------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Moscow backs Washington on moratorium for nuclear tests
Past Nuclear Space Accidents
FedEx Shipped a High Radiation Package Without Knowledge
La. Investigates Radiation Leak
Three British Energy UK nuclear units off line
CIA Reports on China Nuclear Threat
Report sees China greatly increasing missile force
China rejects US missile report
China Denies U.S. Report on Its Nuclear Ambitions
Army buys 'safer' tank ammunition
Silver Bullet: Depleted Uranium
Finnish govt seen backing new nuclear plant
German brown coal second only to nuclear for power
Lithuania nuclear plant reopens first unit after repairs
US likely to face missile threat by 2015
U.S. Encourages Russia on Technology
Russia Takes Stand on Nuclear Arms
Russia Hopes Nuclear Arms Cuts 'Not Just on Paper'
Russia Uneasy About U.S. Arms Cuts Proposals
Loss of ABM Treaty a serious blow to arms control
A World of Wee Devices Seeks Some Batteries to Match
Administration tiptoes around nuke-test issue
U.S. Aims for 3,800 Nuclear Warheads
THE US NUCLEAR POSTURE REVIEW
Tight security rings U.S. nuclear power plants
Calvert Pressing State on Nuclear Emergency Response Plan
Fair trade: Amargosa Valley bovine waste for nuclear waste
Nevada Outraged: Yucca Mountain OKd for Nuclear Waste
Nevada Picked for Nuclear Waste Site
Energy Dept Endorses Nevada Site for Nuclear Waste
Nevada To Fight Nuclear Waste Site
Nevada Files Constitutional Challenge to Yucca Repository
Energy Dept. Wants to Store Nuclear Waste in Nevada
Yucca Mountain Chronology
ORNL workers exposed to radiation in three incidents
DOE officials testify at hearing for whistleblower
U.S. Nuke Proposal Called Shell Game

MILITARY
Villagers, U.S. At Odds Over Lethal Bombing
Reports That Taliban Leaders Were Freed Shock, Alarm U.S.
Afghan troops ordered out of Kabul to open way for ISAF
Military Chiefs Signal Support for Mugabe
Ethiopia says no reason to deploy troops in Somalia
Arms Buildup Enriches Firm Staffed by Big Guns
Russia signs contract to build two destroyers for Chinese Navy
U.S. lifts ban on arms sales
Arms Buildup Enriches Firm Staffed by Big Guns
N.Y., Calif. Refuse to Exclude Terrorism From Insurance
Loral settles charge it gave China data
People and Ecosystems in Colombia: Casualties of the Drug War
Colombia ends peace talks
Bush Warns Iran Not to Try to Undermine Afghanistan
Bush Warns Iranian Officials
Israel Flattens Gaza Homes in Retaliation for Attack
India's deadly defence: the 1,800 mile long minefield
US to mount raids into Pak to hunt Laden
Biographical details of Musharraf
U.S. KC-130 crashes in Pakistan
US assures Pakistan of defence cooperation
200,000 refugees have entered Pakistan since Sept
Pentagon Doesn't Want Photos Sent
For NPR, Violence Is Calm if It's Violence Against Palestinians
Turkey changes line on Chechen rebels
U.S.'s intent to stay in Asia irks Moscow
Evidence of rights abuses mounts as Russians end Argun sweep
US Air Force ready to launch Milstar satellite
KUCINICH SPACE WEAPONS BAN BILL ENDORSERS (HR 2977)
Space Preservation Act HR 2977 IH
BILL WOULD BAN SPACE-BASED MIND CONTROL WEAPONS
Espionage Verdict Upheld in Russia
U.N. group attracts big-name businesses
U.S. Begins Transfer of Detainees to Cuba

POLICE / PRISONERS
Ridge Predicts Salt Lake Games Safe
Fired Nuclear Worker Had Arms Cache, Police Say
Justice's IG begins probe of anti-terror law's use
Demand for bomb-sniffing dogs breeds U.S. Govt program
And to your left ...
Federal Judge Bars Expert Testimony
High Court Reaffirms 'Truth in Sentencing'
O'Connor swings ruling to raise bar on death penalty
N.C. Gov. Commutes Death Sentence
Terrorists moving from Somalia

ENERGY AND OTHER
Wind power use grows by 30%
Loyola Marymount Will Install Giant Solar Roof
U.S. Backs Fuel-Cell Cars
Bush abandons high-mileage car program for hydrogen fuel-cell approach
Most fuel cell companies give up gains on US plan
White House Moves to Contain Political Damage
Microbe breaks down PCBs
Oil Spill Contaminates Ecuadorian Amazon
Beach Water Pollution Can Be Tracked to Its Source
Anthrax not uncommon outside U.S.
Bush backs restoring of food stamps
US intelligence forecasts seven potential new trouble spots in 2002

ACTIVISTS
Greenpeace Star Wars Protesters Guilty of Misdemeanor
Why we have to save the ABM treaty
Inquiry: what other space weapons bans do you know?



-------- NUCLEAR

Moscow backs Washington on moratorium for nuclear tests

Thursday January 10, 2002 3:57 AM
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020109/1/29zu5.html

Russia welcomed the US decision to continue the international moratorium on nuclear arms testing, reports say.

Russian foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Iakovenko said the moratorium was "particularly important as Washington continues to obstinately refuse to ratify the agreement on the complete ban of nuclear tests", a reference to the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

A spokesman for the White House confirmed Tuesday that US President George W. Bush "continued to be in favour of the moratorium" on nuclear arms testing.

The statement came after US press reports suggested underground nuclear testing would begin again, despite the current government stance against it.

Former US president George Bush, the father of the current US leader, decided to impose the moratorium in 1992.

The world's five heavyweight nuclear powers -- Russia, the United States, France, China and Britain -- signed the CTBT, however the parliaments of China and the United States have yet to ratify the treaty.

The Russian foreign ministry spokesman said the importance of non-proliferation and disarmament agreements had increased since the "erroneous decision by the United States to pull out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty" of 1972.

Bush said last month that the United States would pull out of the ABM treaty in six months time.

Discussions on the reduction of strategic arms between the United States and Russia are due to take place later this month.

-------- accidents

Past Nuclear Space Accidents

http://www.globenet.free-online.co.uk/pnacc.htm

NOVEMBER 1996: Russian Mars '96 space vehicle disintegrates over Chile and Bolivia, likely spreading its payload of nearly half a pound of plutonium. Searchers found no remains of the spacecraft which was believed to have burned up. Eyewitnesses saw the flaming reentry over the mountains in the region.

FEBRUARY 1983: Soviet Cosmos 1402 crashes into South Atlantic ocean carrying 68 pounds of Uranium-235.

JANUARY 1978: Cosmos 954 blows up over Canada with 68 pounds of Uranium-235 and other nuclear poisons, much of which is thought to have vaporized and spread worldwide.

APRIL 1973: Soviet Rorsat lands in the Pacific Ocean north of Japan. Radiation released from the reactor was detected.

APRIL 1970: Apollo 13 lands near New Zealand with the 8.3 pounds of Plutonium-238 believed to be still in the spacecraft at the bottom of the ocean floor.

1969: Two Cosmos lunar missions fail. Radiation detected as crafts burn up in the atmosphere.

MAY 1968: U.S. Nimbus B-1 lands in the Santa Barbara channel off California with 4.2 pounds of Uranium-238 but was recovered by NASA.

APRIL 1964: U.S. Transit 5BN-3 hits the Indian Ocean with its 2.1 pounds of Plutonium-238 vaporizing in the atmosphere and spreading worldwide.

----

FedEx Shipped a High Radiation Package Without Knowledge

New York Times
January 10, 2002
By MATTHEW L. WALD
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/10/national/10RADI.html

WASHINGTON, Jan. 9 - FedEx unwittingly carried a package from Paris to New Orleans last week that was emitting so much radiation that the recipient, a company that packages radiation sources for industrial testing, has been unable to get near enough to measure it directly.

But FedEx officials said the fact that the container passed undetected through the company's system did not indicate a security risk, because the shipper and the recipient were known to FedEx, allowing easy approval of the shipment.

If terrorists had tried to ship radioactive material they would have failed, the company said, because extra precautions would have been taken in the case of an unknown shipper or recipient.

FedEx never monitored the radiation while the shipment was in its custody. The recipient, the Source Production and Equipment Company, notified FedEx of the radiation after a FedEx truck delivered the 300-pound package to the company's factory in St. Rose, La.

The company told FedEx in an initial estimate that the dose at the surface was 10 rem per hour. If that is correct, a person exposed to the radiation would exceed the annual limit for exposure in half an hour, and within a few hours would show effects from radiation poisoning.

At the Texas office of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Chuck Cain, the acting director of the materials branch, said that "this event could have had very serious consequences."But Mr. Cain added that it did not appear that anyone had absorbed a large dose.

The package contained Iridium- 172, which is used for industrial radiography. The radioactive material is put behind a heavy piece of metal, and by measuring what comes through the other side, technicians can look for cracks or other flaws.

The shipper was a Swedish manufacturer, Studsvik.

Scott A. Mugnow, director of safety at FedEx, said the pilots on the plane that carried the shipment were equipped with badges that measure radiation, and that when those were processed they did not show significant exposure. But other workers who handled the shipment did not have such badges. FedEx is trying to calculate their exposure. Mr. Mugnow would not describe how a package from an unknown shipper would have been treated differently.

The president of the Source Production did not return phone calls over two days.

--------

La. Investigates Radiation Leak

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
January 10, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Radioactive-Package.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26248-2002Jan10?language=printer

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- A steel container that leaked dangerous levels of radiation after arriving from Sweden will be stored behind a lead-and-concrete shield until the cause of the leak can be determined, state officials said Thursday.

The package, which emitted radiation levels at least five times higher than U.S. regulations allow, was shipped to a company that packages radiation sources for industrial use.

Authorities said it was unlikely anyone was harmed by the leak. Preliminary calculations showed those who came in contact with the package would have been exposed to radiation similar to a CAT scan, said Michael Henry, senior environmental scientist at the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality.

``I don't think anyone was exposed to anything that will be harmful to health. At least there's no indication of that as of yet,'' Henry said.

The leak was discovered Jan. 2 by workers from St. Rose-based Source Production and Equipment Co. who retrieved the container from the New Orleans airport.

The package had been transported from Stockholm to Memphis by FedEx, whose crew members wear devices that constantly monitor radiation levels. The devices showed normal levels during the trip, said Sandra Munoz, a company spokeswoman.

``The radiation was discovered after it left our possession,'' Munoz said.

Henry said the leak probably began sometime after the container arrived in Memphis. FedEx hired a trucking company to drive the package from Memphis to New Orleans. Munoz would not reveal the name of the company, citing a confidentiality policy.

The Swedish company that shipped the package, Studsvik, said radiation levels were tested in Stockholm and Paris and found to be normal. Studsvik is developing a plan to safely open the container and determine the cause of the leak, Henry said.

The package was sending out about 1 roentgen per hour of radiation at a distance of 20 feet away, five times the amount allowed under U.S. regulations, he said.

He said pellets of the radioactive material, Iridium-192, probably moved from a shielded part of the container to an area that allowed radiation to leak. Studsvik has been prohibited from shipping Iridium-192 since the discovery.

Iridium-192 is sold to testing laboratories, which use it in radiography to check welded joints in structures such as oil pipelines and bridges.

-------- britain

Three British Energy UK nuclear units off line

UK: January 10, 2002
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13981/story.htm

LONDON - Three of British Energy's UK nuclear power generating units, with a total capacity of 1,750 megawatts, were out of action on Wednesday, the company said.

"We don't speculate on when plants will come back," a company spokesman told Reuters.

At the Hinkley Point B plant, the 650-megawatt unit seven was shut down early on Tuesday because of a turbine problem.

At the Dungeness B station, both 550-megawatt reactors remained off for refuelling.

The Dungeness reactor 21 went off on Sunday and reactor 22 went down early on Wednesday, according to data from the National Grid.

-------- china

CIA Reports on China Nuclear Threat

By JOHN J. LUMPKIN,
Associated Press Writer
Thursday January 10 8:00 AM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20020110/ts/missile_threat_3.html

WASHINGTON (AP) - China is expected to have as many as 100 long-range nuclear missiles aimed at the United States by 2015, many of them on hard-to-find mobile launchers, a new CIA (news - web sites) report says.

China sees a larger, mobile force as necessary to maintain its nuclear deterrent against the United States, says the report, ``Foreign Missile Developments and the Ballistic Missile Threat Through 2015.''

The report, released Wednesday, also says North Korea (news - web sites) and Iran will probably possess long-range missiles capable of reaching the United States by the same year.

In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi said Thursday that China would strengthen its national defense ``in accordance with its own needs.''

``I have no details on the specific report,'' he said, ``but I think such matters are merely baseless speculation.''

Similar assessments have been used to justify U.S. plans for multibillion-dollar missile defense systems capable of shooting down a limited ICBM attack on the continental United States.

Last month President Bush (news - web sites) used the threat of missile attack by terrorists as a reason for the United States to pull out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty with Russia.

``I have concluded the ABM treaty hinders our government's ability to develop ways to protect our people from future terrorist or rogue state missile attacks,'' the president said.

But the new report says terrorists aren't expected to employ long-range missiles to deliver nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction on the United States.

``Ships, trucks, airplanes and other means may be used,'' it says. Hostile countries may employ similar means, it says.

These delivery methods can be used covertly, are cheaper and more accurate than non-U.S. ICBMs, and avoid any missile defenses, the report says.

Currently, China has about 20 silos with CSS-4 nuclear ICBMs that are capable of reaching the United States, the report says. Another dozen nuclear missiles can reach targets in Russia and Asia. It also has a few medium-range submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and probably only one submarine from which to launch them.

The report is an unclassified summary of a National Intelligence Estimate, which draws together information and analyses from the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies about foreign countries' missile development programs.

The Chinese military is developing three new missile systems, two truck-launched missiles and a new submarine-launched missile, all of which could be fielded by 2010, the report says. The Chinese may also be able to mount multiple-independent re-entry vehicles - MIRVs - on its older silo-based missiles. These enable a single missile to launch warheads at several targets, vastly increasing the missile's potential damage.

China sees an expanded ICBM force as necessary to overcome a U.S. missile defense system - and therefore maintain its ability to strike the U.S. mainland. This would provide a deterrent during a conflict over Taiwan.

While U.S. officials insist the missile defense program is to defeat strikes by North Korea and other ``rogue'' nations, some of those proposed defenses might be sufficient to shoot down all 20 Chinese ICBMs. Analysts say that having a missile defense system would give the U.S. more freedom to go to war over Taiwan, should China invade it.

Arguing for such a system, Bush suggested earlier this year that a rogue state might not be restrained by the fear of nuclear annihilation as the Soviet Union was.

One-hundred missiles would be too many for most of the missile defense systems envisioned by the Pentagon (news - web sites), ensuring that China has a deterrent against U.S. entry into a fight over Taiwan.

``Beijing is concerned about the survivability of its strategic deterrent against the United States and has a long-range modernization program to develop mobile, solid-propellant ICBMs,'' the report says. ``The (U.S. intelligence community) projects that by 2015, most of China's strategic missile force will be mobile.''

China also is expanding its short-range ballistic missile force, and will probably have several hundred by 2005, the report says. These are armed with conventional warheads which could be used to bombard Taiwan from the Chinese mainland.

North Korea, meanwhile, has halted missile flight-testing until at least 2003, although it continues to develop the Taepo Dong-2, a two-stage missile that would be capable of reaching parts of the western United States. North Korea also probably has one or two nuclear weapons that could be mounted on those missiles, the report says.

Iran, meanwhile, might be able to test a long-range missile around 2005, but more likely won't have the capability to do so until 2010, the report says.

The report reflects some differences of opinion between U.S. intelligence agencies, with one unidentified agency arguing that Iran won't be able to test missiles able to reach the U.S. mainland even by 2015. Its projections also assume each country's political direction will not change significantly during the next 13 years.

Iran will rely on foreign assistance from Russia, China and North Korea to complete its missile program, the report says.

Russia's strategic missile force will continue to get smaller, with or without arms control agreements, but Russia will still have far and away the largest nuclear missile inventory capable of hitting the United States, the report says.

----

Report sees China greatly increasing missile force

By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 10, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020110-77865160.htm

China is building up its strategic missile force by converting silo missiles to road-mobile ICBMs, as North Korea, Iran, Iraq continue work on long-range strike weapons, a U.S. intelligence report released yesterday says.

"The intelligence community projects that Chinese ballistic missile forces will increase several-fold by 2015," the National Intelligence Council, an interagency analysis group based at CIA headquarters, stated in an annual assessment.

The unclassified report said the future Chinese ballistic missile force "deployed primarily against the United States" will number around 75 to 100 warheads and will be smaller than either U.S. or Russian strategic arsenals.

The report also said North Korea appears to be preparing for a flight test of its long-range Taepo Dong-2 missile, "which is capable of reaching parts of the United States with a nuclear weapon-sized ... payload" of several hundred pounds.

There is a danger some nations could fire short- or medium-range ballistic missiles or cruise missiles from ships close to U.S. coasts, the report says.

"Most U.S. intelligence community agencies project that during the next 15 years the United States most likely will face [intercontinental ballistic missile or ICBM] threat from North Korea, Iran and possibly Iraq, ... in addition to the strategic forces of Russia and China," the report said.

The report was issued in response to requests from the Senate Intelligence Committee to produce annual threat assessments.

It was made public weeks after President Bush announced the United States' intention to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia as part of efforts to build strategic missile defenses.

A U.S. intelligence official said the report, similar to an earlier national intelligence estimate, was made public as a reminder "that the threat from ballistic missiles remains and continues to grow."

Although North Korea has extended a moratorium on missile flight testing until next year based on progress in talks with the United States, a Taepo Dong-2 space launch test is expected, as occurred during its first test in 1998, the report said.

The report said North Korea is continuing to work on its Taepo Dong missiles.

The intelligence council report is a consensus view of various U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, State Department intelligence and military intelligence units.

The report said that Iran is building both long- and short-range missiles and has Shahab-3 missiles with ranges of up to 806 miles "that could be launched in a conflict."

An intercontinental-range missile could be test launched by Iran by the late 2000s, the report said. Iraq also "wants a long-range missile and probably retains a small, covert force of Scud-variant missiles."

The report states the proliferation of missile goods, mostly from Russia, China and North Korea, has boosted efforts of developing nations to build missiles.

China's sales of M-11 short-range missiles to Pakistan, for example, have helped Islamabad build longer-range missiles, it stated.

Russia's missile force of about 700 ICBMs with 300 warheads and a dozen missile submarines with 200 missiles and 900 warheads, likely will decrease to a total of fewer than 2,000 warheads regardless of arms control, the report said.

China's current small force of about 20 CSS-4 ICBMs capable of hitting the United States and about 12 CSS-3s that can hit targets in Russia and Asia is being modernized, the report said.

----

China rejects US missile report

Thursday, 10 January, 2002
BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/asia-pacific/newsid_1752000/1752481.stm

China has been developing its missiles in recent years China has dismissed as "baseless speculation" a CIA report which said it could quadruple its arsenal of nuclear warheads.

The Central Intelligence Agency said that within 13 years, China is likely to have between 75 and 100 inter-continental missiles aimed at the United States.

That is about four times the current number of missiles.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi said China would strengthen its national defence "in accordance with its own needs".

"I have no details on the specific report," he said, "but I think such matters are merely baseless speculation."

The CIA also concludes that by 2015, both North Korea and Iraq are likely to have developed missiles that could hit the US.

Chinese expansion

China is keen to develop its missile force so it can maintain a nuclear deterrent against the US, which is planning a controversial multi-million-dollar missile defence system.

The US says its missile defence programme is to protect itself against North Korea and what it calls "rogue" nations, like Iraq. But some of those proposed defences could in theory shoot down about 20 Chinese inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).

However, the system could not handle the number of missiles the CIA estimates China will develop.

The CIA says China is already developing three new missile systems which could be ready by 2010.

It is also developing the ability to fire missiles from mobile launchers and to equip them with multiple warheads.

China already has about 20 silos with CSS-4 nuclear ICBMs capable of reaching the US, the report says. It also has a few medium-range, submarine-launched ballistic missiles and, it is thought, one submarine from which to launch them.

China is also expanding its short-range ballistic missile force, and will probably have several hundred by 2005, the report says. These are armed with conventional warheads that could target Taiwan from the Chinese mainland.

The CIA report also says North Korea's Taepo Dong-2 missile, which would have the capability to reach the western US, could be ready for flight-testing.

Pyongyang has declared a moratorium on missile flight-tests until at least 2003.

----

China Denies U.S. Report on Its Nuclear Ambitions

January 10, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-arms-missiles-usa.html

BEIJING (Reuters) - China dismissed as baseless on Thursday a U.S. intelligence report that said Beijing could increase its arsenal of nuclear warheads capable of reaching the United States from about 20 now to 100 over the next 15 years.

``Such news is just baseless speculation. China will increase its defense power based on its own needs,'' said Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi.

The U.S. report was a combined analysis by various intelligence agencies released Wednesday.

The United States is trying to develop a missile defense shield to protect against any long-range missile attack by hostile forces. China has opposed the U.S. defense shield plans out of fear its small nuclear arsenal could be neutered and that it could be stretched to cover rival Taiwan.

Thursday, China also called on the United States to abide by and sign a treaty aimed at banning global nuclear tests after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld left the door open to future underground nuclear tests.

Rumsfeld reasserted U.S. commitment to a nuclear testing moratorium Tuesday, but left open the possibility that future underground tests might be needed to keep the shrinking U.S. nuclear arsenal ``safe and reliable.''

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi, in response to a question on the issue, said:

``We hope that all countries will strictly abide by the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and sign and approve the treaty as soon as possible.''

The U.S. Senate decided in 1999 not to ratify the proposed international Comprehensive Test Ban treaty, which is aimed at a global ban on all nuclear tests.

Rumsfeld said U.S. President George W. Bush would continue for now to observe a self-imposed moratorium on nuclear testing since 1992.

China has signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty but has not ratified it.


-------- depleted uranium

Army buys 'safer' tank ammunition

By Michael Smith,
Defence Correspondent
10/01/2002)
http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/01/10/ndu10.xml&sSheet=/news/2002/01/10/ixnewstop.html

THE Army is to buy a tungsten-tipped armour-piercing round for its tanks amid concern over the side-effects of the depleted uranium equivalent.

The depleted uranium (DU) round used by Britain's Challenger II tanks has been cited by veterans' organisations as a possible cause for the illnesses suffered by thousands of soldiers who served in the Gulf war.

The Ministry of Defence denied that the decision to buy the round, which a year ago the Army said it did not need, was a tacit admission that DU might be harmful.

A spokesman said: "It is not going to replace the DU rounds. We're not going wholesale into tungsten at the expense of DU. It's an option. It's an alternative to DU."

The National Gulf War Veterans' and Families' Association said the MoD had no choice but to seek alternatives to the DU round because so many countries now regarded the potential side-effects as too dangerous.

"It doesn't surprise us because DU is dangerous," said Shaun Rusling, the association's chairman. "It is sensible to do this but it is a bit late for the Gulf war veterans."

The Army warned five years ago that exposure to dust from exploded DU ammunition increased the risk of developing lung, lymph and brain cancers.

The MoD has persistently said that the main risk from DU ammunition comes from chemical poisoning caused by the ingestion of larger quantities of uranium dioxide dust than anyone would be likely to swallow.

The Army report, however, stated that even small amounts of insoluble uranium dioxide dust would build up in the lungs where it would emit radiation, causing cancer.

British forces used DU ammunition during the Gulf war for armour-piercing tank rounds and for Phalanx anti-missile rounds fired by Navy ships. The Navy was forced to stop using the DU rounds after the American manufacturer of the Phalanx rounds stopped producing them because of safety fears.

Gen Sir Michael Walker, Chief of General Staff, told the International Defence Review that the Army was going to buy a tungsten-penetrator round developed privately by BAE Systems Royal Ordnance and Vickers.

----

Silver Bullet: Depleted Uranium

January 10, 2002,
Canadian Broadcast Corporation
http://www.tv.cbc.ca/national/pgminfo/du/

Depleted uranium is the super weapon of the '90s; used in the Gulf War and the conflict in Kosovo. But now Canadian troops, soldiers and peacekeepers alike, may be exposed to depleted uranium with its potential danger. Now this threat wasn't one raised by a hostile enemy, but by the arms used by the United States and other NATO allies. They defeated the toughest armoured vehicles with the use of depleted uranium. It packed a knockout punch, but what soldiers often didn't know was that depleted uranium poses a threat to victor as well as vanquished. Dan Bjarnason reports this cautionary tale. The story producer was Marijka Hurko.

Jerry Wheat went off to war in the Gulf, He drove a Bradley armoured personnel carrier for the Third armoured Division. Then the war followed Jerry home to New Mexico.

"I have had real bad joint pain, abdominal problems," Wheat says. "I get real bad headaches. I went from 220 pounds down to 160 pounds for no reason, and that's when I started suspecting that it was something related to the Gulf."

The shadows of that war eight years ago still haunt him. Wheat brought back more than victory from the front. Awarded a Purple Heart after being wounded in combat, Wheat came home with pieces of shrapnel embedded in his body and with mysterious body pains. Jerry Wheat is convinced these ominous souvenirs from the firing line are connected.

The ground campaign in the Gulf War involved much fighting by armoured forces. Wheat's unit was in the thick of it, and his vehicle was accidentally hit twice by fire from his own side. What Wheat did not know was that the shells that hit him were made from depleted uranium, the pride of the American arsenal.

"It blew off my helmet and blew me into the front of the vehicle," Wheat recalls. "I could feel it. I could feel the burning because when the rounds went through, the aluminum melted. And as it goes in you, just burns; it cauterizes as it goes in. At that point, I felt the shrapnel hit me in the back -- hit me in the back of the head. I had second and third degree burns on the back of my head."

It's the new wonder weapon the Pentagon calls a "silver bullet."

What is depleted uranium? Depleted uranium is still uranium. There are three types of uranium, U238, U234 and U235. Uranium 234 and 235 are fissionable material, the kind used in bombs. Depleted uranium is what is left over when the U234 and U235 is removed. The remaining U238 is still highly radioactive.

Depleted uranium shell A DU round is made from the leftover U238. The killing punch comes from the solid depleted uranium metal rod in the shell. A 120 mm tank round contains about 4000 grams or 10 pounds of solid DU.

DU shell hits A DU rod is very dense. At high speed, it slices through tanks like a hot knife through butter. It burns on impact, creating flying bits and dust that are toxic and radioactive with a half-life of 4.2 billion years.

In the Gulf War, the U.S. fired almost a million DU rounds, leaving a battlefield littered with 1,400 wrecked radioactive Iraqi tanks, crawled over by victorious GI's who were breathing in contaminated dust.

Jerry Wheat and the other Gulf vets were never told of the risks of being exposed to a DU campaign. But after the shooting stopped and back home in Los Lunas, New Mexico, Wheat -- now out of the army -- grew mystified as his health deteriorated. Military doctors had no answers.

Then a year after war's end, Wheat got startling evidence from his father -- a technician at the famous Los Alamos Nuclear Research Centre, who just out of curiosity tested the shrapnel that came from his son's body and gear. The shrapnel was radioactive. Today, eight years after the Gulf War, that shrapnel still lights up a Geiger counter. He also keeps other pieces.

"This is shrapnel out of my gear. And there was just a couple pieces that I took out of my body -- a couple small pieces... I kept it since I found out the vehicle was hit with a DU penetrator, I just kept it so I would have it. Just kind of proof," Wheat says.

The pieces on the table are not a danger, he says. "But if you actually got a piece that was depleted uranium and you had inhaled it or swallowed it or something, then you would have a potential heavy metal problem," Wheat says.

Jerry's great fear is that whatever he brought back with him from the Gulf is now afflicting his family. His older son Joe was hospitalized with breathing problems the day after Wheat dragged his contaminated gear into the house. Derrick, his youngest son, who was born after the war, suffers strange blisters on his hands. His wife suffered a miscarriage. Jerry himself recently had a tumour removed from his shoulder. He now worries continually about cancer.

Jerry says the military has never shown any interest in his shrapnel. The military said Jerry's health problems are due to post traumatic stress.

At the Pentagon, depleted uranium is no mystery weapon. The American military has been testing it for 40 years, yet no one in the corridors of power gave much attention to ensuring that American GI's knew how to handle the new weapons system. Bernard Rostker is the under secretary of the army, and he admits that over the years, troops were given no proper training. Rostker himself reported in 1998 that American soldiers in their thousands had been unnecessarily exposed to DU; this seven years after the end of the Gulf War, when it was first used.

"We were not diligent in training our troops," Rostker says. "That doesn't mean that there were any health consequences. These are men who survived friendly fire incidences and have been traumatized; some had been burned, some have lost limbs. So they are not without health problems. But those health problems are not attributable to the heavy metal toxicity or the radioactivity of depleted uranium."

"So what do you tell the vets who are ailing from something and they feel it's because of depleted uranium weapons?" reporter Dan Bjarnson asks.

"We, first of all, don't believe that this is people's imagination. We think people are ill. We have an extensive program trying to understand what they may have been exposed to on the battlefield. We have published over 23 reports. Unfortunately, we have not found a smoking gun."

The number of Gulf War vets who were in contact with radioactive tanks or breathed in contaminated dust could be in the tens of thousands. Yet so far, only a fraction -- about 200 vets, like Jerry Wheat -- are being monitored. The Pentagon still insists there is not enough evidence to link exposure with illness.

Doug Rokke is a thorn in the side of the military today because of what he learned eight years ago in the Gulf, where he served as lieutenant with the U.S. Army Preventitive Medicine Command. There he led army teams that cleaned up contaminated vehicles hit by DU rounds. Now he is collecting evidence that the Pentagon knew of the health hazards to himself and other vets all along. He now teaches at Jackson State University in Alabama.

"It's obvious today that the military did know, but they didn't inform anybody," Rokke says. "There were two memorandums that came to us in March of 1991 as we started the cleanup of the contaminated equipment and the casualties in the Gulf. One memo was known as the Los Alamos memorandum."

The Los Alamos memo, written by a Lt.Col. M. V. Ziehmn read, in part, "there has been and continues to be a concern regarding the impact of DU on the environment. Therefore, if no one makes a case for the effectiveness of DU on the battlefield, DU rounds may become politically unacceptable and thus, be deleted from the arsenal. ...Keep this sensitive issue in mind when after action reports are written."

"The Los Alamos memorandum specifically gave us guidance that said when we are writing a report, or reporting our findings, make sure -- make sure that we don't disrupt the future use of depleted uranium munitions," Rokke says.

Then a second memo, from the Defence Nuclear Agency, arrived about the same time. It read "Alpha particles (uranium oxide dust) from expended rounds is a health concern but, Beta particles from fragments and intact rounds is a serious health threat..."

"The two memos, added together now after eight years of thought and research and discussions now, in my mind, are very clear. The United States and the world know about the health and the environmental consequences of using this munition and they don't care," Rokke says.

We asked Roskter, if there is no DU problem, why these warnings about DU hazards issued as far back as 1991?

"There has been concern all along with every weapon," Roster says, "We have done testing on depleted uranium, from the beginning, to determine whether it is of particular concern."

After the Gulf War, Doug Rokke was assigned to produce a Pentagon training video to teach soldiers how to handle depleted uranium. It was a video that was ultimately shelved and never shown to the troops.

"There are four general situations during which depleted uranium may present hazards to soldiers. One: if the equipment is damaged or destroyed in combat or in an accident," the video says.

"This is part of the training video that we finished in 1995," Rokke says. "The important part here, what we learned from our research, is everybody involved in working with depleted uranium contaminated equipment must wear respiratory protection and they must have some kind of coveralls or covering that can protect their clothes. What we learned, is you can't get this off the clothing."

"In the Gulf, we basically just had dust masks. We were told that the dust masks and the surgical masks would work and we could wear gloves. And all we had was the uniforms that we had available." "And they knew no better; no one had ever hinted to them they were in peril?" Bjarnason asked.

"And that's criminal," Rokke replies.

The CBC showed that training video to Bernard Rostker at the Pentagon.

"Very interesting film, because you notice something that has been very confusing to some of the troops. Some of them were in full mop gear -- chemical protective gear and a gas mask. But they show other soldiers who were in a bandanna. In fact what you really need is a dust respirator and that's to meet the standards of the EPA. That does not mean anybody who didn't meet the standards during the Gulf War have levels of depleted uranium were likely to be impacted permanently."

The Pentagon built a high security, high priced, high tech cocoon at the Savannah River nuclear facility in Georgia to process radioactive materials from contaminated equipment. It has special walls and flooring to prevent any air or dust from escaping into the outside world. It's known as Building 101.

"If they're going to spend millions and millions of dollars to clean up the contaminated equipment that's come back from the Gulf, which you have seen here, then how could they say there is no hazard?" Rokke asks.

"Look at the amount of effort we do to take asbestos out of a building or lead paint. That doesn't mean that if you walk past a window that has had lead paint that you're going to immediately get lead paint poisoning," Rostker counters.

Doug Rokke's experiences in the Gulf ended eight years ago, but he still fights his battles with the Pentagon from his home in Jacksonville, Alabama. He is convinced his health started to slip away because of his work among contaminated vehicles over there in the deserts of Iraq and Kuwait.

"The problems that I have are breathing problems. My lungs have scar tissue in them. When I run or exercise, there are secretions -- fluids just fill up in the lungs. I don't have the fine motor control to do all the fine things that I used to be able to do because the nerves don't work like they should. Eye problems, vision problems, kidney problems," Rokke says.

Rokke has one important ally in his fight with the Pentagon. He is Dr. Jack Zerimba, head of the Gulf War Clinic at a U.S. Veteran's affairs clinic in Birmingham, Alabama.

He studied Rokke's breathing problems and the scar tissue on his lungs and says, "That is consistent with uranium exposure and other things too, such as metal exposure."

This official affirmation of a link is for Doug Rokke, his biggest victory in eight years.

In Washington, the Gulf War vets have enlisted the attention of many politicians. Wisconsin Democrat Senator Russ Finegold pressed for and got an investigation by the high powered and independent General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

"The evidence is contradictory with regard to the connection between depleted uranium and the many soldiers from the Gulf War who are complaining of ill effects," Finegold says. "Some reports indicate a real problem here; others question it. I think we need an independent investigation to determine whether this is really true. We have been through this before with many years of denial with regard to Agent Orange and its use in Vietnam. I don't want to see our government in any way, in fact or in perception, stonewall this issue of the health effects of depleted uranium.

In the latest chapter of this revolutionary new weapons system, DU ammunition was fired in this spring's NATO war in Yugoslavia. As usage becomes more frequent, for Finegold, the need for answers becomes more urgent.

"Keep in mind that depleted uranium was used recently in Kosovo and may well have effected people there as well," Finegold says, "This is not just old news. It is real current news for those who are ill from the Gulf War. And we may be finding other people, from the Kosovo conflict, who will experience similar problems in the future because of depleted uranium."

Canada once had depleted uranium in its inventory shells for the Navy during the Gulf War, but they were never fired and are now being disposed of because of the expense of special handling and storage facilities.

But Canadian troops must still deal with DU in Kosovo. Some 1,400 soldiers are now on patrol as part of a NATO peacekeeping contingent. They're equipped with small radiation detection devices and they're also under orders to stay away from any damaged Serb vehicles they come across; vehicles that may have been contaminated by DU ammunition fired by American planes last Spring during the air offensive.

At Defence headquarters in Ottawa, Brig.-Gen. David Jerkowski is in charge of all the operations of all Canadian troops overseas; their supplies and movement and safety.

"Our soldiers are not at risk," Jerkowski says. "There are other risks that are much greater than depleted uranium: there are many many more threats out there: landmines, diseases, reptiles. It depends on where we work in the world, and there are many greater risks than that."

A Canadian Forces routine order refers to "the inhalation of radioactive material as a primary health hazard."

"It depends on who wrote that particular order," Jerkowski says. "They are making sure that our troops are going to heed this and stay away from tank hulks, for example."

But U.S. Army Reserve Maj. Doug Rokke, who once ran the DU Project for the Pentagon, insists that an order simply to stay away from damaged vehicles is far from enough.

"Just staying away from it is only part of an answer, because unless the contamination is completely removed from all areas, how are you going to avoid it? How do you avoid it on a battlefield that's littered with uranium?"

Thousands of returning refugees are now fanning out across Kosovo, through a countryside strewn with rubble and war wreckage. No one has the particular task of keeping them clear of high-risk areas. U.N. environmental teams are running tests to check for signs of contamination; they need maps indicating where NATO DU hits were made. The Pentagon has not obliged.

"I don't think it's necessary and I don't know whether they could, even with any rigour, be created," Rostker says. " I mean the targets were combat vehicles and I'm not sure the pilots would have known where they were. The best thing you could find is the destroyed vehicle and I don't know of any that have been reported."

The stockpiling of DU weapons is spreading. As depleted uranium is becoming more, not less popular with the world's generals, more than 20 countries now have DU In their arsenals. If the lessons from past eras are anything to go by, there is often great ignorance about the path being charted when new weapons come along. For example when atomic testing was all the rage in the '50s, or when Agent Orange was used in Vietnam. When revolutionary new technology is introduced on the battlefield, no one at the time has any real idea of the consequences.

"The next time we go to war, the enemy may fire uranium at us," Rokke says. "So whether or not we decide to have it or not, or decide to use it or not, somebody else may decide to use it. We need to make sure that everybody knows what medical care to provide and how to complete the environmental cleanup. Everybody needs to know."

The military predict that depleted uranium will shape the battlefields of the future, but the future is already here.

-------- finland

Finnish govt seen backing new nuclear plant

FINLAND: January 10, 2002
Reuters
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13980/story.htm

HELSINKI - Finland's coalition government is sharply divided over a plan to build a new nuclear power plant, but is likely to tilt in favour of it by as early as next week, officials said on Wednesday.

Parliament could vote on the controversial issue by summer. Finland is the only country in western Europe considering to increase nuclear energy capacity at a time when public support has shifted to other energy sources.

"The cabinet will handle this issue next week at the earliest," said Timo Koivisto, adviser to Trade and Industry Minister Sinikka Monkare, who is expected to bring a plant proposal by power group Teollisuuden Voima (TVO) to the cabinet.

"If no one takes issue (with the application), it could be voted on already next week as most ministers have already taken a stance," Koivisto told Reuters.

Finland now has four nuclear reactors at two installations on the south and west coasts. Nuclear power accounts for about 30 percent of the country's total electricity consumption.

But the country is grappling with how to satisfy increasing energy demand while ensuring it meets its greenhouse gas emissions obligations under the Kyoto protocol.

Backers say boosting nuclear capacity is the only way to meet those goals and keep Finland, which has no oil or gas of its own, from becoming dependent on imported electricity. Opponents say the health and environmental risks are too great, and other energy forms should be favoured.

TVO made its proposal in November 2000, but a public complaint kept authorities from moving ahead with it last year.

An informal Reuters survey found that nine of Finland's 18 cabinet members would support the proposal, while five would oppose it, and four ministers were still undecided.

Majority cabinet support is needed for the application to go to parliament. But in case of a tie, Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen - who is said to favour the plan - will decide.

The Greens, the Left Alliance and the Swedish Party, all junior partners of the five-party coalition, have said they oppose the plant bid, but parties have generally given their representatives free rein to vote according to their conscience.

A similar proposal by TVO and Imatran Voima, now part of energy group Fortum , was rejected by parliament in September 1993 after nine months of heated debate.

-------- germany

German brown coal second only to nuclear for power

GERMANY: January 10, 2002
Reuters
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13979/story.htm

FRANKFURT - Brown coal-fired power plants in Germany last year became the second largest contributor to power generation after nuclear energy, which accounts for a third of the total, the industry association DEBRIV said on Wednesday.

Brown coal, or lignite, plants raised their share to 27.3 percent, a preliminary assessment, and another slight rise is forecast for 2002, DEBRIV said.

Germany is the world's leading lignite producer.

"The share of brown coal within power generation in 2001 increased by around one percentage point," a DEBRIV spokesman told Reuters from his base in Cologne.

"A new plant addition in 2002 will temporarily boost overall production before corresponding old plant capacity is idled," he added.

He cited latest figures from DEBRIV, which showed that some 156 billion kilowatt of power were derived from lignite in 2001, pushing its share in power generation one percent up from the 26.3 percent recorded a year earlier.

According to already published long-term plans, coal producer RWE Rheinbraun in second half 2002 is due to start a new 936 megawatt (MW) plant at Niederaussem near Cologne in order to replace old capacity.

The DEBRIV source said this would cause a temporary overlap with existing capacity.

Latest DEBRIV data also showed that 175.7 million tonnes of lignite were mined in Germany last year, nearly five percent more than in 2000.

The expansion and modernisation of eastern German coal companies, which can tap vast local lignite resources, was the main reason behind the expansion, according to the spokesman.

Politicians are committed to support the sector in order to safeguard jobs and national energy supply as nuclear power will be phased out by the early 2020s.

But these goals clash with national climate protection targets, because of the heavy carbon dioxide emissions arising from lignite.

The spokesman said the industry was working hard at lowering specific CO2 emissions through plant modernisations.

Of the 834 million tonnes of CO2 emissions from German industry recorded last year, 174 million tonnes were caused by lignite production.

-------- lithuania

Lithuania nuclear plant reopens first unit after repairs

LITHUANIA: January 10, 2002
Reuters
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13982/story.htm

VILNIUS - Lithuania's Ignalina nuclear power plant's first unit was back on line on Wednesday after it had been closed for nine days for minor repairs, plant officials said.

"At (1258 GMT) on January 8, after short repairs, the first unit of the Ignalina nuclear power plant resumed operation... On January 9 the first unit's number one turbine was operating at a power capacity of 660 megawatts," the plant said in a statement.

The plant added that the second of the two units - each with two turbines - was operating at 1,210 megawatts (MW) capacity. Each unit has an installed capacity of 1,300 MW.

Plant officials shut down the first unit on December 29 for what it called a "prophylactic" check-up, taking advantage of a lower demand for power during the holiday season.

"During the outage period of Ignalina's unit one, the rooms usually not attended during operation were examined. The seals of the first circuit have been replaced and the defects of the drainage pipes of small diameter have been eliminated," the plant statement said.

Ignalina officials added there were no variations from normal radiation levels around the plant.

"It was a very minor repair. There were no major problems, therefore we needed only a few days to do it," Ina Didziulyte, a plant spokeswoman, told Reuters.

The power utility Lietuvos Energija said in a statement exports to neighbouring Belarus and Russia's Kaliningrad enclave, scaled-down because of the shutdown, would now be resumed at higher levels.

Energija said it planned to supply around 350 million kilowatt hours (KWh) to Belarus and 200 million KWh to Russia's Kaliningrad enclave by the end of the month.

European Union-aspirant Lithuania has vowed to close Ignalina's first unit by 2005. The EU regards the Chernobyl-styled plant as unsafe and has made closing it a condition for joining the 15-member bloc.

-------- missile defense

US likely to face missile threat from North Korea, Iran, Iraq by 2015

Thursday January 10, 12:37 PM
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020110/1/2a1ww.html

The United States most likely will face threats from intercontinental ballistic missiles from North Korea, Iran, and possibly Iraq before 2015, according to a US intelligence estimate.

The National Intelligence Estimate -- which represents the collective view of the US intelligence community -- also said China's ballistic missile forces will increase several fold by 2015, but will remain considerably smaller and less capable that the strategic missile forces of Russia and the United States.

The estimate, made public Wednesday, said Russia's arsenal will decline to less than 2,000 warheads by 2015 with or without arms control.

The assessment showed no major changes since the last time the US intelligence community reviewed foreign ballistic missile trends in 1999.

But it found that "emerging ballistic missile states continue to increase the range, reliability and accuracy of the missile systems in their inventories -- posing ever greater risks to US forces, interests, and allies throughout the world."

Proliferation of technology, materials and expertise -- especially by Russian, Chinese and North Korean entities -- "has enabled emerging missile states to accelerate missile development, acquire new capabilities, and potentially develop even more capable and longer range future systems."

North Korea's Taepo Dong-2, which is capable of reaching parts of the United States with a nuclear weapons-sized payload, may be ready for flight-testing, an unclassified summary of the report said, noting that Pyongyang has extended a voluntary moratorium on flight testing until 2003.

It said Iran, which has a medium-range ballistic missile, also is pursuing a ICBM/space launch vehicle (SLV) system.

"All agencies agree that Iran could attempt a launch in mid-decade, but Teheran is likely to take until the last half of the decade to flight test an ICBM/SLV," it said. "One agency further believes that Iran is unlikely to conduct a successful test until after 2015."

Iraq would likely spend several years re-establishing its short-range ballistic missile force and prusuing medium range ballistic missiles if UN sanctions were lifted, the asessment said.

"All agencies agree that Iraq could test different ICBM concepts before 2015 if UN prohibitions were eliminated in the next few years," it said. "Most agencies, however, believe it is unlikely to do so, even if the prohibitions were eliminated."

----

U.S. Encourages Russia on Technology

By Barry Schweid
AP Diplomatic Writer
Thursday, January 10, 2002; 4:45 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A27129-2002Jan10?language=printer

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration is encouraging Russia to develop its own anti-missile technology for protection against regional threats.

The United States could benefit from a Russian shield when American and Russian troops are engaged in peacekeeping operations side by side, a senior U.S. official said Thursday.

The United States would be willing to cooperate with Russia in an anti-missile venture, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Russian military arms specialists will hold talks in Washington next Monday and Tuesday with a U.S. delegation headed by Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith.

They are due to take up ways to keep track of Russian nuclear weapons and to verify the deep cutbacks in long-range nuclear warheads pledged by President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin at talks in Washington and in Texas in November.

The two leaders vowed to reduce their nations' arsenals, but did not agree on new, lower levels.

Bush pledged to cut back to 1,700 to 2,200 warheads from the current U.S. level of about 7,000. Putin said Russia, which has about 6,000 warheads, would respond in kind.

However, the Russian leader suggested that mutual reductions be incorporated into a treaty. Bush, who has voiced skepticism about such binding agreements, did not go along with that suggestion.

Also, there was no agreement on missile defenses. Bush subsequently said the United States would withdraw from a 1972 treaty with Moscow that stands in the way of his ambitious program for a missile shield.

The two leaders are due to meet again, in St. Petersburg, Russia, in late May or early June. The talks in Washington next week are the first since Bush's decision to scrap the landmark accord and a first step toward potential compromise at the next summit.

The senior U.S. official, who briefed American reporters at the State Department on condition of anonymity, said Putin had cast his lot with the West and that Russia was not an enemy.

In a gesture to Moscow, he said the Bush administration would be willing to codify cutbacks with a statement or even a treaty, provided there would be no Cold War-era, tortuous negotiations.

Also, the official said the United States might try to reach an agreement with Russia on a precise number of warheads that each said would retain, instead of a permissible range.

Some provisions of the 1991 START I treaty, which made deep cuts in U.S. and Russian long-range nuclear weapons, could be applied to new reductions, the official said. These include verification procedures for ensuring the cutbacks are carried out.

But Alistair Miller, vice president of the Fourth Freedom Foundation, a private research group, criticized Bush's proposal to reduce the U.S. stockpile unilaterally.

"This would permit the United States to rearm when it wants to, and is unlikely to build confidence with Russia or any other nuclear state," Miller said in an interview.

"Arms control history clearly shows that arms control agreements build upon one another to foster trust between the two sides," Miller said. "The unilateral announcement by Bush could be ignored or reversed at U.S. discretion."

-------- russia

Russia Takes Stand on Nuclear Arms

By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV,
Associated Press Writer
Thursday January 10 8:30 AM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20020110/ts/russia_us_nuclear_2.html

MOSCOW (AP) - Setting the stage for tough talks on nuclear disarmament, Russia bristled Thursday at the Pentagon (news - web sites) plan to downsize U.S. nuclear arsenals by putting weapons in reserve rather than destroying them.

Russia's Foreign Ministry insisted the cuts must be ``irreversible'' when the United States goes through with a promise by President Bush (news - web sites) to reduce the number of operational nuclear warheads by two-thirds, to 1,700-2,200, by 2012.

The issue of what to do with nuclear weapons removed from duty - the so-called buildup potential - has been a major point of contention in previous U.S.-Russian negotiations. The latest statements from both sides signal tough bargaining ahead.

U.S. and Russian diplomats are expected to meet in Washington next week to discuss the details and timetable for the cuts in preparation for Bush's trip to Russia later this spring or summer.

``Russia will push strongly for the nuclear cuts to be irreversible, but the United States is unlikely to make any major concessions,'' said Alexander Pikayev, a military analyst with the Carnegie Endowment's Moscow office. ``Unfortunately for Russia, its position in talks is rather weak because its aging nuclear weapons are to go off-duty anyway.''

Bush promised Russian President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites) in November that his administration would make the cuts in the numbers of operational warheads - putting the arsenal far below the 6,000 nuclear warheads each country is currently allowed under the START I agreement.

Putin has promised to cut the number of Russian warheads to as low as 1,500. He has also pushed for the cuts to be written into formal treaty, something Bush opposes.

On Wednesday, a top Pentagon planner said that in the reduction plan, some warheads would be destroyed - how many was not announced - while others would be rendered inactive, meaning it would take several months to get them ready to fire.

J.D. Crouch, assistant secretary of defense for international security, said the United States needs to keep the warheads in reserve in case the world situation changes. Most previous arms control treaties do not require warheads to be destroyed, he said.

Russia's Foreign Ministry responded sharply Thursday. Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said cuts must be ``irreversible, so that strategic offensive weapons aren't just reduced 'on paper.'''

Retired Maj.-Gen. Vladimir Dvorkin, a former top Russian arms control negotiator, said he expected a compromise, given the recent warmth in Russian-U.S. ties.

``I wouldn't dramatize the situation. A solution can be found by the time of Bush's visit,'' said Dvorkin, now an adviser to the PIR-Center, an independent Russian military policy think-tank.

But Pikayev and some other analysts predicted that the United States would firmly defend its plan to keep nuclear weapons in reserve and refuse to make any major concessions.

``The resulting agreement will not be about real nuclear disarmament. It will only deceive the public,'' Pikayev said.

Ivan Safranchuk, who heads the Moscow office of the Washington-based Center for Defense Information, said the Pentagon wants to keep its nuclear weapons as a hedge against any new chill in U.S.-Russian relations and also as a deterrent against a potential increase in China's nuclear capability.

``Besides, it's much cheaper to keep weapons in reserve than to destroy them,'' he said.

It was the second time in two days that a U.S. statement on nuclear issues drew criticism from Moscow. On Wednesday, Russia firmly reiterated its commitment to a nuclear testing ban amid indications that the United States wants to reduce the time it would take to resume tests.

Safranchuk said Russia would continue protesting even if it lacks the power to prevent the United States from going its own way.

``Russia wants to show the harm of unilateral approaches to nuclear disarmament,'' he said.

----

Russia Hopes Nuclear Arms Cuts 'Not Just on Paper'

Thursday January 10 6:05 AM ET
Reuters
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20020110/wl/arms_usa_russia_dc_1.html

MOSCOW - Russia sounded a warning on U.S. plans to store rather than destroy warheads to be cut from strategic nuclear arsenals, saying Moscow hoped the reductions ``would be not just on paper.''

A Foreign Ministry statement issued in the early hours of the morning following the presentation in Washington of a new nuclear strategy urged the United States to follow through on pledges to proceed with real cuts in parallel with Russia.

``We believe Russian-American agreements on further cuts in nuclear arsenals must firstly be radical -- down to 1,500-2,200 warheads, secondly verifiable, and thirdly irreversible,'' ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said in the statement.

``That means strategic nuclear weapons must be cut not only 'on paper.'''

A senior source in the Russian general staff, quoted by the daily Kommersant in anticipation of the announcement, said Moscow would object to such a move.

``Such a contribution by Washington cannot be acceptable -- offering 50 Peacekeeper ICBMs and 200-300 warheads whose working life has already expired,'' the source said. ``It is ridiculous.''

Assistant Defense Secretary J.D. Crouch, outlining the results of a Nuclear Policy Review sent to Congress Tuesday, has said many inactivated nuclear warheads would be put into storage for emergency redeployment rather than being destroyed.

Crouch said Washington was not trying to ``mislead anybody.'' He said it was ``a prudent thing to have, in a very uncertain, period, some responsive capability.''

Both Russia and the United States have pledged to reduce the size of their strategic nuclear arsenals, now standing at between 6,000 and 7,000 warheads each, to a figure somewhere between 1,500 and 2,200.

The issue of whether to destroy -- or merely store -- warheads removed from missiles was a focal point of discussions at a summit in November between presidents Vladimir Putin (news - web sites) and George W. Bush.

Putin said the issue was one to be examined in negotiations leading to a new treaty. U.S. officials took no firm position and left the matter open, with Bush suggesting that a new agreement need not necessarily be part of a formal treaty.

Crouch's comments were part of a broader presentation setting out Washington's vision of nuclear weapons by 2012 to abandon the Cold War-era emphasis on mutual deterrence.

U.S. defense policy is predicated on developing an anti-missile shield to guard against what Bush says are new threats in the 21st century -- primarily missile launches by ''rogue states'' like Iran, Iraq and North Korea (news - web sites).

Bush said last month the United States would withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which Washington sees as outdated and a hindrance in developing the missile shield.

----

Russia Uneasy About U.S. Arms Cuts Proposals

January 10, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-arms-usa-russia.html

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia expressed unease on Thursday at U.S. plans to store, rather than destroy, warheads to be removed from nuclear missiles, with specialists saying Moscow had to insist on a formal post-Cold War disarmament pact.

Warning notes were sounded by Russia's Foreign Ministry, and by disarmament experts, after Assistant Defense Secretary J.D. Crouch said many inactivated strategic warheads would be put into storage for emergency redeployment.

A Foreign Ministry statement, issued in the early hours following Crouch's presentation in Washington of a new nuclear strategy, urged the United States to follow through on pledges to proceed with real cuts in parallel with Russia.

``We believe Russian-American agreements on further cuts in nuclear arsenals must firstly be radical -- down to 1,500-2,200 warheads -- secondly verifiable, and thirdly irreversible,'' ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said in the statement. ``That means strategic nuclear weapons must be cut not only 'on paper'.''

An expert at Russia's prestigious World Economy and International Relations Institute was blunter, saying such a U.S. approach made the disarmament process ``pointless.''

``What sort of reductions can we speak of if in a matter of hours, the United States can return to START-1 levels?'' Alexei Pikayev told Interfax news agency, referring to the 1991 arms treaty that led to current levels of 6,000-7000 warheads each.

Russia, he said, had consistently destroyed warheads and its aging arsenal gave it little option but to continue doing so.

The issue of whether to destroy -- or merely store -- deactivated warheads was a key unresolved point at a November summit between presidents Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush.

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN PUTIN, BUSH

Putin said the issue was one to be examined in negotiations leading to a new treaty. U.S. officials took no firm position and left the matter open, with Bush suggesting a new agreement need not necessarily be part of a formal treaty.

A fresh round of talks on clinching a new agreement is to open next week in Washington.

Crouch said Washington was not trying to ``mislead anybody.'' He said it was ``a prudent thing to have, in a very uncertain, period, some responsive capability.''

Both Russia and the United States have pledged to reduce the size of their strategic nuclear arsenals to a figure somewhere between 1,500 and 2,200.

Crouch's comments were part of a broader presentation setting out Washington's vision of nuclear weapons by 2012 to abandon the Cold War-era emphasis on mutual deterrence.

U.S. defense policy is predicated on developing an anti-missile shield to guard against what Bush says are new threats in the 21st century -- primarily missile launches by ''rogue states'' like Iran, Iraq and North Korea.

Bush said last month the United States would withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which Washington sees as outdated and a hindrance in developing the missile shield.

Senior parliamentarian Vladimir Lukin, a former ambassador to Washington, said the statement undermined U.S. notions that it now trusted Russia as a full-fledged ally -- particularly after Moscow's support for the anti-terror coalition.

``After such forthright U.S. declarations about disarmament and trust, it is clear that actions do not bear this out. It is also clear that a handshake is not enough to proceed with arms reductions,'' he said by telephone.

``If this means transferring warheads to a warehouse, it is better than leaving them on missiles, but worse than destroying them. And it sets a bad example for smaller nuclear powers being asked to cut their arsenals. What stimulus is there for them?''

-------- treaties

Loss of ABM Treaty a serious blow to arms control

Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002
Mark A. Gubrud
mgubrud@squid.umd.edu (Mark Gubrud)

The loss of the ABM Treaty is the most serious a blow to arms control and international security in a generation. Its effects may not be as immediately severe as, say, 9/11, but are probably more lasting and fateful:

- The ABM Treaty has been the most important legal impediment to space weapons testing and deployment, in the absence of a specific space weapons ban.

- Building a global NMD system WILL stimulate a Chinese buildup, which likely will stimulate the South Asian arms race, etc. Withdrawal from the ABM Treaty is only part of this process, but as a declaration of intent to plunge fully into this brave new world, it guarantees that the process goes at full speed from this point forward.

- ABM Treaty withdrawal is a clear signal that the era of strategic nuclear arms competition is not over, but is entering a new phase powered by all recent advances in technology and its proliferation worldwide. It is a step that, although not unanticipated, has shocked those who thought it would not come to pass, and sounded alarm bells around the globe. Its consequences thus touch not only China and South Asia but also Russia and the entire world.

- An easy withdrawal from the ABM Treaty will embolden Bush to further attacks on arms control, including a refusal to reexamine opposition to a BWTC verification regime, refusal to negotiate a formal START III or even to abide by the terms of START II, a restart of nuclear testing, and more.

- ABM Treaty withdrawal is a step that will be very hard to reverse, and may effectively commit the United States to this course of action even if the present administration is replaced by a more moderate one in 2004.

Unfortunately, there does not seem to be much basis for any hope of a revolt either from the Congress, the media, or the public, on the scale that would be necessary in order to prevent Bush from carrying through this catastrophic action. It is not clear whether activists are better advised to put their efforts into protesting and attempting to prevent ABM Treaty withdrawal, or to look beyond what may be inevitable and work for a formal space weapons ban combined with continuing nuclear reductions and limits on the scope of any missile defense systems.

-------- nuc power

WHAT'S NEXT
A World of Wee Devices Seeks Some Batteries to Match

New York Times
January 10, 2002
By ANNE EISENBERG
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/10/technology/10NEXT.html

ENGINEERS have yet to create a tiny submarine like the one in the 1966 movie "Fantastic Voyage," which traveled through a patient's bloodstream to battle a deadly blood clot.

But researchers are steadily shrinking once-massive machines, fabricating blades, hinges and other parts out of silicon at an ever tinier scale to create systems the size of a grain of sand or a red blood cell.

Millions of these miniature machines, known as microelectromechanical systems, or MEMS, may surround us one day, embedded in the concrete foundations of roads and bridges to monitor their conditions, aloft to check for biological warfare agents in the atmosphere, or attached to automobile tires to gauge pressure.

To do their job far from a wall outlet, MEMS devices need power to sense, calculate and transmit the data they collect. But so far the batteries needed to accomplish that have not duplicated the amazing shrinking act of the silicon machines. The power of a battery depends on its volume, and scaling down the size while maintaining the power has proved to be a tremendous challenge.

To address the problem, a handful of researchers have turned from traditional fossil fuels or electrochemical cells to a new source to create micro and nano-size batteries: nuclear power. The hope is that the high-energy particles emitted by radioactive materials as they decay will one day drive a generation of MEMS devices.

Dr. James P. Blanchard, an associate professor of nuclear engineering at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, has spent the last three years and about $450,000 awarded by the Department of Energy to develop prototypes of nuclear microbatteries for MEMS use.

Dr. Blanchard is not splitting atoms to get his nanonukes, which is the first thing he has learned to explain patiently when describing his work. "People hear `nuclear' and `power' and they think `fission' " and explosions, he said. "That's not what we are doing - we are not splitting uranium."

Instead, Dr. Blanchard and an assistant professor and MEMS expert, Dr. Amit Lal, are using minute amounts of a radioactive version of nickel, Nickel-63, in one of the prototypes they have developed. As this substance decays, it produces beta particles, high-energy electrons that now yield nanowatts (one nanowatt is one-billionth of a watt) and may soon, the inventors hope, yield microwatts.

This kind of technology - harnessing radioactive isotopes to create a power source - was used to create the far larger nuclear batteries of NASA's Cassini probe, launched in 1997, to help it travel through the far reaches of space. Shrinking such technology became Dr. Blanchard's goal. "We wanted to show it could be done," he said.

Resigned to alarmed reactions at the mention of the word "nuclear," Dr. Blanchard is quick to explain how little nuclear material is involved. "Batteries headed for another planet make a few hundred watts using an isotope of plutonium and are the size of a dishwasher," he said. "Ours is about as dangerous as a smoke detector" that falls off the wall and breaks. Smoke detectors contain small amounts of radioactive materials.

In one of Dr. Blanchard's prototypes, Nickel-63 dissolved in a solution is poured into micromachined channels; in another, it travels in pyramid-shape indentations in the silicon. The relatively low energy emitted by beta particles does not damage the semiconductor device where the particles collect. The half-life of the isotope - 102 years, meaning that in that time half of the substance will have decayed - makes it attractive for long-term applications.

Dr. Blanchard's group has also worked with alpha-emitting radioisotopes and plans to use them for future experiments. His work on microbatteries was reported last April at the ninth International Conference on Nuclear Engineering in Nice, France.

Dr. Jean-Pierre Fleurial, a physicist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., oversees several projects that tap the power of alpha particles, including an effort at the University of Illinois. Alpha particles give off far more energy than beta particles and are therefore a promising source, he said, but in some prototypes they eventually damage the semiconductor diode where they are collected and converted to electricity.

"The work ahead is to find innovative designs that last a long time and are reasonably efficient," Dr. Fleurial said. Because the research has already yielded several prototypes, he said, he is confident that alpha particles will eventually yield powerful batteries. "Most of the power source technologies don't scale down easily," he explained. "These do." The work of Dr. Fleurial and his colleagues was reported last June at the 20th International Conference on Thermoelectrics in Beijing.

Dr. Kris Pister, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, is among the scientists who aim to give microbatteries a trial run with a wireless network based on MEMS technology. Dr. Pister is the inventor of smart dust, or networked airborne motes of silicon that are designed to sense, measure and transmit data like temperature, humidity and light intensity.

"Everything is getting smaller in MEMS but the batteries," he said. "The batteries remain the single heaviest and most expensive part."

Dr. Pister said he was considering making smart dust that draws its power from the radioactive isotope tritium and that he had been approached by Trace Photonics, a company in Charleston, Ill., that is interested in shrinking nuclear batteries to smart- dust size.

"Nuclear batteries can potentially give off a staggering amount of energy," he said.

Their longevity also makes them attractive. "Many applications of wireless networks are for places you never want to go back to," Dr. Pister said, like the foundations of tall buildings or the walls of houses. "You don't want to have to dig beneath the sheetrock to change the batteries."

What risks might the batteries pose if, for instance, they were scattered through the walls of a large building to monitor air quality or temperature? "They aren't likely to be very dangerous," said Stephen I. Schwartz, publisher of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, "unless you ate them, or threw them in the fire and inhaled the smoke."

Most people are still unaware that their smoke detectors contain radioactive materials, Mr. Schwartz said. Still, he added, if people did become aware that MEMS devices might be powered by nuclear batteries, some of them might be alarmed. "The odds of getting hurt by these devices would be very small," but research on them should not be kept secret, he said.

"Let people know about the work," he said. "Let all the facts be put on the table and then let people decide."

-------- u.s. nuc weapons

Administration tiptoes around nuke-test issue

SUN STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
January 09, 2002
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/lv-other/2002/jan/09/512865450.html

WASHINGTON -- Bush administration officials are walking a fine line on the question of whether to resume underground nuclear bomb tests at the Nevada Test Site.

They say they are committed to a 1992 ban on tests in America -- for now. But President Bush wants a plan in place to more quickly prepare the Test Site for a new generation of tests, should he decide the tests are needed.

It would take two to three years to resume tests at the nation's nuclear weapons labs and at the Test Site, a 1,350-acre complex about 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Bush officials want to reduce that time -- some suggest cutting it to a year.

To that end, the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration in December launched a study at the Test Site to examine costs and technical issues associated with speeding up the timetable.

Officials in Nevada say the issue is about readiness.

"There are some of us who believe that we have to dust off the current two-three-year thing and look at it," said Troy Wade, chairman of the Nevada Alliance for Defense, Energy and Business, a trade group that represents Test Site contractors.

Wade, who also directed defense programs for the Energy Department under President Ronald Reagan, warns: "There is a basic point that needs to be focused on and that is that nobody has said let's do a test.

"This whole issue is about capability. We haven't done a test in 10 years. Our (experienced) people are retiring and dying. This nation's defense still is based on nuclear weapons. The question is, can we assure the president that they are safe and reliable?"

Discussions about renewed testing were stirring last year after Bush met with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Bush pledged to cut the U.S. nuclear arsenal by two-thirds, to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads.

The smaller arsenal would need to be actively tested to prove reliability of the remaining bombs, especially given that no tests have been conducted in a decade, defense officials and weapons scientists have said.

The topic of resuming tests surfaced this week in a classified Pentagon document called the Nuclear Posture Review, which outlines the Bush administration's nuclear weapons strategy.

The document was presented to Congress on Tuesday for confidential review. Sens. John Ensign, R-Nev., and Harry Reid, D-Nev., plan to analyze the document; Reps. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., and Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., are out of the country.

Reid and Ensign say any proposals to resume tests should be vigorously scrutinized, but they are not opposed to the idea if it is in the national interest.

The Review annually certifies the reliability of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. But some defense officials have complained such certification has become increasingly difficult since no bomb actually has been detonated underground for 10 years.

Bush has said he has no intention for now of resuming detonations at the Nevada Test Site, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld echoed that Tuesday. But Defense officials, in a classified briefing, expressed concern about the lag time to prepare for testing if it were to resume.

Concern exists within the administration -- and among some members of Congress and the defense establishment -- over the ability to ensure that warheads will work as expected if they are used.

So-called stockpile stewardship by the Energy Department and its nuclear weapons laboratories has become more complex and challenging without tests.

The nuclear plan clearly appeared to raise the specter of renewed testing, test-ban supporters said.

"Many war hawks who are weary of the U.S. decision to drastically cut nuclear arsenals ... are using (concerns about warhead reliability) to champion underground testing," said James Wyerman, executive director of 20/20 Vision, a disarmament advocacy group.

John Isaacs, president of the Council for a Livable World, another nuclear proliferation watchdog group, said while the administration's nuclear review does not call for renewed testing it's "part of a pattern that they want to move toward nuclear testing."

As a substitute to testing, the Energy Department is developing technology that will allow scientists to use the world's most powerful computers and most sophisticated lasers to simulate nuclear detonation as they keep track of warhead performance.

But it will be years before those systems are in place.

Recently several internal audits by the Energy Department's inspector general raised concern about its current programs for finding flaws and defects in warheads. Investigators found backlogs of as much as 18 months in testing, inspections and monitoring.

"If these delays continue the department may not be in a position to unconditionally certify the aging nuclear weapons stockpile," wrote DOE Inspector General Gregory Friedman.

Sun reporters Benjamin Grove and Ed Koch and the Associated Press contributed to this article.

----

U.S. Aims for 3,800 Nuclear Warheads
Cold War Strategy Is Being Replaced

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 10, 2002; Page A09
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22393-2002Jan9?language=printer

The Defense Department plans to reduce the number of operational U.S. nuclear warheads from today's 6,000 to 3,800 over the next five years as part of the administration's new strategic policy, a Pentagon official said yesterday.

In announcing those reductions as one result of the Pentagon's year-long Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), Assistant Secretary of Defense J.D. Crouch told reporters the smaller number of deployed nuclear weapons would be augmented by introduction of missile defenses and precision-guided conventional weapons.

Crouch said the traditional Cold War strategy that was based on threats posed almost totally by Russia is being replaced by a "capabilities-based approach" focused on different contingencies not necessarily associated with any particular country.

In this new era, Crouch said, "We expect to be surprised and so we have to have capabilities that would deal with a broad range of [threats]."

The review represented the first time the administration has spelled out how it plans to carry out the president's promise to reduce the operational U.S. nuclear arsenal. At his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in November, President Bush said that by 2012, the number of deployed U.S. warheads would come down to between 1,700 and 2,000.

The initial warhead reductions disclosed by Crouch in yesterday's briefing parallel those that had been planned during the Clinton administration. Of the warheads set to be taken out by 2005, 500 would come from the 50 Peacekeeper ICBMs, each of which carries 10 warheads; 800 would come from the 96 missiles carried on four Trident submarines that have been designated for decommissioning, and 1,000 would come from the removal of two warheads from each of 500 Minuteman III ICBMs, in a move set under terms of the 1993 START II treaty.

Crouch said that many of the warheads removed would be kept as a "responsive force," able to be reinstalled on missiles within weeks or months. He called it "prudent that we have some responsive capability" that would allow some of the warheads to be returned to the active inventory.

Crouch said no decision had been made on which weapons or how many would be kept for the responsive force.

Noting that previous arms control agreements did not specifically call for destruction of weapons, Crouch said, "I believe the Russians are doing a very similar thing."

Critics of the Bush decision to retain weapons have noted that the Clinton administration also stored warheads it reduced, which will soon create a situation where the United States has more nuclear warheads stored than on operational alert.

On the controversial issue of whether the administration is considering any new nuclear weapons designs to attack deeply buried bunkers or caves, Crouch gave an ambiguous answer. "At this point, there are no recommendations in the report about developing new nuclear weapons," he said. Then he added, "We are trying to look at a number of initiatives," one of which "would be to modify an existing weapon to give it greater capability against deep or hard targets."

Crouch also said there was no current plan for resumption of underground nuclear testing and attributed the decision to reduce from the current two years the time necessary to prepare for such a test to a study done during the previous administration.

At the White House, however, press secretary Ari Fleischer told reporters that Bush has not ruled out conducting nuclear testing "to make sure the stockpile, particularly as it is reduced, is reliable and safe. So he has not ruled out testing in the future, but there are no plans to do so."

Bruce Blair, president of the Center for Defense Information and a specialist in nuclear weapons, said yesterday that although he does not agree with the broad approach taken by the new NPR, its reduction of warheads on alert intercontinental ballistic missiles "is a major improvement."

----

THE US NUCLEAR POSTURE REVIEW:
PUTTING THE PROMISE OF DISARMAMENT ON THE SHELF

By David Krieger <dkrieger@napf.org>
Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002

The Bush administration has conducted the first Nuclear Posture Review since 1994, and has released a classified version of the report to Congress. The report, which has not been made public, provides an updated strategic nuclear plan for the United States. It helps to clarify Bush's promise to President Putin to reduce the deployed US strategic nuclear arsenal by two-thirds to between 2,200 and 1,700 over a ten-year period.

The Bush nuclear posture stands on three legs. First, deactivated nuclear weapons will be kept in storage rather than destroyed. Second, the nuclear weapons that are deactivated will be replaced by powerful and accurate conventional weapons. Third, missile defenses will be deployed ostensibly to protect the US from attack by a rogue state or terrorist.

Despite the planned reductions in the nuclear arsenal, the Bush administration intends to retain a flexible responsive capability by putting a portion (perhaps most) of the deactivated warheads into storage, making them available for future use. The problem with this approach is that it will encourage the Russians to follow the same path and to also keep deactivated nuclear warheads in storage. This means that the promised reductions will not be disarmament at all. It will not lead to the destruction of the nuclear warheads, nor will it be irreversible, as called for by the parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. It will be subject to reversal at any time for any reason, by the Russians as well as the US.

In essence, the Bush administration is hedging its bets, and simply putting nuclear weapons on the inactive reserve list, ready to be activated should they decide circumstances warrant doing so. It is sending a message to the Russians that we do not trust them and that we do not intend to any longer follow the path of irreversible reductions in the nuclear arsenals of the two countries set forth in verifiable treaties. The Russians will likely follow our lead and also put deactivated nuclear weapons into reserve stocks, where they will be subject to diversion by terrorists. This would be highly unfortunate since the Russians would prefer to make the nuclear reductions permanent and irreversible.

The new nuclear posture also calls for cutting down the time necessary to reinstate a full-scale US nuclear testing program should the administration decide to do so. This also fits the pattern of flexible response. According to Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, "Recognizing that the world can change in dangerous and unpredictable ways, we are putting more emphasis than we have in the last 10 or 15 years on that underlying infrastructure that allows you, including in the nuclear area, to rebuild capabilities or build new ones if the world changes."

A second factor driving the Bush administration's nuclear posture is its belief that conventional weapons now have the capability to replace nuclear weapons in deterring an enemy from attacking. Again, according to Mr. Wolfowitz, "We're looking at a transformation of our deterrence posture from an almost exclusive emphasis on offensive nuclear forces to a force that includes defenses as well as offenses, that includes conventional strike capabilities as well as nuclear strike capability." It is anticipated that many of the nuclear warheads being placed in storage will be replaced, particularly on the submarine force, by highly accurate, precision-guided conventional warheads, capable of doing enormous damage.

A third factor figuring prominently in the Bush administration's nuclear posture is its plan to deploy missile defenses. Over the continuing objections of Russia, China and many US allies, President Bush has made clear that he intends to move forward with deployment of ballistic missile defenses that will violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. In December, President Bush gave formal notice to the Russians that the US will withdraw from this treaty in six months.

The Bush administration argues that withdrawal from the ABM Treaty and deployment of ballistic missile defenses will make the US safer, but this is a very unlikely proposition. Instead, it makes the Russians nervous about US intentions, and this nervousness must be increased by the Nuclear Posture Review's emphasis on retaining the deactivated US nuclear warheads in storage. US deployment of ballistic missile defenses will also force the Chinese to expand their nuclear deterrent force with increased targeting of the US. Increases in the Chinese nuclear arsenal may also touch off a new nuclear arms race in Asia.

The bottom line of the new US nuclear posture is that it is built on smoke and mirrors. It will reduce the number of deployed nuclear weapons, but it will put them on the shelf ready to be reinstated on short notice. It will also retain enough nuclear weapons to destroy any country and annihilate its people. Recent computer-based estimates generated by the Natural Resources Defense Council indicate that eliminating Russia as a country would take 51 nuclear weapons and China would require 368 due to its large population. On the other hand, the US could be destroyed as a country with 124 nuclear weapons and all NATO countries, including the US, could be destroyed with approximately 300 nuclear warheads.

The recent Nuclear Posture Review tells us that US policymakers are still thinking that nuclear weapons make us safer, when, in fact, they remain weapons capable of destroying us. Their desire to retain flexibility is in reality a recipe for ending four decades of arms control. Their push for ballistic missile defenses is a formula for assuring that US taxpayers enrich defense contractors while diverting defense expenditures from protecting against very real terrorist threats. The Bush promise of nuclear weapons reductions turns out to be a policy for missing the real opportunities of the post Cold War period to not only shelve these weapons but eliminate them forever.

David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. Other articles on this subject can be found at www.wagingpeace.org.

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

Tight security rings U.S. nuclear power plants

Thursday, January 10, 2002
Reuters
By James Jelter, Reuters
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2002/01/01102002/reu_46091.asp
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13996/story.htm

SAN FRANCISCO - A day after a dismissed California nuclear power plant worker was arrested for allegedly threatening colleagues, U.S. power industry officials said he stood few chances of ever delivering those threats on the job.

The nuclear power industry, already on high alert following the deadly Sept. 11 attacks, runs its employees through a tough gauntlet of checks aimed at weeding out anyone who might jeopardize plant safety.

The arrest Tuesday of a maintenance mechanic, who last month lost his job at the San Onofre nuclear power plant in Southern California, drove home the need for that vigilance.

Acting on allegations that the unidentified 43-year-old had threatened former supervisors and coworkers, Orange County sheriff's deputies found some 200 rifles and ammunition stashed at his Laguna Niguel home and in a nearby rented storage shed.

Plant officials said the man had not threatened the San Onofre plant itself, which lies near the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base just north of San Diego.

San Onofre, which houses two of the nation's 103 reactors, is operated by Southern California Edison, a subsidiary of Edison International.

Nuclear industry officials said internal security breaches were extremely rare, and any charges brought against the man would likely focus on threats to employees, not the plant. The nation's nuclear power plants, because they use potentially deadly radioactive fuel, operate under some of the strictest security measures of any industry in the world.

FORMIDABLE DETERRENTS

"Someone is not going to break into a work place at a nuclear power plant without armed resistance,'' said Jeff Lewis, a spokesman for Pacific Gas and Electric Co.'s Diablo Canyon nuclear plant on California's central coast. "It's not an easy target whether they are a terrorist or a former employee.''

At Diablo Canyon, security is enforced by guards in black, commando-style uniforms armed with automatic rifles and semi-automatic handguns - common throughout the industry.

"These are not rent-a-cops,'' said Paul Gaukler, an attorney with Shaw Pittman, a Washington law firm that represents utilities operating nuclear power plants. "The security forces go through very detailed training. Two-thirds of all security personnel are former military or law enforcement officers,'' Gaulker said.

Many of the 5,000 guards protecting the nation's nuclear power stations can point to display cases at the plants stuffed with marksmanship awards, a skill several plant operators help them keep polished by providing on-site target ranges.

To ensure the guards don't lose their edge, their rigorous training regime requires that they be able to repel an assault on the plant and assumes that any attack is being aided by someone on the inside. Managing to work under this constant air of suspicion requires strict discipline at the plants and constant surveillance by cameras mounted throughout the plants.

STRICT SCREENING

To gain clearance, the nation's 100,000 nuclear power plant workers must undergo the same background checks used to screen FBI agents. Screeners check their previous employment records and ensure they have never been in trouble with the law. They are also given an extensive psychological evaluation aimed at gauging their emotional stability.

Once past these barriers, they are subjected to random drug and alcohol tests, which the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires be administered to at least 50 percent of plant employees each year. On top of all that, plant supervisors are enrolled in what is called a Continuous Behavior Observation Program designed to help them quickly identify quirky or suspicious behavior among any of their subordinates.

When potential employees clear all of the above, they then face a battery of security checks just to get into the plant. Each day they troop through extremely sensitive metal detectors, show a badge holding a small computer chip full of personal data, and run their hands through a palm scanner.

Security has been further beefed up since the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, with a ban on plant visits by nonessential personnel, more guards on duty, and new barriers in place to keep cars and trucks a safe distance away in case they are carrying bombs.

Several states have also deployed National Guard troops to keep an extra eye on local reactors, while "nautical exclusion zones'' have been extended to protect lake or seaside plants.

So far the extra efforts have paid off. The last serious effort to penetrate a plant's security zone was in 1993, when a person with a history of mental illness harmlessly crashed a car into the outer gates of the Three Mile Island power plant in Pennsylvania.

-------- maryland

Calvert Pressing State on Nuclear Emergency Response Plan

By Raymond McCaffrey and Theola Labbe
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, January 10, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17040-2002Jan8?language=printer

The Calvert County Board of Commissioners would like to know if the state intends to take up a federal commission's offer to provide potassium iodide tablets to help residents guard against radiation in the event of a nuclear power plant mishap.

The commissioners agreed to ask a Maryland Department of the Environment representative to come to their Tuesday meeting about the state's policy concerning the tablets, which can help prevent thyroid damage. The Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant is the only such facility in the state.

"Potassium iodide has the potential to help people who have experienced a dose of radiation," Commissioners President David F. Hale (R-Owings) said.

Last month, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission sent a letter to Maryland and other states offering to supply potassium iodide for use in the event of an accident, according to Sue Gagner, an NRC spokeswoman.

"Sheltering and evacuation would be the prime means of protection, with potassium iodide as a supplement to that," Gagner said.

Maryland does not stockpile potassium iodide, but rather believes that evacuation and sheltering are the ways to respond to a nuclear plant emergency, MDE spokesman Richard McIntire said. "Remove yourself from danger as opposed to relying on a pill," McIntire said.

That policy, though, is "being reconsidered," McIntire said. "We haven't made a final ruling yet, but expect to soon."

-------- nevada

Fair trade: Amargosa Valley bovine waste for nuclear waste

By Jeff Ackerman
January 8, 2002
http://www.nevadaappeal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?Site=NA&Date=20020108&Category=OPINION&ArtNo=201080201&Ref=AR

They say milk does a body good. Especially when it's washed down with a donut.

Unfortunately, I don't think I'll be drinking as much milk if the feds decide Yucca Mountain will be the official host for the nation's nuclear waste.

Until last week I wasn't aware that 25 percent of Nevada's milk comes from a dairy located just 12 miles from Yucca Mountain. A photograph of the Ponderosa Dairy in Amargosa Valley showed 5,000 black and white milk cows, each with her own private pen, lined up in rows just beyond the shadow of Yucca Mountain range in Southern Nevada.

For the record, I like milk more than I like nuclear waste. I'll admit that straight off the top, just so you know I'm not exactly objective in this debate. Not that I've ever tasted nuclear waste, mind you. I don't need to shove nuclear waste into my piehole to know it's not as good as milk. I've seen photos of people who have consumed too much nuclear waste and they didn't look nearly as healthy as milk drinkers. They seemed much greener and there were little bubbles coming from their noses.

U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham visited Yucca Mountain on Monday in preparation for making a recommendation as to its suitability for a nuclear dump site. That's good. A fellow ought to at least visit a place before nuking it.

It's unlikely, however, that he stopped at the Ponderosa Dairy on his way to the proposed dump site. He'll sure smell it, though. Five thousand cows not only produce several thousand gallons of milk per day, they also generate a mountain of their own waste. It's non-nuclear, but can make your eyes water if you're not used to the smell.

When I was younger I used to shovel the cow waste in a milk barn just an hour after the "last call" in most California bars. I got room, board and rubber knee-boots. It's a wonder I still drink milk at all after slipping and slopping around in that barn at 3 a.m. each and every day of the week. Cows don't even have the decency to take the Sabbath off.

It got to the point where I hated cows almost more than I hate chickens. I've seen what chickens eat and I wouldn't care one bit if someone gave them a good dose of nuclear radiation.

The general manager of the Ponderosa Dairy, some fellow named Ed, told a Vegas newspaper he was concerned about the nuclear waste contaminating the water system and eventually his cows. Ed knows a thing or two about waste and its effect on water systems. His dairy was accused of dumping more than 1.7 million gallons of cow poop that made its way into the Amargosa River in 1998. It made a whole bunch of Californians, where the Amargosa eventually runs, just want to vomit.

Ed would argue that cow waste is not nearly as bad for you as nuclear waste, which is not something I want to taste test.

I'm sure the nuclear waste fans could produce scientific evidence to show that a little nuclear waste is actually good for cows and milk. Give those guys enough time and money and they could probably prove that Elvis is alive.

But I'm with Ed. He knows bull dung when he smells it. When you're out in the barn up to your knees in cow poop while 99.9 percent of humanity is asleep, you have a lot of time to think. I imagine Ed doing just that one early morning while Bessie was being relieved of her donut juice.

"I don't know about this nuclear waste dump site," Ed probably told Bessie. "What happens if that stuff gets into your water?"

"Don't worry, Ed," Bessie probably answered. (Cows really do talk when you're alone with them at 3 a.m.) "I don't really drink much water, myself. I'm basically a milk cow."

"Still," said Ed, shoving one poop pile into another. "I don't like the idea of these city folk dragging all this nuclear waste past my babies."

"That's sweet of you, Ed," Bessie replied. "But don't just sit there feeling sorry for yourself. Why don't you return the favor?"

And that's pretty much how a million gallons of original Amargosa Dairy waste will make its way to our nation's capital next week. Under Ed's proposed agreement, Yucca will receive one ton of nuclear waste for every 1 million gallons of cow poop Ed ships to Washington, D.C. It's called the GREAT WEST WASTE SWAP AGREEMENT. We'll store their waste and they'll store Ed's.

I hope Ed and Bessie were able to flag down Secretary Abraham's caravan on its way to Yucca Mountain, so they could get an official handshake deal.

It does a body good to see that kind of cooperation.

Jeff Ackerman is publisher and editor of the Nevada Appeal.

----

Nevada Outraged: Yucca Mountain OKd for Nuclear Waste

January 10, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2002/2002L-01-10-04.html

WASHINGTON, DC, A mountain just 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, America's premier gambling resort destination, has been approved by the secretary of energy as the nation's long term geological repository for high level nuclear waste.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham (Photo courtesy U.S. Government)

Over the objections of Nevada politicians in both parties at every level of government, Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham today notified Nevada Governor Kenny Guinn and the Nevada Legislature that in 30 days he intends to recommend to President George W. Bush that the Yucca Mountain site is scientifically sound and suitable to hold radioactive waste.

Secretary Abraham said the development of Yucca Mountain "will help ensure America's national security and secure disposal of nuclear waste, provide for a cleaner environment, and support energy security."

Nevada Governor Kenny Guinn, a Republican, said he got the news by phone this morning in a telephone call from Secretary Abraham.

"I told him that I am damn disappointed in this decision and to expect my veto," Governor Guinn said. "I explained to him we will fight it in the Congress, in the Oval Office, in every regulatory body we can - we'll take all of our arguments to the courts. This fight is far from over."

Nevada Governor Kenny Guinn (Photo courtesy Office of the Governor)

"I also told him that on behalf of all Nevadans, I am outraged that he is allowing politics to override sound science," the governor said.

"At the conclusion of the call I told the secretary that I think this decision stinks, the whole process stinks, and we'll see him in court."

The state of Nevada filed a lawsuit December 17, 2001 in federal district court in Washington, DC to halt the Yucca Mountain Project. The state alleges that Energy Department's ground rules for judging whether the site is suitable for nuclear waste storage are contrary to what Congress intended.

The state asks that Secretary Abraham be prevented from making recommendations on Yucca Mountain until the ground rules are reviewed by the courts.

Governor Guinn says the state is well prepared with a legal team that includes nuclear scientists, physicists and environmental experts, all with law degrees.

But Secretary Abraham toured the Yucca Mountain site on Monday and says he believes the "science behind this project is sound and that the site is technically suitable for this purpose."

"There are compelling national interests that require us to complete the siting process and move forward with the development of a repository, as Congress mandated almost 20 years ago," Abraham said today.

"A repository is important to our national security," the secretary said. "We must advance our non-proliferation goals by providing a secure place to dispose of any spent fuel and other waste products that result from decommissioning unneeded nuclear weapons, and ensure the effective operations of our nuclear Navy by providing a secure place to dispose of its spent nuclear fuel."

Tunnel inside Yucca Mountain which Secretary Abraham toured on Monday. Here workers conduct scientific tests to determine the safety of the site to contain highly radioactive waste. (Photo courtesy Yucca Mountain Project)

"A repository is important to the secure disposal of nuclear waste. Spent nuclear fuel, high level radioactive waste, and excess plutonium for which there is no complete disposal pathway without a repository are currently stored at over 131 sites in 39 states. We should consolidate the nuclear wastes to enhance protection against terrorists attacks by moving them to one underground location that is far from population centers," he said.

"A repository is important to our energy security," Abraham said. "We must ensure that nuclear power, which provides 20 percent of the nation's electric power, remains an important part of our domestic energy production."

"And a repository is important to our efforts to protect the environment," said Abraham. "We must clean up our defense waste sites permanently and safely dispose of other high level nuclear waste."

Nevada Senator Harry Reid, a Democrat who holds the powerful position of Majority Whip called Abraham's decision "hasty and dangerous."

"It will come despite the growing mountain of evidence that the site is unsuitable and that this site recommendation is premature," said Reid who pins his hopes on President Bush who must agree on what Reid calls "the flawed report."

"After he receives the secretary's report, President Bush has an opportunity to cut through the bureaucratic pseudo-science, see this project for the sham that it is, and do the right thing for America and Nevada by changing course," Reid said.

Reid says the Department of Energy "has wasted $8 billion on Yucca Mountain and has virtually nothing to show for it. Now they want taxpayers to spend another $50 billion to develop a dump they can't prove to be safe. I hope the President will just say no."

If the President agrees the site is suitable for a repository, he would recommend it to Congress. Guinn and the Nevada Legislature would then have 60 days to submit a notice of disapproval to Congress, as they are expected to do.

If the governor and the Legislature decline to veto the site during the 60 day period, Yucca Mountain automatically becomes an approved repository site.

But if Guinn and the Legislature submit a notice of disapproval, Congress has the option of passing a joint resolution to override the veto within the first 90 days of a continuous congressional session. If Congress takes this action, the joint resolution becomes law and the site is approved.

The Energy Department then is required to file a license application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission 90 days after the site recommendation.

Nevada opposition to the Yucca Mountain repository is bipartisan. Congresswoman Shelley Berkley, a Democrat, called the decision "grossly irresponsible."

"As outlined by the December 2001 GAO [General Accounting Office] report," she said, "the secretary does not have the scientific data he needs to recommend the site, and any recommendation is therefore scientifically premature."

Congresswoman Shelley Berkley (Photo courtesy Office of the Representative)

Secretary Abraham's reasons "defy common sense," she said. "The so-called 'compelling national interests' cited by the secretary are more effectively addressed by the continued and reinforced storage of spent fuel at the reactor sites themselves. Furthermore, the secretary's claim that the repository would further our national security is completely mistaken. In fact, the transportation of nuclear waste through 43 states, and the construction of a single identifiable repository outside the fastest growing metropolitan region in the country, are gross and needless risks to our national security, and a slap in the face to every Nevadan."

"The secretary's claim that the repository is important to protect the environment is dangerously misleading," said Berkley. "Scientists have uncovered compelling evidence suggesting that the site could be devastating to the environment for tens of thousands of years."

In a document released today along with the notification, the Department of Energy characterizes Yucca Mountain as safe and far enough from Las Vegas so that it does not create a hazardous situation. "The mountain sits on restricted federal land: part of the Nevada Test Site, combined with portions of the Nellis Air Force Range and parcels managed by the Bureau of Land Management. Since January 1951, over 900 U.S. nuclear weapon tests have been conducted at the Nevada Test Site. The U.S. Geological Survey and national laboratories have been studying the area's geology and hydrology since the start of atomic testing...Yucca Mountain would be one of the few nuclear facilities located in a remote area where there are no metropolitan centers within 75 miles."

Yucca Mountain looking west into Crater Flat with volcanic cones in the background (Photo courtesy DOE)

"Water is the main means of transporting radionuclides out of a repository and into the accessible environment. Yucca Mountain is located in one of the most arid and remote deserts in the United States," says the Department of Energy (DOE).

"Yucca Mountain also has many natural barriers that limit or delay what little water is available from entering the emplacement drifts. DOE has designed a set of engineered barriers that take advantage of the natural features and work in concert with the natural environment to isolate waste for tens of thousands of years... Only about one percent of the waste packages are projected to lose their integrity during the first 80,000 years."

But a range of citizens groups object to Yucca Mountain on environmental grounds. Kalynda Tilges of Citizen Alert, a Las Vegas based organization which has taken the lead in this campaign, says her group works with the Sierra Club and with Friends of Nevada Wilderness to educate the public about the dangers of burying nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain - even with engineered barriers.

"What makes the mountain unsafe is that there's a lot of seismic activity in that area," Tilges said Monday. "There's a lot of volcanic cones out there and the DOE has state they have no idea if there's even magma under Yucca Mountain. There's 15 faults that run through the mountain, and they're already shown that water travels through the mountain very, very fast. It's not nearly as dry as they thought it was."

Water travelling through Yucca Mountain would allow radioactivity to escape from the repository, Tilges warns. "It means superheated steam with corrosive minerals in there that will eat right through the canisters and expose the waste into the heat and into the rock. And the Department of Energy still doesn't know how this is all going to react together."

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Nevada Picked for Nuclear Waste Site

January 10, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Nuclear-Waste.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Addressing the most troubling issue facing the nuclear industry, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham on Thursday chose Yucca Mountain in Nevada to be the nation's burial site for thousands of tons of nuclear waste.

Abraham concluded the site 80 miles northwest of Las Vegas was ``scientifically sound and suitable'' as a repository for highly radioactive used reactor fuel now kept at commercial reactors in 31 states, a department spokesman said.

A final administration decision will be up to President Bush, who has championed the need for a central disposal site for the waste and is expected to seek a federal license for the site in the coming months.

``The secretary made his decision on sound science,'' said Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis.

Nevada officials, who have fought the proposed dump for more than a decade, have vowed to use every means available to keep the waste out of the state. They argue that despite 13 years of intense scientific study the federal government has not adequately shown that the public can be protected from future radiation.

Abraham, in notifying Nevada's governor of the decision, said ``sound science and compelling national interests'' as well as growing concern about nuclear materials since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks require wastes to be consolidated at a central site.

``There are compelling national interests that require us to complete the siting process and move forward with the development of a (waste) repository,'' Abraham wrote Nevada Gov. Kenneth Guinn.

Earlier in the day White House adviser Karl Rove telephoned Guinn, a Republican and strong opponent of the Yucca project, to attempt to soften the political concerns.

But even a presidential decision is not expected to end the bitter debate over siting of a national waste dump. The final word probably will come from Congress.

Under a 1982 law, which directed the government to assume responsibility for the commercial nuclear industry's highly radioactive waste, only Congress can override the expected Nevada veto.

The site, which still faces a myriad of legal challenges from Nevada, is not expected to be ready to accept waste until 2010 at the earliest. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission also must issue a license, a process that could take several years.

The government has spent $6.8 billion to study the Nevada site since 1983. After reviewing three sites, Congress settled on Yucca Mountain in 1987 as the only location to be pursued.

The Nevada site is a mountain of volcanic rock formed 13 million years ago. For nearly two decades, scientists have worked to determine whether its geology, volcanic history and hydrology are suitable for storing materials that will remain dangerously radioactive for tens of thousands of years.

Power utilities have promoted the Yucca Mountain site as the most secure and safest place to put the used reactor fuel now kept at reactor sites. More than 40,000 tons of wastes already have built up at the plants with 2,000 tons added each year.

The site, if finally approved and licensed, is expected to hold up to 77,000 tons of waste, buried in a labyrinth of bunkers 900 feet beneath the surface.

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Energy Dept Endorses Nevada Site for Nuclear Waste

January 10, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-utilities-nuclear.html
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13993/story.htm

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Energy Department on Thursday approved a remote Nevada site as the final resting place for the nation's vast amounts of radioactive waste, a plan immediately opposed by the Senate's top two Democrats.

A repository would be built under Yucca Mountain, 90 miles (144 km) from Las Vegas, under the plan endorsed by Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham. The site would store 70,000 tons of radioactive materials from the nation's nuclear power plants for about 10,000 years deep within the mountain.

Abraham telephoned Nevada Governor Kenny Guinn, a Republican, on Thursday afternoon to inform him of the long-awaited decision.

``I am damn disappointed in this decision,'' Guinn said in a statement. ``At the conclusion of the call I told the secretary that I think this decision stinks, the whole process stinks and we'll see him in court.''

Abraham said he will forward a formal recommendation to President Bush in 30 days, the time allotted by law for Guinn to review the controversial proposal.

NATIONAL SECURITY CITED

Abraham emphasized that a single U.S. waste site was crucial for national security since the Sept. 11 attacks in Washington and New York, which raised public and political concern about guarding the nation's radioactive material.

``There are compelling national interests that require us to complete the siting process and move forward with the development of a repository, as Congress mandated almost 20 years ago,'' Abraham said in a letter to the governor.

The Yucca Mountain site, which will not be in operation until at least 2010, will help ``ensure America's national security,'' the Energy Department said in a statement.

Used fuel from the nation's 103 nuclear power plants is piling up at a rate of about 2,000 tons a year, according to the U.S. utility industry, which has pressed the federal government to designate Yucca Mountain as a waste repository.

The Nuclear Energy Institute praised Abraham's decision as ''the right scientific thing to do'' to safely manage the huge amounts of nuclear waste generated by power plants. Putting all the waste in one secure site is better than forcing individual nuclear power plants to store it, the trade group said.

Green groups and Nevada lawmakers object to the proposal, citing safety worries about long-term radiation leaks, geologic faults near the site and underground water movement.

DEMOCRATS OPPOSE PLAN

The proposal faces stiff opposition from senior Democrats on Capitol Hill.

Nevada Senator Harry Reid, the body's No. 2 Democrat, has repeatedly said he would fight a waste dump at Yucca Mountain.

``I think (Bush) should do nothing. He has wide discretion as to what he does with the recommendation of his energy secretary,'' Reid told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle also criticized the plan, calling it ``unfortunate and premature.'' Scores of scientific studies are still underway and until they are finished, the government should not choose a site, he said.

``The safety of the American people, not political pressure from the energy industry, should be the overriding concern,'' Daschle said in a statement.

Other politicians also reacted swiftly and angrily.

Republican Senator John Ensign had ``a 10-minute conversation with (Abraham) where he expressed outrage over the decision,'' said an aide to the senator in Reno, Nevada.

Rep. Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat and long-time critic of the nuclear industry for safety reasons, said the decision was based on politics, not science.

``Other sites were struck because of the political clout of their congressional delegations,'' Markey said in a statement. Alternative sites in Louisiana, Texas, New Hampshire, and North Carolina were blocked by such action, he said.

Meanwhile, Idaho senators Larry Craig and Mike Crapo both applauded the decision as ``great news'' for their home state, which wants to ship waste outside its borders.

CONGRESS WILL VOTE ON PLAN

Although the Energy Department's endorsement is a key step in the process, the plan for a repository at Yucca Mountain still faces several obstacles before construction could begin.

If Nevada objects to the administration's plan, as is now likely, Congress would have 90 days to decide the issue with a simple majority vote. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission must also approve a license for the site.

Some $8 billion has been spent over the last 20 years to determine if Yucca Mountain will offer safe storage, with critics contending the studies have shown it is unsuitable. Reid contends that the government would have to spend a total of $100 billion to develop the storage site.

A November report issued by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, urged the Energy Department to postpone approval of the Yucca Mountain project. The GAO said the Energy Department cannot meet its 2010 goal because it still lacks reliable cost estimates.

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Nevada To Fight Nuclear Waste Site

January 10, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Nuclear-Waste-Reax.html

RENO, Nev. (AP) -- Nevada officials angrily promised to fight Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham's recommendation Thursday that the nation store its nuclear waste 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

``This decision stinks,'' Gov. Kenny Guinn said after speaking with Abraham. ``I want to tell you what I told him in succinct fashion: I'm damned disappointed in this decision, and he was to expect my veto.''

Guinn accused Abraham of favoring politics over science and said his state was ``going to fight this with every ounce of energy we can mount.''

A government report issued Nov. 30 recommended the Bush administration postpone a decision on Yucca Mountain because of 293 questions about project. Most referred to the mountain's geology and the metal alloy casks that would hold spent nuclear fuel in a grid of tunnels deep inside the volcanic-rock ridge.

Nevada's congressmen were also outraged over the decision.

Democratic Sen. Harry Reid said Abraham's decision was hasty and dangerous, given ``the mountain of evidence that the site is unsuitable.''

Republican Rep. Jim Gibbons said the project ``has been riddled with corruption and mismanagement since its inception,'' and Republican Sen. John Ensign promised to meet with Vice President Dick Cheney, saying the project is not yet a reality.

The recommendation requires Bush's approval. Guinn, a Republican, could then veto it, sending it back to Congress, where the House and Senate could override the veto with a simple-majority vote.

Ensign stressed that even then, the project would only advance to the licensing phase. He said some experts estimate the earliest nuclear waste could begin arriving at the site would be 2020. Others say 2010.

Ensign expressed optimism that in the meantime, other disposal alternatives could be found.

The repository would accept 77,000 tons or more of waste over 17 years. The site would remain radioactive for at least 10,000 years. The project is expected to cost $58 billion.

In Las Vegas, Mayor Oscar Goodman pledged to warn members of the U.S. Conference of Mayors next week in Washington, D.C., about nuclear waste shipments through their cities.

``This stuff is just a moving target for terrorists and teen-agers flying Cessnas,'' Goodman said, referring to the Sept. 11 attacks and a Saturday's crash of a a single-engine plane piloted by a 15-year-old into an office tower in Tampa, Fla.

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Nevada Files Constitutional Challenge to Yucca Repository

January 10, 2003
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2003/2003-01-10-09.asp#anchor3

LAS VEGAS, Nevada - The state of Nevada has filed another lawsuit in an attempt to halt the construction of the nation's only high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The Bush administration and Congress have approved building of the Yucca Mountain facility, but legal and licensing hurdles are still blocking the underground repository that is supposed to contain 77,000 tons of waste from power plants and defense sites.

Joined by the city of Las Vegas and Clark Country, the state Thursday filed suit in the District of Columbia Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals, claiming that Nevada has been unfairly selected and unfairly burdened with this repository, contrary to the U.S. Constitution. It is the sixth Yucca Mountain lawsuit filed by the state.

Arguing that the resolution authorizing Yucca Mountain signed by President George W. Bush skirts the 10th Amendment to the Constitution regarding states' rights, the lawsuit asks the court to declare the Yucca Mountain resolution unconstitutional and order the federal government to stop "all activities relating to the development licensing of a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.

At a news briefing in Las Vegas on Thursday, Nevada's newly elected Attorney General Brian Sandoval said, "At issue is the right of the state not to be singled out and unduly burdened. The proposed dump is not safe, not scientifically sound, and is not legal."

A member of the state's legal team, attorney Charles Cooper who appeared with Sandoval at the briefing, said the state cannot be asked to "endure this burden" of nuclear waste disposal that other states will not bear. "Our point, Nevada's point, is if sovereignty means anything, this type of mandate cannot stay."

On April 8, 2002, Nevada Governor Kenny Guinn, a Republican, vetoed the federal Department of Energy's Yucca Mountain proposal, as he was permitted to do under a special process pertaining only to this site. In his veto speech, the governor said he will never support disposal of "the most dangerous waste generated by mankind" in his state because it is not safe.

"For almost 20 years, Nevadans have fought against the transportation and storage of thousands of tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain," the governor said. "Let me make one thing crystal clear - Yucca Mountain is not inevitable, and Yucca Mountain is no bargaining chip. Trust me, so long as I am governor, it will never become one! Yucca Mountain is not safe. It is not suitable, and, we will expose the Department of Energy's dirty little secrets about Yucca Mountain."

Opponents of the repository say the science behind it is flawed, the underground tunnels will not safely contain the radioactive waste due to the entry of water and the possibility of volcanic action, and that thousands of shipments of waste will endanger people in 43 states through which it must pass to reach Nevada.

But the Bush administration and proponents of the repository say it is safe and necessary for the security of the country. When the Senate approved Yucca Mountain last July, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said, "America's national, energy and homeland security, as well as environmental protection is well-served by siting a single nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. Congress has recognized that the Government has safely transported nuclear waste for more than 30 years and, in doing so, has rejected the transportation scare tactics employed by those opposed to Yucca Mountain."

"Without Yucca Mountain, the nuclear waste simply stays where it is," said Abraham. "However, by moving the process forward, we have the opportunity to dispose of nuclear waste that has piled-up at 131 sites in 39 states."

"Moving forward in the process also helps ensure that the clean energy generated by nuclear power will remain an important part of America's energy mix," the energy secretary said.

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Energy Dept. Wants to Store Nuclear Waste in Nevada

New York Times
January 10, 2002
By MATTHEW L. WALD
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/10/politics/11NUKE.html

WASHINGTON, Jan. 10 - The Energy Department said today that Yucca Mountain, a barren volcanic structure about 90 miles from Las Vegas, is suitable for storing 70,000 tons of long-lived, highly radioactive nuclear waste from power plants and nuclear weapons factories.

A decision to open the mountain to nuclear waste could still be blocked by technical, legal or political challenges. Ever since Congress chose the site in 1987 as a prime candidate for the burial of nuclear waste, Nevada officials and environmental groups have contended that engineers cannot reliably predict that it will not leak for 10,000 years, as government rules require.

While the announcement is not a surprise, and the government has already spent 14 years and $4.5 billion to assess the mountain, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham did add a new twist. "We should consolidate the nuclear wastes to enhance protection against terrorist attacks by moving them to one underground location that is far from population centers," he said.

The disposal of nuclear waste has been a festering problem for the civilian power industry for years, but has drawn more attention since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

But in the contentious, decades-long argument over what to do with nuclear waste, even the terrorist argument cuts both ways, depending on who is providing the analysis. Some anti-nuclear activists say nuclear waste is not safe where it is, at power plants around the country, but would be even more at risk on trucks and trains on its way to Nevada.

The federal effort to find a place to put nuclear waste began in the 1960's. In 1982, Congress promised to have a repository open by January 1998, and the Energy Department signed contracts with the reactor owners to take their waste, beginning at that time, in exchange for a payment of one cent per 10 kilowatt hours generated by nuclear power plants.

Since then, the government has collected billions of dollars, but it is still at least 10 years from opening a repository even if Yucca is eventually chosen. The utilities are suing for breach of contract, often backed up by their state regulators, who say power customers have paid for disposal but received nothing in return. Political pressure for a decision has been growing.

The announcement today was made in a letter from Mr. Abraham to Gov Kenny Guinn of Nevada and the Nevada state legislature, telling them that he intends to recommend the site to the president in 30 days. Under the 1982 law and the 1987 amendment that made Yucca the prime site, Congress will have an opportunity to overturn the recommendation, and Nevada's senior senator, Harry Reid, now the Senate's deputy majority leader, has vowed to do so vigorously.

If the choice survives in Congress, the Energy Department will have to submit an application for a license to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which must hold hearings and decide whether Yucca can contain the nuclear waste for 10,000 years, under rules written last year by the Environmental Protection Agency.

But there is still considerable technical doubt about the character of the site. The General Accounting Office, the congressional auditing office, said last month that the Energy Department was not ready to make a decision because numerous scientific questions remained.

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Yucca Mountain Chronology

January 10, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Yucca-Mountain-Chronology.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A27921-2002Jan10?language=printer

A chronology on development of a national nuclear waste repository: 1982 -- Congress orders development of a permanent national disposal site for waste from commercial nuclear power reactors.

1986 -- Government pledges to take responsibility for commercial high-level nuclear wastes from commercial power plants by 1998 and narrows potential sites to Nevada, Texas and Washington state.

1987 -- Congress designates Yucca Mountain in Nevada as the only site to be considered for permanent waste disposal.

1989 -- Completion of a site is delayed until 2010, missing the 1998 deadline.

1994 -- Utilities sue the Energy Department for violating its contractual obligation to accept waste by 1998.

1995 -- Federal court rules in favor of utilities and says government is liable for damages for not meeting deadline. Decision on extent of liability still is pending.

2001 -- Interim Energy Department report finds no ``showstoppers'' in scientific review of Yucca Mountain site. Estimated cost for construction, operation and monitoring over 100 years is put at $58 billion.

2002 (January) -- Energy Department concludes Yucca Mountain ``scientifically sound ... technically suitable'' for waste storage and approval to be recommended to the president.

What's Ahead:

--Formal recommendation of approval goes to the president after 30 days.

--Nevada has 60 days after presidential decision to object and override the decision.

--Congress has 90 legislative days to override Nevada's objection, affirming the president's decision. Both the House and Senate must act by majority vote.

--Nuclear Regulatory Commission must issue a license approving the design and construction plans.

--Construction begins with completion target of 2010.

--Waste shipments (up to 77,000 tons) are accepted at the site over 30 years by truck and rail. Site may be left open for possible waste retrieval for up to 300 years and then shut in. Specific shut-in date has not been determined.

Sources: Energy Department. Nuclear Energy Institute. 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act.

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ORNL workers exposed to radiation in three incidents

by R. Cathey Daniels
Oak Ridger staff
January 10, 2002
http://www.oakridger.com/stories/011002/new_0110020022.html

Five Oak Ridge National Laboratory workers in December were exposed to radiation in an ion source development experiment in Building 6000 where the Holifield Radioactive Ion Beam Facility is located, according to Jim Roberto, associate director for physical sciences at the Lab.

Preliminarily estimates by the ORNL Radiological Control staff indicate that maximum exposure to any of the employees was approximately 300 millirems, a level equal to what ORNL says is about three dental X-rays.

The average American gets a dose of about 360 millirem a year, most of it from radon gas and some from man-made sources, such as X-rays and airline flights.

"Of course our primary concern is the health and safety of the employees, but in this event, because of the low exposure, that is not the issue," said Roberto. "The issue is that we had an unintended exposure and that is not acceptable and we need to find out how it occurred and how to correct it."

Though the radiation was first detected Dec. 26, workers could have been exposed earlier in December when the experiment first started.

Workers had performed the experiment a total of three times, and the estimate for radiation exposure is based on all three incidents, said Roberto.

The science involved the development of a new type of ion source, said Roberto. That source works by accelerating electrons in a magnetic field. If the electrons come in contact with the chamber walls, low energy radiation occurs.

"X-rays are produced if the electron comes in contact with the chamber walls, but that was not expected at low power," said Roberto.

"It was not expected that the device was producing radiation -- that was discovered the third time it was turned on by the researchers doing the work," said Roberto, who noted that workers could have been exposed each time the device was turned on at low power.

"As soon as the radiation was detected, the experiment was shut down," said Roberto.

Only two of the workers exposed were present at the time the radiation was discovered. Those exposed over the course of the three experiments included a graduate student, a technician, a senior task leader and two other staff members.

According to a media advisory, a "complete environmental, safety and health review" will be conducted, and work on the experiment has been suspended until all investigations are complete.

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DOE officials testify at hearing for whistleblower

by Paul Parson
Oak Ridger staff
January 10, 2002
http://www.oakridger.com/stories/011002/new_0110020019.html

KNOXVILLE -- Joe Carson's legal battle against the Department of Energy continues.

The licensed professional engineer went before a U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board judge Wednesday in an attempt to find out why he did not receive a reassignment to Oak Ridge in the summer of 1999 after the DOE headquarters program he was working for locally was abolished.

Knoxville attorney Loring Justice represented Carson during the hearing that took place in a small conference room in the John J. Duncan Federal Building.

At the start of the hearing, Judge Margaret Cunningham made it clear that she did not want to rehash all the history of Carson's battle with DOE. She said those matters have already been dealt with by previous judges.

Instead, Cunningham said she wanted to focus on a couple of key issues, including whether Carson's attempts to report safety and security violations within DOE contributed to his not getting a job locally. This involved testimony Wednesday from several DOE officials, including Leah Dever, manager of the Oak Ridge Operations office.

Carson's legal battle with DOE has been going on since the early 1990s.

Carson says his decision to report safety and security violations within DOE sites resulted in a lowering of his usual performance rating and his removal from surveillance responsibilities, among other things. He was assigned to a safety oversight role in Oak Ridge by DOE headquarters.

In April 1999, the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board ruled that DOE's actions were reprisal for Carson's whistleblowing.

Then, in July 1999, it was announced that the DOE headquarters program Carson was working for would be abolished. David Michaels, who was the assistant secretary for Environment, Safety and Health at the time, issued a memorandum suggesting that funding would be provided if the 19 people in this program were given jobs at the field offices where they were working.

Although some people in the program were offered jobs at field offices, this didn't happen in Oak Ridge. Carson said he requested a local job, but DOE's Oak Ridge Operations office denied his request.

Raymond Hardwick testified Wednesday that the Oak Ridge Operations office expressed no interest in hiring Carson or another individual assigned to a safety oversight role in Oak Ridge by DOE headquarters. Hardwick was serving as an acting associate deputy in the Office of Oversight for Environment, Safety and Health when Carson's program was abolished.

Hardwick said he talked with Steve Richardson, then deputy manager for the Oak Ridge Operations office, about the matter. However, Richardson testified that he did not recall any "specific conversation" on the issue.

Robert Poe, who is the assistant manager for Environment, Safety, Health and Emergency Management for the Oak Ridge Operations office, was also called to testify Wednesday. DOE's attorney, Ivan Boatner, quizzed Poe about one of three Oak Ridge positions that became available in the past couple of years that Carson applied for but didn't get.

Poe said that based on a comparison of information he did Tuesday night, Carson would not have been selected over the person who got the job. Poe said he looked at job applications and depth of experience to reach this determination.

Carson did mention that he has been working in connection with BNFL Inc.'s three-building cleanup project at the Oak Ridge K-25 site since November 2000. This position came about after the Merit Systems Protection Board rejected DOE's appeal of the April 1999 decision and required that Carson be given an Oak Ridge job.

Carson's hearing was expected to resume this morning.

-------- us politics

U.S. Nuke Proposal Called Shell Game

January 10, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Nuclear-Strategy.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush pledged to cut America's nuclear arsenal by some 4,000 warheads, but as details of the plan become clear disarmament advocates are calling it a shell game because few of the warheads are likely to be destroyed.

``We're certainly not trying to mislead anyone,'' J.D. Crouch, assistant secretary of defense for international security, insisted Wednesday. He emphasized that the number of operational nuclear warheads that will be available on a moment's notice would be cut by two-thirds over the next decade as Bush pledged in November.

Pentagon officials described to reporters Wednesday the administration's revamped nuclear weapons strategy as a significant break from the past, reflecting the new realities of closer ties with Russia and the need to address a broader range of threats than faced during the Cold War.

The new Nuclear Posture Review, a highly classified blueprint of the nation's strategic nuclear weapons program, calls for reducing the number of operational warheads from about 6,000 today to between 1,700 to 2,200 over the next 10 years.

But the broad review, the first since 1994, envisions most of those warheads being put in storage, not destroyed, reflecting a concern by defense officials that the weapons might be needed in the future.

Russia, which also has agreed to take thousands of its warheads out of operation, is expected to do the same, said Crouch, noting that no arms control treaty has ever required the specific destruction of warheads.

While most of the government's nuclear plan remains highly classified, what was made public has left arms control advocates disappointed.

``This is a surprisingly modest effort ... given that the president as a candidate had promised a fundamental rethinking of our nuclear weapons posture,'' said Ivo Daalder, a nuclear arms expert at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank.

During the presidential campaign Bush expressed the view -- as part of his call for a missile defense system -- that the nation's security ``need no longer depend on a nuclear balance of terror.''

If the administration's new nuclear posture was supposed to demonstrate that nuclear weapons were less important today, it failed, Daalder said. ``The message being sent is that nuclear weapons remain fundamental.''

``What the administration is proposing is still very much stuck in a Cold War mentality,'' said Stephen Schwartz, publisher of the Bulletin for the Atomic Scientist, and a longtime follower of the nuclear arms debate. ``They're saying the Cold War is over, but we're really not sure so they keep all those weapons around.''

``It's a high-tech shell game,'' said Schwartz.

The nuclear review outlines a reduction of operational warheads from the current 6,000 to 3,800 over the next six years, and then a further drop to between 1,700 and 2,200 by 2011.

Crouch gave no estimate on how many of those warheads would be kept in mothballs for possible future use, with redeployment in some cases taking a few months or longer should they be needed.

``There will be weapons that will be destroyed,'' he said.

As to specifics, Crouch revealed only a decision to destroy 50 Peacekeeper missile silos and remove all warheads, and reducing the fleet of nuclear-armed Trident submarines from 18 to 14.

Defending the mothballing, he said it was only ``prudent that we have some responsive capability'' to possibly address events ``that we cannot foresee at this time.''

But arms control advocates fear that putting warheads in storage will encourage the Russians to do that same at a time of continued concern over Russia's ability to secure its stockpile of nuclear materials from theft or diversion.

``Retaining the option of rebuilding the U.S. nuclear weapons force after cutting it goes counter to the need to de-emphasize nuclear weapons in the post-Cold War environment,'' said John Isaacs, president of the Council for a Livable World. He and other arms control advocates also questioned why it should take a decade to achieve the cuts in operational warheads.

The nuclear plan does not call for resuming underground nuclear tests, which the United States halted in 1992. But it does call for helping the Energy Department improve its systems to be ready for a test, if needed, in less than the two to three years that project currently would require.

Doing that would cost about $15 million a year over three years to get the Nevada Test Site ready, said John Harvey, the Energy Department's policy director.


-------- MILITARY

-------- afghanistan

Villagers, U.S. At Odds Over Lethal Bombing
Residents Say Al Qaeda, Taliban Were Never There

By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, January 10, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22677-2002Jan9?language=printer

QALAI NIAZI, Afghanistan, Jan. 9 -- The U.S. bombs that blasted this clump of mud-brick homes a few hours before dawn on Dec. 29, killing dozens of civilians, were aimed at Taliban and al Qaeda leaders who survivors deny were ever here, and an arms cache they say they never saw.

What remains in view is the tattered evidence of a little world blown apart:

• Wads of bloody hair and flesh ground into the parched, cracked earth.

• Children's rubber shoes with tiny red pompoms scattered in the rubble of blasted-out houses.

• Strips of women's party dresses -- red, blue and yellow -- twisted around the debris.

• Tunnel-like holes more than 30 feet deep, apparently the result of bombs that burrowed for bunkers or underground chambers that are nowhere to be seen.

Journalists who arrived here on Sunday found a large store of ammunition that filled one little house, from boxes of rifle rounds to stacks of antitank rockets. But, by today, it had been hauled away, and people now swear it was never here in the first place.

There is much that is not known -- and maybe never will be -- about what happened that December night and what caused it to happen. But from conversations with people in the area today, this much seems established:

Burhan Jan's 15-year-old son, Inzar, married a local girl about his age, and people came to Qalai Niazi from miles around for the wedding. About 3:30 a.m., while the family and their guests slept in the largest house after an evening of celebration, the U.S. planes attacked.

After an initial series of blasts in which men, women and children died, people fled in panic out of Qalai Niazi, which is located north of Gardez in eastern Afghanistan's Paktia province. Then more bombs fell, killing a dozen other people as they moved across the barren landscape.

Bai Jan, 45, an elder in a neighboring village who helped pick up the mangled bodies that morning, estimated 80 people were killed. Khanzad Gul, a Russian-trained physician who runs the hospital at Gardez, estimated the number of victims at 100. The United Nations put its estimate at 52. By any of those tallies, the bombing here would likely constitute the deadliest civilian toll from a single U.S. attack since the Bush administration launched its war on Afghanistan on Oct. 7.

The Pentagon said it was acting on intelligence that Taliban and al Qaeda leaders were in Qalai Niazi. It also mentioned the arms store, saying a surface-to-air missile was fired at the U.S. warplanes on the bombing runs, but would not confirm reports of civilian casualties.

"There were multiple intelligence sources that qualified that target, and there were multiple secondary explosions out of that target," Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said last week. "That is to say, significant explosions from more than one location as a result of the attack, which would tend to persuade one that it was a military target."

Local people, however, said no Taliban or al Qaeda militants were in the village, although some wedding guests were from the former Taliban strongholds of Khost and Jalalabad. There never were many foreign al Qaeda fighters in this region, the residents said, and Taliban activists fled south toward Kandahar soon after Kabul fell to the Northern Alliance in November.

"There was nothing of the Taliban here," Jan said. "All around, there was nothing left of them."

Gul, the Russian-trained doctor who treated one of three wounded survivors, noted that most men in this heavily Pashtun region wear full beards and the same traditional turbans that the Taliban made its trademark. But that does not make them Taliban leaders, he added.

"If they say that anybody who grows a beard is a Taliban or an al Qaeda member, they should take me, but in fact I am a medical doctor who studied in Russia," he said.

"It was just a misunderstanding," said Noor Mohammed, a nurse at the hospital. "They thought there were some al Qaeda members living over there. But when the new government took over, all the Taliban ran away from here."

The people of this area got along with the Taliban during its five years of rule; however, some members of the new local governing council, or shura, were also part of the Taliban's local administration. Following the Afghan tradition of getting on the side of whoever holds power, they have renounced their Taliban adherence, at least formally, and have begun to cooperate with the new administration in Kabul.

Although U.S. Special Forces troops have conducted searches in this region for Taliban and al Qaeda militants, most of the bombing in recent weeks has taken place about 50 miles to the east, south of Khost, near the border with Pakistan.

It is not known who controlled the ammunition stored in one of Qalai Niazi's five buildings. But reporters saw it stacked there Sunday; today it was gone and residents said there never was such a cache. Previously, residents had told investigators for a nongovernmental organization that Taliban fighters stored the ammunition there and left it when they fled.

Whatever the exact tally of dead, and whatever the quality of the U.S. intelligence that night, the bombing has taken its toll on the goodwill of people around Qalai Niazi toward the U.S. military campaign. There was no reason to bomb the wedding party, they said, and the Pentagon should own up to a mistake.

"We picked up small pieces of people's bodies," said Jan, reaching down to the ground and digging into it with his hennaed nails to pantomime his gruesome task that morning. "And we put them in the ground so the dogs would not eat them."

Holding up a bit of blood-matted hair, he said: "The bombing should stop. Where can we go?

"Look at these shoes," he moaned, lifting a part of plastic slip-ons that looked right for a 10-year-old girl. "Are these Taliban shoes?"

All five of the houses in the village were reduced to rubble. A metal trunk used to store clothes was perforated with shrapnel. A man's woven cap, the kind Afghans wrap their turbans around, lay crumpled in the dust. A paperback book on the proper way to conduct Islamic prayer, titled "The Purity of Truth," flapped in a cold wind coming off mountains dappled with the season's first snow.

In the debris, scattered atop a layer of fine dust, lay a nylon bag used for grain or flour. "USA," said letters in red, white and blue. "USAID," it read just above the image of a handshake symbolizing U.S. foreign aid.

One of the bombs that burrowed into the ground created a deep hole exactly in the path of an aqueduct. As a result, the water coming down from the mountains now drops into the hole, cutting off the water supply to nearby villages whose normal sources have dried up because of a long drought.

A group of elders from the Gardez region took their complaints to Hamid Karzai, head of Afghanistan's interim administration in Kabul. Karzai promised to look into the incident but also has backed U.S. resolve to continue the air attacks until all Taliban and al Qaeda leaders are killed or captured.

President Bush's special Afghanistan envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, said the United States is investigating what happened here and will take "appropriate steps" if a mistake is found to have been made. But, addressing reporters in Kabul on Tuesday, he also said the bombing must continue until al Qaeda and the Taliban are eliminated from Afghanistan.

----

Reports That Taliban Leaders Were Freed Shock, Alarm U.S.
Afghans Were Told of Desire to Take Custody of Prisoners

By Bradley Graham and Alan Sipress
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, January 10, 2002; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22547-2002Jan9?language=printer

In their search for the elusive leaders of al Qaeda and the vanquished Taliban regime, U.S. military commanders could not have been clearer lately about their desire to take custody of any who might fall into the hands of local Afghan militias.

American authorities have prepared most-wanted lists with the names and photos of those being sought. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has warned publicly of a drop in U.S. assistance if Afghanistan's new rulers failed to comply, and administration officials delivered the same message to them even more firmly in private.

Which was all the more reason yesterday that the Bush administration was dumbfounded by reports from the southern Afghanistan city of Kandahar that several former ministers of the Taliban regime surrendered but were allowed to go free after swearing allegiance to the country's new governing authorities.

U.S. Central Command dismissed the account as unfounded. But two Afghan officials close to Kandahar's local ruler told news agencies that the Taliban figures had indeed been released, saying that only Mohammad Omar would be ineligible for amnesty. And a senior administration official cited intelligence reports indicating that some regional Afghan authorities were pursuing negotiations with former Taliban leaders to secure their conditional surrender.

As U.S. officials struggled to sort through the confusion, the evident inclination of Kandahar officials to free Taliban leaders -- even if not yet realized -- was cause for American alarm. It marked the latest example of a divergence between U.S. military and Afghan tribal objectives compounding the hunt for ranking Taliban and al Qaeda members.

It also raised the prospect of a prolonged American operation in the country and underscored the limited power of the new interim government led by Hamid Karzai to impose uniform policies and constrain unilateral edicts by regional warlords.

"The local commanders and new authorities will be making assessments based on their own conditions rather than on U.S. priorities," said Fiona Hill, an analyst at the Brookings Institution. "The implications are that this is probably going to be a long, drawn-out process if the U.S. really wants long-standing results out of this."

Although the new government and local authorities were installed in large measure by American forces, U.S. analysts and administration officials said it is no surprise that Afghan politicians would demonstrate a degree of independence. That local autonomy is heightened because of the relative weakness of the new administration in Kabul.

"It reflects a lack of communication between the central government and the provinces," a State Department official said. The gap is especially wide between Karzai and his rival, Gul Agha Shirzai, the governor of Kandahar whose aides have asserted the amnesty policy.

The State Department official said the United States does not intend to drop the matter, adding, "I expect we'll be going back at the interim government about it."

Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, the U.S. Central Command's top spokesman, said there was no evidence of Taliban leaders being released in Kandahar.

"I don't think there's a grain of truth to it," he said. "I don't think anyone surrendered, anyone was in custody or anyone was ever let go."

But Khalid Pashtoon, a spokesman for Gul Agha, told Reuters that the Taliban leaders had been freed and only Omar would not be eligible for amnesty. And Jalal Khan, a close associate of Gul Agha, told the Associated Press that the surrendering Taliban leaders had met with government officials and received general amnesty after recognizing Karzai's interim administration.

"From the very start, we have said when they surrender, and give up their guns and their cars, they will be given amnesty," Khan said. He said they have been allowed to go back to their homes and live with their families.

"Those men who have surrendered are our brothers, and we have allowed them to live in a peaceful manner. They will not be handed over to America," Khan said. "However, they will not participate in politics."

Two of the Taliban officials said to be involved are on the U.S. most-wanted list: Mullah Hadji Obaidullah Akhund, who was minister of defense; and Mullah Nooruddin Turabi, the former justice minister who authored some of the Taliban's most repressive edicts and set up the dreaded religious police to enforce them.

Others were identified in wire service reports as Mullah Saadudin, the former minister of mines; Abdul Haq, the former security chief of Herat province; and senior officials Raees Abdul Wahid, Abdul Salam Rakti and Mohammad Sadiq.

A deal between the Kandahar authorities and Taliban leaders has precedent in a similar arrangement during the fall of Mazar-e Sharif and the pitched battle for Kunduz. Abdurrashid Dostum, an Uzbek warlord who is now Karzai's deputy defense minister, had allowed the Taliban army chief of staff, deputy defense minister and two commanders to go free after they were reportedly captured.

Thomas E. Gouttierre, director of the Center for Afghanistan Studies at the University of Nebraska, said these incidents reflect the interest of Karzai and other local leaders in maintaining their standing with their own people.

"To remain credible in Afghanistan, one does not engage in what might be perceived as punitive politics. And that might, at times, run counter to our own politics and interests," Gouttierre said.

Analysts and administration officials said it was inevitable that American and Afghan interests would diverge, especially as U.S. military commanders concentrate on pursuing Taliban and al Qaeda suspects while local rulers put a higher priority on consolidating their new power.

Analysts said that divergence was illustrated by reports that Afghan commanders on several occasions recommended that U.S. airstrikes target rival militias rather than Taliban or al Qaeda fighters. They cite two attacks: one on Dec. 22, when U.S. warplanes struck a convoy that some villagers say was carrying tribal elders to Karzai's inauguration; the other on Dec. 28, when an airstrike on the village of Niazi Kala reportedly killed dozens of civilians.

In both cases, U.S. military officials said they had carefully checked proposed targets before launching strikes and defended both as attacks on legitimate military targets.

Another difference of opinion may be emerging over the positioning of international peacekeepers throughout Afghanistan. Karzai has said in recent days that Afghans are eager to see the security force spread to cities outside Kabul, where it has been confined since the interim administration took power last month. But U.S. military officials remain wary of dispatching peacekeepers to many other locations while American combat operations are still underway against remnants of al Qaeda and the Taliban.

----

Afghan troops ordered out of Kabul to open way for ISAF

Thursday January 10, 12:54 AM
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020109/1/29zmo.html

Afghanistan's new government ordered Afghan troops to quit Kabul within three days to make way for a 17-nation security force, while controversy broke out over the release of Taliban prisoners.

Interior Minister Yunus Qanooni's office announced the move as French troops joined British soldiers already patrolling the war-ravaged capital to protect the work of Afghan leader Hamid Karzai's transitional power-sharing government.

In Washington, the Pentagon said US forces were pursuing a sweep of the sprawling Zhawar Kili complex, a former al-Qaeda base in eastern Afghanistan, where they detained two suspected senior al-Qaeda fighters.

"Qanooni has decided that all... military units affiliated to the defense ministry that took part in the conquest of Kabul should evacuate the city within three days," said interior ministry official Din Mohammad Jorat.

"After that, the peacekeeping force, along with our police force, will be patrolling the city," he said.

Britain's Ministry of Defence unveiled the final list of 17 countries taking part in the first phase of the International Security and Assistance force in Afghanistan, only one of which is non-European.

The UN-mandated force, which is under the command of British Major General John McColl, has already started deploying in the country and should reach its full strength of 4,500 by the end of the month.

Britain has committed up to 1,800 military personnel, of whom more than 300 are now in place.

All but one of the contributing countries are European. As well as Britain, they are: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden and Turkey.

The non-European exception is New Zealand, while Turkey is the only country with a Muslim majority contributing to the force.

The ministry of defence was not able to say exactly how many troops or what other form of military assistance each country was providing.

Britain's leadership of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) will last for three months, after which another country will take over.

The force's powers will be limited to "assist in the maintenance of the security" in Kabul and its surroundings.

Not every country which offered soldiers was taken up. Canada, for example, which had also expressed a readiness to contribute to ISAF, is deploying them instead in support of US forces near the southern Afghan city of Kandahar.

On Wednesday around 15 French marine infantrymen went on patrol at Kabul's civilian airport, which ISAF military engineers are racing to repair and clear of mines to provide a secure bridgehead for incoming troops.

Turkey said Wednesday it would contribute 261 military personnel.

Meanwhile there were signs of tension between the United States and its Afghan allies, after local officials said they had freed some senior Taliban, including three former ministers, who surrendered last week in Kandahar.

In Kandahar, local government spokesman Khaled Pashtun said former Taliban justice minister Mullah Toorabi, defence minister Mullah Obaidullah and industry and mines minister Mullah Haqqani had surrendered.

-------- africa

Military Chiefs Signal Support for Mugabe

WORLD In Brief
Thursday, January 10, 2002
Associated Press Reuters
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22967-2002Jan9?language=printer

HARARE, Zimbabwe -- Zimbabwe's military chiefs sent a clear signal that they would not accept a victory by the opposition in the presidential election in March.

"The security organizations will only stand in support of those political leaders that will pursue Zimbabwean values, traditions and beliefs for thousands of lives lost in pursuit of Zimbabwe's hard-won independence," said Gen. Vitalis Zvinavashe,the defense forces commander.

The statement appeared to be an endorsement of President Robert Mugabe, 77, who has ruled since 1980 and who faces the toughest battle of his political career in the race against the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, headed by former trade unionist Morgan Tsvangirai.

----

Ethiopia says no reason to deploy troops in Somalia

Thursday January 10,
AFP
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020109/1/29znw.html

Ethiopia has "no reason" to deploy troops in Somalia, a foreign ministry official said in the wake of numerous reports, including from the United Nations, of the presence of Ethiopian soldiers on Somali soil.

"Ethiopia has no reason to deploy its troops inside Somalia" Dena Mufti, an official with the ministry's press and information department told the Ethiopian News Agency.

In Nairobi on Wednesday, UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia Randolph Kent said Ethiopia was indeed in Somalia.

"We do know that there is a confirmed (Ethiopian) presence in Somalia," said, indicating that the men in question were in military uniform.

"What they are doing there we do not know," added Kent.

On January 3, an armed opposition group in Somalia said that Ethiopian troops were helping to train its men in the central Bay region while transitional Prime Minister Abshir Farah condemned the presence of Ethiopians on Somali soil.

The Rahanwein Resistance Army (RRA), which controls Bay and the neighbouring Bakol region, said Ethiopian officers were in the region to support the RRA in a demobilization program.

"A few Ethiopian officers are in Baidoa area to train RRA security personnel. They are our guests that respected our call for the demobilization in our fiefdom," RRA Deputy Chairman Mohamed Ibrahim Habsade told AFP by telephone from Baidoa.

On Tuesday, the speaker of Somalia's transitional parliament, Abdalla Derrow Issak, repeated an accusation that Ethiopia wanted to topple Somalia's transitional government by sending troops and military hardware to Puntland, an autonomous region in northeast Somalia.

"Ethiopia has maintained a neutral position to bring peace and stability in that country," insisted Dena Mufti.

-------- arms sales

Arms Buildup Enriches Firm Staffed by Big Guns
Defense: Ex-president and other elites are behind weapon-boosting Carlyle Group.

By MARK FINEMAN Times Staff Writer
January 10 2002
http://www.truthout.com/01.11F.Arms.Carlyle.htm

WASHINGTON -- Even by Washington standards, the Carlyle Group has some serious clout.

President George W. Bush's father works for Carlyle; so does former Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci, whose close friend Donald H. Rumsfeld now runs the Pentagon; and so does a stellar cast of retired generals and Cabinet secretaries, including former Secretary of State James A. Baker III.

And even by Wall Street standards, the Carlyle Group has some serious money: $12.5 billion in investments at last count. The Washington-based private equity firm, which advises and invests for wealthy clients and institutions, has shown returns of more than 34% through the last decade, particularly through timely defense and aerospace investments.

So when President Bush declared war on terrorism in September, few were better poised than Carlyle to know how and when to make money.

On a single day last month, Carlyle earned $237 million selling shares in United Defense Industries, the Army's fifth-largest contractor. The stock offering was well timed: Carlyle officials say they decided to take the company public only after the Sept. 11 attacks. The stock sale cashed in on increased congressional support for hefty defense spending, including one of United Defense's cornerstone weapon programs.

Carlyle's windfall is a result of astute business decisions, excellent connections, strategic lobbying, good timing and a bit of luck. It is also a prime example of how defense contractors got well in a hurry after the Sept. 11 attacks, in a year when the Bush administration already was planning steep hikes in defense spending.

For several years in the late 1990s, United Defense's Crusader Advanced Field Artillery System--a massive high-tech cannon that could fire faster and with more impact than any before it--was in trouble at the Pentagon. The system clashed with the vision many military planners and analysts have for a lighter, more mobile Army. And its high price tag--originally $20 billion--endangered it in times of tight defense budgets.

But the suicide attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center freed up tens of billions of dollars in new defense spending. United Defense already had modified the Crusader, making it 20 tons lighter. And the Army had cut its order by more than half to make it more palatable to budget cutters.

On Sept. 26, the Army signed a $665-million modified contract with United Defense through April 2003 to complete the Crusader's development phase. In October, the company listed the Crusader, and the attacks themselves, as selling points for its stock offering.

Then Congress fully funded the system in the defense authorization bill that passed the House and Senate on Dec. 13, the day before Carlyle's stock sale. And President Bush is scheduled to open the funding spigot today, when he signs a defense appropriation bill that includes $487.3 million for the Crusader in 2002.

The ties that bind the president's family and close advisors to Carlyle have helped draw the confidence of its investors--and the criticism of outsiders.

"It's the first time the president of the United States' father is on the payroll of one of the largest U.S. defense contractors," said Charles Lewis, director of the Center for Public Policy and one of Carlyle's most ardent critics.

"Between Baker and Carlucci, not to mention dear old dad, the relationship of the president with this particular company is as tight and close as, well, anyone can imagine."

Carlyle officials bristle at such talk. They described their recent stock sale as just plain good business that benefited a wide array of investors, including pension funds like those of California's state employees.

Carlyle spokesman Chris Ullman said that neither the company nor its managers, directors and advisors have ever personally lobbied for the Crusader or other government contracts now in the hands of United Defense and other Carlyle subsidiaries and investments.

Of Carlucci, Carlyle's board chairman, and his friendship with the current Defense secretary, Ullman said: "I assure you he doesn't lobby. That's the last thing he'd do. You'd have to know Carlucci to know he'd never do that, and you'd have to know Rumsfeld to know it wouldn't matter."

But even if Carlyle and Carlucci don't lobby, their subsidiaries and majority-owned companies do. And documents on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Election Commission, the Defense Department and Congress show that they do so heavily, strategically and persistently.

Midway Between White House, Congress

By any standard, the Carlyle Group has the right address. Its suite of offices are on Pennsylvania Avenue midway between the White House and Congress--a 15-minute walk to each.

It was founded as a small private-equity firm in 1987 by David M. Rubenstein, a young lawyer who had worked as an aide in Jimmy Carter's White House, and two investment specialists. They named the company after their favorite hotel in New York and started out with a modest portfolio of $100 million.

In 1989, Carlucci retired as Ronald Reagan's Defense secretary and joined Carlyle. Soon after, the company aggressively went after defense and aerospace investments, a specialty for Carlucci and the other former government officials who followed him into Carlyle.

Their investment strategies paid off, not only in defense acquisitions and sales but also in a wide array of corporations. Carlyle's portfolio quickly grew into the billions of dollars as pension funds and wealthy businessmen and families, including royal sheiks in the Persian Gulf, invested with the firm.

As its reputation grew, so did the group's star-studded management roster. It added former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. John M. Shalikashvili; Arthur Levitt, the long-serving former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission; former British Prime Minister John Major; former Secretary of State Baker; and former President Bush (Carlyle officers say the elder Bush's principal role is as "a draw": delivering speeches at Carlyle-sponsored events).

Last February, the California Public Employees' Retirement System announced it was investing $425 million in "a strategic partnership" with Carlyle. Even the company owned by Osama bin Laden's estranged billionaire family in Saudi Arabia was among Carlyle's clients--a mere $2-million investment that Carlyle said it bought out after Sept. 11 "for image reasons," Ullman said. He declined to say whether the Bin Ladens made a profit.

Ullman downplayed Carlyle's defense connections, saying that today less than 10% of its $12.5-billion portfolio is in defense, an additional 15% percent in commercial aerospace, and the rest in real estate, health care, telecommunications and consumer industries.

Only 15 of Carlyle's 500 employees are former government officials, Ullman said. Most of the rest are investment professionals working in 24 offices scattered across the globe.

Carlyle bought Arlington, Va.-based United Defense LP in October of 1997 for $850 million.

At the time, the company had contracts for the Army's main fleet of armored infantry vehicles, an automated naval gun system and a Navy missile-launching system. Among its potentially most lucrative contracts was the one for the next generation of high-tech Army battlefield artillery.

Still, the company was losing money. The year after Carlyle bought it, United Defense lost $122 million on $1.2 billion in revenue. But under Carlyle's ownership, United Defense turned around; last year, it reported a net profit of $18.8 million.

Critical to that turnaround was the future of the Crusader artillery system.

United Defense had started work on the Crusader in 1994. It is a self-propelled 155-millimeter howitzer that fires ammunition the size of scuba tanks farther, faster and more accurately than ever imagined, with the killing power of 10 rounds per minute.

The Crusader reloads automatically from an armored sister vehicle, and it uses millions of lines of computer code and battlefield intelligence to pinpoint and strike enemy positions as far as 25 miles away.

The system was, and is, considered the most advanced and lethal artillery on the globe.

It's also the heaviest. At 110 tons, the Crusader was deemed far too heavy for the rapidly deployable Army that will be needed to fight the sudden and remote conflicts America will face, according to a Pentagon-appointed National Defense Panel that sharply criticized the Crusader in December 1997.

That report fed into what is now the lead edge in post-Cold War Pentagon planning: To transform the U.S. armed forces into a slim, trim fighting force that can move halfway around the globe in a matter of hours and fight in conditions like the Afghan campaign.

And the Crusader, the panel concluded, was anything but mobile.

"Crusader was the gleam in somebody's eye in the later years of the Cold War," said Andrew Krepinevich, executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington and a member of the 1997 Defense Panel.

But Krepinevich, who has testified against the Crusader on Capitol Hill in the years since that report, added: "For something so heavy and hard to move as Crusader, it certainly has been a hard target to hit on the Hill. They've done a remarkable job in keeping it alive."

Here's how:

About the time the Carlyle Group bought United Defense, the United Defense LP Employees Political Action Committee registered with the Federal Election Commission. Since then, that committee has contributed more than $300,000 to several dozen legislators who have been key supporters of the Crusader and other Pentagon weapon systems that United Defense supplies.

In many cases, the legislators who received the money have other interests in pushing United Defense's agenda: jobs and commerce in their home states or districts.

Oklahoma Republican Rep. J.C. Watts Jr., for example, has been one of the Crusader's staunchest supporters. Watts' district includes the Crusader's Comanche County assembly and testing facility. Watts also has received $7,000 in contributions from the United Defense PAC.

Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) has received $10,000 from the same PAC. Pennsylvania is home to a United Defense plant in York. In October, he praised the Senate's passage of an early version of the defense authorization bill because it included $487 million for Crusader in 2002.

And Rodney P. Frelinghuysen, a GOP member of the House Appropriations Committee, was among the Crusader's pioneering proponents, dating back to the system's early development at the Picatinny Arsenal in Frelinghuysen's New Jersey district. The company's PAC has contributed $4,500 to his campaigns.

Such contributions are business as usual in the industry; larger defense contractors lavish even greater sums on their congressional supporters, FEC records show. Carlyle denies it played any role in creating United Defense's PAC.

United Defense spokesman Doug Coffey said the contributions are "not anything that would be out of the norm." The PAC's creation, he said, was timed not to the Crusader project but to the fact that United Defense became an independent corporation allowed to make such contributions only after Carlyle bought it.

"The contributions are primarily made to congressional members in areas where we have facilities," Coffey said. "And the total amount is nothing very extraordinary in the defense industry."

In addition to making its case on Capitol Hill, United Defense sought to answer Pentagon worries. The company redesigned the Crusader--and in record time. Its engineers took 20 tons off the system's weight, making it light enough to rapidly deploy two of them on a C-17 transport aircraft.

The Army also cut its order to 480 from more than 1,100 Crusader systems, reducing the program's overall cost to a projected $11 billion. And ever since, a succession of Army chiefs of staff have argued passionately for the program as an essential, leading-edge tool for its battlefield readiness in the 21st century.

Some independent analysts are impressed. John Pike, who runs the defense watchdog group GlobalSecurity.com, said he believes the Army will need an advanced artillery system, which he called "the king of battle, the thing that kills half the enemy."

But Krepinevich and others remain unconvinced. Given that future conflicts more likely will resemble Afghanistan than the Gulf War, he said: "over time, Crusader becomes less and less attractive. . . . Nobody wants to fight the American military out in the open anyway."

Krepinevich concluded that the system nonetheless has survived because "there's a high level of support by United Defense, No. 1; No. 2, by the [congressional] members whose constituents are affected by the health of United Defense. Then, you've got the Army. This kind of artillery system pacifies the traditional culture of the Army while it is transitioning to a lighter, more modern force.

"And there simply isn't the same kind of intensity on Capitol Hill to cancel projects like Crusader, especially in times of bigger defense budgets."

Carlyle Officials Seek to Sell United Defense

Carlyle officials say their strategy is to keep companies for three to five years and then sell them. Defense industry sources said Carlyle was trying to market United Defense as early as a year ago but had no takers. Carlyle officials confirm they were looking for an "exit strategy" from their ownership of United Defense.

"They basically didn't have options," said Stuart McCutchan, who edits the Virginia-based Defense Mergers & Acquisitions newsletter.

"What has happened in the last two or three months has given them an option. The public becomes the buyer."

And Carlyle's timing was impeccable.

First came the Bush administration's proposed 2002 defense budget. The document landed in Congress in June 2001, and it included an 11% hike in defense spending, including full funding for the Crusader.

Bolstered by the good news and the prospects for the company, Carlyle took its first dividends from United Defense on Aug. 13: $289.7 million.

Twenty-nine days later, the two hijacked airliners slammed into the World Trade Center towers, while another hit the Pentagon.

President Bush declared war on terrorism, defense industry stocks were suddenly hot and, just five weeks later, Carlyle was ready to take United Defense Industries public.

On Oct. 22, United Defense filed its stock-offering prospectus with the SEC.

"The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, have generated strong Congressional support for increased defense spending," the prospectus declared. "We believe that domestic and international defense spending will grow over the next several years as a result of an increased focus on national security by the U.S. government and its allies."

A month later, Carlyle took $92 million more in dividends out of United Defense.

Then, on Dec. 13, the Defense Authorization Bill passed both the House and Senate, with full funding for the Crusader, just one day before United Defense went public. United Defense's president and chief executive, Thomas Rabaut, even got invited to ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange that day.

Carlyle Managing Director Allan Holt explained: "The decision to take United Defense public was a function of the performance of the company, the outlook for its programs in the defense budget and the receptiveness of the market to defense equity offerings.

"We have an obligation to try to achieve the best returns for our investors."

And they did.

By the closing bell, Carlyle, which still controls 54% of United Defense, had sold more than 11 million of its shares in the company for a total of $237 million. United Defense raised an additional $163 million from the sale of about 9 million new shares.

On Wednesday, the company's stock, which Carlyle and United Defense opened at $19 a share Dec. 14, was trading for nearly $21.

----

Russia signs contract to build two destroyers for Chinese Navy

FROM MICHAEL BINYON IN MOSCOW
THURSDAY JANUARY 10 2002
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,3-2002016216,00.html

RUSSIA yesterday announced that it had signed an arms contract to build two new destroyers for the Chinese Navy at a cost of $1.4billion. The ships will be delivered to the Chinese by 2006 and will be equipped with up-to-date missiles, bombs, torpedo, radar and anti-submarine systems as well as new anti-ship supersonic missiles.

The vessels, able to reach 34 knots, will add formidable power to the Chinese Navy.

The contract follows a $650million weapons sale to India and underlines the crucial importance to the Russian economy of its arms sales, one of its main sources of revenue after oil exports.

India is one of Russia's primary arms markets and the present tension with Pakistan is deeply worrying to Moscow. India is putting pressure on Moscow to supply vast quantities of emergency spares, but the Russian factories are unable to meet demand. Should war break out and Moscow be unable to resupply India immediately, its arms sales would suffer a catastrophic blow.

This has added weight to Russian efforts to enforce restraint on India, 70 per cent of whose weapons are of Soviet or Russian origin.

Together with the Chinese, the Russians promised at the recent summit meeting of the Shanghai Co-operation Council to use their influence to restrain the military confrontation between India and Pakistan. Since both countries are crucially dependent on Russia and China respectively, that means that each will look to Beijing and Moscow for emergency spares and other arms that may be needed in any future war.

Unlike China, Russia - the third largest arms exporter - has not announced any new arms supplies to India during the present build-up. It has come under considerable pressure to match any weapons sent to Pakistan, and would be extremely loath to let down one of its top arms purchasers at a time of need.

----

U.S. lifts ban on arms sales

Around the Nation
Washington Times
January 10, 2002
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020110-98902148.htm

The United States lifted a blanket ban on arms sales to Tajikistan and Yugoslavia yesterday in recognition of the recent improvement in relations with the governments of the two countries.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Tajikistan was off the list because it had been cooperating since September with the United States' war against terrorism.

"In the case of Yugoslavia, Yugoslavia has been cooperating with the International War Crimes Tribunal, the U.N. embargo has been lifted and we're working to normalize our bilateral relationship," he said.

-------- business

Arms Buildup Enriches Firm Staffed by Big Guns
Defense: Ex-president and other elites are behind weapon-boosting Carlyle Group.

By MARK FINEMAN,
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer,
January 10, 2002
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-011002carlyle.story

WASHINGTON -- Even by Washington standards, the Carlyle Group has some serious clout.

President George W. Bush's father works for Carlyle; so does former Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci, whose close friend Donald H. Rumsfeld now runs the Pentagon; and so does a stellar cast of retired generals and Cabinet secretaries, including former Secretary of State James A. Baker III.

And even by Wall Street standards, the Carlyle Group has some serious money: $12.5 billion in investments at last count. The Washington-based private equity firm, which advises and invests for wealthy clients and institutions, has shown returns of more than 34% through the last decade, particularly through timely defense and aerospace investments.

So when President Bush declared war on terrorism in September, few were better poised than Carlyle to know how and when to make money.

On a single day last month, Carlyle earned $237 million selling shares in United Defense Industries, the Army's fifth-largest contractor. The stock offering was well timed: Carlyle officials say they decided to take the company public only after the Sept. 11 attacks. The stock sale cashed in on increased congressional support for hefty defense spending, including one of United Defense's cornerstone weapon programs.

Carlyle's windfall is a result of astute business decisions, excellent connections, strategic lobbying, good timing and a bit of luck. It is also a prime example of how defense contractors got well in a hurry after the Sept. 11 attacks, in a year when the Bush administration already was planning steep hikes in defense spending.

For several years in the late 1990s, United Defense's Crusader Advanced Field Artillery System--a massive high-tech cannon that could fire faster and with more impact than any before it--was in trouble at the Pentagon. The system clashed with the vision many military planners and analysts have for a lighter, more mobile Army. And its high price tag--originally $20 billion--endangered it in times of tight defense budgets.

But the suicide attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center freed up tens of billions of dollars in new defense spending. United Defense already had modified the Crusader, making it 20 tons lighter. And the Army had cut its order by more than half to make it more palatable to budget cutters.

On Sept. 26, the Army signed a $665-million modified contract with United Defense through April 2003 to complete the Crusader's development phase. In October, the company listed the Crusader, and the attacks themselves, as selling points for its stock offering.

Then Congress fully funded the system in the defense authorization bill that passed the House and Senate on Dec. 13, the day before Carlyle's stock sale. And President Bush is scheduled to open the funding spigot today, when he signs a defense appropriation bill that includes $487.3 million for the Crusader in 2002.

The ties that bind the president's family and close advisors to Carlyle have helped draw the confidence of its investors--and the criticism of outsiders.

"It's the first time the president of the United States' father is on the payroll of one of the largest U.S. defense contractors," said Charles Lewis, director of the Center for Public Policy and one of Carlyle's most ardent critics.

"Between Baker and Carlucci, not to mention dear old dad, the relationship of the president with this particular company is as tight and close as, well, anyone can imagine."

Carlyle officials bristle at such talk. They described their recent stock sale as just plain good business that benefited a wide array of investors, including pension funds like those of California's state employees.

Carlyle spokesman Chris Ullman said that neither the company nor its managers, directors and advisors have ever personally lobbied for the Crusader or other government contracts now in the hands of United Defense and other Carlyle subsidiaries and investments.

Of Carlucci, Carlyle's board chairman, and his friendship with the current Defense secretary, Ullman said: "I assure you he doesn't lobby. That's the last thing he'd do. You'd have to know Carlucci to know he'd never do that, and you'd have to know Rumsfeld to know it wouldn't matter."

But even if Carlyle and Carlucci don't lobby, their subsidiaries and majority-owned companies do. And documents on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Election Commission, the Defense Department and Congress show that they do so heavily, strategically and persistently.

Midway Between White House, Congress

By any standard, the Carlyle Group has the right address. Its suite of offices are on Pennsylvania Avenue midway between the White House and Congress--a 15-minute walk to each.

It was founded as a small private-equity firm in 1987 by David M. Rubenstein, a young lawyer who had worked as an aide in Jimmy Carter's White House, and two investment specialists. They named the company after their favorite hotel in New York and started out with a modest portfolio of $100 million.

In 1989, Carlucci retired as Ronald Reagan's Defense secretary and joined Carlyle. Soon after, the company aggressively went after defense and aerospace investments, a specialty for Carlucci and the other former government officials who followed him into Carlyle.

Their investment strategies paid off, not only in defense acquisitions and sales but also in a wide array of corporations. Carlyle's portfolio quickly grew into the billions of dollars as pension funds and wealthy businessmen and families, including royal sheiks in the Persian Gulf, invested with the firm.

As its reputation grew, so did the group's star-studded management roster. It added former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. John M. Shalikashvili; Arthur Levitt, the long-serving former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission; former British Prime Minister John Major; former Secretary of State Baker; and former President Bush (Carlyle officers say the elder Bush's principal role is as "a draw": delivering speeches at Carlyle-sponsored events).

Last February, the California Public Employees' Retirement System announced it was investing $425 million in "a strategic partnership" with Carlyle. Even the company owned by Osama bin Laden's estranged billionaire family in Saudi Arabia was among Carlyle's clients--a mere $2-million investment that Carlyle said it bought out after Sept. 11 "for image reasons," Ullman said. He declined to say whether the Bin Ladens made a profit.

Ullman downplayed Carlyle's defense connections, saying that today less than 10% of its $12.5-billion portfolio is in defense, an additional 15% percent in commercial aerospace, and the rest in real estate, health care, telecommunications and consumer industries.

Only 15 of Carlyle's 500 employees are former government officials, Ullman said. Most of the rest are investment professionals working in 24 offices scattered across the globe.

Carlyle bought Arlington, Va.-based United Defense LP in October of 1997 for $850 million.

At the time, the company had contracts for the Army's main fleet of armored infantry vehicles, an automated naval gun system and a Navy missile-launching system. Among its potentially most lucrative contracts was the one for the next generation of high-tech Army battlefield artillery.

Still, the company was losing money. The year after Carlyle bought it, United Defense lost $122 million on $1.2 billion in revenue. But under Carlyle's ownership, United Defense turned around; last year, it reported a net profit of $18.8 million.

Critical to that turnaround was the future of the Crusader artillery system.

United Defense had started work on the Crusader in 1994. It is a self-propelled 155-millimeter howitzer that fires ammunition the size of scuba tanks farther, faster and more accurately than ever imagined, with the killing power of 10 rounds per minute.

The Crusader reloads automatically from an armored sister vehicle, and it uses millions of lines of computer code and battlefield intelligence to pinpoint and strike enemy positions as far as 25 miles away.

The system was, and is, considered the most advanced and lethal artillery on the globe.

It's also the heaviest. At 110 tons, the Crusader was deemed far too heavy for the rapidly deployable Army that will be needed to fight the sudden and remote conflicts America will face, according to a Pentagon-appointed National Defense Panel that sharply criticized the Crusader in December 1997.

That report fed into what is now the lead edge in post-Cold War Pentagon planning: To transform the U.S. armed forces into a slim, trim fighting force that can move halfway around the globe in a matter of hours and fight in conditions like the Afghan campaign.

And the Crusader, the panel concluded, was anything but mobile.

"Crusader was the gleam in somebody's eye in the later years of the Cold War," said Andrew Krepinevich, executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington and a member of the 1997 Defense Panel.

But Krepinevich, who has testified against the Crusader on Capitol Hill in the years since that report, added: "For something so heavy and hard to move as Crusader, it certainly has been a hard target to hit on the Hill. They've done a remarkable job in keeping it alive."

Here's how:

About the time the Carlyle Group bought United Defense, the United Defense LP Employees Political Action Committee registered with the Federal Election Commission. Since then, that committee has contributed more than $300,000 to several dozen legislators who have been key supporters of the Crusader and other Pentagon weapon systems that United Defense supplies.

In many cases, the legislators who received the money have other interests in pushing United Defense's agenda: jobs and commerce in their home states or districts.

Oklahoma Republican Rep. J.C. Watts Jr., for example, has been one of the Crusader's staunchest supporters. Watts' district includes the Crusader's Comanche County assembly and testing facility. Watts also has received $7,000 in contributions from the United Defense PAC.

Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) has received $10,000 from the same PAC. Pennsylvania is home to a United Defense plant in York. In October, he praised the Senate's passage of an early version of the defense authorization bill because it included $487 million for Crusader in 2002.

And Rodney P. Frelinghuysen, a GOP member of the House Appropriations Committee, was among the Crusader's pioneering proponents, dating back to the system's early development at the Picatinny Arsenal in Frelinghuysen's New Jersey district. The company's PAC has contributed $4,500 to his campaigns.

Such contributions are business as usual in the industry; larger defense contractors lavish even greater sums on their congressional supporters, FEC records show. Carlyle denies it played any role in creating United Defense's PAC.

United Defense spokesman Doug Coffey said the contributions are "not anything that would be out of the norm." The PAC's creation, he said, was timed not to the Crusader project but to the fact that United Defense became an independent corporation allowed to make such contributions only after Carlyle bought it.

"The contributions are primarily made to congressional members in areas where we have facilities," Coffey said. "And the total amount is nothing very extraordinary in the defense industry."

In addition to making its case on Capitol Hill, United Defense sought to answer Pentagon worries. The company redesigned the Crusader--and in record time. Its engineers took 20 tons off the system's weight, making it light enough to rapidly deploy two of them on a C-17 transport aircraft.

The Army also cut its order to 480 from more than 1,100 Crusader systems, reducing the program's overall cost to a projected $11 billion. And ever since, a succession of Army chiefs of staff have argued passionately for the program as an essential, leading-edge tool for its battlefield readiness in the 21st century.

Some independent analysts are impressed. John Pike, who runs the defense watchdog group GlobalSecurity.com, said he believes the Army will need an advanced artillery system, which he called "the king of battle, the thing that kills half the enemy."

But Krepinevich and others remain unconvinced. Given that future conflicts more likely will resemble Afghanistan than the Gulf War, he said: "over time, Crusader becomes less and less attractive. . . . Nobody wants to fight the American military out in the open anyway."

Krepinevich concluded that the system nonetheless has survived because "there's a high level of support by United Defense, No. 1; No. 2, by the [congressional] members whose constituents are affected by the health of United Defense. Then, you've got the Army. This kind of artillery system pacifies the traditional culture of the Army while it is transitioning to a lighter, more modern force.

"And there simply isn't the same kind of intensity on Capitol Hill to cancel projects like Crusader, especially in times of bigger defense budgets."

Carlyle Officials Seek to Sell United Defense

Carlyle officials say their strategy is to keep companies for three to five years and then sell them. Defense industry sources said Carlyle was trying to market United Defense as early as a year ago but had no takers. Carlyle officials confirm they were looking for an "exit strategy" from their ownership of United Defense.

"They basically didn't have options," said Stuart McCutchan, who edits the Virginia-based Defense Mergers & Acquisitions newsletter. "What has happened in the last two or three months has given them an option. The public becomes the buyer."

And Carlyle's timing was impeccable.

First came the Bush administration's proposed 2002 defense budget. The document landed in Congress in June 2001, and it included an 11% hike in defense spending, including full funding for the Crusader.

Bolstered by the good news and the prospects for the company, Carlyle took its first dividends from United Defense on Aug. 13: $289.7 million.

Twenty-nine days later, the two hijacked airliners slammed into the World Trade Center towers, while another hit the Pentagon. President Bush declared war on terrorism, defense industry stocks were suddenly hot and, just five weeks later, Carlyle was ready to take United Defense Industries public.

On Oct. 22, United Defense filed its stock-offering prospectus with the SEC.

"The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, have generated strong Congressional support for increased defense spending," the prospectus declared. "We believe that domestic and international defense spending will grow over the next several years as a result of an increased focus on national security by the U.S. government and its allies."

A month later, Carlyle took $92 million more in dividends out of United Defense.

Then, on Dec. 13, the Defense Authorization Bill passed both the House and Senate, with full funding for the Crusader, just one day before United Defense went public. United Defense's president and chief executive, Thomas Rabaut, even got invited to ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange that day.

Carlyle Managing Director Allan Holt explained: "The decision to take United Defense public was a function of the performance of the company, the outlook for its programs in the defense budget and the receptiveness of the market to defense equity offerings.

"We have an obligation to try to achieve the best returns for our investors."

And they did.

By the closing bell, Carlyle, which still controls 54% of United Defense, had sold more than 11 million of its shares in the company for a total of $237 million. United Defense raised an additional $163 million from the sale of about 9 million new shares.

On Wednesday, the company's stock, which Carlyle and United Defense opened at $19 a share Dec. 14, was trading for nearly $21.

----

N.Y., Calif. Refuse to Exclude Terrorism From Insurance

By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 10, 2002; Page E03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22400-2002Jan9?language=printer

Insurance regulators in California and New York have denied a blanket request to allow hundreds of insurers to exclude terrorism coverage from commercial policies.

Both big states declined to approve an initial request by Insurance Services Office Inc., a private firm that filed nationwide for the terrorism exclusions on behalf of about 200 insurance groups. More than 35 states, including Maryland and Virginia, and the District have approved the request.

Neither denial was unexpected. Insurance brokers said yesterday that finding coverage for commercial policyholders could be more difficult if enough insurers scale back their businesses rather than write policies that include terrorism coverage.

"There are companies that are just not going to be able to buy insurance at all because it will be too cost-prohibitive" with fewer players in the market, said James Hutchinson, first vice president of Kaye Insurance Associates Inc., a New York brokerage. "Some places are going to go bare or they are going to go out of business. It's scary."

The states that have approved the Insurance Services Office request have done so on the recommendation of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, which encouraged exclusions until Congress creates a federal backup to help pay terrorism claims.

Under the association's guidelines, the exclusions would be allowed if a terrorist act caused more than $25 million worth of damage and would apply only to commercial policies, not to auto, home or life coverage. The exclusions would expire if Congress enacted a federal backup.

Terrorism damage was covered in most U.S. policies before Sept. 11, and most states require primary companies to get permission to drop the coverage. Reinsurers, which provide insurance to the primary companies and are not regulated, have indicated their intentions to drop terrorism coverage. Without reinsurance for terrorism, primary insurers would have to assume the entire risk of coverage.

But regulators from California and New York, whose decisions were issued Tuesday, said they are not convinced that the exclusions are necessary.

They are working with the Insurance Services Office to modify the request to narrow the definition of a terrorism event and to limit the conditions under which insurers could deny claims.

"It isn't an outright rejection," said Scott Edelen, California deputy insurance commissioner. The Insurance Services Office will be allowed a hearing to petition regulators to reconsider a modified request, he said.

Edelen said regulators want to "limit any policy language that would hinder policyholders in collecting claims."

Like their counterparts in California, New York regulators are concerned that the $25 million threshold for a terrorism attack is too low.

Representatives of both states said limited permission to exclude terrorism may be granted, as it already has been in California. Regulators there have allowed four companies that were not a part of the Insurance Services Office request to exclude terrorism from certain commercial policies because the exclusions were narrow and applied to an event similar to the Sept. 11 attacks.

J. Robert Hunter, insurance director of the Consumer Federation of America, said regulators should not grant exclusions that would hurt small policyholders, which do not pose a great loss risk to insurance companies.

Hunter said insurers are not going to abandon California and New York -- two of the largest commercial markets in the country -- because of the regulatory decisions this week.

But Matthew Mosher, group vice president of property and casualty for the insurance ratings agency A.M. Best Co., said that by limiting the exclusions, regulators take away one of the tools that companies use to manage their exposure to catastrophic losses.

He said companies in New York and California will have to go "policy by policy" to look at their risk.

"In major cities, it's going to have an impact on companies' willingness to write coverage," Mosher said.

----

[They got off pretty cheap, eh?]

Loral settles charge it gave China data

By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 10, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020110-13165970.htm

A U.S. satellite maker under investigation for providing missile technology to China has reached a settlement with the U.S. government and will pay a $14 million fine.

Loral Space & Communications Ltd. announced the settlement in a statement yesterday and said it was informed by the Justice Department that an investigation of the company for the technology transfer has ended without prosecution.

"Loral has agreed to pay a civil fine of $14 million to the State Department without admitting or denying the government's charges," the company statement said.

The fine will be paid over seven years without interest at a rate of around $2 million annually, the company said.

A Justice Department spokesman referred questions to the State Department. A State Department official had no immediate comment.

The missile-technology-transfer case highlighted the pro-China export policies of the Clinton administration, which critics say damaged U.S. national security.

The technology provided by Loral allowed China to increase the reliability of its space-launch boosters, which U.S. intelligence officials said are identical to the boosters used in its long-range nuclear missiles and built by the same state-run firm.

A classified Pentagon report concluded in 1998 that the technology likely gave China a "significant" boost in its long-range missiles, which the CIA has said includes more than a dozen targeted at U.S. cities.

U.S. intelligence officials said China used one of its space launchers to flight-test the warhead-carrying stage of its new Dong Feng-31 missile last week. The space launcher blew up in midflight, however.

A senior Bush administration official said the deal for Loral to pay a fine was reached after the Justice Department declined to bring criminal charges.

The Justice Department last year also declined to prosecute a CIA officer who tipped off Hughes Electronics, a U.S. satellite maker still under investigation in missile-technology transfers, to the criminal probe.

Bernard L. Schwartz, Loral's chairman and chief executive officer, said in a statement that "we take this matter very seriously.

"We historically have had an excellent security record and are committed to vigorous compliance with export control laws," Mr. Schwartz said. "The company has instituted an extensive new training program, significantly expanded staff, and greatly improved oversight in the area of export control."

Mr. Schwartz said the case grew out of the company's role in an insurance and technical review panel that investigated a 1996 Chinese rocket launch failure.

The panel's report was "mistakenly sent to the Chinese by a Loral employee," Mr. Schwartz said, and the company then informed the State Department.

"Nonetheless, Loral accepts full responsibility for the matter and expresses regret for its failure to obtain appropriate State Department approval," Mr. Schwartz said.

Defense officials said the company had an incentive to help the Chinese improve the reliability of their launchers because it would reduce insurance costs. A failed launch could cost insurers $300 million or more.

Mr. Schwartz was the largest single contributor to President Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign and had lobbied aggressively to loosen export controls on satellite sales to China.

Hughes Electronics remains under investigation, according to U.S. officials, in its role in helping China improve fairings and nose cones that could be used on Chinese strategic nuclear missiles.

In June 2000, Lockheed Martin agreed to pay the State Department a fine of $13 million for a similar improper transfer of missile technology to China dating to 1994.

The companies were required to obtain an export license before providing such technology to China.

-------- colombia

People and Ecosystems in Colombia: Casualties of the Drug War

by Sarah Peterson,
January 7, 2002
Independent Review
VOLUME 6 NUMBER 3 WINTER 2002
http://www.independent.org/tii/content/pubs/review/tir63_peterson.html

More than 10 years of fumigation have failed to slow the increase in Colombian coca production. Despite or because of this failure, U.S. policymakers have escalated the drug war in Colombia, much to the detriment of Colombians' liberties, health and environment. Download Acrobat PDF format file of article http://www.independent.org/tii/media/pdf/tir63peterson.pdf

----

Colombia ends peace talks

From combined dispatches
Washington Times
January 10, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020110-6348948.htm

Colombia - Colombia's government yesterday ended 3-year-old peace talks with FARC rebels and said it was giving the Marxist guerrillas 48 hours to vacate a demilitarized zone in the country's south.

President Andres Pastrana accused Colombia's largest rebel group of destroying the peace process.

The military put all its troops on high alert, army spokesman Maj. Jose Espejo said.

Fifteen tanks and 10 trucks loaded with soldiers were later seen moving through the streets of Bogota toward a military base in the south of the capital, closer to rebel territory.

Word of the talks' collapse appeared to take FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, by surprise. Rebel spokesman Raul Reyes had said hours before Mr. Pastrana's announcement that they hoped talks would continue until at least Jan. 20, when the rebels' use of the safe haven in southern Colombia was set to expire.

Many observers feared that if talks failed, all-out war would follow in the 38-year-old conflict that already kills about 3,500 people every year.

Mr. Pastrana granted the safe haven to the FARC as a site for the talks when they began three years ago. Since then the rebels have controlled the Switzerland-sized haven, mainly jungle and pastureland in southern Colombia.

"Today I have to tell Colombians, with regret, but above all with realism and responsibility, that the FARC keeps placing obstacles in front of the peace process, making it impossible for us to keep advancing with the process," Mr. Pastrana said in his nationally broadcast address to the nation.

"The FARC has 48 hours, as agreed, to retire from the zone," he said, referring to the original timeframe for them to abandon the safe haven if talks failed.

A grave Mr. Pastrana told the nation, "I've done the impossible to save this process that I initiated and directed personally."

He blamed the rebels for failing to discuss substantive issues like a cease-fire, and instead quibbling about military controls outside the borders of the safe haven.

The only airline - Satena - that has regular flights into the biggest town in the safe zone said it was suspending those flights.

The presidential peace negotiator, Camilo Gomez, said earlier in the day that the FARC had withdrawn from the process, but a rebel spokesman said he was lying.

"He lied to the country and the international community when he said the FARC had asked for 48 hours for the armed forces to enter the zone after not coming to an agreement," Mr. Reyes said.

He accused Mr. Gomez of "throwing gasoline on the fire at a time when the future of the nation requires humility, prudence and greatness."

Mr. Gomez spent the past days in the safe haven trying to resuscitate the talks. The rebels suspended negotiations last October after the military increased patrols along the borders of the zone.

Before returning to Bogota late yesterday from the zone, Mr. Gomez said he understood after his latest talks with the rebels that they would abandon the whole peace process.

"After hearing the FARC in different rounds of negotiations in the past few days the government understands that this insurgent group will not continue the peace process, and therefore they have asked for 48 hours" to vacate the towns inside the safe haven, Mr. Gomez said.

Mr. Reyes denied the rebels had made any such request.

After almost 38 years of war, Colombia is now facing a further upsurge of violence as the army prepares to push back into the Switzerland-sized enclave that Mr. Pastrana granted the FARC, Latin America's largest and oldest insurgency.

The final break came after a three-month deadlock in talks, as the FARC refused to discuss a cease-fire with the government in protest of military air patrols and border restrictions on the rebels' swath of cattle and cocaine country.

There was an angry reaction from the 17,000-member FARC - branded a terrorist organization by the United States - which is fighting to establish a socialist state.

Talks have done little to staunch the flow of blood in a war that has claimed 40,000 mainly civilian lives in the past decade, and the FARC has resisted government demands to silence their guns and cease mass kidnappings. The army accuses the rebels of using their territory as a base for running a cocaine business and training for war.

But, while opinion polls had shown Colombians doubted FARC's sincerity in negotiations, few had predicted that Mr. Pastrana would abandon a peace process so close to the end of his four-year term in August.

The president had long swallowed his pride and periodically renewed the controversial FARC enclave, even after high-profile rebel killings, including the September slaying of the attorney general's wife, and recent kidnappings of congressmen.

The United States is pouring more than $1 billion in mainly military aid into Mr. Pastrana's anti-cocaine "Plan Colombia."

-------- iran

Bush Warns Iran Not to Try to Undermine Afghanistan

New York Times
January 10, 2002
By ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/10/international/10CND-IRAN.html

WASHINGTON, Jan. 10 - President Bush warned Iran today that it must not try to undermine the new interim government of Afghanistan, or it will face consequences.

"Iran must be a contributor in the war against terror," Mr. Bush told reporters at the White House. "Our nation, in our fight against terrorism, will uphold the doctrine of either you're with us or against us."

The president's comments were in response to reports that Pentagon and intelligence officials are concerned that Iran is seeking to exert political and military influence in border regions in western Afghanistan in ways that challenge the authority of the interim government in Kabul and threaten Washington's long-term goals in the country.

The officials say Iran, which denied the accusations today, has grown increasingly concerned about the pro-Western tilt of Afghanistan's government and is moving to flex its muscle in a part of Afghanistan where it has long held sway.

"Iran is trying to make sure that Afghanistan remains an Islamic state and does not become more secular, like Turkey," one defense official said on Wednesday.

Mr. Bush noted that Iran gave the United States "positive signals" of cooperation early in the American-led military campaign in Afghanistan. Then he said Iran must not "allow Al Qaeda murderers to hide in their country" and must surrender any who have slipped across the Afghan border into Iran.

Mr. Bush said of the Iranians, "If they in any way, shape, or form try to destabilize the government, the coalition will deal with them, you know, in diplomatic ways, initially."

Today an Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, Hamid Reza Asefi, told Reuters, "Our borders are tightly closed and the Islamic Republic of Iran in no circumstances would let Al Qaeda members, fighters and supporters of bin Laden enter the country." Mr. Asefi also said Iran was not trying to interfere in Afghanistan's internal affairs or influence Kabul to set up an Islamic system of government. "Afghan people should decide their own future," he said.

American intelligence shows that Iran, which opposed the Taliban and viewed Al Qaeda with caution, is giving safe haven to small numbers of Al Qaeda fighters fleeing Afghanistan, with the view that Al Qaeda will fight to weaken Western influence, Pentagon officials said.

United States Special Forces around Herat, in northwestern Afghanistan, report that Iranian agents are infiltrating the area, threatening some tribal leaders and bribing other local leaders to undermine American-backed programs in one of the most lawless provinces of Afghanistan.

"Iran is trying to stir up mischief," a senior military official said on Wednesday. "So far we haven't taken any action, but we're keeping a very close eye on it."

Afghanistan's interim cabinet, led by Hamid Karzai, includes a son of a powerful warlord, Ismail Khan, who was Iran's closest ally in the Northern Alliance, which helped topple the Taliban. Defense officials described the selection, arranged in power-sharing talks in Bonn, as partly an effort to secure the support of Mr. Khan, whose forces control Herat.

The move to put Mr. Khan's son, Mir Wais Sadeq, in the government is seen as an attempt to hold together the fractious factions.

Growing signs of cooperation between Washington and Tehran had emerged in recent months. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell says Iran has been generally helpful in the war in Afghanistan. Iran secretly agreed in October to rescue any American troops in distress in its territory. Many refugees fled to Iran from Afghanistan, and Iran provided a port for shipping American wheat into the war zone.

"By and large, the Iranian role diplomatically has been quite constructive," Richard N. Haass, the State Department's director of policy planning, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last month. Iran sent observers to the talks in Bonn on forming the coalition government, and its diplomats played a key role behind the scenes, he said. But he cautioned, "I'm not saying we see everything eye to eye here."

Iran is also seeking a leading role in the rebuilding of Afghanistan. A United Nations-sponsored conference this week in Tehran brought together Afghan business leaders, entrepreneurs and academics to discuss recovery efforts in health, education and community development.

Tens of thousands of refugees have returned to the Herat area, with hundreds of families arriving every day, according to the United Nations, and more than 100,000 remain in a huge camp near the Iranian border. Aid agencies are mounting a major food-distribution effort in Herat, a city of nearly 400,000 where hunger and poverty are rampant.

Some experts, while condemning any Iranian actions that could undermine the interim government in Kabul, offered another explanation for Iran's behavior.

"I'm sure Iran would be concerned about a United States military presence on its border," said Prof. Barnett R. Rubin, an Afghanistan specialist at New York University. "I wouldn't necessarily say theirs is an aggressive terrorist position. It's quite a reasonable security concern."

As one State Department official put it: "From the Iranian point of view, they're probably feeling pretty threatened in Afghanistan right now. There are some things we're working in parallel with the Iranians, and some things they're going at in a different direction. We don't have identical goals in Afghanistan."

Iran poses difficult challenges for the Kabul government, and for President Bush and his senior national security advisers as they look beyond Afghanistan in the campaign against terrorists: Iran is listed by the State Department as the world's most active state supporter of terrorism, largely because it supports the Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

In Lebanon, Iran has also retained its close ties to Hezbollah, the Shiite group that has waged terrorism against the United States and Israel since the 1980's. American officials say that for years, there have been regular flights from Tehran to Damascus, Syria, carrying arms for Hezbollah's use in Lebanon. More recently, the officials suspect, Tehran has expanded its support for Palestinian terrorists.

Iran, a Shiite-controlled state, opposed the Sunni Muslim Taliban from the time the movement gained control in Kabul in 1996. About 20 percent of Afghans are Shiites.

Iran and Russia were the primary backers of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance before Sept. 11. The Iranians were most immediately concerned over Taliban control in the west, near the Iranian border, and focused their resources on rebel groups there. Iranian intelligence officers were working in Afghanistan against the Taliban as early as 1996, according to United States intelligence reports.

How much influence Iran eventually wields may hinge on Ismail Khan, who initially criticized the Bonn agreement on power-sharing but later agreed to take part.

A former governor of Herat, Mr. Khan, an ethnic Tajik, ruled peacefully after the Soviet pullout in 1989, while the rest of Afghanistan was gripped by factional fighting.

He decided not to confront the Taliban as they swept toward Herat in the mid-1990's. Instead, he fled to Iran with a convoy of 50 trucks. He later returned to Herat and was jailed. But his mystique grew when he escaped prison in March 2000 and again took refuge in Iran.

After the Taliban's demise, Mr. Khan quickly restored his rule, and since then has singled out Iran for praise. "Iran is the best model of an Islamic country in the world and we approve of the policy of Iran," he said in November.

Asked how supportive Mr. Khan may be of the interim government, an American official said: "That remains to be seen. Loyalties in Afghanistan are often fungible."

----

Bush Warns Iranian Officials

By Sally Buzbee
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, January 10, 2002; 7:09 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A27887-2002Jan10?language=printer

WASHINGTON -- President Bush warned Iranian officials Thursday not to harbor al-Qaida fighters fleeing Afghanistan and not to try to destabilize the country's new government. If the warning is ignored, Bush said, the U.S.-led coalition "will deal with them ... in diplomatic ways, initially."

Until now, the United States has quietly praised longtime foe Iran for its help in the war on international terror. Iranians and Americans have worked together to fight the Taliban and to create Afghanistan's new government.

Now, however, Iran is moving to safeguard its traditional influence in western Afghanistan, apparently unnerved by growing U.S. military influence on almost all sides, analysts said.

U.S. intelligence has evidence that Iran is providing sanctuary for a small number of al-Qaida fighters who fled the fighting in Afghanistan, a U.S. official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Iran denied those reports on Thursday. An official called Bush's warning "baseless" and said Iran wants neighboring Afghanistan to be stable and independent.

"Iran has never been on good terms with the Taliban and their supporters," said Iranian Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi. "It has been our policy not to allow terrorist groups such as al-Qaida in Iran."

Indeed, many analysts believe Iran, which hated the Taliban and is suspicious of al-Qaida, merely is doing what Russia and Pakistan are doing: working with local warlords to guarantee their interests in Afghanistan don't get swept aside.

"Iran regards Afghanistan like we regard Mexico," said Judith Kipper, a Middle East expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "It is a vital, critical interest for them, and they have every right to be consulted and involved."

Reports that al-Qaida fighters fled to Iran could simply be a sign that Iran does not totally control its border, said Ted Carpenter of the Cato Institute, noting that al-Qaida also fled to key U.S. ally Pakistan. Or hard-liners in Iran's government might be helping al-Qaida, he said. But Iran's Shiites and Afghanistan's Sunnis represent different Islamic sects, long hostile.

Since the Taliban fell, Iran has sent aid and promises of reconstruction across the border. It says it seeks a more stable Afghanistan in part so 11/2 million refugees now inside Iran can go home.

"We have a special relationship with Afghanistan," Iran's consul in Herat, Mohammad Alagizadeh, told The Associated Press recently. "The end of the Taliban is a chance to begin again."

But U.S. officials worry that Iran's main ally in Afghanistan, warlord Ismail Khan, does not sufficiently support the new U.S.-backed prime minister, Hamid Karzai.

"Iran must be a contributor in the war against terror. Our nation, in our fight against terror, will uphold the doctrine, 'Either you're with us, or against us,'" Bush said.

The president's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said Iran "is a center for supporting terrorism. There is no doubt about that."

"The United States has long said that Iran is a state that supports terrorism," she said in an interview broadcast Thursday by Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. International.

"And we have every evidence that Iran continues to support terrorism. Until there is a change in that behavior it's going to be very difficult for the dynamics between the United States and Iran to change."

The president said Iran should hand over any al-Qaida supporters who might flee Afghanistan. And he said: "If they try, in any way, shape or form to destabilize the government, the coalition will deal with them ... in diplomatic ways, initially."

The president said he hoped the two can still work together. "We had some positive signals early in this war from the Iranians. We would hope that they would continue to be a positive force," he said.

Iran and the United States have not had ties since the storming of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Iran condemned the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, however, which led officials including Secretary of State Colin Powell to explore the chance of closer relations.

Iran is torn internally between a moderate president and Islamic hard-liners.

The United States accuses Iran of sponsoring terrorism worldwide, of secretly developing nuclear weapons and of undermining the Middle East Israeli-Arab peace process.

On Thursday, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher cited "compelling evidence that Iran and Hezbollah were involved" with a ship full of weapons, allegedly for Palestinian militants, that Israel recently seized.

Nevertheless, Iran and the United States have worked closely on Afghanistan.

"The Iranians have committed themselves, and indeed (at U.N.-sponsored meetings) in Bonn (Germany) worked to try to bring about a broad-based government for Afghanistan," Boucher said.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said that early in the war, American special operations troops fought alongside Iranians on the ground. The Americans and Iranians had joined Afghan rebels in their fight against the Taliban.

-------- israel / palestine

INTERNATIONAL
Israel Flattens Gaza Homes in Retaliation for Attack

New York Times
January 10, 2002
By JAMES BENNET
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/10/international/middleeast/10CND-MIDE.html

JERUSALEM, Jan. 10 - Israeli bulldozers destroyed dozens of buildings in a Gaza refugee camp early today in retaliation for an attack on an Israeli outpost in which two Palestinian gunmen killed four soldiers before being shot dead themselves.

Israel's action brought a rebuke from Washington, where a State Department spokesman said it would not help end violence.

"We have been very clear about the need for Palestinian action against violence and terror," the official said. "At the same time we do not believe that demolitions of Palestinian property and homes can contribute to the restoration of calm and an end to violence."

The official, who asked not to be identified by name, was citing language approved by the State Department.

Israel said the buildings in the Rafah refugee camp, where the two attackers lived, were used as cover for Palestinian gunmen and smugglers. Palestinians said the buildings were inhabited and local officials said hundreds of people were made homeless.

The Israeli military said Palestinians threw grenades and fired weapons toward troops during the demolitions but that no one was hurt.

Later the militant group Islamic Jihad said it was abandoning an agreement not to mount attacks inside Israel, because the Israelis were still attacking Palestinians.

The group, which said it had abided by the call by the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat last month to halt such attacks, said in a statement, "We will maintain our right to continue the jihad and resistance until the last drop of blood in our veins."

Asked if that meant it would resume its attacks, one of the group's senior officials in the West Bank was quoted by Reuters as saying, "Not necessarily."

The four soldiers killed at the Kerem Shalom outpost on Wednesday were all Israeli Arabs who had volunteered for military service. The Israeli deaths were the first at the hands of Palestinian militants striking from the West Bank or Gaza Strip since Mr. Arafat called for a halt to attacks on Dec. 16. At least 20 Palestinians have died violently during the same period.

Mr. Arafat's Palestinian Authority condemned the assault, but Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister, held Mr. Arafat personally responsible for it.

The attack further weakens Mr. Arafat's standing just as Israel is pressing the Bush administration to support fully its campaign to isolate him and force him to crush Palestinian militant groups.

While the Bush administration has pushed Mr. Arafat to take that step, it has not endorsed declarations by Israeli officials that Mr. Arafat has made himself irrelevant or Israel's "bitter enemy."

The United States envoy, Anthony C. Zinni, has continued talking with Mr. Arafat. After a four-day visit that ended Monday, General Zinni, who is retired from the marines, left the region expressing optimism about a possible truce, despite the smuggling incident.

On Wednesday night, six United States congressmen canceled a meeting with Mr. Arafat planned for today, citing an American intelligence briefing that they said proved Mr. Arafat was personally responsible for the attempt to smuggle 50 tons of munitions into the Gaza Strip aboard the freighter Karine A. The Israelis captured the ship in the Red Sea last Thursday.

So far the Bush administration has not backed the Israeli claim that Mr. Arafat was involved. But Representative Gary Ackerman, a Democrat from Queens, said the administration had information proving just that.

"These guys are nailed," he said. "Let me tell you the level it rises to: 100 percent certainty that Arafat was personally involved in the ordering of the procurement of the ship and the weapons, 100 percent certainty that it was intended for the Palestinian Authority."

In a telephone conversation Wednesday morning, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell urged Mr. Arafat to make a thorough accounting of Palestinian involvement in the smuggling. In an interview with the Middle East Broadcasting Center, Secretary Powell said that he had told Mr. Arafat that "more evidence will be forthcoming."

He said that "a heavy burden rests on Mr. Arafat to deal with these charges and to deal with the evidence as it comes forward."

On Wednesday Mr. Arafat again dismissed the smuggling accusation. "As you can see, they make up stories," Mr. Arafat said of the Israelis during an appearance in the West Bank city of Ramallah. "Now it's about a ship."

He added that the Palestinians would not have to resort to such expensive and elaborate subterfuge to obtain weapons. It would be "easier and cheaper," he said, to buy them from Israel. Palestinian officials have said that Israeli soldiers and settlers sell weapons and ammunition to Palestinian militants.

Mr. Arafat appeared to be in a light mood, but as he spoke his advisers looked grim. The Palestinian Authority has said it is investigating the smuggling operation and will punish Palestinians involved.

The militant Islamic group Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack on the lightly defended Israeli outpost. Hamas never declared a full cease-fire, as Mr. Arafat did. It left open the possibility it would attack Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Since Mr. Arafat called for a halt in attacks, at least 13 Palestinians have been killed in clashes with Israeli soldiers, and another 7 in clashes with the Palestinian police. On Dec. 20 Israeli soldiers killed six Palestinians who the army accused of preparing to attack Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip in operations much like the one on Wednesday.

The soldiers killed Wednesday were members of a battalion composed almost entirely of Bedouins, descendants of Arabic-speaking desert nomads. The battalion has been assigned the dangerous task of patrolling the southern Gaza Strip, near Egypt.

The Palestinian gunmen who were killed during the attack were also Bedouins.

Trackers from the Bedouin battalion said Wednesday that footprints in the muddy ground indicated that, in the fog and rain of the predawn hours, eight men approached the fence at the Gaza Strip's eastern. The fence is electrified to warn the Israeli Army if it is touched, but that section apparently was not functioning.

Just a couple of hundred yards to the south, three Israeli soldiers were manning "Africa" outpost, little more than a circular, six-foot-high wall of dirt piled up near the fence. The post guards this tattered kibbutz, or collective farm, whose name means "Peace Vineyard."

One guard was in a small canvas-and-plastic observation post on the rim of the muddy bowl; two others were in a Humvee inside it.

At about 4:20 a.m. the Palestinians attacked with crudely fashioned grenades and semi-automatic rifles, the army said. The soldier in the canvas shack was mortally wounded, as was one of the men in the vehicle, said Lt. Itamar Gelbfish, an army spokesman. The other man in the vehicle was injured. Hearing the noise, four more soldiers, including the company commander, arrived in a jeep, the lieutenant said. He said that the commander and another soldier were killed before the Palestinian gunmen were cut down.

The gunmen were wearing Palestinian police uniforms, though only one appears to have been affiliated with the force. The Israeli Army used bulldozers to destroy two posts of the Palestinian security services near here.

Relatives of the two men involved in the attack - Muhammad Abu Jamous, 21, and Imad Abu Rizek, 26 - said that they met at a mosque just four months ago and became fast friends. They used to sit until midnight talking in Mr. Abu Rizek's store, where he made and sold signs.

Mr. Abu Jamous, whom the Israelis identified as a member of the Palestinian Navy, was something of a minor celebrity. He had been a runner on the Palestinian national team, competing in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. He married just three months ago, and his wife is two months' pregnant. Mr. Abu Jamous was not a member of Hamas, his brother said, but he added that a relative had been killed during another attack on Israeli soldiers.

His father, Abed al-Ghani, bridled when it was pointed out that his son had attacked fellow Bedouins. "You have to remember that they are Israeli soldiers, who kill us," he said. "We have to shoot them because they shoot at us."

Mr. Abu Rizek's father, Etewa Abu Rizek, said that his son was engaged to marry a woman in Egypt. He was surprised, he said, to learn of Wednesday's attack. "I never knew what was inside his mind," he said.

Mr. Abu Rizek was a member of Hamas, a friend said, and he used to scribble graffiti in praise of dead Hamas fighters on the walls in Rafah. On Wednesday he received the same honor. Two masked men shot in the air outside his home and then wrote in black paint on a nearby wall, in part: "Hamas claims responsibility for the heroic operation."

-------- landmines

India's deadly defence: the 1,800 mile long minefield
Outlawed weapons create no man's land on border

Simon Tisdall and Ewen MacAskill
Thursday January 10, 2002
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/kashmir/Story/0,2763,630246,00.html

Indian army and security forces have embarked on an unprecedented project to lay hundreds of thousands of anti-personnel mines along the entire length of its 1,800-mile border with Pakistan.

The operation, in response to tension in disputed Kashmir, reverses gains made in the past five years by international anti-mine campaigners and threatens further to entrench the military confrontation between the sub-continent's two nuclear-armed powers.

The minefields will be up to three miles deep in places. Along with accompanying Indian defensive installations this will create the longest, fully-fortified border in the world, running from the Indian Ocean to the Himalayas. It will dwarf the western front of the first world war and the Maginot Line of the second and amount to south Asia's equivalent of the Berlin Wall.

Indian troops have been evicting farmers and seeding large areas of arable land over the last month with anti-personnel landmines outlawed under the Ottawa mine ban treaty of 1997. These minefields are in addition to those laid in the three Indo-Pakistani wars since independence from Britain in 1947.

The development represents a serious setback to the world-wide campaign against APLs championed by Princess Diana and actively supported by the Labour government. The UK ratified the treaty in 1999 and is committed to pushing for a global ban. The US, India and Pakistan have refused to sign.

Jitendra Misra, political counsellor at the Indian high commission in London, confirmed yesterday that new mines were being laid. "We do deploy landmines but we do it in a most responsible manner," he said. "We fence the areas and mark them very clearly and use them only on the border, not anywhere else." He added: "We have reluctantly been forced to take the measures in self-defence."

Mr Misra was unable to specify how many mines were being laid or over how wide an area. The International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) estimates India has a stockpile of between 4m and 5m mines and Pakistan 6m.

Pakistan is also thought to have been laying mines along the border in recent weeks. A spokesman for the Pakistan high commission was vague yesterday. "We may have," he said. Kashmiri separatist groups condemned by India as terrorists also use APLs.

Casualties from mine explosions along the border have been rising in recent days. At least 11 people were killed by Indian devices in the Punjab region last Saturday. A few days earlier, 19 Indian soldiers were killed in a similar explosion at the border in Jaisalmer in Rajastan.

The decision by India and Pakistan to resort to minelaying comes after weeks of escalating tension following last month's attack by allegedly Pakistani-backed militants on the Indian parliament in New Delhi. Yesterday there were continuing, sporadic exchanges of fire across the Kashmir border and India claimed that Pakistan had mounted an air incursion by a unmanned drone over its territory.

In a bid to calm the crisis, the Bush administration announced last night that the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, will follow Tony Blair to India and Pakistan next week. The Indian defence minister, George Fernandes, is also due to visit Washington to discuss burgeoning bilateral defence cooperation.

The extended minelaying operation undercuts five years of hard work by campaigners, non-government organisations and European governments that have seen a drop in casualties from landmines worldwide. An estimated annual rate of 26,000 deaths and injuries has been halved as a result of the Ottawa treaty, a worldwide clean-up campaign, increased aid and environmental programmes, and a reduction in conflicts. Pakistan and India manufacture their own weapons after the post-1997 collapse of the international trade in landmines.

The ICBL, an umbrella organisation representing anti-landmine pressure groups, wrote to the Indian prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, this week saying it "is gravely disturbed that Indian troops are laying new anti-personnel landmines along the border with Pakistan". A similar letter was also sent to the Pakistan leader, General Pervez Musharraf. Both leaders were urged to think again urgently.

Sue Wixley, a spokesperson for ICBL, said the move by Indian and Pakistan added greatly to insecurity in the sub-continent.

"It puts civilians and soldiers at risk now and for years to come. Nobody wins in this situation, everybody loses. That's why most governments have already outlawed mines.

"We condemn any use of mines loudly and clearly. We call on India and Pakistan to refrain from using mines."

Britain has been pushing for a universal ban on APLs. A Foreign Office spokesman said yesterday: "The UK is at the forefront of the campaign for a global ban on anti-personnel landmines." He added: "We encourage other states to ratify the convention."

The department for international development said in a policy statement last autumn that Britain was obligated "to promote the globalisation of the ban on APLs and to help developing countries implement their obligations."

The department said Britain was committed "to provide a more coherent, timely and cost-effective response to the global challenge of landmines."

But London's position is at odds with that of George Bush's administration, which insists that it must retain APLs and other mine weapons and sub-munitions, such as the cluster bombs used recently in Afghanistan, for its own defence and for the defence of allies such as South Korea.

-------- pakistan

US to mount raids into Pak to hunt Laden

The Times of India Online
Printed from www.timesofindia.com
PTI
THURSDAY, JANUARY 10, 2002
http://www.timesofindia.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=385660647

LONDON: The United States could soon be staging raids into Pakistan to track down Osama Bin Laden and his key allies as the focus of the campaign against terrorism begins to move beyond Afghanistan, a senior US military official has said.

Pakistan's government had given the US troops permission to cross the border in the hunt for al-Qaeda terrorists and fleeing Taliban fighters, General Tommy Franks, commander of the military operation in Afghanistan, said.

Intelligence reports confirm fears that Bin Laden may have escaped into Pakistan after the bombardment of his Tora Bora cave complex, a report in the Evening Standard said.

Meanwhile, according to US intelligence, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar fled to the mountains of southern Afghanistan with 3.5 million pound stuffed into flour bags after clearing a Kandahar bank.

Deputy Manager of the bank, Abdul Qadez, said Omar claimed he was taking the money to pay civil servants directly from his home. "We knew this wasn't true. He took the money and left."

Omar and his bodyguards are believed to be travelling on motorbikes or donkeys. Heavy bags of cash, guns, ammunition, water and food will weigh down the convey and make it vulnerable to SAS and US special forces, the report said.

----

Biographical details of Musharraf

By Tish Wells
Knight Ridder Newspapers
1/2/01
http://www.krwashington.com/content/krwashington/2002/01/11/world/BC_INDIA_PAKISTAN_MUSHARRAF_BIO_WA_foreign.htm

Some biographical details about Pakistan's leader, Gen. Pervez Musharraf:

Born: April 11, 1943, in Delhi in British India. In 1947, the subcontinent was divided into two nations, India and Pakistan.

Musharraf was raised in Karachi, Pakistan, but lived for seven years in Turkey where he became fluent in Turkish.

He graduated from the Command and Staff College, Quetta, Pakistan, and the National Defense College. He also studied at Britain's Royal College of Defence Studies.

In 1961, he attended the Pakistan Military Academy, and in 1964, he was commissioned in an artillery regiment. He served in the Punjab during the 1965 war with India. He also was a company commander in a commando battalion in the 1971 war with India. In his career, he has commanded artillery, infantry and armored forces.

He married Sehba Musharraf in 1968. They have two children and one grandchild.

In October 1999, he implemented a military takeover of Pakistan's government and later became president.

Sources: Pakistan government biography, CIA Factbook

----

U.S. KC-130 crashes in Pakistan

By Jim Mannion
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
January 10, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020110-78667862.htm

A U.S. Marine Corps KC-130 air-refueling aircraft carrying seven Marines crashed into a mountain yesterday while making an approach to land at a forward operating base in southwestern Pakistan, the military said.

There were no reports of survivors, Pentagon officials said, adding that darkness and the ruggedness of the terrain meant that the conditions of those aboard could not be determined immediately.

"We don't know the disposition of the crew at this point," said Navy Cmdr. Dan Keesee, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command.

An investigation was under way into the circumstances surrounding the crash, he said.

"It just breaks your heart," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters at a ceremony honoring retired Army Gen. Henry H. Shelton, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

"It is a tough and dangerous business over there. They are doing a dangerous job and they are doing it darn well," he said.

Military officials were unable to say whether hostile fire played any role in the crash, which could be the worst air disaster of the 3-month-old war in Afghanistan.

In a separate incident yesterday, the right main landing gear of an S-3B Viking aircraft collapsed when it made an emergency landing on the flight deck of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, the Navy said. No deaths or injuries were reported.

The KC-130 was carrying a passenger and six crew members on a flight from Jacobabad, Pakistan, when it crashed near Shamsi, Pakistan, Cmdr. Keesee said.

Shamsi, a base whose use by U.S. forces had not been disclosed previously, was the last stop on a multistop trip.

"At approximately 10:15 a.m. EST today, a US KC-130 crashed into a mountain near Shamsi, Pakistan. Seven marines were aboard," the command stated. "The aircraft was making its landing approach at the time of the crash. It's final destination was the forward operating base in Shamsi."

Marine Lt. Col. David Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman, said the aircraft was a Marine Corps KC-130 aircraft, which can be used to refuel fighter aircraft or helicopters in the air or to carry cargo and troops.

A Pentagon official, who asked not to be identified, said the plane was believed to be on a supply mission at the time of the crash.

The KC-130 normally has a six-member crew made up of two pilots, a navigator, a flight engineer, a mechanic and a loadmaster.

The plane is the second fixed-wing aircraft to go down since the start of the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan on Oct. 7.

A B-1 bomber crashed in the Indian Ocean on Dec. 12, but its crew bailed out and were rescued. Two crew members were injured.

At least four helicopters have crashed. Two persons were killed in the crash of a helicopter Oct. 9 in a sandstorm in Pakistan. The other helicopter crashes injured crew members but caused no deaths.

Pakistani military officials confirmed the crash, but said they were "not in a position" to give details, which instead would be released by U.S. authorities.

----

US assures Pakistan of defence cooperation

Thursday January 10, 2002-- Shawaal 25,1422 A.H.
ISSN 1563-9479
Editor: Shaheen Sehbai
http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/jan2002-daily/10-01-2002/main/main1.htm

ISLAMABAD: The United States on Wednesday assured assistance and cooperation to Pakistan in defence.

Dr Dov S Zakheim, Under Secretary of Defence and Comptroller of US Defence Department announced it in his talks with a top Pakistani defence official. Zakheim, as head of a seven-member US defence delegation, met Defence Scretary Lt Gen (retd) Hamid Nawaz Khan.

The Zakhiem Mission arrived in Islamabad early Wednesday to broader the base of defence cooperation between the two countries. "The under secretary, remained with the defence secretary for some time and discussed matters related to bilateral relations between the two countries," said an official announcement on Khan-Zakhiem talks.

Pakistan and the United States have evolved closer cooperation in defence, particularly after lifting US sanctions on Pakistan. The two officials are understood to have exchanged information relating to regional security, said an official.

Meanwhile, Pakistan has told the United States that it intends to have broadbased and sustainable bilateral economic and defence relations, but would use all its resources for national defence and security if war is thrust on it by India.

According to senior official sources this message was strongly conveyed to Dr Dov S Zakheim, US Under Secretary of Defence, in a meeting with Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz here on Wednesday.

"We have discussed long-term, broad-based and sustainable cooperation in a number of areas," said the official, affirming that the matters related to national defence requirements also came under discussion.

Shaukat Aziz also met US Congressmen Tony P. Hall and Joseph R Pitts, and US Ambassador Wendy Chamberlin. Former vice presidential candidate, Joseph Lieberman also met Pakistani leaders.

The main focus of this high-profile diplomatic flurry was to urge the United States to draw a line somewhere in supporting India. "Strong and stable Pakistan would be better for regional peace and security, and for the prosperity of the region as a whole," Pakistan told the US officials. National security is the supreme objective, all other issues were subservient, the officials said.

Almost half of the world's poor live in South Asia region, almost 450 million in India and 50 million in Pakistan. However, war posturing and aggressive designs of India are blocking diversion of resources from defence to social development.

Pakistan has moved aggressively since August 14, 2001 against radical groups alleged to be involved in sectarian violence. The government also took action against the Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lasker-e-Taiba, despite the fact that there was no tangible evidence to implicate them in the Parliament attack in New Delhi. President General Musharraf intends to do more.

However, hawkish Indian elements, like Lal Krishna Advani, Interior Minister, George Fernandes, Defence Minister, and Jaswant Singh, Foreign Minister are beating war drums to make Pakistan yield under pressure.

Extremist Indian organisations, like Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, were also engaged in anti-Pakistan activity, pouring cold waters on peace initiatives.

Political analysts reckon that a strong feeling was emerging in Islamabad that the United States and its Western allies of international coalition against terror, which was overwhelmingly supported by Pakistan, were siding with India, without giving due respect to Pakistani point of view. They observe that such a situation could lead to major political implications.

President Musharraf is due to make a public announcement in the next couple of days of his action plan on armed religious groups and madaris, most of which were creation of first Afghan jihad in Afghanistan, when the United States funneled billions of dollar to strengthen them.

Regarding relations with the United States, the official sources said that Pakistan had reiterated to have stronger and mutually beneficial relations in all areas. However, there were a number of issues, which were causing a nuisance.

The United States is reluctant to make sales of high-tech military hardware to Pakistan at a time when the security of the latter is under threat. Pakistan extended all out intelligence and logistical support to US in Afghanistan operation. Not just in the current war against the Taliban regime, but also against the Soviet occupation.

More than 100 thousand regular army and border security personnel are guarding the western border to check al-Qaeda infiltrators that could be withdrawn for redeployment on the eastern borders in case of war. Americans have also been using three Pakistani bases for last four months.

In return US provided a cash grant of $600 million, and support for new multilateral loans and debt re-profiling at the Paris Club. "The government appreciates US support, but there was a need to do more," the official sources said.

Pakistan expects US to waive off interest rates on the bilateral debt of about $3 billion at least to make the debt relief more meaningful. US provided almost $10 billion package to Egypt during Gulf war in early 90s, in return for its support.

US president also assured President Musharraf to allow enhanced access to Pakistani exports, particularly preferential treatment to textile items that are 70 percent of total exports. However, it could not be materialized afterwards, as some believe that Washington was backing off under pressure from its textile lobby.

There was even more problematic situation for the textile exports. US customs had been holding back release of over 300 textile containers from Pakistan since end-November. Despite strong pursuance, US officials are reluctant to release the stuff, arguing that it was over shipment. The ministry of commerce, however, believes that these goods were shipped in anticipation of higher quota allocations, as promised by US administration.

"This issue was discussed in detail, and US officials had promised to resolve the matter as early as possible," said the officials. Pakistani textile exporters are crying that the shipment would turn out to be a junk if it remained locked up at the Customs.

US Customs had also been detaining goods of Pakistani origin for inspection, which is causing undue delay in releases. This is hurting the export sector, and the country could lose US market. To add to misery, the cost of additional checks is also being charged from Pakistan.

Then there are problems associated with the overseas Pakistani labour in the US market. Since the September 11 incident, Pakistanis have been facing problems. Many arrested on suspicion are in jails without any proof. Their businesses are under threat, and even traveling and boarding causes pain. "The government has discussed all these issues with the top US officials, and we are hopeful that a better and more conducive situation would prevail for us," the officials claimed. They hoped that US would not repeat the history, by leaving Pakistan in the lurch after achieving its objectives in Afghanistan, as it did after Soviet withdrawal in 1989.

----

200,000 refugees have entered Pakistan since Sept

Thursday January 10, 2002
Shawaal 25,1422 A.H. ISSN 1563-9479;
Editor: Shaheen Sehbai
http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/jan2002-daily/10-01-2002/main/main15.htm

ISLAMABAD: About 200,000 Afghans are estimated to have entered Pakistan since last September, most of whom are living with relatives in long-time refugee settlements or in urban areas.

This was stated by a UNHCR spokesperson at a daily briefing at the UN Information Centre here on Wednesday. "There are currently some 95,000 newly arrived Afghans settled in nine UNHCR-assisted camps in Pakistan split between the south-western Balochistan province and the NWFP," the spokesperson said.

On Tuesday, UNHCR staff in the NWFP relocated more than 1,800 Afghans to new camps, including some 1,000 recent arrivals from Jalozai and more than 800 undocumented Afghans living in Peshawar who came for seeking UN assistance and protection in the recognised camps. In recent days, the UNHCR staff in the area opened two more camps for new Afghan refugees.

On Sunday, the UN refugee agency opened the Shelman refugee camp also in NWFP with the transfer of more than 1,000 Afghans from the makeshift Jalozai refugee camp. Some 20,000 refugees have been relocated from Jalozai. Another 2,000 Afghan refugees have also been shifted to the recently-opened camps. Elsewhere in NWFP, Kotkai camp shelters more than 13,000 Afghans. The Old Bagzai camp has more 4,300 newly relocated Afghans.

In Chaman, UNHCR cares for more than 17,000 recently-arrived Afghans at the Roghani camp and more than 8,000 at the nearby Landi Karez site, while some 2,800 await relocation from the Killi Faizo transit camp. From Balochistan Province's capital city of Quetta, UNHCR has relocated more than 34,000 refugees to Mohammad Khail camp and the recently-opened Lejay Karez sites some 75 km away.

-------- propaganda wars

Pentagon Doesn't Want Photos Sent

January 10, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-Prisoners-Photos.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Pentagon officials ordered several news organizations Thursday not to transmit images of masked and chained prisoners in Afghanistan.

A Pentagon spokesman said the decision was made because the Red Cross raised an objection, contending the images would violate international laws on the treatment of prisoners.

``The Geneva Convention prohibits humiliating, debasing photos,'' said Rear Adm. Craig Quigley. ``We need to be cautious in case there is a legal action somewhere downstream.''

But officials at the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva said the organization had not contacted the Pentagon about photographs taken in Afghanistan.

``We have not raised this as an issue,'' said Vincent Lasser, a Red Cross spokesman. ``They may have our stance on the issue in their files but we did not raise an objection.''

Photographers and camera crews from CNN, CBS, and The Army Times and other organizations were allowed to take pictures of the 20 prisoners in Kandahar as they boarded a C-17 cargo plane for Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But the journalists had to agree not to transmit the images until military officials gave them permission.

Shortly after the plane left the airport, they were told not to send the images.

It is unclear how much authority the Pentagon has to keep news organizations from transmitting images. CBS spokesman Kelli Edwards said the station has considered the Pentagon's order and decided to air the images Friday morning on ``The Early Show'' anyway.

Rob Curtis, a photographer for The Army Times who often takes photos for The Associated Press, said the Pentagon seemed to be breaking an agreement made with journalists early in the conflict.

``We signed papers that said we would not publish photos that endangered a military operation,'' Curtis said. ``There are no military implications for these photos, only political (implications). This has never come up before.''

The Geneva Convention, which is accepted as international law on the treatment of war prisoners, says the captured must ``at all times be protected against acts of violence and intimidation, and against insults and public curiosity.''

Lasser said that in some cases this provision should be interpreted to prohibit a government from publishing photos of prisoners under their control.

``This is meant to protect prisoners from a government that would show off images of them in captivity,'' Lasser said. ``It is meant to protect the dignity of the prisoner as well as the safety of their family from those who would recognize them back home.''

Curtis said the images of the prisoners would not have made it possible to identify them.

``They were in red hats, with goggles and surgical masks on,'' he said. ``You would have been able to see the wire holding pens where they were held. We were kept at a distance.''

Quigley called the decision a ``legal policy call at the 11th hour.''

``We allowed people to collect images in case the answer came back'' that the photos and video could be used, he said. ``We didn't want them to lose the opportunity to collect the images.''

He acknowledged this had not come up before, in Bosnia or Kosovo or Iraq, or even in recent days, when images of the detainees were printed and broadcast all over the world.

He said that the Pentagon has not classified the prisoners as POWs, rather as detainees but that they are being treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention.

On the Net: Geneva Convention on treatment of prisoners of war: http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/91.htm

----

For NPR, Violence Is Calm if It's Violence Against Palestinians

January 10, 2002
FAIR ACTION ALERT
http://www.fair.org/activism/npr-israel-quiet.html

Before the January 9 gun battle on the Gaza Strip, National Public Radio (NPR) had for weeks been telling its listeners that Israel/Palestine was in a period of "relative quiet."

"Morning Edition" anchor Bob Edwards on January 3 stated that U.S. envoy Anthony Zinni was coming to the region during "a time of comparative quiet." In another report the same day, correspondent Linda Gradstein referred to "the relative calm of the past few weeks." Other NPR reports have mentioned the "recent calm" (1/5/02) or the "fragile period of quiet" (1/7/02).

What NPR means by this was spelled out most explicitly by Linda Gradstein in a January 4 report on the envoy's mission. "You know, there's been actually three weeks of relative quiet," she said. "Only one Israeli has been killed in those three weeks, as opposed to 44 Israelis who were killed when Zinni was here last time in November and early December."

What Gradstein didn't mention-- and what someone who relied on NPR for their Middle Eastern news would have little idea of -- was that this has been in no way a period of calm for Palestinians. In fact, in the three-week period that Gradstein referred to, at least 26 Palestinians were killed by occupation forces-- more than one a day.

Media critic Ali Abunimah documented the killings in a letter of protest to NPR (1/8/02), starting with 13-year-old Rami Khamis Al-Zorob, shot in the head on December 13 while playing near his home in Rafah, Gaza. Most of the deaths cited by Abunimah were of unarmed civilians; six were minors, ranging in age from 12 to 17.

But none of these deaths received much attention from NPR, leaving the impression that calm for Israelis was calm for Palestinians as well. One of the few times that the Palestinian toll was even vaguely referred to was in this December 24 exchange between "All Things Considered" anchor Robert Siegel and correspondent Peter Kenyon:

SIEGEL: "There was a resumption of violence today, I gather, a shooting of a Jewish settler."

KENYON: "That's right, the first such shooting of a Jewish settler after a week of comparative quiet. There have been some deaths on the Palestinian side in the past week. But tonight a Jewish settler was shot in the chest, seriously wounded by Palestinian gunmen up near Nablus and the West Bank. One of the gunmen was also shot, and he was killed."

Kenyon agrees with Siegel's claim that December 24 marked a "resumption of violence," even while acknowledging that "there have been some deaths on the Palestinian side." In fact, there had been at least five Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in the previous week, including 12-year-old Muhammad Huneidek, shot in the chest at a checkpoint near the Neve Dekalim settlement near Gaza. Are we to conclude, then, that the killing of Palestinians is not violence?

That's the contention of the Israeli government, and NPR appears to take this position seriously. Here's a January 5 report by Kenyon:

"The raids into the West Bank and Gaza Strip have continued. They were yesterday in the West Bank village of Tel up near Nablus. They killed one Palestinian; four arrested. The army said they were all Hamas members.... But the Israelis don't consider these military raids to be violence. They consider that doing what Yasser Arafat should have been doing, by their rights, which is arresting these people and rounding them up."

The unequal treatment of Israeli and Palestinian deaths is a long-standing pattern at NPR; a FAIR study of six months of the network's coverage (Extra!, 11-12/01) found that 81 percent of Israeli conflict-related deaths were reported, but only 34 percent of Palestinian deaths. Strikingly, NPR was even less likely to report the deaths of Palestinian minors killed; only 20 percent of these deaths were reported, as compared to 89 percent of Israeli minors' deaths. While NPR was more likely to cover Israeli civilian deaths than those of Israeli security personnel (84 percent vs. 69 percent), the reverse was true with Palestinians (20 percent vs. 72 percent).

Of course, NPR is not the only outlet that has misreported the Israeli/Palestinian conflict by downplaying violence against Palestinians. When a battle in Israeli-occupied Gaza recently left four Israeli soldiers and two Hamas guerrillas dead, the New York Times described the story on its front page (1/10/02): "Palestinian gunmen in Gaza put an end to a lull in the violence, ambushing and killing four Israeli soldiers before being shot dead." The fact that the story inside acknowledges that "at least 20 Palestinians have died violently" in recent weeks only underscores how some violence doesn't seem to register with mainstream U.S. media.

ACTION: Please contact the NPR's ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin to ask for an end to NPR's double standard in reporting on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and for equal treatment of all victims of violence, regardless of ethnicity or nationality.

CONTACT: Jeffrey Dvorkin NPR Ombudsman JDvorkin@npr.org

As always, please remember that your comments are taken more seriously if you maintain a polite tone. Please cc fair@fair.org with your correspondence.

To read Abunimah's letter to NPR, see: www.abunimah.org/nprletters/020108calm.html

-------- russia / chechnya

Turkey changes line on Chechen rebels

FROM CLEM CECIL IN MOSCOW,
London Times
THURSDAY JANUARY 10 2002
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,3-2002016142,00.html

TURKEY may extradite the Chechen propagandist and Islamic fundamentalist Movladi Udugov to Russia, which accuses him of armed rebellion.

In a shift of policy, Turkey, formerly sympathetic to the separatists in Chechnya, yesterday requested the dossier against Mr Udugov, the former Chechen Prime Minister, that Moscow prepared almost two years ago. In recent months he has been seen in Pakistan and Afghanistan where, according to Russian television, he may have met Osama bin Laden.

A Russian presidental aide, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, said that Turkey's decision could shortly lead to Mr Udugov's arrest, although he admitted that Mr Udugov might not be there. The Russian Interpol department had sent extradition notices to all the countries where he might be hiding; in recent days he had been seen in a Gulf state, he said.

Mr Udugov ran for Chechnya's presidency in 1996. It is believed that his campaign was financed with Saudi money.

In the 1994-1996 RussianChechen war he told the world of Chechnya's plight: it was said that Moscow had lost the information war to him. He told the West that fundamentalism would increase if the world did not back Chechnya.

Yesterday Turkey refused to comment on the decision to consider his extradition. However, since September 11 it has made clear that it supports the international war against terrorism, being the first country to offer to send Muslim peacekeepers to Afghanistan. Chechnya is increasingly connected to international terrorism.

Mr Yastrzhembsky said yesterday that "a new wind is blowing, and Turkey is beginning to understand the reasons for the conflict in Chechnya. Members of international terrorist organisations, including Chechen terrorists, are welcome in fewer countries."

The present Russian-Chechen war is in its third year. Yesterday one of the biggest engagements for months was completed by Russian Special Forces. Acting on intelligence that terrorist attacks were planned for New Year's Eve, federal forces conducted operations in four areas of the republic culminating in the blockade of Argun. Russia says that rebel losses total 92, including two leaders, with five Russian soldiers lost. The rebels say that they have lost no fighters but that more than 50 Russian troops were killed.

----

U.S.'s intent to stay in Asia irks Moscow

By Ben Aris
LONDON DAILY TELEGRAPH
January 10, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020110-21438697.htm

MOSCOW - Pentagon officials indicated yesterday that America's military presence in Central Asia could persist for years to come, prompting unease in Moscow.

The United States' professed commitment not to abandon the area after defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan has been interpreted negatively by conservatives in the Russian military and political hierarchy.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz told the New York Times that the staffing of air bases in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan was likely to be expanded into increased programs of cooperation and training with local military commands.

"Their functions may be more political than actually military," Mr. Wolfowitz said.

The bases and exercises conducted from them in the future would "send a message to everybody, including important countries like Uzbekistan, that we have a capacity to come back in and will come back in. We're not just going to forget about them."

But Gennady Seleznyov, speaker of the Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, said yesterday, "It is not desirable that permanent U.S. bases be established in Central Asia."

Russia says 2,000 American troops are deployed at the Khanabad air base near the Uzbek capital Tashkent, while U.S. Air Force personnel are at Kulyab in Tajikistan.

The Russian army does not plan to hold any division-level exercises this year because of a lack of money and resources, Col. Gen. Nikolai Kormiltsev, the head of the country's ground forces said yesterday.

----

Evidence of rights abuses mounts as Russians end Argun sweep

Thursday January 10,
AFP
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020109/1/29zmq.html

Russian federal forces wound up a sweep through the Chechen town of Argun amid mounting evidence of human rights abuses by Russian troops during a 10-day military operation targeting separatist rebels.

The Kremlin's chief spokesman on Chechnya, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, said the actions in Argun and at Tsotsin-Yurt further east had ended successfully, claiming that 92 Chechen rebels had been killed and the remainder dispersed.

An investigator with the human rights group Memorial, Kheda Saratova, cited several instances of arbitrary killings in a report based on testimony obtained during a three-day stay in Tsotsin-Yurt, 25 kilometres (15 miles) east of Grozny.

In the report obtained by AFP after Saratova's return to Nazran, Ingushetia, local resident Apti Shakhgiryev said Russian troops had provoked groups of young people, "then killed them and arrested innocent people."

In five days, some 80 people were taken for questioning. "They were all beaten in the ribs and kidneys. Seven of them have disappeared," he said.

At the neighbouring village of Geldagana, "four young villagers were summarily executed," Saratova quoted him as saying.

In another instance, Russian armoured vehicles chased a private car carrying two men and, when the men sought refuge in the home of a religious leader, 70-year-old Lechi Idrissov, pursued the men into the house and killed them.

They then burnt the house down, resident Kharon Vakhayev said, according to one of 15 similar accounts in Saratova's report.

Yastrzhembsky said that the operations, launched just before the New Year, were now over, but local officials said adult males below the age of 60 were still being prevented from leaving Argun.

The sweep through Argun, 15 kilometres (nine miles) east of Grozny, began on January 3 after guerrillas fleeing the Tsotsin-Yurt operation sought refuge there.

Russian forces, reportedly seeking five rebel field commanders, rounded up scores of suspects but released most of them after interrogation.

According to Saratova, backed up by a spokesman for rebel Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov, several families were asked to pay substantial ransoms before their relatives were released.

Russian military officials said several of the guerrillas had succeeded in slipping through the cordon set up around Argun last Friday, but Yastrzhembsky said he doubted that any significant number of rebels could have escaped.

The officials quoted by the ITAR-TASS news agency said the escapees had taken advantage of a diversionary attack Monday in which two federal soldiers were killed and four wounded.

-------- space

US Air Force ready to launch Milstar satellite

10 January 2002
http://defence-data.com/current/page13230.htm

A US Air Force Milstar II military communications satellite is to be launched from Cape Canaveral Air Station, on Tuesday, January 15, aboard a Titan IVB launch vehicle. The satellite, designated Milstar II, is the Defense Department's most technologically advanced telecommunications satellite, and is the second to carry the Medium Data Rate (MDR) payload which can process data at speeds of 1.5 megabits per second. Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company built both the satellite and launch vehicle.

The Air Force transitioned to the Block II configuration with the successful launch of the first Milstar II satellite last year. The Milstar block II system offers a variety of communications features for the US military, including added security through the use of specially designed antennas and faster data-rate transmissions for all users.

Milstar I satellites currently on-orbit are equipped with an UHF and Low Data Rate payload, which transmits information at rates between 75 and 2,400 bits per second. Lockheed Martin is under contract to provide one more Milstar II spacecraft, which is scheduled to launch later this year.

"US forces depend on timely, responsive, secure communications," said Kevin Bilger, vice president of Military Space Programmes for Lockheed Martin. "With the MDR payload, the Milstar team is providing a substantial increase in capabilities, allowing our military forces to communicate in a secure mode without betraying their locations and with capabilities very resistant to enemy jammers.''

Milstar's "switchboard-in-space" concept allows communications links to be established rapidly and is a departure from current communications systems. The spacecraft constellation provides secure global communication links for the joint forces of the US military and can transmit voice, data, and imagery, in addition to offering video teleconferencing capabilities. This Milstar launch will increase the Milstar constellation's capability to provide near-global coverage for the nation's strategic forces, Air Force's space warning assets and operationally deployed military forces.

Milstar is used for communications among ships, submarines and land-based naval stations via Navy Extremely High Frequency Satellite Communications Programme terminals. The system provides communications networks to Army units via the Secure Mobile Anti-Jam Reliable Tactical Terminals mounted on vehicles, and to individual troops and small units from the Single Channel Anti-Jam Man-Portable terminals. For the Air Force, the Milstar system provides links for Air Force Command Post Terminals.

----

KUCINICH SPACE WEAPONS BAN BILL ENDORSERS (HR 2977)

From: "Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space" <globalnet@mindspring.com>

(Endorsement indicates commitment to promote the bill in your community of influence. See our web site http://www.space4peace.org/ for more information.)

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· West Midlands Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (Birmingham, U.K.)
· Wide World Peace Puppetry (Albuquerque, NM)
· WILPF (Seattle, WA)
· WILPF (U.S. Section)
· Wisconsin Mfd Homeowners Association, Inc.
· Women for Peace (Berkeley, CA)
· Women Speak Out for Peace & Justice (Cleveland, OH)
· World Peace Now (Tampa, FL)
· Yorkshire CND (England)
· Youth Group of the Osaka Peace & Justice Committee (Japan)

List in formation (01-09-02)

Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space PO Box 90083 Gainesville, FL. 32607 (352) 337-9274 http://www.space4peace.org globalnet@mindspring.com

---

Space Preservation Act HR 2977 IH

107th CONGRESS 1st Session
October 2, 2001
http://www.fas.org/sgp/congress/2001/hr2977.html

To preserve the cooperative, peaceful uses of space for the benefit of all humankind by permanently prohibiting the basing of weapons in space by the United States, and to require the President to take action to adopt and implement a world treaty banning space-based weapons.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Mr. KUCINICH introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Science, and in addition to the Committees on Armed Services, and International Relations, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned

A BILL

To preserve the cooperative, peaceful uses of space for the benefit of all humankind by permanently prohibiting the basing of weapons in space by the United States, and to require the President to take action to adopt and implement a world treaty banning space-based weapons.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the `Space Preservation Act of 2001'.

SEC. 2. REAFFIRMATION OF POLICY ON THE PRESERVATION OF PEACE IN SPACE.

Congress reaffirms the policy expressed in section 102(a) of the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 (42 U.S.C. 2451(a)), stating that it `is the policy of the United States that activities in space should be devoted to peaceful purposes for the benefit of all mankind.'.

SEC. 3. PERMANENT BAN ON BASING OF WEAPONS IN SPACE.

The President shall--

(1) implement a permanent ban on space-based weapons of the United States and remove from space any existing space-based weapons of the United States; and

(2) immediately order the permanent termination of research and development, testing, manufacturing, production, and deployment of all space-based weapons of the United States and their components.

SEC. 4. WORLD AGREEMENT BANNING SPACE-BASED WEAPONS. The President shall direct the United States representatives to the United Nations and other international organizations to immediately work toward negotiating, adopting, and implementing a world agreement banning space-based weapons.

SEC. 5. REPORT.

The President shall submit to Congress not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, and every 90 days thereafter, a report on--

(1) the implementation of the permanent ban on space-based weapons required by section 3; and

(2) progress toward negotiating, adopting, and implementing the agreement described in section 4.

SEC. 6. NON SPACE-BASED WEAPONS ACTIVITIES.

Nothing in this Act may be construed as prohibiting the use of funds for--

(1) space exploration;

(2) space research and development;

(3) testing, manufacturing, or production that is not related to space-based weapons or systems; or

(4) civil, commercial, or defense activities (including communications, navigation, surveillance, reconnaissance, early warning, or remote sensing) that are not related to space-based weapons or systems.

SEC. 7. DEFINITIONS.

In this Act:

(1) The term `space' means all space extending upward from an altitude greater than 60 kilometers above the surface of the earth and any celestial body in such space.

(2)(A) The terms `weapon' and `weapons system' mean a device capable of any of the following:

(i) Damaging or destroying an object (whether in outer space, in the atmosphere, or on earth) by--

(I) firing one or more projectiles to collide with that object;

(II) detonating one or more explosive devices in close proximity to that object;

(III) directing a source of energy (including molecular or atomic energy, subatomic particle beams, electromagnetic radiation, plasma, or extremely low frequency (ELF) or ultra low frequency (ULF) energy radiation) against that object; or

(IV) any other unacknowledged or as yet undeveloped means.

(ii) Inflicting death or injury on, or damaging or destroying, a person (or the biological life, bodily health, mental health, or physical and economic well-being of a person)--

(I) through the use of any of the means described in clause (i) or subparagraph (B);

(II) through the use of land-based, sea-based, or space-based systems using radiation, electromagnetic, psychotronic, sonic, laser, or other energies directed at individual persons or targeted populations for the purpose of information war, mood management, or mind control of such persons or populations; or

(III) by expelling chemical or biological agents in the vicinity of a person.

(B) Such terms include exotic weapons systems such as--

(i) electronic, psychotronic, or information weapons;

(ii) chemtrails;

(iii) high altitude ultra low frequency weapons systems;

(iv) plasma, electromagnetic, sonic, or ultrasonic weapons;

(v) laser weapons systems;

(vi) strategic, theater, tactical, or extraterrestrial weapons; and

(vii) chemical, biological, environmental, climate, or tectonic weapons.

(C) The term `exotic weapons systems' includes weapons designed to damage space or natural ecosystems (such as the ionosphere and upper atmosphere) or climate, weather, and tectonic systems with the purpose of inducing damage or destruction upon a target population or region on earth or in space.

---

BILL WOULD BAN SPACE-BASED MIND CONTROL WEAPONS

Secrecy News,
10 Jan 2002
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/2002/01/011002.html

From: "ICIS - institute for cooperation in space" <alw@peaceinspace.com>

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) introduced a bill in the House of Representatives late last year that would ban weapons in space. But while there have been many similar legislative initiatives in the past, Rep. Kucinich's bill is distinguished by its unusually expansive definition of "weapons."

Among the weapons that it would proscribe the new measure includes "psychotronic" devices that are "directed at individual persons or targeted populations for the purpose of ... mood management, or mind control."

No explanation for this peculiar proposal was immediately available....

[Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the Federation of American Scientists. To SUBSCRIBE send email to majordomo@lists.fas.org with this command in the body of the message: subscribe secrecy_news (your email address)]

-------- spies

Espionage Verdict Upheld in Russia

WORLD In Brief
Thursday, January 10, 2002
Associated Press
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22967-2002Jan9?language=printer

MOSCOW -- A former diplomat convicted of spying for South Korea lost his appeal to overturn an espionage verdict, raising concern among human rights advocates.

Valentin Moiseyev, a former deputy chief of the Foreign Ministry's Asia desk, was convicted in August and sentenced to 4 1/2 years in prison for passing secrets to South Korea for several years.

The Supreme Court refused to overturn the conviction, and Moiseyev and his lawyers said they would appeal to the Supreme Court presidium, a higher body within the court, and to the European Court of Human Rights.

Moiseyev's trial is one of several recent cases of Russian citizens accused of espionage for contacts with foreigners, drawing widespread criticism from human rights groups.

-------- un

U.N. group attracts big-name businesses

By Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 10, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020110-21028934.htm

NEW YORK - Nearly 40 companies from around the world have signed up for a voluntary U.N. program designed to ease the impact of globalization on workers and the environment.

The Global Compact was conceived in 1999 to encourage good corporate citizenship by emphasizing human rights, fair labor practices and respect for the environment. Its members are mostly businesses, with union and nongovernmental organizations participating. Nike, Royal Dutch Shell and DuPont are among the corporations that have embraced the compact's nine principles of good corporate citizenship, contributing case studies in problem solving to the initiative's Web site.

But watchdog groups warn that sweatshop operators, chronic polluters and abusive multinationals could take advantage of their U.N. affiliation.

"The U.N. has handed these companies a public relations coup," said Charles Kernigan, director of the National Labor Committee, a U.S.-based group that monitors factory conditions and workers' rights in the developing world.

"If these companies would just disclose the names and addresses of the factories they use, that would be worth 1,000 global compacts," he said.

Nike - whose factories in Indonesia, Vietnam and El Salvador have been cited as places where underpaid workers endure harsh conditions - is still "a 100-percent offender," according to Mr. Kernigan.

But Nike's program to improve factory conditions in Southeast Asia, based on thousands of interviews with its workers, is being offered to other multinationals as a case study in how to do business in the Third World.

Members of the Global Compact advisory panel acknowledge they have no way of enforcing compliance with all of the compact's environmental and human rights goals. Nor do they have a system by which they can eject a backsliding or abusive corporation from the program.

"If they fall short of the standards they are setting themselves, there will be no shortage of critics to sort that out," said Bill Jordan, general secretary of the International Confederation of Free State Unions and a member of the compact's advisory panel.

"Believe it or not, we're still working on how to get people into the club" rather than out, he said.

The Global Compact grew out of a 1999 plea by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to business executives at Davos, Switzerland, urging them to share the fruits of globalization with the poorest nations.

U.N. officials say the effort is necessary to blunt the potentially devastating impact of globalization on the developing world. Various U.N. agencies - including the International Labor Organization, the U.N. Environment Program and the High Commissioner for Human Rights - deal with aspects of the issue.

Michael Doyle, a senior advisor to Mr. Annan, says more than 300 companies have sent letters expressing an interest in joining the compact, which he calls "a club for mutual education in which global companies, unions and [nongovernmental organizations] gather together and try to solve problems with practical ideas."

So far, about three dozen multinationals, factories and oil companies have undertaken projects in line with the Global Compact's nine principles, including Bayer AG, DuPont, Royal Dutch Shell, Indian Oil Co., and Unilever.

Several advisers noted that U.S. companies aren't as enthusiastic about the Global Compact as their counterparts in Nordic and Western European countries, which have posted reports on their efforts on a Web site (www.unglobalcompact.org).

"There is a striking increase in the numbers of companies coming from the developing world - South Ameria, Africa and Asia," Mr. Doyle said, noting that Mr. Annan had kicked off the effort in front of a mainly European audience.

-------- us

U.S. Begins Transfer of Detainees to Cuba

January 10, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-US-Military.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. military on Thursday began moving hooded and chained prisoners from the war in Afghanistan to a jail in Cuba.

Taliban and al-Qaida detainees were taken from prisons in and around Afghanistan to Kandahar airport in the south of the country for movement to Guantanamo, Cuba, officials said. Later, a group of some 20 from among more than 300 in U.S. custody were seen on CNN shuffling to an airplane at the airport.

The trans-Atlantic move presents an unprecedented security challenge.

Prisoners were to be chained to their seats -- and possibly be sedated, forced to use portable urinals and be fed by their guards -- during the flights from Afghanistan to newly constructed jail cells in Guantanamo, according to newspaper and television reports.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld sidestepped comment on that directly, saying troops had been authorized to use ``appropriate restraints'' and noting other groups of al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners had killed their guards in at least two instances in the war.

``They're fully aware that these are dangerous individuals,'' Rumsfeld said of American troops at a Pentagon press conference.

Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said detainees were being treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention rules on prisoners.

Meanwhile, U.S. warplanes struck again early Thursday Afghan time at the huge cave, tunnel and building complex used as an al-Qaida training camp in eastern Afghanistan.

American-led forces for several days have been detonating ordnance found there and hitting the compound itself, saying intelligence indicated it was recently occupied by al-Qaida fighters preparing to escape the country into Pakistan.

As for the prisoners, Clarke told a Thursday press briefing that she was trying to determine what details of the transfer would be released, saying officials would not be talking about schedules or other things that would breach security, but would simply announce when the detainees had reached Guantanamo.

But it was clear their transfer was imminent when prisoners were consolidated -- that is brought from other locations to Kandahar.

Eight were brought from the Navy's USS Bataan in the Arabian Sea and a number from the U.S. detention centers in Bagram and Mazar-e-Sharif, military officials said.

``This thing is being done ... with the most expertise that we can bring to bear on it,'' said spokesman Steve Lucas at the U.S. Southern Command, the Miami-based command that is helping coordinate the move.

``These suicidally murderous people have compatriots at large,'' said Lucas. ``We don't want to provide them any information that could make a big terrorist splash.''

In two separate deadly incidents, prisoners got hold of weapons and staged an uprising while held in a fortress in northern Afghanistan, while others killed Pakistani guards after being apprehended trying to escape into that country. American troops have held the prisoners in much greater security since taking custody of them.

``Nothing like this to my knowledge has been done before (considering) the level of threat and probably the size and distance too,'' Lucas said of the imminent transfer. ``I'm not sure that anyone has every handled detainees of this type and transferred them 20 hours or whatever it is -- around the world.''

The regrouping of prisoners overnight Wednesday Washington time brought the number in Kandahar to 351, said Lt. Col. Martin Compton at the U.S. Central Command's war command center in Tampa, Fla. A total of 371 are in U.S. custody, with 19 remaining in Bagram, one on the Bataan and none in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, he said.

Preliminary plans were to take them from Kandahar on C-17s to a base in Europe where they could be transferred to C-140 cargo planes for the remainder of the trip to Cuba.

Those in U.S. custody have been selected from among thousands captured by Afghan fighters as they took one city after another from the former Taliban rulers who had been harboring Osama bin Laden and is al-Qaida terrorists.

``These people vowed to win their way into paradise by murdering anybody in American uniform, or for that matter, any civilians,'' Lucas said in reference to the terrorists' radical Islamic beliefs. ``The level of threat is probably unique.''


-------- POLICE / PRISONERS

Ridge Predicts Salt Lake Games Safe

Thursday January 10
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20020110/ts/oly_olympics_security_1.html

WASHINGTON (AP) - Next month's Salt Lake City Olympics will be the most secure sporting event in history, U.S. domestic security chief Tom Ridge said Thursday.

Over the past 21/2 years, planners and protectors of the games ``have had to take into consideration every conceivable possible attack,'' Ridge said.

``I would assure you ... they have done everything humanly and technologically possible to prepare, to prevent, to detect, to disrupt and, in the very unlikely event that something were to occur, to respond to it in a meaningful way and very appropriate way,'' he said on NBC's ``Today.''

``We've covered the landscape of possibilities and we're prepared to deal with any situation.

``This is probably going to be one of the most secure places in the world from Feb. 8 through Feb. 24 ... and clearly the safest sporting event ever,'' Ridge said.

In Geneva, Switzerland, Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee (news - web sites), said security will not be as tight as at past games. He predicted visitors will hardly notice increased security resulting from the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

``There won't be a soldier behind every athlete,'' he said.

Rogge added that IOC officials saw no need to re-examine security as a result of a 15-year-old pilot's suicide flight into a skyscraper in Tampa., Fla., on Saturday.

``The scenario of a plane crashing into a venue is a scenario that has been on the risk list for 15 years,'' he said. ``Whether we have the means to prevent it is another issue, but there have been no-fly zones in all Olympic Games (news - web sites) for the past decade, and there will be a no-fly zone in Salt Lake City.''

----

Fired Nuclear Worker Had Arms Cache, Police Say

By Jeff Adler
The Washington Post
Thursday, January 10, 2002; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22925-2002Jan9?language=printer

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 9 -- Sheriff's deputies found a cache of unregistered firearms stockpiled in a house and a storage unit belonging to a recently fired nuclear power plant worker, who was arrested Tuesday for allegedly threatening to kill his former co-workers, according to officials.

Authorities said they suspect that David Reza, 43, was seeking revenge against his former colleagues after losing his job several weeks ago at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in north San Diego County. Reza is being held without bail in an Orange County jail for making terrorist threats, possession of illegal firearms and narcotics.

Steven Conroy, a spokesman for Southern California Edison, which runs the power plant, said that Reza had worked there since 1984 as a maintenance mechanic but that in 1995 his access to the nuclear reactor area was permanently revoked. Conroy would not comment on why Reza's access was restricted or why he was fired.

In recent weeks, authorities said Reza had threatened to kill his former co-workers. An unidentified third party allegedly told police that Reza said, "They have taken my job, they have taken my life. . . . I'll take my guns and go to San Onofre and whack a bunch of people."

Sheriff's spokesman Jon Fleischman said that the threats were aimed at individuals rather than the plant and were not likely part of a broader terrorist plot.

Authorities arrested Reza at his Laguna Niguel home. Inside, deputies found 61 firearms, including shotguns, pistols, rifles and assault rifles, and some narcotics, Fleischman said.

Evidence led officers to a nearby rented storage locker in San Juan Capistrano. In Reza's unit, deputies discovered more than 200 firearms, 5,000 rounds of ammunition, an expended anti-tank weapon similar to a rocket launcher, gunpowder, and four inert grenades. Only two of the firearms were registered, Fleischman said.

During the search, two deputies were overcome by a noxious cloud of yellow vapor released when they opened an ammunition canister. A hazardous materials team was dispatched, and the deputies were taken to a hospital and later released. The fumes were identified as military-grade tear gas.

Shirley Wickham, manager of Capistrano Properties Self Storage, described Reza as a tall, affable man with jet black hair who collected guns and antiques.

"I'm really surprised," Wickham said. "He seemed like just such a happy-go-lucky person."

But Reza's collection of weapons has officials convinced that he possessed the means to carry out his threats.

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Southern California Edison has beefed up security at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. Conroy said that employees must go through a "security train" of hand searches, metal detectors, and devices that scan for explosives before they can enter the plant.

----

Justice's IG begins probe of anti-terror law's use

By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 10, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020110-2121982.htm

The Justice Department's Office of Inspector General yesterday began an investigation under an anti-terrorism law adopted in the wake of the September 11 attacks on America that will focus on complaints of suspected civil rights abuses by federal agents.

Inspector General Glenn A. Fine said a special counsel would be hired soon to head the probe, which is authorized under the USA Patriot Act signed into law by President Bush on Oct. 26. In the meantime, he named his counselor, Paul K. Martin, as the acting official mandated by the law.

"Historically, the Office of the Inspector General has had responsibility for investigating allegations of misconduct by Department of Justice employees," Mr. Fine said. "The USA Patriot Act focuses attention on the fact that individuals who believe that a department employee has violated their civil rights or civil liberties have a place to send their misconduct allegations."

The Justice Department, in a sweeping anti-terrorism campaign after attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that killed more than 3,000 men, women and children, rounded up more than 1,200 people - mostly of Middle Eastern descent. Many have been arrested and others detained for questioning.

Several civil rights groups and a few members of Congress have questioned the constitutionality of detentions and asked whether anti-terrorism tactics adopted by the department have been appropriate. Others have questioned how those being detained have been treated.

Under the USA Patriot Act, Mr. Fine is empowered to name a special counsel to determine whether Justice Department employees - including members of the FBI and the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service - have violated anyone's civil rights or civil liberties.

Mr. Fine said he has created a special section in the agency's investigations division to process the complaints.

The section will identify what Mr. Fine described as the "more serious civil rights and civil liberties allegations" and assign them to one of 17 investigations division field offices across the country.

He said the inspector general will refer other complaints to Justice Department components for their review and handling.

In addition, Mr. Fine said his office also may conduct audits, inspections and special reviews to exam systemic issues related to Justice Department practices implicated by the complaints received.

Mr. Fine said people who believe their civil rights or civil liberties have been violated by a Justice Department employee can e-mail the complaint to inspector.general@usdoj.gov or fax the complaint to the OIG at 202/616-9898. His office is located at the U.S. Department of Justice, 950 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, D.C. 20530.

----

Demand for bomb-sniffing dogs breeds U.S. Govt program

By Seth Borenstein
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Thursday, January 10, 2002
http://www.krwashington.com/content/krwashington/2002/01/10/washington/faadogs.htm

WASHINGTON - The U.S. government is looking for a few good dogs. But federal agencies are having trouble finding enough trainable canines to meet the growing demand for bomb- and drug-sniffing dogs. So they're making their own.

Three 6-week-old Labrador puppies bred by the U.S. Customs Service to find illegal drugs are the latest arrivals in the stepped-up federal breeding program. The Federal Aviation Administration, concerned about finding bombs in luggage, and the Department of Defense are about to launch breeding programs of their own.

Heightened security measures following the Sept. 11 attacks have increased the number of bomb-sniffing dogs needed across the country. The workload will grow beginning Jan. 18, when the FAA begins screening checked baggage for explosives.

The FAA will open a breeding center later this month at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, using five purebred Labrador retrievers. The Defense Department will begin breeding a few German shepherds and Belgian Malinois dogs this spring at Lackland for drug and bomb detection.

At Auburn University, which conducts dog training and research for the federal government, the first litter of detector dogs reached adulthood last month.

"We need a steady supply of dogs who can do what we need them to do,'' said FAA spokeswoman Rebecca Trexler. The FAA has 175 dog-trainer teams at 39 airports but wants to add 90 this year. By the end of 2003, the FAA hopes to have 358 teams in 112 airports, she said.

A dog's sense of smell is at least 10,000 times greater than a human's, said Paul Waggoner, director of the Institute for Biological Detection Systems at Auburn. Federal dog programs use all kinds of breeds, with German shepherds and retrievers the most common because of their hunting skills and trainability. For breeding, the FAA and Customs prefer Labradors born in Australia.

Because Customs' three latest puppies are from the 11th litter in the 5-year-old program, their corresponding names _ chosen in an agency contest - will start with the 11th letter in the alphabet, "K." They will spend a year in foster homes before being trained.

Most federal detector dogs will still come from animal shelters and private institutions. Customs, for example, gets 150 dogs from those locations each year, and only about 15 from breeding.

Nearly half the dogs found in shelters can't meet the government's high training standards, compared with a 90 percent passing rate for specially bred dogs, Waggoner said.

"It is difficult to find dogs,'' said Lee Titus, acting director of the U.S. Customs Enforcement Training Center in Front Royal, Va., near Washington, D.C. "It does make sense, especially if you can get the best dog they can make.''

Customs' best-bred dog may be Gus, who finished training last November. Dogs at Front Royal are judged before graduation in a process similar to Olympics' gymnastics judging. They perform a variety of skills and are rated on a 1 to 10 scale, with a 7 needed to pass. As in gymnastics, a perfect 10 is a rarity, said Titus, who does the judging.

Gus, who now sniffs for drugs for Customs in San Diego, scored a couple of 10s.

"This dog here was just awesome,'' Titus recalled fondly. "That's what we're looking for.''

Australia's Customs Service began its breeding program in 1993 when it couldn't find enough quality dogs. Today, about 450 of Australia's Customs dogs are bred by the government, according to Australian Customs Service National Breeding Centre Manager John Vanderloo.

Drug seizures for specially bred dogs " increased markedly'' compared to those from the pounds, Vanderloo said. Not only are the dogs better at finding contraband, but they have fewer physical problems so they can work longer, he said.

As more government agencies breed detector dogs, U.S. officials say the next step is swapping semen among different agencies to prevent in-breeding.

----

And to your left ...

January 10, 2002
Washington Times
Inside the Beltway
by John McCaslin
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020110-25542348.htm

Inside the Beltway has learned that the racially embattled Prince George's County Police Department will be leading its officers on tours of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington - what is being called "authority awareness training."

"Our authorities are likening us to a bunch of Nazi S.S. officers," one P.G. police officer charges in an interview with this column.

Police officers in the suburban Maryland county that borders Washington have been sharply criticized in recent months, particularly in the media, for so-called "racial profiling" and insensitivity, accusations many of the officers deny.

Now, these same cops have just been handed the "Prince George's County Police In-Service Training 2002 Schedule," also obtained by this column, where an eight-hour block of time is set aside for "Authority-Awareness Training (Holocaust Museum)."

"It's caused quite a stir in the department," says the officer we interviewed.

When not touring the Holocaust Museum - established by President Jimmy Carter so that future generations can "learn how to prevent such enormities from occurring in the future" - the officers over a four-day period will be trained in more conventional areas of law enforcement - firearms and officer-survival skills, defensive driving, and cardiopulmonary resuscitation, to name several.

----

Federal Judge Bars Expert Testimony

January 10, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Death-Penalty-Bias.html

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- A federal judge has banned experts from testifying whether a fingerprint taken from a crime scene matches that of a defendant, saying the century-old identification technique is unreliable.

While fingerprints themselves are unique and permanent, the technique to match them is subjective and scientifically unreliable, U.S. District Judge Louis H. Pollak said in a ruling Monday.

The decision involves a death penalty case in which three men are charged with operating a multimillion-dollar drug ring linked to four murders. The ruling applies to all three defendants: Carlos Llera-Plaza, Wilfredo Acosta and Victor Rodriguez.

Jury selection is continuing in the case.

Under the judge's ruling, fingerprint evidence may be presented during the trial, but no testimony is allowed about whether the defendants' prints match prints found at the crime scene.

Fingerprint evidence was first admitted to an American court 99 years ago, but its credibility has been challenged in recent years.

In 1993, a U.S. Supreme Court decision required judges to take a more active role in deciding what scientific evidence to admit. In the case of fingerprints, the guidelines would lead to questions such as: Has the practice of fingerprint identification been adequately tested? What's the error rate? Are there standards and controls?

Under these criteria, critics say, fingerprint identification could be challenged on the grounds that it has not been adequately tested, that the error rate has not been calculated, and that no standards exist for what constitutes a match.

``The judge is making a distinction between the assumption that every fingerprint is unique and the opinions that are yielded by the process,'' said Edward Imwinkelreid, a law professor at the University of California at Davis, and co-author of a text on scientific evidence.

``You don't actually examine the finger; you compare the complete, nearly perfect fingerprint taken at the police station with a partial smudge taken from a crime scene,'' Imwinkelreid said. ``And there's no universal agreement on how many similarities you have to find before you can declare it a match.''

Pollak's ruling said experts can testify about and show illustrations of similarities or dissimilarities between ``latent'' fingerprints left at a crime scene and ``rolled'' fingerprints on file that the government contends were made by the same person. In turn, defense attorneys can present evidence countering the prosecution's testimony.

Llera-Plaza's lawyer, Jules Epstein, did not return telephone calls seeking comment Thursday. Attorneys for the other defendants could not immediately be determined.

Simon A. Cole, visiting scholar at Cornell University and author of a book on the history of fingerprinting, said he believed Pollak's decision to be the first to limit fingerprint evidence in that way.

``It sends a message to the entire scientific community that no one's exempt from scrutiny,'' Cole said. ``If you want to call yourself a scientist on the witness stand, you better be able to point to scientific research to support your conclusions.''

Pollak also ruled prosecutors' decision to seek the death penalty was not racially biased. Lawyers for the Hispanic defendants cited similarities with the case involving mob boss Joseph Merlino and three co-defendants, in which prosecutors did not seek the death penalty.

Pollak said those slayings had been ordered by Ralph Natale, Merlino's predecessor and the government's star witness.

On the Net:
http://www.onin.com/fp/daubert--links.html
describes recent legal challenges to fingerprinting.

-------- death penalty

High Court Reaffirms 'Truth in Sentencing'
Capital-Case Jurors Must Know Options

By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 10, 2002; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22403-2002Jan9?language=printer

The Supreme Court, in a split decision, reaffirmed yesterday that courts must tell jurors that life without parole is an alternative to the death penalty in capital murder cases where the defendant's future dangerousness is at issue.

The court's 5 to 4 ruling marked the first time it had applied a "truth in sentencing" principle it laid down in 1994 to a case where a prosecutor did not explicitly argue that the defendant would be a public menace in the future but rather used language, such as "murderers will be murderers," that arguably implied the defendant would be a threat even if sentenced to prison.

Yesterday's decision in Kelly v. South Carolina, No. 00-9280, will have an immediate impact only in South Carolina and Pennsylvania, the only two death-penalty states that do not already require courts to expressly advise jurors of the life-without-parole option. Thirty-five of 38 death-penalty states and the federal government have a life-without-parole alternative.

However, some states, including Texas, which leads the nation in executions, do ask jurors to factor in a defendant's future dangerousness in deciding whether to impose the death penalty. To the extent it helps define the notion of future dangerousness, the court's opinion could have an indirect impact on trials in those states.

"This gives meat to the meaning of what is future dangerousness," said Kathy Swedlow of the Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Lansing, Mich.

In the case before the court, William Arthur Kelly, then 17, was convicted in 1996 of the brutal abduction and murder of a pregnant woman. At the sentencing proceeding, the prosecution presented evidence that he had plotted a jail break and secretly fashioned a knife to carry it out.

Defense attorneys said this amounted to an assertion that Kelly would be dangerous to the public even if sentenced to life in prison, and they asked the trial judge to remind the jury that, under South Carolina law, they could give Kelly life without parole.

The judge refused, saying that the state was merely describing Kelly's character, not his future dangerousness. The jury sentenced Kelly to death after 43 minutes of deliberation.

The South Carolina Supreme Court upheld the trial court's ruling, noting that the prosecution raised Kelly's future dangerousness only with respect to his dangerousness in prison.

But Kelly appealed, and yesterday Justice David H. Souter, writing for the court, concluded that the trial judge had been unrealistic.

When the South Carolina prosecutor called Kelly a "butcher" and told jurors he hoped they would never have to be "30 feet away from such a person," he "accentuated the clear inference of future dangerousness raised by the evidence," Souter wrote. Jurors "would end up 30 feet away from the likes of Kelly only if he got out of prison."

Souter was joined by Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens.

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Clarence Thomas each wrote dissenting opinions, joined by Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and Antonin Scalia, respectively.

The dissenters said there was no way to limit the majority's ruling, since almost any evidence or argument that a prosecutor introduces regarding a murder defendant's violent behavior could be interpreted as a claim that a defendant would be dangerous in the future.

Rehnquist said that the court was creating a " 'truth in sentencing' doctrine which may be desirable policy, but has almost no connection" with the rule the court established in 1994.

"Today's decision allows the Court to meddle further in a State's sentencing proceedings under the guise that the Constitution requires us to do so," Thomas wrote.

----

O'Connor swings ruling to raise bar on death penalty

By Frank J. Murray
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 10, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020110-77448916.htm

A Supreme Court newly divided on death-penalty issues yesterday voted 5-4 to ease the way for convicted murderers striving to avoid death sentences to advise their juries if they are ineligible for parole under life sentences.

The decision sets the stage for resentencing William A. Kelly, who was convicted for the murder of his former boss at Kentucky Fried Chicken and sentenced to death by a South Carolina jury unaware that a life sentence did not allow for his parole.

Kelly was characterized by a prosecutor in the 1996 trial as "Bloody Billy" and the "Butcher of Batesville." At age 17, the former Boy Scout with no criminal record kidnapped, tortured and cut the throat of Shirley Slade Shealy, 25, who had fired him from the Batesville KFC franchise she managed.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor provided the swing vote for four traditional execution opponents in the first capital-punishment decision since her July 2 speech expressing misgivings about the administration of the ultimate punishment. That speech marked a dramatic step away from longtime support of capital punishment even for murderers who were moderately retarded or were teen-agers when they committed their crimes.

Yesterday, she voted with Justice David H. Souter, who wrote the court's opinion also joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.

In a rare dissent, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, joined by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, predicted the new test would virtually require the persuasive rationale against execution anytime a life sentence did not permit the chance of parole.

A separate dissent by Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas raised anew their objections to the underlying 1994 decision that required such statements only when the prosecution claimed a prisoner would be dangerous if not executed.

Richard Dieter, who heads the Death Penalty Information Center, said Justice O'Connor's objections to sloppy administration of the death penalty that causes innocent people to be convicted include questions about sentencing the guilty.

"One way to avoid the worst outcome - sentencing an innocent person - is to invoke a higher standard of proof to make sure the jury has the most leeway to avoid the death sentence and impose a life sentence. This might be seen as a way to facilitate that," Mr. Dieter said.

In the 1994 case, Justice O'Connor wrote a concurring opinion saying the right of a murderer to say he never would be paroled was required by the Constitution's "due process" clause to rebut prosecutors who raised the specter of "future dangerousness."

Chief Justice Rehnquist said yesterday's ruling erased that distinction.

"The rule is invoked, not in reference to any contention made by the state, but only by the existence of evidence from which a jury might infer future dangerousness and evidence there will surely be in a case such as the present one, correctly described by the Court as an extraordinarily brutal murder," the chief justice wrote.

When she was killed after closing the restaurant on the night of Jan. 5, 1996, Mrs. Shealy and her husband, Neal, had a 6-year-old son and she was 23 weeks pregnant. The fetus did not survive.

Prosecutor Donnie Myers said he dwelt on Kelly's vengeful "butchery" to meet state death-penalty requirements, but carefully avoided mentioning "future dangerousness."

Yesterday's opinion said he failed.

"Characterizations of butchery did go to retribution, but that did not make them any the less arguments that Kelly would be dangerous down the road," Justice Souter wrote. "A jury hearing evidence of a defendant's demonstrated propensity for violence reasonably will conclude that he presents a risk of violent behavior, whether locked up or free, and whether free as a fugitive or as a parolee."

Kelly's case is the first of four death-penalty appeals the court will decide by June. The others involve a new review of executing mentally retarded murders, questions of ineffective counsel, and a claimed conflict of interest by the defense attorney in a capital case.

In one of two speeches raising "serious questions" about fairness of death-penalty procedures, Justice O'Connor told the Minnesota Women Lawyers in Minneapolis that since 1973 new evidence exonerated 90 death-row inmates.

"If statistics are any indication, the system may well be allowing some innocent defendants to be executed," she said, suggesting Minnesotans were fortunate to live in a state that did not execute murderers.

--------

N.C. Gov. Commutes Death Sentence

January 10, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-North-Carolina-Execution.html

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) -- A condemned man who steadfastly denied fatally beating his girlfriend escaped execution when Gov. Mike Easley commuted his sentence to life in prison Thursday, hours before he was to be put to death.

Charlie Mason Alston Jr., 42, was to die by injection early Friday. In a statement, he thanked the governor ``for giving me a chance to enjoy another day in this wonderful world.''

Alston was sentenced in 1992 for the beating and suffocation death two years earlier of Pamela Renee Perry, who was hit in the face with a hammer.

No one witnessed the killing and no blood or fingerprint evidence was ever linked to Alston, who had been convicted about six weeks earlier for assaulting Perry.

Alston contended his innocence could have been proved by DNA tests on evidence that has since disappeared. Prosecutors said the evidence, scrapings from beneath Perry's fingernails, would confirm the guilty verdict.

Defense lawyer Mark Edwards said he will continue to try to locate the fingernail scrapings in an effort to have the conviction overturned.

``The good thing is, we now have time,'' he said.

Easley did not specify why he commuted the sentence, saying only that after scrutinizing the case ``the appropriate sentence ... is life in prison without parole.''

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Alston's two remaining appeals Thursday afternoon.

As his execution approached, Alston's supporters had scheduled protest rallies around the state and at the governor's mansion.

``This case involves a man sentenced to death despite the fact that not a single shred of physical evidence tied him to the murder,'' said Steven Hawkins, executive director of the Washington-based National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

-------- terrorism

Terrorists moving from Somalia

By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 10, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020110-17932486.htm

Warlords from Somalia and terrorists linked to the al Qaeda network have been spotted moving from the failed African state to nearby nations, as U.S. intelligence agencies continue to monitor terrorist activities outside Afghanistan.

A group of Somalian Muslim guerrillas was spotted recently as they fled to Yemen, U.S. officials told The Washington Times.

The Somalian fighters' movement comes amid growing reports that the United States is considering military operations against al Qaeda terrorists in Somalia.

The officials said the Somalians appear to be preparing to use Yemen, located at the southern end of the Arabian peninsula, as a staging area for guerrilla attacks if U.S. forces start military operations against al Qaeda terrorists in Somalia.

In other developments, a U.S. KC-130 refueling aircraft crashed yesterday in Pakistan, killing all seven U.S. Marines on board, the Pentagon said. The plane crashed near the town of Shamsi in southwestern Pakistan as it approached a remote airport being used by U.S. forces.

The Pentagon said the cause of the crash is under investigation and there were no early signs that it was shot down by hostile fire.

Bombing raids were carried out yesterday for a fifth day against a large cave complex in eastern Afghanistan where al Qaeda and Taliban forces have been trying to regroup. U.S. warplanes attacked the complex near Zhawar Kili, destroying several buildings, defense officials said.

Regarding Somalia, U.S. and allied reconnaissance aircraft have stepped up monitoring flights over the East African nation over the past two weeks to help pinpoint what U.S. officials said were several terrorist training bases in Somalia.

The aircraft are said to be helping Pentagon planners to target facilities in areas of southern, northern and coastal Somalia.

President Bush said in a speech last night that the war on terrorism is not limited to Afghanistan.

"But wherever terror exists, this great nation will hunt it down," Mr. Bush said.

Asked about al Qaeda training activities in Somalia, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters last week that terrorists "go in and out" of the country.

"We know there have been training camps there and that they have been active over the years and that they, like most of them, go inactive when people get attentive to them," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Tuesday that the location of future al Qaeda terrorists outside of Afghanistan "is the subject of a lot of analysis right now."

The military is watching intelligence indicators and talking with other governments to help track al Qaeda movements outside Afghanistan. "It's too early to say where that might be," Gen. Myers said.

The Joint Chiefs chairman said the government of Yemen "is taking measures to combat terrorism, and I'll just leave it at that."

Al Qaeda terrorists have been based in Yemen in the past and carried out the October 2001 attack on the destroyer USS Cole that killed 17 sailors.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Tuesday that Somalia is one of the places "where these al Qaeda cells might find haven."

"It's a place we're watching very, very carefully not just because it's a weak, broken state," Mr. Powell said in an interview with The Washington Times. "That's not a reason to go there. It's because terrorist activity might find some fertile ground there, and we don't want that to happen."

U.S. officials said earlier that intelligence reports last week stated that some 100 al Qaeda terrorists had been spotted recently in Somalia. The terrorists were part of an Islamic rebel group known as Al-Ittihad Al-Islam, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The Mogadishu-based group is linked to Somalian warlord Hussein Mohammed Aideed and al Qaeda.

In November, the Bush administration took steps to shut down a Somalia-based banking system in Washington that was identified as a source of funding to international terrorists.

Recent reconnaissance flights over Somalia have included missions by U.S. P-3 maritime patrol planes, along with similar missions by British Nimrod and French Atlantique aircraft, the officials said.

U.S. military officials said plans for any military operation in Somalia would be mindful of the incident in 1993 when 18 U.S. Army Rangers were killed during a raid in Mogadishu as they sought to arrest a Somalian warlord.

A reported stronghold of the Al-Ittihad Al-Islam group is the border town of El Wak, Kenya, where fighters from the group have fled, according to Mohammed Omar, the district commissioner there.

Asked about the group's presence, town residents typically responded, "Yes, Al-Ittihad were here, but they left about two years ago." Mr. Omar told the London Daily Telegraph yesterday, "The tribes came together and fought them in a big battle."

Residents of the town said they feared strikes by U.S. bombers, the newspaper stated, noting that the region is the main operating based for Al-Ittihad, which has ties to al Qaeda.

The newspaper quoted a Western security source as saying a training camp was spotted in El Wak several years ago, although that camp had been dismantled since then.

The Somali National Front, a group that has fought Al-Ittihad in the past, claims that the group carried out an attack in March on a town 150 miles from El Wak that was led by Arab members of al Qaeda.

Hussein Mohammed Dires, the Somali National Front police chief, told the Telegraph that he knows the exact locations of Al-Ittihad members. He said Oskurun, Arma, Dar es Salaam and its new headquarters, Kudar, north of the port of Kismayo, are the main areas.

The police chief said Al-Ittihad members have gone underground since the September 11 attacks. "The question the Americans need to ask is not where they are, but how they work. They need to use us to do the job," Mr. Dires said.

A U.S. military team was recently in Somalia gathering intelligence from militia leaders and obtained some data on suspected terrorists and al Qaeda members, U.S. officials said.

The Pentagon also appears to be opening a second "boots on the ground" in the war on terrorism.

Gen. Diomedio Villanueva, the chief of the Philippines armed forces, said he wants U.S. military advisers on the front lines in the battle against the al Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf.

In the Philippines, the Associated Press quoted officials as saying 100 U.S. personnel are expected to arrive to help troops fighting Abu Sayyaf, a terrorist group on the southern island of Basilan that wants an independent Muslim state.

"Going to the front line does not necessarily mean that they will be the ones going in direct contact with the enemy," Gen. Villanueva said.

The Pentagon has acknowledged sending military advisers to the Philippines, but declines to discuss specific operations.


-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

Wind power use grows by 30%

Paul Brown, environment correspondent
Thursday January 10, 2002
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/renewable/Story/0,2763,630217,00.html

Electricity production from wind leapt by 31% last year, making it the fastest growing industry in the field of power generation, according to figures released yesterday.

With the newest turbines on the best sites, wind is now the cheapest method of producing electricity, and huge building programmes have begun worldwide.

Lester Brown, from the Earth Policy Institute in Washington, says that global capacity climbed from 17,800 to 23,300 megawatts - sufficient to meet the electricity needs of 23m people, the combined population of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden.

Since 1995, global wind-generating capacity has increased nearly fivefold. During the same period, the use of coal, the main alternative for generating electricity and a major contributor to global warming, fell by 9%.

One megawatt of wind-generating capacity satisfies the electricity needs of 350 households in an industrial society, or roughly 1,000 people.

Germany leads the world in wind electric-generating capacity, with more than 6,000MW. The US, which launched the modern wind power industry in the early 1980s, follows with 4,150MW. Spain is third with 3,300MW and Denmark fourth with 2,500MW. The Danes get 18% of their electricity from wind.

Two-thirds of the capacity added last year was concen trated in three countries: Germany added 1,890MW, the US 1,600 and Spain 1,065. For America, this translates into a 63% growth in generating capacity.

Britain, which has the largest potential of wind resources of any EU country, had only 406MW of capacity, but this is set to change. In April 2001, the government sold offshore lease rights for an estimated 1,500MW of capacity.

Despite this spectacular growth, development of the earth's wind resources has barely begun, according to the Earth Policy Institute. Mr Brown says that with the latest technology there is enough easily accessible offshore wind energy to meet all of Europe's electricity needs.

The US has enough accessible wind energy in just three states - North Dakota, Kansas and Texas - to satisfy the country's electricity needs. New wind farms have come online in recent years in Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington and Wyoming.

Looking to the future, the institute says that low-cost electricity from wind brings the option of electrolysing water to produce hydrogen, which can easily be stored and used to fuel gas-fired turbines in backup power plants when the wind power ebbs.

Over time, hydrogen produced with wind-generated electricity will be the leading candidate to replace natural gas in power plants as gas reserves are depleted.

--------

Loyola Marymount Will Install Giant Solar Roof

January 10, 2003
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2003/2003-01-10-09.asp#anchor6

LOS ANGELES, California - The largest solar electric rooftop system at any university in the world and the largest system in Southern California will be installed at Loyola Marymount University early this year.

Due to an innovative partnership between Los Angeles' Loyola Marymount University, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), the Southern California Gas Company, and solar electric company PowerLight, the 723 kilowatt hours peak solar rooftop system will be installed at Loyola Marymount's campus in Westchester on three of the university's largest buildings: Gersten Pavilion, University Hall, and the Von der Ahe Library.

"This is a big win for everyone," said Lynne Scarboro, Loyola Marymount University's vice president for administration. "Loyola Marymount will have a cost effective, reliable, non-polluting system that will save us more than $120,000 annually, and we will be contributing to the well being of our planet and, in particular, the well being of Southern California." Estimated at a total cost of more than $4.3 million, the project expense will be offset by rebates - $3.7 million from the LADWP, and $325,000 from the Gas Company - resulting in an actual cost to the university of just $325,000. LMU receives the $325,000 incentive from the Gas Company as part of a statewide program implemented by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC).

Encompassing a combined 81,000 feet of rooftop, the total project will generate about 880,000 kilowatt hours a year - producing enough clean electricity in the daytime to power about 150 homes in the Los Angeles area and resulting in an annual reduction of carbon dioxide emissions equivalent to driving a car more than two million miles - or the amount that can be consumed by about 233 acres of trees a year.

Construction is expected to be complete on all three facilities by April.

"The installation of this system by Loyola Marymount in partnership with LADWP is an outstanding model of how a coordinated effort can result in reduced traditional energy usage, as well as tangible savings utilizing environmentally friendly renewable energy resources," said LADWP general manager David Wiggs.

By investing in on site solar generation, Loyola Marymount will lower its operating costs, reduce purchases of expensive peak electricity, and aid in addressing California's ongoing energy shortage. In addition to generating electricity, PowerLight's solar roof system provides thermal insulation and protects the roof from weather and UV radiation, resulting in decreased heating and cooling energy costs and extended roof life.

"This formidable solar system means a cleaner environment in Los Angeles, and our incentive program is one, if not the best, mechanism for making LA a solar leader," added Angelina Galiteva, LADWP director of Green LA.

----

U.S. Backs Fuel-Cell Cars
Big Three Automakers Join in Research

By Frank Swoboda and Dina ElBoghdady
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, January 10, 2002; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22546-2002Jan9?language=printer

DETROIT, Jan. 9 -- The Bush administration is abandoning a program aimed at developing high-mileage family sedans within a few years and instead will fund research on pollution-free vehicles that are about a decade away from the marketplace.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham today announced the program, called Freedom Car, at the North American International Auto Show. Abraham said it was the best way to protect the environment and reduce the nation's reliance on foreign oil.

Without saying how much the administration plans to spend on the program, Abraham committed to spending federal money on research into fuel-cell automobiles, powered by hydrogen and oxygen. Such vehicles emit only water vapor. The government's partners -- General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co., and DaimlerChrysler AG -- pledged enthusiastically to invest substantially in the program.

Abraham said the administration was dropping a Clinton administration research initiative -- launched with backing from Detroit automakers -- that focused on creating an affordable family sedan by 2004 that could get up to 80 miles per gallon of gasoline. Despite $1.5 billion in government subsidies over eight years, Clinton's Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles was going to fail, Abraham said.

"We are not going to have in 2004 a vehicle that people will be out buying that gets 80 mpg," Abraham said. "The approach PNGV proposed failed."

Today's announcement raised suspicions among environmental groups because it comes as Congress and the White House are debating the best way to conserve energy and what role the auto industry should play.

Automakers have come under increasing pressure to produce more fuel-efficient vehicles while consumer taste for gas-guzzling sport-utility vehicles and pickups is at an all-time high. This year, the Transportation Department and Congress are to consider whether to toughen the nation's fuel economy laws -- known as the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards -- for the first time in six years.

Every year since 1995, Congress has frozen the fuel economy standards, which require each automaker to ensure that its automobiles average 27.5 mpg and its light trucks average 20.7 mpg. Last year, Congress, with the Bush administration's support, agreed to allow the Transportation Department to review the standard.

"Now that the president will have the opportunity to look at increasing [fuel efficiency] standards, the administration will proceed to explore that option," White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said yesterday.

Even though environmentalists are enthusiastic about the prospect of hydrogen fuel cells, some say Abraham's initiative is designed to distract Congress from enacting stricter fuel-economy laws and to give automakers political cover if they're accused of not doing enough to make better-performing engines.

"People are concerned that this is a public relations move to discourage Congress from improving fuel-economy standards," said Frank O'Donnell, executive director of the Clean Air Trust. "Bravo to trying to make fuel cells. But don't drop efforts to make fuel economy tougher in the meantime."

Dan Reicher, who was assistant energy secretary in the Clinton administration, criticized the Bush administration for dropping a program that set concrete deadlines and "held the industry's feet to the fire."

One of the breakthroughs, Reicher said, was the commitment from Detroit automakers to produce high-mileage hybrids powered by gas and electricity. A hybrid Ford Escape, he said, is to go on sale in 2003 as a direct result of the Clinton-backed program.

"They're letting Detroit off the hook on delivering real fuel-economy breakthroughs in the next few years," said Reicher, who is a visiting fellow at the World Resources Institute. "This is in exchange for potential improvements that are more than a decade off."

Abraham denied that his new initiative is linked to the fuel-efficiency debate. Unlike the Clinton administration, Abraham said, the Bush White House approved of having Congress and the Transportation Department review the fuel-efficiency laws, which were frozen throughout the Clinton years.

Abraham acknowledged that the program announced today was "a long-term research program." But he expressed frustration at the resistance from environmental groups. "Our vision expands over several decades," he said.

Auto industry officials acknowledge that they won't soon have the technology to mass-produce the fuel-cell vehicles that the Bush White House is promoting.

"The companies are working hard to get demonstration models of these fuels cells to get some experience with them," said Mark Kemmer, GM's senior Washington representative. "But the time frame for them to be available to the public is still a ways down the road."

Auto industry officials acknowledge that much of their energy-efficiency research has been driven by the threat of tougher fuel-economy standards. But if the standards get much tighter, Detroit automakers say, they fear they will not be able to produce the light trucks their customers demand.

GM, Ford and DaimlerChrysler have more than 85 percent of the light-truck market, the most popular but least fuel-efficient segment of the vehicle market. It includes the heavy sport-utility vehicles, pickup trucks and minivans.

Gloria Bergquist, spokeswoman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, said automakers already build more than 50 models of vehicles, mostly smaller cars, that get more than 30 mpg.

"But these are not the most popular vehicles," Bergquist said. "Consumers have a love affair with light trucks."

ElBoghdady reported from Washington.

----

Bush abandons high-mileage car program for hydrogen fuel-cell approach

Thursday, January 10, 2002
By H. Josef Hebert,
Associated Press
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2002/01/01102002/ap_46085.asp

WASHINGTON - After nearly $1.5 billion in subsidies, the Bush administration is ending an eight-year program to help automakers develop high-mileage, family-sized cars. Instead, it wants to spur the growth of hydrogen fuel cells to power the next generation of motor vehicles.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, addressing an auto show in Detroit, planned Wednesday to tout hydrogen fuel cell development as part of a broader strategy to reduce the country's dependence on foreign oil and help the environment by reducing carbon dioxide emissions and other tailpipe pollution.

Department officials said Abraham would be joined by auto executives in unveiling the new program, called Freedom Car. It is expected to emerge as the Bush administration's response to critics who are calling for a phase-out of gas-guzzling cars and sport utility vehicles.

Automobile fuel economy is likely to be a major issue when the Senate takes up energy legislation next month. Democrats are calling for the government to require increased auto fuel efficiency, especially as it applies to the popular SUVs.

The Energy Department and senior White House policy officials in the Bush administration all along have expressed little enthusiasm for the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles, an ambitious government-industry effort aimed at quadrupling automobile fuel economy by the middle of this decade.

The department said the new fuel cell program would supersede the new-generation vehicle partnership, which had pushed industry development of hybrid gasoline-electric cars now just entering the market. The old program had focused industry attention on finding ways to improve fuel economy without reducing car size and zip.

Begun in 1993 and championed by the Clinton administration, especially Vice President Al Gore, the joint venture between the federal government and the Big Three domestic automakers was seen as a way to put family-sized sedans that get 80 miles per gallon into showrooms by 2004.

Using advanced aerodynamics, new engine technologies, and lighter composite materials, the automakers in the program developed prototypes of vehicles capable of getting more than 70 mpg, three times better fuel economy than most cars now on the road. But commercial development of large numbers of these cars in the next few years, as once envisioned, was not expected.

Although Abraham supported the program as a senator from Michigan, shortly after he became energy secretary, he said the highly touted program had outlived its usefulness because the auto industry was going in a different direction.

The administration proposed slashing funding for the program as part of its first budget a year ago. Nevertheless, Congress continued to keep it alive, even as some environmental groups and the watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense called the program an unnecessary subsidy for the car industry.

Instead, the administration intends to focus on speeding up development of hydrogen-fuel-cell-powered vehicles, a technology that has attracted intense interest in recent years.

This new government-industry partnership "will further the president's national energy policy, which calls for increased research in hydrogen technology to diversify and enhance America's energy security," the Energy Department said.

It is hoped that the new federal push for development of fuel cells will spur industry efforts to develop motor vehicle engine and power systems that eventually will replace the internal combustion engine.

Although several automakers, including DaimlerChrysler, Ford, and General Motors, have said they expect to have fuel-cell vehicles in showrooms within the next four or five years, wide availability of such cars is probably a decade or more away.

A fuel cell produces energy from a chemical reaction when hydrogen is combined with oxygen. The only byproduct is water. In recent years, the cost of fuel cells has dropped sharply. Hydrogen can be produced from natural gas aboard vehicles or pure hydrogen can be used, requiring development of a new supply infrastructure.

----

Most fuel cell companies give up gains on US plan

CANADA: January 10, 2002
REUTERS
Story by Allan Dowd
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13990/story.htm

VANCOUVER, British Columbia - Shares of several fuel cell developers that had skyrocketed in advance of a new U.S. plan to boost hydrogen-powered cars gave up most their gains on Wednesday once the plan was actually released.

The plan unveiled by U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham and major automakers was short on specifics, and came with warnings it could take years if not decades for environmentally friendly vehicles to become commercially viable.

The plan was released at the annual Detroit international auto show, which was the spark of similar gyrations for fuel cell stocks two years ago, prompting one analyst to term this the industry's "silly season."

Fuel cells use a chemical reaction to produce electricity from hydrogen which derived from such sources as natural gas, methanol and modified versions of gasoline. They are seen as alternative to the internal combustion engine.

Many fuel cell developers do not aim their products at transportation, but their shares still skyrocketed on Tuesday in anticipation of the announcement.

It was a different story for most on Wednesday.

Plug Power Inc. closed down $1.54 at $10.50, although that was still above its Monday close of $8.66 FuelCell Energy Inc. which had jumped 23 percent on Tuesday closed at $19.25 on Wednesday, down 11.9 percent.

H Power Corp dropped 32 cents to $3.73, although that was still above its Monday close of $3.30.

Bucking the trend, albeit only slightly, was Ballard Power Systems Inc. , which is already working with several automakers to develop fuel cell cars and is involved in the United States' only major testing program for the vehicles, in California.

Ballard stock, which rose 15 percent on Tuesday, was up a more modest 2.8 percent, or 99 cents, on Nasdaq to close at $35.95, having been up as much as 10 percent earlier in the day.

On the Toronto Stock Exchange, the Vancouver company's shares closed at C$57.45, up C$1.95 or 3.5 percent.

Fuel cells have been hailed as an environmentally friendly technology because the reaction produces only heat and water as emissions. The entire process does produce pollutants as hydrogen is made, before it reaches the actual cell.

Abraham said the new Freedom CAR research project would fund research into fuel cells and advance different ways of handling hydrogen and creating an infrastructure to make hydrogen fuels widely available.

Analyst Gary Holdsworth of Wedbush Morgan Securities said he was "unimpressed" because the plan lacked details such as funding levels and appeared to focus on areas such as cell technology development which is far more advanced than that done on fueling infrastructure.

"We believe that many investors were expecting much more out of this announcement. We do not believe Freedom CAR comes close to the Manhattan Project call-to-arms that some fuel cell enthusiasts have been calling for," Holdsworth said in a note to clients.

Holdsworth said while it was positive that politicians are now interested in the technology, he put more significance in General Motors' unveiling this week of a prototype car that could set the trend for future fuel cell vehicles.

(Additional reporting by David Sinkman in New York).

-------- energy

White House Moves to Contain Political Damage From Enron Turmoil

New York Times
January 10, 2002
By JACK LYNCH
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/10/politics/10CND-ENRON.html

President Bush directed the Treasury Department and other agencies today to study how to protect pension plans from debacles similar to the collapse of the Enron Corporation.

The move followed the Justice Department's decision late Wednesday to form a special task force of prosecutors from across the country to conduct the inquiry into the giant energy company's downfall. But it also appeared aimed in part at containing the political damage from the turmoil at Enron, which had strong ties to the Bush administration.

The White House also disclosed today that Kenneth L. Lay, Enron's chief executive and a leading financial supporter of the Bush presidential campaign, had contacted administration officials weeks before the collapse to warn of the company's growing difficulties.

Enron's collapse, which came on Dec. 2 in the largest bankruptcy filing ever, virtually wiped out the stakes of its shareholders and eliminated millions of dollars in investments held in the pension plans of the company's employees.

Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, said today that Mr. Lay called Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and Commerce Secretary Don Evans in October to advise them of Enron's deterioration and suggested that government intervention might be needed to protect the company's bondholders. Mr. Fleischer said that Mr. Lay told Mr. O'Neill that his company was heading into bankruptcy and that he told Mr. Evans that Enron might default on its bonds.

Mr. Fleischer said Mr. O'Neill and Mr. Evans decided not to intervene, and they did not discuss the calls with Mr. Bush.

Mr. Bush said that Mr. Lay did not contact him to discuss the company's financial crisis and that he had not seen the Enron executive since last spring.

The president said Enron's collapse raised considerable questions about the rules for pension plans and corporate disclosure.

"One of the things that we're deeply concerned about is that there has been a wave of bankruptcies that have caused many workers to lose their pensions," he said.

The president said he directed the Treasury Department, along with the Commerce and Labor departments, to examine the rules for pension plans and 401(k) plans and propose revisions to protect employees from losing their savings in a corporate bankruptcy.

In addition, Mr. Bush said he had directed Treasury Secretary O'Neill and other government officials to form a working group to examine the rules on corporate disclosure. The group would include officials from the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Reserve and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission.

Questions about Enron, and this morning's disclosure that its chairman had reached out to two Bush administration Cabinet secretaries, dominated the midday news briefing by Mr. Fleischer.

"It's appropriate to take a look at what led to the bankruptcy of Enron," Mr. Fleischer said. He expressed the hope that any Congressional inquiry would be even-handled, not a "partisan, politically charged investigation" of the kind that he said had so soured many Americans on Washington.

Mr. Fleischer rejected any suggestion that the Treasury or Commerce secretaries should have informed the president of their conversations with Mr. Lay or told the Securities and Exchange Commission what they knew of Enron's weakness. He also rejected any suggestion that there was any attempt to keep Mr. Bush "out of the loop" on Enron matters.

The spokesman said there should be no rush to judgment about Mr. Lay's contacts with Mr. O'Neill and Mr. Evans "as if there's something wrong inherently with contact and communication - and there is not."

The White House decision to review the rules on pension plans and corporate disclosure came a day after the Justice Department widened the potential scope of the criminal investigation into Enron.

The broadened inquiry, however, is likely to reduce the burdens going forward on Enron, which has been struggling with the demands from multiple civil and criminal investigations. By consolidating the criminal investigations, the company will have only one coordinated group of prosecutors seeking information, decreasing the potential demands for documents and limiting the number of officials to persuade of its position.

-------- environment

Microbe breaks down PCBs

UPI Science News
1/10/2002
by Koren Capozza in San Francisco
http://www.upi.com/print.cfm?StoryID=10012002-055357-6440r

BALTIMORE, Jan. 10 (UPI) -- A tiny microbe identified by University of Maryland researchers could be a powerful warrior against a persistent and dangerous pollutant.

The scientists isolated a strain of bacterium that successfully attacks the chlorine bonds of PCBs or polychlorinated biphenyls and slowly breaks them down.

PCBs are suspected cancer-causing agents. They were used to insulate electrical equipment and transformers during most of the 20th century but were banned in the United States in 1979.

However, 22 years since they were banned, PCBs are still readily found in river, harbor and bay sediments throughout the world. Moreover the agent tends to bio-accumulate in the tissue of fish, marine mammals and humans. This is because PCBs persist years after they were released and tend to magnify in concentration as they move up the food chain.

The University of Maryland's Center of Marine Biotechnology in Baltimore and the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston jointly zeroed-in on a bacterium found at a former electrical power plant in Baltimore where PCB levels were elevated.

They then used a DNA screening method to amplify specific gene sequences in the bacterium responsible for dechlorinating PCBs. The strain identified is highly adapted to seek out PCBs and "feed off" them.

"Now we can begin to find ways to use biotechnological advancement to address pollution in the environment," said Dr. Kevin Sowers, research microbiologist at COMB.

PCB-contamination remains a serious problem in many of America's water systems and industrial sites. The finding raises hopes scientists will soon be able to manipulate bacteria to act as a tool to clean up pollution.

If it proves to be useful for this purpose, environmental scientists would have a critical new weapon to clean up dangerously contaminated industrial sites.

At present, PCB-contaminated sediment in rivers, harbors and streams remains difficult to address. One of the few ways to tackle the problem is to dredge the sediment and dispose of it in an incinerator -- an extremely costly undertaking.

"It's significant that we know this because once we know of the bacterium, we can study it and find out how it does the work," said Dr. Craig Phelps, a microbiologist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. "Then we can encourage other bacteria in the environment to behave like it."

----

Oil Spill Contaminates Ecuadorian Amazon

January 10, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2002/2002L-01-10-01.html

QUITO, Ecuador, Oil from an abandoned exploratory oil well in the Ecuadorian Amazon is spilling uncontrolled into the environment months after government authorities were first notified, according to an international wildlife conservation group.

Patricia Medici is a conservation biologist with the Lowland Tapir Project, which works to conserve the endangered tapir, the largest native mammal on the South American continent. Based in Sao Paulo, Brazil, she maintains contact with native people in tapir country throughout South America.

River Puyo in the Ecuadorian Amazon (Photo courtesy Earthfoot)

Medici says that in October 2001 an Ecuadorian native group told the state oil company Petroecuador about the spill, but had no response from the oil company.

A few weeks later, The Organization of the Shiwiar Nationality of the Ecuadorian Amazon announced over a local radio station, Radio Puyo, that they had notified Petroecuador of the oil spill, but no one from the oil company had come to investigate.

Now, in January, Petroecuador still has done nothing about the oil spill, and it continues to kill wildlife and pollute nearby streams. The affected area is in the southeast of Pastaza province in eastern Ecuador.

The oil spill was discovered by local inhabitants of the community of Chuindia while hunting. Medici says, "They found a tapir still alive, but with its whole body shaking, and with the snout, lips and toothflesh in a state of advanced decay."

Lowland tapir. Tapirs are plant eaters in danger of disappearing because of hunting and clearcutting of their forest habitat. (Photo courtesy Lowland Tapir Project)

"Continuing forward," she reports, "they found a huge pool of petrol, and bodies of dead tapirs and peccaries, some of them just skeletons. The oil spill was on a salt lick, such that the animals have consumed oil while licking for salt."

"The spill comes from an old abandoned exploratory oil well, which obviously has not been adequately closed after completing operations," Medici said.

The Shiwaiar indigenous people of the Ecuadorian Amazon wish to promote ecotourism as an alternative to oil exploitation. A small tribe in danger of losing their land and culture, they offer visitors the opportunity to see or study the plants and animals of the region while they act as guides.

Medici and other tapir biologists are asking that the international community contact Petroecuador and the Ecuadorian Ministry of Energy and Mines urging them to close the well, undertake cleanup of the area and compensate the local people for their losses of wildlife and habitat.

-------- genetics

Beach Water Pollution Can Be Tracked to Its Source

January 10, 2003
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2003/2003-01-10-09.asp#anchor8

IRVINE, California - A California study may help beachside communities identify the sources of water pollution affecting beach water.

The study has proved instrumental for improving the quality of beach water in Avalon, Catalina Island, a popular California tourist destination. The research shows that it is possible to identify and track the specific sources of water pollution by combining bacteria sampling with genetic testing.

By combining these methods, the researchers found that decaying sewage pipes in the downtown area adjacent to Avalon Bay had been leaking human waste into the shoreline water. As a result of the research, Avalon officials sliplined the city's sewer lines to seal the leaks and are investigating connecting pipes from private businesses and homes for further leakage.

Their work has already decreased bacteria levels along the shoreline by more than 50 percent, and beach closures declined from 31 in 2001 to 15 in 2002.

The approach provides a new method for coastal agencies to comply with tougher beach water quality laws. Beaches are now tested for fecal indicator bacteria using methods that only provide general information on potential sources for pollution. High bacteria content can lead to beach closures.

"Right now, beach communities are faced with bacterial pollution without knowing their sources," said lead author Stanley Grant, an environmental engineer at the University of California at Irvine (UCI).

"The combination of indicator sampling and genetic testing has the potential to make a real difference in efforts to clean up polluted beaches," Grant added.

The study, coauthored by University of Southern California microbiologist Jed Fuhrman, Alexandria Boehm of Stanford University, and Robert Mrše of UCI, was posted Thursday on the Research ASAP site of "Environmental Science & Technology."

-------- health

Anthrax not uncommon outside U.S.

By Ravi Nessman
ASSOCIATED PRESS
January 10, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020110-73777344.htm

JOHANNESBURG - The San bushmen did not see a potential threat when they stumbled upon a dead cow lying in a South African field. They saw precious meat. So they cooked and ate the animal.

It was only later, when the lesions with black spots began forming on their hands, that it became clear how the cow had died. It had anthrax, and now so did they.

The people who have been infected by the disease in recent months in the United States are not suffering alone.

But in places as far afield as Zimbabwe, Kyrgystan and Indonesia, authorities are more worried about suspicious cows than suspicious envelopes.

The cattle-borne form of the disease - not the weaponized version created in a laboratory - can be found in nearly every region of the globe with grazing animals.

"Anthrax is not strange. This has always been here and people get along with it," said Eliphas Nyamogo, a teacher in Kenya. "I think it has been much scarier in the United States because it is not something they have had for many years."

Last year, at least 2,000 people around the world contracted the disease from animals, according to incomplete statistics from the World Organization for Animal Health, which tracks human anthrax infections as well as animal outbreaks. The animals get the disease themselves from spores in the ground.

The South African government is concerned enough about the disease that every year it distributes nearly 100,000 pamphlets - illustrated with cartoons of unhappy cows - telling farmers to vaccinate their cattle and never to eat animals they suspect may have the disease.

The San who ate the cow in South Africa's Northern Cape Province last January were sent to a local hospital when veterinary officials investigating an outbreak in local animals noticed their skin lesions.

A total of 15 persons were infected with the skin form of anthrax, treated with antibiotics and released.

"We get anthrax on a regular basis there," said Dr. Jaco Pienaar, deputy director of the veterinary services in the Northern Cape Province, where the outbreak occurred.

Anthrax is believed to be thousands of years old. Some historians believe the fifth and sixth of the Bible's 10 plagues - the death of cattle, followed by a wave of boils - represented an ancient anthrax outbreak.

"That's exactly how it happens," said Maryke Henton, an official at the veterinary research institute at South Africa's Agricultural Research Council.

Anthrax thrives in cattle, sheep and goats. Its spillover into humans is purely an accident of nature, said Dr. Ottorino Cosivi, an official at the World Health Organization.

The vast majority of human cases are skin infections, caused by handling tainted meat. A few people get the more deadly intestinal infections by eating the infected meat, and on very rare occasions, anthrax is inhaled, usually by people working with wool or hides from infected animals.

Some epidemiologists roughly estimate that for every 10 infected animals, one person gets skin anthrax.

When an animal catches the disease and dies, infected fluids drip into the ground, turning it into an "anthrax field," Dr. Cosivi said.

If another animal eats from the field, it too can become infected.

The spore can live in the ground for decades, and in at least one case has been found to live for centuries.

Heavy rains often trigger outbreaks, uncovering spores that had been buried under the surface. But droughts trigger outbreaks, too, concentrating the spores that may have blown into shrinking water holes.

"It stays in the soil for so long we can have an outbreak any day," said Gerhard Schutte, general manager of South Africa's Red Meat Producers Organization.

In southwestern Zimbabwe, at least 40 persons have been infected with the disease since October. A child died Oct. 26, probably after handling meat from infected cattle, said Dr. Christopher Zishiri, the local medical director.

In Kenya, two persons in the central district of Nyeri contracted skin anthrax after skinning a cow that had mysteriously died. They recovered after treatment.

A total of 396 persons contracted anthrax in Turkey last year. All of them survived, according to the Turkish Health Ministry.

The disease is widespread throughout Central Asia. Tajikistan reported 338 human cases in 2000, and 33 persons were infected in October of that year in one outbreak in Kazakhstan, mostly after illegally slaughtering sick cattle without veterinary supervision. India and Indonesia have also experienced recent outbreaks.

Six members of a Minnesota farm family were treated for anthrax last year when two of them showed signs of intestinal anthrax after eating meat from an infected cow they had raised and slaughtered.

But cases of natural anthrax are extremely rare in the United States, where stringent slaughterhouse regulations weed out bad meat.

Anthrax usually affects the world's poorest, who don't know of its dangers or are so hungry they don't care.

Human anthrax will be difficult to overcome, said Dr. Huseyin Caksen, an official in the department of pediatrics at Turkey's Yuzuncuyil University.

"As long as there is poverty, we will have this disease," he said.

-------- human rights

Bush backs restoring of food stamps

Around the Nation
Washington Times
January 10, 2002
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020110-98902148.htm

The Bush administration, seeking to reverse part of the 1996 welfare overhaul, yesterday proposed to restore food-stamp benefits to 363,000 legal immigrants who have lived in the country for at least five years.

Under current rules, adult immigrants must have worked in the country for at least 10 years or be refugees or members of the military to qualify for benefits. There is no work requirement in the White House proposal, which will be part of President Bush's 2003 budget.

The administration's plan would cost $2.1 billion over 10 years.

----

US intelligence forecasts seven potential new trouble spots in 2002

Thursday January 10
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020110/1/2a2yq.html

Seven conflicts brewing in Africa, Asia and Europe could escalate into full-fledged humanitarian emergencies in 2002, but the world's ability to respond to them is likely to remain limited, the US intelligence community predicted.

The forecast is contained in a report released Wednesday by the National Intelligence Council, the analytical branch of the 13 agencies that make up the US intelligence community.

A team of intelligence experts who conducted the study believes that the conflict in the Balkan nation of Macedonia, which made headlines last year when ethnic Albanian rebels battled government security forces, has a medium-to-high probability of boiling over into a major clash with "very high" potential impact on the rest of Europe.

"An escalation of ethnic conflict in western Macedonia leading to full-scale civil war would be likely to destabilize southeastern Europe by displacing tens of thousands of Slavic Macedonians and sending hundreds of thousands of mostly ethnic Albanian refugees into neighboring countries," the report said.

The experts also drew attention to the southern African nation of Zimbabwe, where a drought coupled with mounting civil unrest fueled by high inflation, racial tensions and disrupted agricultural production due to land reform "are likely to precipitate a humanitarian crisis by spring 2002."

"Widespread food shortages are likely -- particularly of corn, the primary food staple -- and it is doubtful that Harare will be able to compensate for the deficit with imports," the study concludes.

The current trickle of boat people trying to leave Haiti could grow into a torrent if economic stagnation and political stalemate in the Caribbean nation were to coincide with a severe economic downturn, according to the report.

Regional refugee crises could be created in Kenya, Ivory Coast and Nigeria where economic problems combined with droughts, repression, and ethnic and religious strife were bound to displace thousands of people.

While rating the probability of a major armed clash between India and Pakistan over the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir as low, the experts warned that if a full-scale war did erupt in the region, it would have dire consequences.

"Such a conflict probably would spread to the Indian state of Rajasthan and the Indian and Pakistani states of Punjab, displacing well over one million people," the report predicted.

With new crises bubbling under the surface, the US intelligence analysts said that the old humanitarian emergencies in Afghanistan, Burundi, Colombia, North Korea and Sudan were not likely to go away.

"All show signs of worsening through 2002," the report said.

But the current economic downturn in the United States, Japan and other industrialized countries could put a damper on their willingness to provide new aid. "Should the economic slowdown persist, it will constrain at least somewhat the ability and willingness of Western donor countries to provide additional assistance," stressed the intelligence analysts.


-------- activists

Greenpeace Star Wars Protesters Guilty of Misdemeanor

January 10, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2002/2002L-01-10-03.html

LOS ANGELES, California, The U.S. Attorney's Office has agreed to drop the two felony charges against the 15 Greenpeace activists and two freelance journalists who were due to stand trial in Los Angeles January 8, following a protest against the Star Wars missile test at Vandenberg Air Force base in California on July 14, 2001.

Greenpeace protesters enter the Los Angeles courthouse (Photos courtesy Greenpeace)

All 17 defendants pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor charge of conspiring to enter a military base, which carries a potential jail term of up to six months.

During the action Greenpeace activists swam ashore at the airbase with Stop Star Wars banners, divers went underwater and other activists in inflatables protested under the flight path of the missile, delaying the test for 40 minutes. The action was documented by the two journalists.

Some or all of the 17 defendants will have to appear in court on January 18 for sentencing. The prosecution has indicated they may still demand that some could be given jail terms.

In addition, Greenpeace staff in the United States have a been bound by a civil injunction, preventing them from participating in protests which break the law at military bases supporting the Star Wars program in the United States and the Marshall Islands in the Pacific.

The court required $150,000 in damages for costs incurred by the government and military as a result of the protest and subsequent legal proceedings. Should Greenpeace in the United States violate the terms, a $500,000 fine will be imposed, and individuals involved in the breach could face jail terms.

Greenpeacers carried out the Vandenberg protest to publicize their belief that Star Wars will ignite a new nuclear arms race.

The 15 activists come from the U.S., UK, Sweden, India, Australia, Germany, Canada and New Zealand. One freelance journalist is from the UK, while the other is from Spain and a resident of the United States.

Matt Pendzialek came from Germany to protest Star Wars

One of the protesters, Matt Pendzialek, a professional dive trainer from Germany, said, "Stopping the destruction of our planet is important to me, it is how I live my life and the future I want. It is my human right to protest when I see our environment is threatened. Not only is it my right, it is my duty."

"We are not afraid or ashamed to admit to trespassing at Vandenberg, our action was a simple, principled and a non-violent one," said Greenpeace disarmament campaigner, Mike Townsley.

"The U.S. Attorney's Office was attempting to shut down our civil right to protest and intimidate both the defendants and Greenpeace as a whole by bringing totally unwarranted felony charges against activists and journalists. They failed, and we will continue our campaign to stop Star Wars," Townsley said.

Greenpeace was prepared to go to court and face all the original charges, to tell the jury why the activists took their action. But under a legal motion brought by the prosecution prior to trial, they would have been prevented from presenting a defense based upon moral opposition to Star Wars missile defense system and from detailing their case that the test was illegal under both U.S. and international law.

----

Why we have to save the ABM treaty

Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002

1) It puts a cap on the nuclear arms race. Several emails on this list serve have talked about a new arms race with China that is already beginning.

2) It is the keystone of the nuclear arms control treaties. Without it, the nonproliferation treaty, the comprehensive test ban treaty (which the US has signed but the Senate refused to ratify in 1999) and the Outer Space treaty of 1967 have much less force, and will be disregarded internationally, leading to much more rapid spread of nuclear weapons.

3) Bush's unilateral withdrawal makes a mockery of all US treaties. What is to stop him from withdrawing from any other treaty he chooses, if his right to do this goes unchallenged?

4) Bush is seeking unbridled power. He wants out of the treaty because it puts constraints on him. This administration does not have the interests of the American people at heart, as shown by his economic recovery plan which favors the corporations. We need to draw the line here.

5) This withdrawal attacks the underlying principle of the US Constitution, which relies on a balance of powers among the three branches of government. It requires a 2/3 majority of the Senate to ratify a treaty. Surely withdrawing from the ABM treaty is a momentous enough decision to require the same input from the Senate.

6) It creates a dangerous precedent. If Bush can scrap a treaty over the other party's objections because it is "out of date", when will he do the same to the Constitution?

There is only one way to stop this, and that is by arousing the Senate to assert its authority; either by a lawsuit or by a sense of the Senate resolution. This was done before, over the same issue, in the 80's. Sam Nunn led the defense of the ABM treaty against Reagan's desire to withdraw, and won in the back rooms. I heard this from a key Senate staff person on the Foreign Relations committee. He said, "We did it before, we can do it again." Let's do it!

----

Inquiry: what other space weapons bans do you know?

Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002
From: Regina Hagen <regina.hagen@jugendstil.da.shuttle.de>

This is a call for those who know of initiatives/proposals for a space weapons ban beyond those I am aware of which are

- the Kucinich and World Treaty initiative

- the Chinese initiative at the CD in June 2001

- the German draft treaty of 1984

Please contact me, not the lists, if you have knowledge of any other texts, proposals, legislation, initiatives.

Thanks, in peace

Regina Hagen Darmstaedter Friedensforum Teichhausstrasse 46 64287 Darmstadt, Germany Tel. [49] (6151) 47 114 Fax [49] (6151) 47 105 regina.hagen@jugendstil.da.shuttle.de

--

The Outer Space Treaty specifically names weapons of mass destruction. The US' focus is on space-based lasers, which it claims are not WMDs, and therefore, not under the treaty. Perhaps the Treaty could be amended to include all weapons.

From: "Sallight1@earthlink.net" <sallight1@earthlink.net>
Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 14:34:07 -0500


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