations that California law does not require incineration for certain types of medical waste. State officials and the incinerator's operator, Integrated Environmental Systems, have long insisted they have a legal mandate to keep the burners running.

That's not true, Jack McGurk, chief of the Environmental Management Branch of the state Department of Health Services, told The Oakland Tribune Tuesday. The requirement was inadvertently dropped from the statute books when that section of law was amended two years ago, he said.

Nor will the department push to have the language restored, McGurk added, as other technologies such as steam sterilization and microwaving are improving to the point where they could supplant incineration.

But that technology is not here yet, and for now incineration remains the best way to dispose of pathogens, chemotherapy drugs and outdated pharmaceuticals -- the three types of waste formerly required by law to be burned, McGurk said. No other waste disposal company in the state today accepts placentas or amputated limbs, for example, he said.

And IES maintains it is following the spirit of the law, if not the letter. "The legislative intent is still there," said IES spokesman Jay Silverberg. "Whether you look at the technicality in the law or the legislative intent, the law was written that incineration is essentially the best way to get rid of that waste."

Still, protesters with Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice and other groups decried the betrayal, noting that IES officials stood on the steps of City Hall last month with state Sen. Don Perata, D-Oakland, and Oakland City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente to tout that mandate as the reason to keep the burners going.

"Is it legal or not?" asked Greenaction's director, Bradley Angel, as he marched in front of the incinerator's gate. "They should've said what it is, instead of misleading us -- the same way they're saying incinerating is safe. There's no excuse anymore."

Three protesters -- Brett Shull, Heather McCormick and Dave Rinaldi -- chained themselves to the front gate and were arrested on charges of unlawful assembly. Police and firefighters needed bolt cutters and a hydraulic ax to cut the chains. A fourth protester, Alice Burkner, was also arrested after she refused to leave the area.

Throughout the protest, white steam poured from the incinerator's stack, indicating operations inside continued normally.

Angel was undaunted. "We made our point," he said as police wagons carted away the four protesters and the crowd disbursed. "We'll be back. There are many more people willing to put their bodies on the line."

Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice http://www.greenaction.org phone (415) 252-0822 fax (415) 252-0823 NOTE OUR NEW ADDRESS! 1540 Market Street, Suite 325 San Francisco, CA 94102

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DIRTY TRICKS OVER DU CAMPAIGN

Exclusive By Simon Mitchell
The Big Issue (SW)
7th September 2001
From: davey garland <thunderelf@yahoo.co.uk>

Campaigners highlighting the health risks of depleted uranium fear they have become targets of a harassment campaign.

In the latest of a series of incidents, two researchers producing a comic book exposing the dangers of DU weapons have had their mail destroyed and their computer hard-drive inexplicably scrambled.

Author Davy Garland, a researcher in depleted uranium at Lancaster University, was sent a parcel last month containing 17 finished pages and a CD-Rom. The package was posted from Weston-super-Mare by the book's designer, Ian Hurst. But when it arrived, the parcel had been opened. All the pages had been removed apart from a short section that covered the surveillance and murder of an anti-DU campaigner.

The CD-Rom had been sliced in two.

Two days later Hurst returned home to discover his computer's hard-drive hadbeen disabled. He lost three years work.

"There were no signs of a break in," said Hurst. "The computer engineer I took it to said this could only happen by someone going in and altering the hard-drive. He did not think it could have been caused by a power surge or a virus as the damage was too selective."

DU is a nuclear power by-product used to tip armour piercing shells. Western armed forces fired hundreds of thousands of rounds in Iraq and the Balkans.

Campaigners say the side effects include birth abnormalities and cancer.

Garland said: "This follows a pattern of harassment of DU activists." Among the examples he cited was US campaigner Doug Rokke who was shot at, British Gulf War veteran Ray Bristow who had his house burgled and his computer tampered with, and journalist Felicity Arbuthnot who had her car rammed off the road. A French journalist also died in Kosovo while researching DUpoisoning. Intelligence expert Robin Ram-say said: "This is standard stuff that would be carried out by Special Branch at a local level working for M15."

He continued: "This is all about money. M15 would have been tasked by someone in the military to keep an eye on these people because the Ministry of Defence is nervous about getting sued by Gulf War veterans."


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

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