------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
US nuclear insurance law faces Senate fight
NRC seeks revised standards for US nuke waste site
ENVIROS PELT ENERGY TASK FORCE WITH LAWSUITS
More than 20 leaks of radioactive fluid at uranium mine
British Energy restarts Dungeness nuclear reactor
China upgrades Su-30s
Nuclear team heads for Baghdad
Gulf War answers needed to combat terrorists
USEC request to import (!) DU
ulgarian PM sows confusion over N-plant
Ominous war sign
India Test-Fires Intermediate-Range Missile
India tests nuclear-capable missile
India Successfully Tests Missile
Prime Minister of India Says Missile Test Good for Security
U.S. Prepares to Test Sea - Based Missile Defense
Stalled Talks Prompt Security Concern
Russian official, Powell discuss arms-cut deal
US to use weapons plutonium as nuclear plant fuel
Las Vegas sues to halt nuclear dump
Panel Looks at Yucca Mountain Site
Indian Point Intruders Were Hunters
Wash. Radiation Levels in Dispute
Talbott to Brookings
More Atomic Vets Eligible for Aid

MILITARY
US targeting extremists in ex-Soviet states
CORRECTIONS
Taliban weapons stash destroyed
Times too harsh with Mugabe?
U.S. hits China with sanctions over arms sales
U.S. Backs Rules Against Arms Spread
Seoul's arms sale to Hanoi takes aim
Bush ties Arafat to cargo of weapons
U.S. Will Give States $1 Billion to Improve Bioterrorism Defense
Bill Would Require Laboratories to Adopt Strict Security
Defense stocks rise with Bush's budget
China backs off confrontations with U.S.
Colombia's guerrilla, military square off
Colombia destroys downed U.S. helicopter
Some Israeli Reservists Balk
Shin Bet bill nears final readings
Bush Says Arafat Is Not Doing Enough to Fight Terrorism
Palestinian Suicide Bomber Strikes in Tel Aviv
Landmine clearers welcome focus of Afghan aid
Putin said to exploit U.S. war
Bin Laden mafia
Police in Chechnya Accuse Russia's Troops of Murder
Bomber debate
Congress considers Legislation would require military training
HAWAII COUNTY OPPOSES EXPERIMENTAL SONAR


POLICE / PRISONERS
$37.7 Billion for Homeland Defense Is a Start, Bush Says
Some Security Duties May End
Bush seeks to double budget for homeland security
Afghans to carry on stoning criminals
Neb. Court Overturns Death Sentence
American Charged as a Terrorist Makes First Court Appearance

ENERGY AND OTHER
Irish green energy firm in Scottish Energy deal
Gephardt envisions 'Apollo project' on alternative fuels
Gephardt says US should seek energy independence
Dane wind shares down on doubt over offshore plans
DOE Rebuffs Energy Policy Suit
Cheney again refuses to give energy policy details
Toxic Waste Landfills Pose Birth Defect Risks
Environmental group gives Bush 'D-minus'
U.S., N.J. Utility in Cleanup Pact
Scientists Herald a Versatile Adult Cell
AIDS Set to Surpass Black Death as Worst Pandemic

ACTIVISTS
Pot-banging web-page reflects Argentine discontent
I was (almost) John Walker
A 'Pragmatic Idealist' Pursues Justice for All
Obituaries in the News
Activists Mobilize After Shooting
Civil Rights Curbs Surprise Writer



-------- NUCLEAR

US nuclear insurance law faces Senate fight

REUTERS USA:
January 25, 2002
Story by Chris Baltimore
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/14189/story.htm

WASHINGTON - The second-ranking Senate Democrat this week signaled a rocky road for a bill to renew an expiring nuclear accident insurance law which the industry sees as key to new plant construction.

Harry Reid of Nevada, who also is chairman of the Senate's Transportation, Infrastructure and Nuclear Safety subcommittee, said at a hearing that the nation's 103 nuclear power plants should provide more of their own insurance before receiving government help.

Under the law, the nation's 103 operating nuclear plants are protected from liability claims exceeding $9 billion in the event of a serious accident.

The Republican-led House of Representatives last November approved a 15-year extension of the Price Anderson Act, set to expire in August 2002. The Democratic-controlled Senate has yet to rule on reauthorization.

The Bush administration and the nuclear industry both see renewal of the law as key to future plant construction. Critics contend that no other U.S. industry receives similar benefits.

Reid said he opposed a bill offered by Ohio Republican George Voinovich to reauthorize the act, which covers nuclear power plants providing 20 percent of the nation's electricity.

"Coal and nuclear power have been inappropriately demonized over the last few years ... but the fact of the matter is both are efficient and cost-effective sources of energy," Voinovich said at the hearing.

Reid is also fighting the Energy Department's recent choice of his state to build storage for 70,000 tons of U.S. nuclear waste. The proposed site at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles (144 km) from Las Vegas, is expected to be challenged in court.

$9 BILLION POOL

The act, passed in 1954, requires nuclear operators to carry the maximum available amount of accident insurance of $200 million and collectively fund a $9 billion pool for paying claims for large accidents. If the cost of a nuclear accident exceeds $9 billion, the law says the federal government will pay the rest.

Some lawmakers question whether the industry's $9 billion pool is big enough.

"We cannot allow nuclear power plants to operate without adequate insurance - it's as simple as that," Reid said.

Reid's skepticism was joined by Vermont Independent Jim Jeffords, chairman of the Senate Environment committee. Jeffords cited "a number of very legitimate questions about the appropriateness and adequacy of this legislation," including whether the insurance law would cover a potential terrorist attack on a nuclear plant.

The Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington have raised concerns among lawmakers about nuclear plant vulnerability.

American Nuclear Insurers, which administers the industry's collective insurance pool, has not excluded acts of terrorism from coverage eligibility. In response to last September's events, it limited industry liability to $200 million, said John Quattrocchi, the senior vice president of underwriting.

NO FEDERAL PAYMENTS EVER MADE

Reid also criticized the bill as an unfair subsidy for the industry. He asked a Nuclear Regulatory Commission official at the hearing to identify any other industry that enjoys a government-backed insurance program.

"The short answer is no," said William Kane, the agency's deputy executive director for reactor programs.

Kane said that so far, the U.S. government "has not paid a penny" for nuclear accident claims, and that the act gives adequate public protection.

To bolster his case, Reid enlisted supermodel Christie Brinkley to appear at the hearing.

Brinkley spoke against the inadequacy of nuclear accident insurance and U.S. funding of alternative energy sources. "You can get insurance against a meteor hitting your home, but not one private insurance company in America will cover your home from a nuclear power plant accident," Brinkley said.

----

NRC seeks revised standards for US nuke waste site;
public should comment within 75 days

REUTERS USA:
January 25, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/14190/story.htm

WASHINGTON - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission this week proposed revised guidelines for determining whether it should issue a license for the U.S. government's planned nuclear waste storage site in Nevada.

The Energy Department earlier this month accepted Yucca Mountain as the final resting place for radioactive waste from the nation's nuclear power plants. The site would store 70,000 tons of waste for about 10,000 years deep within the mountain.

The NRC said it will consider changing its guidelines to exclude "unlikely events" like volcano eruptions from the guaranteed protection of groundwater supplies at the proposed Yucca Mountain waste repository near Las Vegas.

The new guidelines would exclude "features, events or processes that are estimated to have less than a 10 percent chance of occurring within 10,000 years" at the site, NRC said in a release.

NRC will take public comment on its proposal for 75 days.

Some $8 billion has been spent over the last 20 years to determine if Yucca Mountain would be a safe storage site, with critics contending the studies have shown it is unsuitable.

The major concern over making Yucca Mountain a repository is the question of whether the radioactive waste will contaminate ground water in the area.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham is expected to soon forward his department's formal approval recommendation for the site to President George W. Bush.

If Nevada objects to the administration's plan, as is likely, Congress would have 90 days to decide the issue with a simple majority vote. The NRC would then decide whether to issue a license for the site.

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 Yucca Mountain site is not expected be in operation until at least 2010.

----

ENVIROS PELT ENERGY TASK FORCE WITH LAWSUITS

January 25, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2002/2002L-01-25-09.html

WASHINGTON, DC, One day after the Department of Energy (DOE) rebuffed a lawsuit seeking release of the list of companies, individuals and other outside groups that helped develop the White House energy policy, a new lawsuit has been filed.

On Thursday, the DOE told the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) that the Bush administration has not refused to disclose names of outside interests working with the Vice President Richard Cheney's energy task force - while once again refusing to provide that very information, NRDC said.

"The American people have a right to know who is making our energy policy," said NRDC attorney Sharon Buccino. "The government's continued refusal to answer the question can't help but raise the question: What are they hiding?"

In response, the Sierra Club filed suit today against the energy task force under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, asking that the White House give a full accounting of who from private industry participated in crafting the national energy policy it introduced last May.

"It's extremely unfortunate that it takes a lawsuit to learn out how much influence polluting companies had over a policy affecting all Americans. If the White House had conducted their meetings in the light of day, we wouldn't need this lawsuit," said Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club. "The American people were shut out of this process while energy companies and oil industry were given the red carpet treatment. Americans deserve to know what happened behind those closed doors - and the law requires it."

Congressional investigators have been told that the task force had six meetings with now bankrupt energy giant Enron, but the administration refuses to reveal who else had a hand in shaping the energy plan.

The Cheney task force drafted the administration policy proposing massive subsidies to oil, coal and nuclear power companies, and extensive regulatory changes that would benefit them. The DOE was a lead federal agency working with the energy task force.

"The energy policy that eventually came out of those meetings heavily favors the outdated and polluting fossil fuel industries whose representatives appear to have helped draft the policy," said Sierra Club's Pope. "If the Administration built its energy policy on the recommendations of the likes of Enron, Americans deserve to know about it before it's too late."

The NRDC says it will ask the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to force the DOE to release its information.

"The administration is bending over backward to avoid providing even the most basic facts on the big energy companies and other special interests that might have influenced these highly controversial policies," said Buccino.

The NRDC lawsuit was filed in December, eight months after the environmental group filed Freedom of Information Act requests for the information. The U.S. General Accounting Office has filed a similar request.

-------- australia

More than 20 leaks of radioactive fluid at uranium mine

Friday, January 25, 2002
By Emma Tinkler,
Associated Press
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2002/01/01252002/ap_46238.asp

SYDNEY, Australia - Officials investigating a large spill of radioactive waste at a uranium mine in the Australian outback found there have been 24 other leaks at the site.

Details of the leaks, which were not publicly disclosed at the time, have prompted the South Australian state government to review reporting procedures of all such spills, officials said. They also said the leaks were not considered harmful to the public.

Earlier this month, some 15,600 gallons of radioactive fluid leaked from a pipe at the Beverley uranium mine, 370 miles north of the state capital, Adelaide. The spill was not publicly disclosed until more than 24 hours later.

Mine operator, Heathgate Resources, said the liquid was composed of salty ground water, sulfuric acid, uranium, and oxygen and was "naturally radioactive." A spokesman, Stephen Middleton, said the spill was contained in a drain surrounding the complex and had posed no threat to the environment, the public, or mine workers.

The Jan. 11 spill brought calls from environmentalists for the closure of the mine, located in an isolated, sparsely populated desert area.

A full report into the spill and conditions under which the Beverley mine could resume commercial operations would be released later this week, said a spokeswoman for the South Australia state mines minister.

Investigations after the spill found there have been 24 other leaks at the mine over the last two years, three of which were listed as more than 520 gallons, government officials said. All the spills were considered minor and were not harmful to the public.

Heathgate Resources, a subsidiary of the San Diego-based General Atomics, underlined that the spills caused no environmental damage. "People are making great issue that there were 24 spills, but they had no environmental or occupational health and safety consequences," said Heathgate Vice President Stephen Middleton. "It's unnecessarily alarmed a large number of people."

But concerned that the leaks went little noticed for so long, the state government will review the system for reporting radioactive spills at uranium mines, said a spokeswoman for state Mines Minister Wayne Matthew.

Heathgate Resources fulfilled its obligations by informing mines inspectors of the leaks, Middleton said.

The mines ministry said the rules should be revised to require that more senior officials be notified. Under the current system, "we have technical experts who assess the level or risk from any incidents, but it's the government's view that ministers also need to be advised every time there is one of these incidents," the spokeswoman said.

Heathgate Resources welcomed the review of reporting procedures, which it said are "severe in the extreme."

"We believe that a better solution might be to establish a reporting procedure that classifies spills not only on the numbers and the size of them but on the environmental consequences," Middleton said.

Environmental groups said the spills pose dangers to workers and the underground water supply and have called for the mine to be closed.

Australian Conservation Foundation spokesman Dave Sweeney said the technique used at the mine, known as in situ leach or ISL, involving pumping acid underground, was not approved in any other of the major industrialized nations and had in the past caused serious pollution in eastern Europe. "The Beverley mine is fundamentally unsustainable both in the product it's mining and the way it's doing it," said Sweeney.

-------- britain

British Energy restarts Dungeness nuclear reactor

REUTERS UK:
January 25, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/14186/story.htm

LONDON - British Energy restarted the 550-megawatt reactor 21 at its Dungeness B nuclear power station in southern England earlier yesterday, according to data from the National Grid.

British Energy could not immediately be reached for comment.

The reactor had been off since January 6 in an outage for refuelling. It had reached about half capacity by 0845 GMT yesterday, according to the Grid's BM Reports website.

Nuclear plants have to be restarted gradually, taking several hours to return to full production.

British Energy restarted the 550-megawatt reactor 22 at the 1,100 megawatt Dungeness B plant on Saturday. Reactor 22 had been off for two weeks while engineers worked on a faulty sprinkler system. UK: UPDATE - British Energy restarts Dungeness nuclear reactor.

LONDON - British Energy restarted the 550-megawatt reactor 21 at its Dungeness B nuclear power station in southern England earlier yesterday, according to data from the National Grid .

British Energy could not immediately be reached for comment.

The reactor had been off since January 6 in an outage for refuelling. It had reached about half capacity by 0845 GMT yesterday, according to the Grid's BM Reports website.

Nuclear plants have to be restarted gradually, taking several hours to return to full production.

British Energy restarted the 550-megawatt reactor 22 at the 1,100 megawatt Dungeness B plant on Saturday. Reactor 22 had been off for two weeks while engineers worked on a faulty sprinkler system.

-------- china

China upgrades Su-30s

January 25, 2002
Inside the Ring
Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020125-67125491.htm

The Chinese military is outfitting its Russian-made Su-30 fighter bombers with C-801 anti-ship cruise missiles, U.S. intelligence officials said.

The upgrade will give China's air force a major new strike capability against ships, the officials said.

The C-801 is modeled after the French Exocet anti-ship missile. Until recently, the weapon was deployed on Chinese destroyers, submarines and patrol boats, with a version known as the C-802 deployed on shore-based batteries.

Adding the missile to the Su-30 is a new development that was detected by U.S. intelligence agencies in the past several months.

According to the intelligence officials, the upgrade is not going smoothly. The Chinese military is having problems with fuel shortages for the C-801 in the new air-launched model, they said. The air-launched missile uses a turbojet engine, which increases its range over the ship-based solid-fuel model.

China took delivery of 30 Su-30s from Russia last year and has a contract for some 30 additional bombers, along with two additional Sovremenny guided missile destroyers, the officials said.

Beginning in November, China started flying Su-30s over the Taiwan Strait as part of the ongoing tit-for-tat aerial standoff with Taiwan's air force.


-------- depleted uranium

Nuclear team heads for Baghdad

CNN
Fri, 25 Jan 2002
From: uranium@t-online.de

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A team of nuclear experts is due to arrive in Baghdad for an annual inspection of Iraq's uranium stockpiles.

The International Atomic Energy Agency's team is unrelated to U.N. weapons inspections blocked by the Iraqi government since the end of 1998.

But it is essential in verifying that Iraq is not diverting uranium stocks left in the country for use in weapons.

The seven-member team will examine low-enriched uranium sealed by the IAEA after it dismantled Iraq's nuclear programme following the Gulf War.

High-enriched uranium, which could more easily be used in weapons, was removed from Iraq by the agency.

RESOURCES In-Depth: Gulf War anniversary

The team will also examine stockpiles of depleted and natural uranium.

For the first time the team includes safety experts who will ensure that the uranium is being properly stored and the containers are not leaking radiation.

The IAEA, the world's nuclear watchdog, conducted more intrusive inspections after the Gulf War under the same mandate as U.N. weapons inspectors.

Those inspections stopped when all the weapons inspectors pulled out of Iraq in December 1998 just hours before a major U.S. bombing.

Iraq is demanding that U.N. sanctions against it be lifted before the inspectors return.

The IAEA had declared Iraq's nuclear program essentially dead. But since the standoff over allowing nuclear and other inspections to resume, the agency says it cannot certify that Iraq is not trying to revive that programme.

-------

Gulf War answers needed to combat terrorists

IAN BRUCE,
UK Herald,
January 25, 2002
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/archive/25-1-19102-0-9-58.html

A NEW call for a public inquiry into Gulf War syndrome was made yesterday in Washington by Lord Morris of Manchester, who warned that definitive results were vital to combat the chemical and biological threats posed by the al Qaeda terrorists.

The Labour peer, who has campaigned on behalf of afflicted participants in the 1991 conflict, told a US congressional sub-committee on veterans' affairs and international relations that many of those stricken by various illnesses attributed to service in the region felt there had been "preventable delay" in dealing with their problems.

He described the Ministry of Defence's protection for troops against chemical and biological warfare as an immunisation programme which amounted to "a veritable blitzkrieg on the immune system".

More than 520 British veterans have died since 1991 and up to 5000 more continue to be affected by debilitating symptoms which include memory loss, neurological problems and kidney failure, representing 10% of the 52,000 British service personnel deployed.

Many are convinced their illnesses are the result of a combination of experimental immunisation, environmental fallout from oil wells set ablaze by the Iraqis, over-use of insecticides to protect units in the field and contamination by depleted uranium shells, he said.

"They have been told that MoD studies on possible adverse health effects are continuing, but that final results will not be available until 2003. By that time, the jury will have been out for 13 years on this issue. That begs important questions about the protection of troops now engaged in the struggle with a terrorist adversary known to be seeking chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

"The British government has argued nothing would be gained by a public inquiry, but has not ruled out the possibility of such an inquiry if the facts warrant it.

"Of all the duties it falls to parliamentarians to discharge, none is of more compelling priority than to act justly to citizens prepared to lay down their lives for their country and the dependents of those who have done so.

"There was no delay in the response of our troops to the call of duty in 1990-91. Nor should there be any delay now in discharging in full our debt of honour to them."

Despite MoD refusal to accept the concept of a single, Gulf service cause for the medical condition of thousands of servicemen from the war, independent researchers from the universities of Manchester and Alberta in Canada claim that Gulf veterans are twice as likely to complain of ill-health than other armed services' personnel.

The Pentagon has also refused to acknowledge the "syndrome", but is conducting its own ongoing tests on behalf of the 500,000 UDS troops who took part in operations in 1991.

-Jan 25th

----

USEC request to import (!) DU

From: uranium@t-online.de
Fri, 25 Jan 2002
WISE Uranium Project
http://www.antenna.nl/wise/uranium

In a letter to USEC, NRC stated on Jan. 18, 2002, that an import license can only be issued if an acceptable disposal approach is provided, including, for example, an agreement with DOE or a contract with a licensed Low-Level Radioactive Waste disposal site, accepting the material for disposal. Moreover, "for purposes of the issuance of a specific license to import DUF6, this material would be _classified as waste_ since there is not a clear foreseeable use." (emphasis added)

Peter Diehl
E-Mail: uranium@t-online.de
Am Schwedenteich 4,
D-01477 Arnsdorf, Germany
Phone: +49-35200-20737

-------- europe

Bulgarian PM sows confusion over N-plant

REUTERS BULGARIA:
January 25, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/14192/story.htm

SOFIA - Bulgaria's Prime Minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg appeared to have sown confusion over when the European Union aspirant state plans to close two of the older reactors at its Kozloduy nuclear power plant.

The local media have interpreted his remarks made this week as a surprise agreement, under pressure from the European Commission to close them in 2006.

This week the premier and top government officials failed to clarify the issue which had triggered public uproar in which opposition demanded a special parliamentary hearing.

Bulgaria bowed to the EU pressure in 2000 and agreed to shut down Kozloduy's first two oldest 440-megawatt reactors, number one and two, before 2003.

But there is still no clarity on when it would close the other two 440 MW reactors, number three and four.

According to a 1999 deal with the European Commission, Bulgaria should close them in 2008 and 2010, respectively, but in the last two annual reports on Bulgaria the commission insisted it should be in 2006 at the latest.

Most Bulgarian officials have been saying that the two reactors in question have been modernised to be safe and the country which is the main power exporter in the Balkans cannot afford to close them so early.

On Tuesday, Saxe-Coburg talking to reporters after meeting Prime Minister Costas Simitis of Greece, a main supporter of an earlier closure, told reporters:

"We have taken firm international obligations to take reactors one and two out of exploitation by the end of this year and will make neccessary efforts to meet the dates of taking out of use reactors number three and four."

Local newspapers said that when asked later on Tuesday if he meant 2006, the former king answered: "Things are moving in this direction".

This week, Saxe-Coburg said: "We are making efforts to combine the interests of Bulgaria and the European Union."

Several ministers made evasive statements.

Deputy Prime Minister Kostadin Paskalev said that the issue would be addressed in a new energy strategy which the government would approve after January 31.

"It is not clear. And I am telling you this clearly - it is not clear yet. Until we approve that strategy everything else is just tales," he said.

Energy Minister Milko Kovachev told reporters:

"I can not make any comment. I think that a solution to the question is to publish the 1999 agreement (with the European Commission)...There is an agreement."

The Soviet-designed 3,760 MW Kozloduy plant, which has two other 1,000 MW recators, supplies some 44 percent of Bulgaria's power a year. It produced 19 billion kWh last year, its highest output for 10 years.

Bulgaria opened the energy chapter in its pre-accession talks with the EU in November and hopes to close it in 2003.

-------- india / pakistan

Ominous war sign

January 25, 2002
Inside the Ring
Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020125-67125491.htm

Intelligence reports are providing further evidence that the standoff between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan is far from over.

Officials tell us the latest indicator of a potential war involves recent discussions between the Indian and Russian governments for the rapid resupply of weapons and equipment for the Indian armed forces.

Officials familiar with the reports said India wants Russia to provide spare parts for its Su-27 fighter-bombers. As part of the discussions, Indian officials have asked the Russians if they could provide the spare parts within two weeks after the requests are made, a much faster turnaround than is seen in the normal process of resupply, the officials said.

In exchange for the expedited shipment of parts, Indian officials are holding out the prospect of large future purchases of Russian arms.

Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes was in Washington last week. He met with representatives of U.S. defense contractors, holding out the prospect that the Indian military's modernization efforts - in the past based mostly on Russian weapons - could shift in favor of U.S. systems. Mr. Fernandes made no mention of the recent discussions with the Russians on the Su-27 spare parts and potential new weapons purchases.

The intelligence indicators continue to show that both the Pakistani and Indian armies are preparing for a conflict. India's forces are 90 percent deployed in combat positions and Pakistan is building five short-range missile launch sites.

Bush administration officials have said tensions appear to have cooled somewhat after the visit to the region by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.

----

India Test-Fires Intermediate-Range Missile

By THE NEW YORK TIMES
January 25, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/25/international/asia/25INDI.html

NEW DELHI - India this morning successfully test- fired an intermediate range missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, the Press Trust of India reported, quoting defense officials. Defense Minister George Fernandes was reportedly present when the missile, known as the Agni, was launched from an island off the coast of the eastern state of Orissa at 8:50 a.m.

India has a complement of more than 70 short range, nuclear-capable missile, the Prithvis, that have been moved closer to the border with Pakistan in the current military build up in the confrontation with Pakistan. But India's ability to fire a longer range missile has not been as well established.

A reliable intermediate range missile would give India the capacity to strike deeper into Pakistan, and to base the missles more safely deep inside Indian territory, rather than close to the border. India's decision to test at a moment when tensions between India and Pakistan are a dangerous pitch will likely be seen as a threatening move in Islamabad.

---

India tests nuclear-capable missile

January 25, 2002
By Harbaksh Singh Nanda
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/25012002-021606-7504r.htm

NEW DELHI, Jan. 25 (UPI) -- India on Friday successfully test fired its nuclear-capable missile, a move neighboring Pakistan termed a threat to the regional stability.

The shorter-range version Agni-II missile, capable of delivering a nuclear warhead up to a distance of 500 miles, was fired from Wheeler's Island off India's eastern coast.

The intermediate or the longer-range versions of the Agni missiles can target up to a distance of 1,550 miles and was last tested Jan. 17.

The missile test comes while India and Pakistan are involved in a massive military buildup along their shared border following the Dec. 13 attack on Indian Parliament that New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-based extremist groups.

Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said the launch of Agni missile was part of "several steps" taken to bolster country's security.

"For the nation's security and protection, we are taking several steps and Agni is one among them," Vajpayee said after Friday's missile test.

Pakistan sharply reacted, saying, "We hope the international community will take note of this Indian behavior, which is prejudicial to the pursuit of stability in our region, especially during the current situation."

A statement issued by the foreign office in Islamabad said: "The test comes at a time of tensions when the Indian forces are massed on our borders... On its part, Pakistan favors a policy of restraint in the region."

Press Trust of India quoted the statement as saying Pakistan has the means to defend itself.

A spokeswoman of India's foreign ministry, however, said the timing of the launch was solely guided by technical considerations and there was no political significance or relationship with any event.

"We do not view missile tests as sending a political message," Nirupama Rao told reporters.

She said the heads of missions of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council -- the United States, Russia, United Kingdom, China and France -- along with Germany the Pakistan deputy high commissioner in New Delhi were informed of the test "over the last two days."

"It was not an abrupt or a sudden test," she said. "Everything was done in a transparent manner."

This is the sixth time India test-fired its intermediate range ballistic missile since it was developed in 1999. The first test of Agni prompted neighboring Pakistan to test fire its medium range Ghauri missile.

The Indian-built Agni, or fire, is part of the integrated guided missile program of India's Defense Research and Development Organization.

That program also includes the surface-to-air missile Akash, or sky, surface-to-surface missile Prithvi, or earth, naval surface-to-air missile Trishul, or Trident, and the anti-tank missile Nag, or Cobra.

Meanwhile, India's top most nuclear scientist said the country has the capability to retaliate with "multiple effect" if a nuclear weapon was used against it.

A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, also known as father of India's nuclear technology, told reporters India stands by its "the no first-use (nuclear) philosophy." "But, India can and has the capability to retaliate with multiple effect," he said.

----

India Successfully Tests Missile

Fri Jan 25,
By ASHOK SHARMA,
Associated Press Writer
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&u=/ap/20020125/ap_on_re_as/india_missile_test_14

NEW DELHI, India (AP) - India tested a new nuclear-capable missile Friday and announced it will not pull troops back from Pakistan's border anytime soon, raising tensions with its rival neighbor and drawing international criticism.

Officials said the missile, a shorter-range version of the intermediate-range Agni-I, was successfully fired over the Bay of Bengal from Wheeler's Island off the coast of Orissa state in eastern India. The missile's range is 420 miles.

The test drew immediate criticism from Pakistan — deadlocked in a dispute with India over violence in divided Kashmir — and from the United States, Britain and Germany. All said it sent the wrong signals amid the tension with India's nuclear-armed neighbor.

"We hope the international community will take note of this Indian behavior, which is prejudicial to the pursuit of stability in our region, especially during the current situation," Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said. It added, "Pakistan has the means to defend itself."

Indian officials said the test was routine and had no political meaning. They said it was scheduled months ago, well before a deadly Dec. 13 attack on the Indian Parliament prompted both India and Pakistan to mass forces along their border.

"The test was conducted in a non-provocative manner and has no bearing on the situation on the India-Pakistan border," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Nirupama Rao said. "This should not aggravate any tensions on the border or between India and Pakistan."

India accused two Pakistan-based Islamic militant groups and Pakistan's intelligence agency in the Parliament raid, in which 14 people were killed, including the five attackers. It has demanded that Pakistan's government stop all cross-border attacks by militants based in Pakistan.

Hundreds of thousands of Indian and Pakistani soldiers, missiles, fighter jets and tanks have faced each other across their border since last month in the two nations' biggest military standoff in decades.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, who tried to nudge the rivals toward dialogue in a visit to the region last week, said he would have preferred that India "had not performded that test at this time of high tension." But he said he did not think it would further inflame relations with Pakistan.

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer also criticized the timing of the test, saying, "Against the background of the current tensions with Pakistan, this test could lead to avoidable misunderstandings."

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said, "I believe that restraint in developing possible nuclear weapon delivery systems is in the long-term interest of India and the region."

A U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the missile launch was long expected and did not demonstrate any new Indian capabilities. The most advanced version of the Agni — the word for fire in Hindi — can reach 1,500 miles.

India says it is developing its missile program as a deterrent against Pakistan and China.

India and Pakistan both conducted nuclear tests in 1998, raising fears that nuclear weapons could be used if they go to war again — as they have three times since gaining independence from Britain in 1947.

Two of the wars between Hindu-majority India and Islamic Pakistan have been over Kashmir, a mostly Muslim Himalayan region divided between them and claimed by both.

Islamic militants, some based in Pakistan, have been fighting Indian rule in Kashmir for 12 years. More than 32,000 civilians, militants and Indian troops have been killed.

India accuses Pakistan of funding and arming the groups and sponsoring attacks on Indian soil, both in Kashmir and in some cases elsewhere — such as in the Parliament attack.

Also under pressure from the United States, its ally in the campaign against terrorism, Pakistan banned several Islamic groups, including the two accused in the Parliament attack, and made hundreds of arrests.

In a Jan. 12 speech, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf promised not to allow any terrorist activity targeting Indian-controlled Kashmir. But India says the words have not been matched by action.

On Friday, Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani said India would need several months to judge whether there has been a letup in "cross-border terrorism" and repeated India's demand that Pakistan extradite 20 men wanted on suspicions of terrorist acts in India.

"At the moment, the government decision is that the present situation will continue," Advani said, referring to the troop deployments.

In New Delhi, sharpshooters, bomb disposal squads, air defense teams and 65,000 police took up positions in a show of tight security for a parade Saturday marking the Republic Day holiday. Top Indian leaders will attend.

In a message to Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee marking the day, Musharraf offered a "serious and sustained dialogue" to ease tension. The message was released to the media early Saturday and there was no immediate reaction from India, which rejected a similar overture earlier this month.

----

Prime Minister of India Says Missile Test Good for Security

January 25, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-arms-india-test.html

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said the test-firing of a short-range missile Friday would be good for the country's security, though Pakistan said it could destabilize the already tense region.

Vajpayee was speaking to reporters after India announced it had tested a variant of its nuclear-capable Agni missile as part of a series of tests to guarantee the credibility of its nuclear forces and deter China and Pakistan.

``This will be beneficial from India's security point of view. The date of the test had been decided beforehand. I once again congratulate our scientists,'' he said.

A defense ministry statement quoted Defense Minister George Fernandes as saying that the ``mission was flawless and enhanced India's capability in deployment of such surface-to-surface missile systems.''

The foreign ministry said the missile test was meant to enhance the credibility of its nuclear deterrent. India has ruled out first use of nuclear weapons, but says its nuclear capability is meant as a deterrent to nuclear-armed China and nuclear-capable Pakistan.

India has fought three wars with Pakistan since bother became independent from Britain in 1947 and fought a border war with China 40 years ago.

Pakistan, which exploded a nuclear device in 1998 following a similar detonation by India, condemned the latest test.

``We hope the international community will take note of this Indian behavior, which is prejudicial to the pursuit of stability in our region, especially during the current situation,'' the Pakistan foreign ministry said in a statement.

-------- missile defense

U.S. Prepares to Test Sea - Based Missile Defense

January 25, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-arms-usa-missile.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military prepared on Friday to launch a prototype interceptor missile from an Aegis cruiser in the latest test of a sea-based leg of President Bush's planned ballistic missile defense.

Eager to curb expectations, the Pentagon said a hit was not its chief goal. But it termed it ``probable'' the interceptor and the Aries target missile would collide in space over the U.S. Pacific Missile Range Facility at Kauai, Hawaii, given the flight path.

``It's the walking before running part,'' said Cheryl Irwin, a Pentagon spokeswoman. She referred to the exercise as a flyby in case the target, built by Orbital Sciences Corp., eluded the Raytheon Co. built Standard Missile-3.

Lockheed Martin Corp., the system integrator, builds the Aegis combat system and phased-array SPY-1D radar used to guide the missile to its target.

The sea-based test was scheduled to take place between 9 p.m. EST on Friday and 1 a.m. EST on Saturday after a four-hour postponement because a U.S. Navy medical evacuation ship was passing by, the Pentagon said. It would be the first operational flight outside the Earth's atmosphere of the ``LEAP'' kinetic warhead designed to knock out an incoming medium- or long-range ballistic missile outside the atmosphere.

The test, being carried out by the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency and the U.S. Navy, was designed to evaluate the warhead's guidance, navigation and control capabilities. The first sea-based test specifically aimed at testing interception is scheduled to take place at an unspecified date this spring.

U.S. plans for a missile defense system have been opposed by China and Russia. Washington last year abandoned the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which prohibits deployment of missile defense, and critics expressed fears the move could spark an arms race.

On Friday, the guided-missile cruiser USS Lake Erie's Aegis combat system was to track the Aries target missile launched from Kauai as it rose above the horizon, then launch the Standard Missile-3 tipped with the fourth-stage kinetic warhead.

The launch would be the fourth in a planned series of nine flight tests for the sea-based midcourse missile defense program, formerly called the Navy Theater Wide ballistic missile defense program.

Backers of a sea-based missile defense say it would provide the United States with a mobile shield that could easily be reconfigured to counter the perceived threat from countries like North Korea, Iraq and Iran. Such a system also could provide regional coverage, for instance to shield U.S. allies or troops deployed overseas.

The largest U.S. missile defense program is a ground-based system, with Boeing Co. as prime contractor, that the Bush administration hopes to start operating in rudimentary form in Alaska by 2004.

Bush's layered approach to missile defense entails a broad research and testing effort that also includes experimental space-based and airborne lasers. Pentagon officials say they need the flexibility to deploy whichever weapons prove most effective.

-------- russia

Stalled Talks Prompt Security Concern

January 25, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Uranium-Deal.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A U.S. company that sells nuclear fuel taken from old Soviet weapons is at loggerheads with Russian negotiators over the purchase price.

The dispute has some Bush administration officials worried about the future of the ``megatons to megawatts'' program that serves the dual purpose of keeping nuclear weapons away from terrorists and supplying fuel to commercial U.S. reactors.

The latest round of talks between USEC Inc. of Bethesda, Md., and its Russian counterpart, Tenex, ended Friday in Moscow without a deal.

USEC executives say the negotiations are progressing normally, and there's no threat to the U.S. government-backed program. But Russian officials have grown impatient and asked the Bush administration to intervene.

USEC is a former government entity that was privatized in 1998. It is the government-appointed middleman that buys the Russian nuclear fuel and sells it to U.S. utilities. The recycled fuel accounts for about half the low-enriched uranium used in the nation's nuclear plants.

A five-year fixed pricing agreement between USEC and Tenex expired at the end of last year. USEC says the fixed rate was too high. It wants a 10-year agreement with a lower price that will fluctuate with the uranium market.

Gaining a lower price is key for USEC, which has seen its stock price drop by about half in the last four years. The company made a $41 million profit in the fiscal year that ended in June, but that was down more than 60 percent from the previous year.

USEC operates the nation's only uranium enrichment plant, in Paducah, Ky. Bush administration officials have said they want to ensure a domestic supplier of enriched uranium exists, so USEC's financial viability is important.

USEC's initial proposal to Tenex has changed little since it was offered in May 2000, and Russian officials are growing impatient. The lack of progress also has Bush administration officials worried.

In a Jan. 8 letter to USEC, Undersecretary of Energy Robert Card said he fears ``if the outstanding issues in the negotiation are not resolved expeditiously, the United States could find itself with a nuclear power fuel shortage.''

In an unusually tart response, USEC President and CEO William Timbers replied that such concerns are ``unwarranted and disingenuous.''

USEC has not placed an order with the Russians for the current year. Normally, orders would have been placed in October for deliveries in March. USEC spokesman Charles Yulish said Friday the company has an inventory of low-enriched uranium, so U.S. power plants will not be left without a supply.

Russia's minister of atomic energy, Alexander Rumyantsev, sent Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham a letter Jan. 15 recommending government-to-government negotiations. Rumyantsev complained USEC was trying to secure an artificially low price.

``USEC's proposals aim to create a price-setting mechanism, which would help the company solve its financial difficulties at the expense of the Russian party,'' Rumyantsev wrote.

Abraham turned down the request. Meantime, the U.S. ambassador to Russia, Alexander Vershbow, sent Russia's finance minister a letter urging the Russian government ``to encourage Tenex to work to resolve the remaining differences, which in our view do not lend themselves to resolution by governments.''

National security analysts say they are troubled by the back and forth because so much is at stake.

``This deal is critical to the future of international security. To see it fail would be an enormous tragedy,'' said Bill Hoehn, a director at the Russian American Nuclear Security Advisory Council, a nonprofit research organization.

Russia gets roughly $500 million annually from the megatons-to-megawatts program, which has destroyed 5,600 warheads.

-------- treaties

Russian official, Powell discuss arms-cut deal

World Scene
January 27, 2002
Combined dispatches and staff reports
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020127-99721462.htm

MOSCOW - Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov spoke by telephone to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to discuss efforts to work out a new arms-control agreement, the Foreign Ministry said yesterday. Their conversation "confirmed the mutual disposition to work out a legally binding agreement on radical and verifiable reductions of strategic offensive arms," the ministry said. At a summit in Texas in November, President Bush pledged to slash U.S. nuclear arsenals to between 1,700 and 2,200, while Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that Russia could go as low as 1,500 warheads. Russia has pushed for a formal written treaty on the cuts, something U.S. officials have indicated they are willing but not eager to do.

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

US to use weapons plutonium as nuclear plant fuel

REUTERS USA:
January 25, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/14191/story.htm

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration this week unveiled a plan to convert 34 metric tons of surplus weapons-grade plutonium into fuel for nuclear power plants.

The plan will allow the United States to comply with a Sept. 2000 agreement with Russia to dispose of an equal amount of surplus plutonium, said the Department of Energy (DOE), which will oversee the program.

The plan to turn the material into mixed oxide fuel is a result of the administration's review of nonproliferation goals agreed by the United States and Russia, including high-tech disposal methods.

The plan "is central to enhancing our national security and advancing our nonproliferation goals," Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said in a release.

Conversion will cost $3.8 billion over 20 years, including construction of two new facilities at the DOE's Savannah River weapons and research site in South Carolina, set to begin in 2004, DOE said.

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

-------- nevada

Las Vegas sues to halt nuclear dump

January 25, 2002
UPI
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/25012002-122615-5062r.htm

WASHINGTON, Jan. 25 (UPI) -- Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman on Thursday filed a lawsuit to stop Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham from recommending that the nation's nuclear waste be buried in southern Nevada.

Goodman, attending the U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting in Washington, filed a joint petition with U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on behalf of Las Vegas and Clark County.

Abraham has said he plans to tell President Bush that Yucca Mountain is a suitable place for the nation's nuclear waste. The proposed site is 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

"The recommendation of Yucca Mountain as a high level waste repository will cause immediate and irreparable harm to the city of Las Vegas and Clark County," the suit charges.

According to the suit, the damage would include but not be limited to "a reduction of property values, a reduction of the city and county tax base, a reduction of tourism, a reduction of the population and/or population growth, and high levels of anxiety and stress among the people who resident in the city and county."

Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis was unavailable for comment late Thursday.

--------

Panel Looks at Yucca Mountain Site

January 25, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Nuclear-Waste.html or
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39580-2002Jan25.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A panel of scientists says the Energy Department's plan to store nuclear waste in Nevada is fraught with uncertainties.

Indeed, the scientists say, no matter where the waste is put, it will be impossible to avoid unexpected problems over the more than 10,000 years the material will be highly radioactive.

The findings of the oversight board come as the White House prepares, possibly within weeks, to give the go-ahead for the Yucca Mountain waste project in Nevada. The Energy Department signed off on the site earlier this month.

The scientists emphasized in a letter sent to congressional leaders and the department that they were making no judgment on whether Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, should be designated for long-term burial of 77,000 tons of nuclear waste.

The panel, which was created by Congress as a technical watchdog in the search for a nuclear waste site, acknowledged that it had found no single issue ``that would automatically eliminate'' Yucca Mountain as a waste repository.

But the 11-member board said the Energy Department's analysis of the facility depends largely on computer models that try to predict performance thousands of years in the future -- and that poses scientific uncertainties that must be considered.

Despite 13 years of scientific study of the Yucca site, there remain ``gaps in data and basic understanding'' of how the volcanic rock and hydrology -- as well as the man-made barriers that would contain the waste -- will perform over tens of thousands of years, the panel said in its report released Friday.

As a result, the board has ``limited confidence'' in the Energy Department's predictions that the site will provide the protection that is anticipated over many centuries. It urged the department to find ways to make their projections ``more realistic.''

At the same time, the panel acknowledged ``eliminating all uncertainty associated with (future) performance would never be possible at any repository.''

Policy makers will have to decide ``how much scientific uncertainty is acceptable,'' said the board in letters sent Thursday to the Energy Department and congressional leaders.

Two weeks ago, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced he has concluded ``that the science behind this project is sound and that the (Yucca) site is technically suitable'' to keep highly radioactive waste from commercial power plants and the federal weapons program.

He said he planned to give a formal recommendation next month to President Bush to go ahead with the project, which is strongly opposed by Nevada officials who have argued that the government is ignoring safety concerns.

The findings by the panel, formally known as the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board -- its members coming from scientific and engineering disciplines -- are likely to be used by critics of the Yucca project as support for the need for more scientific studies before a green light is given by the president.

But the Energy Department in a statement noted that the panel found no single scientific show-stopper in its review of the Yucca program and took heart in the scientists' declaration that no matter where the waste is put, there will be uncertainties.

The oversight panel has expressed concerns for several years about various aspects of the Yucca project, from the waste site's design and the limitations of using computer models to predict future performance to the reliability of the waste canisters.

In its report, the board said the Energy Department had taken steps to address some of these issues, but that others have not been fully addressed.

For example, the board said it's not certain that the waste canisters will hold up as predicted by project engineers, or that the estimates on how fast wastes will eventually move through the volcanic rocks into groundwater are reliable.

All this, the scientists say, is complicated by the difficulty in predicting performance more than 10,000 years into the future.

Yucca project engineers say a new, much stronger alloy that will be used in waste containers will provide corrosion protection for 10,000 years. But the board said the alloy has only been observed for several decades and its performance for thousands of years is uncertain, especially at high temperatures such as those surrounding the radioactive waste.

Last year, the Energy Department also agreed to consider as a possible option a new design that would allow for much lower temperatures in the disposal area -- something the oversight board has viewed as ``critical'' for years.

But the board said the project engineers have yet to thoroughly compare the benefits of the low-temperature option and made no commitment use that design.

-------- new york

Indian Point Intruders Were Hunters

The Associated Press
Friday, January 25, 2002; 10:45 AM
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37389-2002Jan25?language=printer

BUCHANAN, N.Y. -- Security forces on alert for terrorists at the Indian Point nuclear plants thwarted three turkey hunters, including one who was re-arrested when he returned to retrieve his pellet gun.

Buchanan police said the men were found at 3:10 p.m. Thursday, looking for turkeys on an unfenced section of the Indian Point property. The property was not in a high-security area and the men posed no threat to the plants, the police said.

The men were charged with a trespassing violation and released without bail.

But Willard Jones, 25, of Peekskill, not realizing police had confiscated his rifle, returned to Indian Point to look for it and was arrested again and charged with misdemeanor trespassing, a more serious charge, police said.

Security at the plants has been heightened since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

-------- washington

Wash. Radiation Levels in Dispute

The Associated Press
Friday, January 25, 2002; 7:08 AM
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36500-2002Jan25?language=printer

KENNEWICK, Wash. -- American Indian tribes that fished in the Columbia River were exposed to more radiation from the bordering Hanford Nuclear Reservation than previously thought, a federal report suggests.

The Indians ate so much fish they were more exposed to potentially cancer-causing radiation than were white farmers and other people living in the area, according to a draft report prepared for the U.S. government by Risk Assessment Corp.

The study, presented Wednesday, looks at fish consumption and radiation releases from 1944 to 1972.

Previous studies had been aimed at estimating the exposure rates for people living downwind of the nuclear reservation when radioactive iodine was released into the atmosphere in the 1940s and early 1950s.

Those studies had assumed that people ate about 90 pounds of fish per year, said Ed Liebow, a cultural anthropologist and consultant on the new study.

But historians and representatives of tribes that fished downstream from Hanford say fish were so central to the diet of many Columbia River Indians that they might have been consuming as much as 1 1/2 pounds a day.

-------- us politics

Talbott to Brookings

January 25, 2002
Embassy Row
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020125-67436588.htm

Strobe Talbott, the former deputy secretary of state, has been named president of the Brookings Institution.

Mr. Talbott is to take over the position at the think tank Sept. 1.

"Strobe has the right combination of intellectual rigor, integrity and dedication to public policy to lead Brookings in the years ahead," James A. Johnson, chairman of the Brookings board of trustees, said yesterday in announcing the appointment.

---

Talbott to Preside at Brookings
Think Tank Chooses Clinton Administration Alumnus

By Claudia Deane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 25, 2002; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35243-2002Jan24?language=printer

Veteran diplomat and journalist Strobe Talbott yesterday was named the sixth president of the Brookings Institution, one of the nation's oldest think tanks, whose scholars have helped shape national policy for more than eight decades.

His appointment comes as the institution tries to balance a commitment to in-depth scholarship against a desire to compete with a growing number of think-tank rivals to serve the short-term needs of policymakers, politicians and the media.

"Brookings has made a place for itself in that part of our overall political civic spectrum where I have the most to contribute, which is at the point of intersection between the world of mind -- scholarship, the academy -- and the world of policy," said Talbott, an expert on Russia who has written a half-dozen books on arms control and U.S.-Soviet relations. "It just seemed, when raised as a possibility, to be in many ways the best possible job I could imagine."

Now at Yale University running a center on globalization studies, Talbott is well known in Washington. He served as deputy secretary of state during both terms of the Clinton administration. Before joining the State Department, he spent more than two decades as a reporter, editor and foreign affairs columnist for Time magazine.

Talbott, who was approached by the Brookings Board of Trustees during an eight-month search process, will succeed retiring president Michael H. Armacost in September.

John L. Thornton, president of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and a Brookings trustee, chaired the search committee. Thornton said Brookings chose Talbott because he fulfilled the following characteristics: "The first was significant intellectual and scholarly attainment; second was an intense interest and ability in leading an independent, nonpartisan public policy research institution; and third, an understanding of how to further Brookings' impact on issues of national significance, and in particular, understanding how to affect policy in Washington."

"His familiarity with the media is an added plus," Thornton said.

Named after businessman and philanthropist Robert S. Brookings, the center traces its beginning to 1916. Last year, its operating budget was $33.6 million, and it is one of the few local think tanks with a substantial endowment, currently at $209 million.

Brookings casts itself as centrist and nonideological. In the late 1960s and '70s, it was viewed as decidedly liberal, after being pegged as conservative and business-friendly during the New Deal.

Armacost, who was former president George Bush's ambassador to Japan, brought high-profile scholars with Republican connections. But now Talbott joins a growing number of Clinton administration alumni at the think tank. Talbott's ties to Bill Clinton reach back to the days when the two were Rhodes scholars and housemates at Oxford University.

Two of Brookings' three program directors served in the Clinton administration: foreign policy head James B. Steinberg, a former deputy national security adviser, and economics director Robert E. Litan, who was the associate director of the Office of Management and Budget. Gene B. Sperling, Clinton's national economic adviser, is a visiting fellow.

"There are in the ranks of Brookings leading scholars and thinkers who represent a pretty broad range of political stripes. There are people associated with former Republican and Democratic administrations," Talbott said. "When administrations change and there's a change in party, it's pretty natural you have people passing on the way in and on the way out. . . .

"There is a total commitment on the board's part and on my part to preserving and making sure that the world sees that this is a nonpartisan, independent policy research organization. The priority will be on quality, on independent thinking, on clearheaded analysis," he said.

The recent proliferation of think tanks has forced Brookings' 277 staffers to work harder and faster in order to maintain its high profile. During Armacost's tenure, the think tank put significant resources into its Web site, began a series of shorter policy briefs and built an in-house television studio.

Staff writer Richard Morin contributed to this report.

--------

More Atomic Vets Eligible for Aid

January 25, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Atomic-Veterans.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Thousands of veterans exposed to cancer-causing radiation during atomic tests decades ago will be eligible for compensation under regulations adopted Friday by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The rules add five types of cancer -- brain, bone, colon, lung and ovary -- to the 16 presumed to be connected to radiation exposure during military service. ``Atomic veterans'' who meet the criteria will be eligible for monthly benefits ranging from $103 to $2,163, depending on their level of disability.

The five cancers are being added to the VA's so-called presumptive list -- meaning if a veteran is found to have the disease and participated in ``radiation-risk activities,'' it is presumed the illness is related to service time. The new rules go into effect March 26.

``These veterans accepted the risks of duty and have borne the burden of their illnesses in service to our nation,'' said Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony J. Principi. ``They should not have to bear an additional and unequal burden to prove they deserve the benefits they've so rightfully earned.''

The VA estimates it will grant 11,000 veterans claims, as well as 5,800 dependency claims, over the next 10 years, at a cost of around $800 million.

Since 1994, Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., tried to expand the ``presumptive list'' of cancers legislatively. Although he never succeeded, the VA proposed doing so administratively in 2000, after Congress extended similar protections to civilian employees exposed to radiation.

``This has been a long fight, but one that was well worth it,'' Wellstone said.

Thelma Petrie, whose husband, Bill, died of lung cancer four years ago at the age of 78, recalled fighting for such benefits for decades. Bill Petrie served in the U.S. Navy in ``Operations Crossroads,'' the atomic testing program in the Pacific, in 1946.

``He went over there to give his life, and he didn't ask why,'' said Mrs. Petrie, of Alvord, Texas. ``I think our veterans should be recognized for what they went through.''

VA spokesman Jim Benson said the department waited to establish a scientific connection between the service and the cancers before adding them to the list.

The 16 types of cancer already eligible for compensation include leukemia, thyroid, breast, stomach, liver and esophagus.

Until now, those suffering from brain, bone, colon, lung or ovarian cancer had to prove they were exposed to a set level of radiation to receive compensation. Few could, and many who submitted claims had them denied.

``There have been a lot of atomic veterans who have fallen through the cracks,'' said Joe Violante, a lobbyist for the Disabled American Veterans.


-------- MILITARY
300
US targeting extremists in ex-Soviet states

Friday January 25, 2002
http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/jan2002-daily/25-01-2002/main/main14.htm

TASHKENT: The commander of US forces in Afghanistan General Tommy Franks told Uzbekistan on Thursday that his troops were also targeting Islamic militants opposed to the Uzbek president.A day after Washington criticised a forthcoming referendum that should further tighten President Islam Karimov's grip on power, General Tommy Franks thanked his Uzbek hosts for opening bases to US forces during their campaign against the Taliban.

He told reporters here that while the Taliban were now "largely destroyed", US action would continue, gathering intelligence to prevent more violence and also targeting remnants of the Taliban-allied Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), which Karimov has accused of guerrilla attacks aimed at assassinating him.

Franks said the US was also willing to aid the other former Soviet republics in Central Asia root out Islamic extremists. "On the IMU my comments will focus on Afghanistan because I believe that is where the remnants of IMU, al-Qaeda and perhaps some other groups remain," he said.

Cooperation between the US and the Central Asian states currently centres on intelligence sharing and training but it could expand over the coming months if US assistance was requested, Franks said. "This cooperative arrangement provides opportunities for us to work with all the military forces in the region (and) to provide assistance where it is requested," he added.

He said cooperation with the US would "enable forces in each of the nations of Central Asia to be able to work on the IMU problem if there is perceived to be one in any one of the states locally." Franks reiterated comments made earlier that the US had no plans to establish permanent bases in the region in competition with Moscow, which still views it as its own strategic backyard. On Russian concerns about US forces on its southern flank, he said in Tashkent: "We do not anticipate a permanent presence in any of the countries of the region."

Arriving later in the Tajik capital Dushanbe, Franks was asked specifically if Washington was competing with Moscow in Central Asia: "There is no competition," he said. "Russia is a very strong nation and also a good friend in the coalition." He said the US had no plans to establish military bases in Tajikistan or to challenge Russia's influence in the Central Asia.

Gen Franks said ahead of talks in Dushanbe with Tajik President that the US and its allies would open "locations" across Central Asia to gain access to Afghanistan. But he stressed that Russia was a strong partner in the US-led anti-terror campaign that shared common security interests and served as a prominent member in the military coalition.

"What we will not do immediately is ask President Rakhmonov to open a base only for Americans," Franks told reporters. "You know that we have American forces and forces of other nations who are passing through the Dushanbe airport, and I would anticipate that we would continue to do that for a while, but we are not establishing permanent bases in the region," he said.

-------- afghanistan

CORRECTIONS

Friday, January 25, 2002; Page A02
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35240-2002Jan24?language=printer

A Jan. 24 article inaccurately quoted Michael Chandler, a U.N. sanctions monitor, as saying the Taliban possessed 100 Scud missiles and four mobile Scud launchers before it fell from power. Chandler said the weapons were in Afghanistan but that the United Nations has not determined whether they were under the control of the Taliban or other armed groups.

----

Taliban weapons stash destroyed

By Pamela Hess
Pentagon correspondent
1/25/2002
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=25012002-104354-5696r

WASHINGTON, Jan. 25 (UPI) -- An American AC-130 gunship destroyed what the Pentagon describes as a very large arms cache secreted in a Taliban compound that U.S. forces raided this week, spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said.

Clarke said defense officials, while not surprised by the Taliban nest, were nevertheless struck by the fact that more than 110 days into the conflict large weapons caches and enemy hideouts are still being discovered.

"It is just another sign there is still bad stuff there," Clarke said. "There are still troublesome areas, and people who wish to do harm to us and others."

The two-building compound was near Hazar Qadam, about 40 miles north of Kandahar. A team of special forces soldiers raided the compound midnight Wednesday, killing around 15 Taliban fighters in a firefight. A total of 27 other people were captured.

One U.S. soldier was injured in the ankle during the exchange. He has been flown to a U.S. hospital in Landstuhl, Germany.

Including the 27 detainees captured at Hazar Qadam there are 302 prisoners in U.S. custody in Afghanistan and 158 at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba.

The Afghanistan figure was five more than had been revealed Thursday and Clarke was unclear where the additional five prisoners came from. Five Algerians were arrested by U.S. forces in the Balkans this week.

A congressional delegation of about 25 members and staff are headed to Cuba to inspect the make-shift jail there.

The Defense Department has been criticized about the treatment of the prisoners and the facilities. It maintains the detainees -- to whom it has not accorded the protected status of "prisoners of war" -- are being treated humanely and in general accord with the Geneva Convention.

A team from the International Committee of the Red Cross is on site interviewing the detainees about their treatment and making recommendations for improvements to local commanders.

At least five of the detainees have undergone surgery at the camp for gunshot wounds. A number are receiving treatment for possible tuberculosis.

This week, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld temporarily suspended the transfer of additional detainees to Cuba to prevent overcrowding while additional 8-foot by 6-foot cells are constructed.

-------- africa

Times too harsh with Mugabe?

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
January 25, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/ed-letters-200212518659.htm#3

We have noted that in recent weeks your paper on a regular basis has published pieces on Zimbabwe ("Army support for Mugabe in doubt," World, Jan. 23; "The failures in Africa," Commentary, Jan. 22; "Mugabe's delusions of power," Editorials, Jan. 21). Although we appreciate your interest in what is happening in our country, we are concerned that most of what you publish is intended to denigrate the government of Zimbabwe, particularly President Robert Mugabe.

Unfortunately, your paper and other world newspapers rely on members of Zimbabwe's opposition parties, who are determined to replace the present government, as sources. It is not surprising, then, that what you print paints a negative picture of what the government is doing in Zimbabwe. For example, your Jan. 23 story reports that the army will not support Mr. Mugabe. You base this report, however, on remarks made by Wilfred Mhanda, a disgraced former liberation fighter. Mr. Mhanda was arrested in Mozambique in 1977 as part of a group that tried to undermine the liberation war. He was released just before independence in 1980. He resents Mr. Mugabe and most of the leadership of ZANU-PF, the ruling party. He has never been a member of the Zimbabwean army. Nor does he have close associates in the army. He cannot speak as an authority on the army. Furthermore, his history with the liberation war in Mozambique made it difficult for him to join the official association of the liberation war veterans, which is why he joined the rival anti-government War Liberators Platform.

The Zimbabwean army is a highly disciplined and professional organization that should not be dragged into campaign politics. Unfortunately, recent press reports, similar to your report, have tried to turn the army into a political tool. The recent statement by the chief of the defense forces, Gen. Vitalis Zvinavashe, was an appeal to the press not to drag the defense forces into the current charged political atmosphere.

Your Jan. 21 editorial reiterates accusations against Mr. Mugabe that have been made repeatedly by the opposition in Zimbabwe, especially concerning the land resettlement program and the political violence going on at the moment. As a result, you continue to look at the land issue as theft, and you ignore or downplay Mr. Mugabe's firm promise to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) heads of state that Zimbabwe will hold free and fair elections. You also ignore calls being made by ZANU-PF leaders for the party's members not to engage in violence. The press is making a serious mistake by ignoring this fact.

The Zimbabwean government is determined to hold free and fair elections next March, and it is doing everything in its power to achieve this goal. Mr. Mugabe has promised that the elections will be free and fair, and he will deliver on his promise. He needs your support and encouragement, not your disparagement.

SIMBI V. MUBAKO Ambassador Embassy of the Republic of Zimbabwe Washington

-------- arms sales

U.S. hits China with sanctions over arms sales

January 25, 2002
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020125-97804390.htm

The Bush administration imposed economic sanctions on China yesterday after Beijing was caught selling chemical- and biological-weapons equipment to Iran.

It was the second time in four months that sanctions were imposed on China for its sales of weapons of mass destruction, products and missile goods.

In September, the State Department imposed sanctions on the China Metallurgical Equipment Corp. and Pakistan's National Development Complex. Those sanctions were for Chinese missile-related sales.

"We imposed penalties on three Chinese entities, pursuant to the Iran Nonproliferation Act of 2000," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters yesterday.

The sanctions come weeks before President Bush will visit China as part of a tour of Asia. He is set to leave Feb. 16 for China, Japan and South Korea.

The sanctions were imposed on two companies and one person, Q.C. Chen, Mr. Boucher said.

"The penalties were imposed for the transfer to Iran of equipment and technology that's used for the manufacture of chemical and biological weapons," Mr. Boucher said. The equipment is controlled under a forum known as the Australia Group.

A Chinese Embassy spokesman could not be reached for comment. Spokesmen for the companies and the person sanctioned also could not be reached.

The sanctions were imposed because the transfer "violated the provisions of the law" that require sanctions for chemical and biological weapons sales, Mr. Boucher said.

A U.S. intelligence official said at least one of the chemical-related shipments took place in April and was tracked by U.S. intelligence agencies. No other details on the transfer were made public.

"We've had a long-standing dialogue with China on nonproliferation issues and overall sought to get China to abide by or impose similar standards to those that the rest of the international community follows when it comes to these kinds of transfers," said Mr. Boucher.

Mr. Boucher said the sanctions are "comparable" to those imposed last year for China's missile-related sales to Pakistan.

The missile components were tracked to Pakistan's Shaheen missiles, which are nuclear-capable and thus violated a pledge made by the Chinese government not to export missiles or related goods that could be used for nuclear delivery systems.

Mr. Boucher would not comment on how the Chinese transfers had helped the Iranian chemical- or biological-weapons program.

A notice in the Federal Register, the U.S. government's official notification outlet, stated that the three companies had sold equipment to Iran that violated the statute.

The three Chinese entities hit with the sanctions were identified as Liyang Chemical Equipment; the China Machinery and Electric Equipment Import and Export Co., and Q.C. Chen. One of the companies produces glass-lined equipment, which can be used to produce chemical weapons.

The sanctions bar the companies from doing business with the U.S. government and prevent them from getting any assistance from the United States. The companies are also banned from buying arms, arms-related goods or goods that require export licenses from the United States. The sanctions will be in place for two years.

Gary Milhollin, director of the private Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, said the person identified by the State Department, Mr. Chen, had been hit with sanctions in 1997.

Mr. Milhollin said the sanctions are ineffective since one of the entities was sanctioned in the past and continued its proliferation.

"It's a good thing to sanction these companies, but on the other hand, these sanctions don't really have any teeth," Mr. Milhollin said. "We don't do business with these companies so there is no real penalty and thus no real impact on their activities."

"The big question for Bush's trip [to China] is whether China is really going to change its behavior after September 11," said Mr. Milhollin. "The fact that we had to sanction them shows they probably won't."

A CIA report to Congress made public last year said Iran was one of the most active states seeking to acquire nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and missile systems, primarily from Russia, China and North Korea.

The CIA report said that before the last half of 2001 "Chinese firms had supplied dual-use [chemical-weapons]-related production equipment and technology to Iran." Sanctions were imposed in May 1997 on seven Chinese entities for boosting the Iranian chemical-arms program, the report said.

"Evidence during the current reporting period shows Iran continues to seek such assistance from Chinese entities, but it is unclear to what extent these efforts have succeeded," the report said.

Meanwhile, a senior State Department official said yesterday that the United States is stepping up efforts to pressure states that aid in the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

John Bolton, undersecretary of state for international security, said in a speech to the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament that the United States will use "every method at our disposal" to make sure terrorists do not get weapons of mass destruction.

Mr. Bolton said Iraq and North Korea had violated the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and are interfering with monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

----

U.S. Backs Rules Against Arms Spread

By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 25, 2002; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34852-2002Jan24?language=printer

The Bush administration aims to deny weapons of mass destruction to terrorists and deter the rogue states that help them, but will be selective in its use of international arms control agreements, the State Department's top arms control specialist said yesterday.

Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton said the danger of nuclear Armageddon with Russia has become a "comfortingly remote possibility." He told the 66-nation Conference on Disarmament in Geneva that the international community should focus on threats posed by more nimble players who might deliver chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

Naming Iraq and North Korea as treaty violators, Bolton emphasized the need to enforce existing nonproliferation rules. He said the United States will continue to sanction foreign companies believed to spread dangerous technology or equipment and will support involuntary inspections of suspected chemical weapons offenders.

"I caution those nations that we know are violating the Chemical Weapons Convention: You should not be smug in the assumption that your chemical warfare program will never be uncovered and exposed to the international community," Bolton said. He described the "challenge inspection" as a "flexible and indispensable tool."

The State Department announced yesterday that two Chinese companies and an individual are banned from doing business with the United States for two years. Q.C. Chen, along with Liyang Chemical Co. and China Machinery and Electric Export and Import Co., were accused of delivering to Iran equipment and technology for producing biological or chemical weapons.

Other Chinese companies have been banned, including a firm sanctioned last summer for selling missile technology to Pakistan.

Bolton's words will be studied for clues about the administration's approach to arms control agreements already signed or under revision. In the past year, the administration has withdrawn from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia, announced that a test ban treaty would not be submitted to the Senate for ratification and ruffled feathers by rejecting revisions to the Biological Weapons Convention.

Two days before Bolton's speech, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan pointedly noted the "abrupt end" to seven years of biological weapons talks, while Russian Ambassador Leonid Skotnikov said the administration's behavior reflected "a certain approach, a unilateral one, which runs contrary to security interests of other countries and international security in general."

"We would like to hope," Skotnikov said, "that after the withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, the United States will not treat in a similar way other arms control and disarmament agreements."

Bolton, lambasted by some U.S. arms control advocates on the same grounds, is aware of the criticism. Requesting "one personal favor" during his speech, he recited a string of treaties and agreements that the United States supports, although he omitted the ABM and test ban treaties.

"In fact, trying to characterize our policy as unilateralist or multilateralist is a futile exercise," Bolton said. "Our policy is, quite simply, pro-American, as you would expect."

Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, said he was encouraged by Bolton's endorsement of challenge inspections, suggesting the approach could be expanded to searches for other weapons. He called it "a small but hopeful sign that the administration is recognizing the value of multilateral arms control in supporting United States' vital interests."

----

Seoul's arms sale to Hanoi takes aim

By Rodger Baker
STRATFOR.COM
January 25, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020125-28623073.htm

The South Korean government is reported to be preparing to upgrade Vietnam's weaponry, including M-113 armored cars and M-16 rifles. The plan reflects Seoul's growing ties with Hanoi and the ongoing expansion of its domestic arms industry.

In the long run, however, the government hopes to leverage its ties with Vietnam to gain Hanoi's help in the Korean reconciliation process.

An official with the South Korean Defense Ministry said early this month that a "domestic defense contractor" and the military would jointly handle a contract to upgrade 200 Vietnamese M-113 armored vehicles, the JoongAng Ilbo daily reported.

Daewoo Heavy Industry was mentioned as a potential contractor for the project during an August 2001 meeting between the South Korean and Vietnamese defense ministers, according to a Yonhap news wire report at the time.

In the longer term, the South Korean government hopes Vietnam can encourage North Korea to come out of its isolation, especially as Vietnamese President Tran Duc Luong is expected to visit Pyongyang in May.

Seoul has been struggling to kick-start reconciliation on the divided Korean Peninsula since it ground to a halt after President George W. Bush took office last year. Seoul, by presenting Vietnam as an example of a closed, socialist nation that has expanded economic ties with the world, hopes to coax North Korea into following a similar pattern and thus re-engage the South in talks.

Even if this fails, South Korea would gain the economic benefits of adding Vietnam to the growing list of customers for its domestic arms industry.

South Korea, one of Vietnam's biggest foreign investors, has accelerated defense contracts with its former ideological opponent during the past few years. South Korea's defense minister in December 2000 paid his first visit to Vietnam since establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries in 1992.

Vietnam reciprocated last August when it sent its defense minister to Seoul for the first time. During the latter meeting, the two sides began talks on increased defense cooperation, including armament contracts like the M-113 project and an upgrade of Vietnam's remaining M-16 rifles.

South Korea's defense minister paid another visit to Hanoi last month, which led to the recent unofficial announcement of the upgrade contracts.

The final decision on the projects is expected to be reached at a joint conference in Seoul on defense and logistics in the first half of 2002, according to the Seoul daily Chosun Ilbo.

The South Korean defense sector received a major boost in last July after an agreement with Turkey to provide subsystems for Ankara's new self-propelled howitzer systems. South Korea's Samsung Techwin beat out more established European companies, largely because Seoul attaches few political restrictions to such deals.

But as South Korea tries to bolster defense exports, there is a deeper reason underlying the enhanced ties with Vietnam. Ties between Pyongyang and Hanoi shrank dramatically after Vietnam officially recognized South Korea in 1992. But Pyongyang has recently revived them.

Kim Young Nam, North Korea's de facto head of state, traveled to Hanoi last July in the highest-level such visit since 1965. It was followed in October with a Vietnamese economic mission to Pyongyang, and Hanoi recently announced that its president would likely visit North Korea in May.

Seoul hopes that this trip will restart the inter-Korean dialogue.

Like China, Vietnam can show North Korea how to implement economic reforms without significantly loosening political or social control. In addition, because Vietnam is so far from the Korean peninsula, it has little at stake and thus can be a more "honest broker" between the two Koreas than China or even Russia.

Whether Pyongyang will be listening during the visit remains to be seen.

----

Bush ties Arafat to cargo of weapons

By Barry Schweid
ASSOCIATED PRESS
January 25, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020125-13401712.htm

President Bush provided three key Arab leaders with evidence Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority was involved in trying to smuggle 50 tons of weapons to the Palestinians, a senior administration official said yesterday.

The weapons were intercepted by Israeli commandos in the Red Sea, and Israeli security officials informed the United States the arms were designed to be used in terror raids against Israeli civilians.

Mr. Bush provided the evidence in letters to the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, all considered centrist Arab nations with close ties to the United States, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. He also asked the leaders' help in persuading Mr. Arafat, the Palestinian leader, to make more arrests connected to the smuggling and to combat terrorism generally. The official didn't describe the evidence.

The Palestinian Authority, under U.S. urging, has detained several suspects. But State Department spokesman Richard Boucher repeated yesterday that Mr. Arafat had neither provided an explanation of the smuggling nor arrested the key figures.

Israel's account, given to the administration by top security officials who came to Washington recently, had Mr. Arafat directly involved and said Iran supplied the weapons and the ship was loaded at an Iranian port.

While Mr. Arafat has denied any role, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell publicly has demanded an explanation from him. At the same time, Mr. Powell has said he has seen no evidence against the Palestinian leader.

The dispatch of Mr. Bush's letter, first reported yesterday evening by CBS News, surfaced as the administration again turned up the heat on Mr. Arafat.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the president understands why Israel has confined Mr. Arafat to his West Bank headquarters.

Mr. Fleischer demanded that Mr. Arafat eliminate terrorism, which he said posed "a threat not only to Israel, but also to Arafat."

"The president understands the reason that Israel has taken the action that it takes, and it is up to Chairman Arafat to demonstrate the leadership to combat terrorism," Mr. Fleischer said.

Mr. Bush discussed the volatile Middle East with his senior security advisers at the White House. Closing the Palestinian office in Washington reportedly was discussed, but no decision was made.

A decision depends largely on what Mr. Arafat does about combating terrorism, a senior U.S. official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. No option, including closing the Washington office, has been ruled out, the official said.

Mr. Arafat has been under virtual house arrest on the West Bank for nearly two months. From his office window in Ramallah, he can peer out at Israeli soldiers who are posted down the street.

In the town, a member of the Palestinian intelligence service, Riyad Sadi, 26, was killed in a clash with Israeli forces yesterday.

Four other Palestinians also were killed, including a senior Hamas official killed in an Israeli helicopter attack in the Gaza Strip.

-------- biological weapons

STATES PREPAREDNESS
U.S. Will Give States $1 Billion to Improve Bioterrorism Defense

New York Times
January 25, 2002
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/25/national/25BIOT.html

WASHINGTON, Jan. 24 - Federal health officials said today that they were planning to distribute more than $1 billion to help states improve their defenses against a biological attack but that the bulk of the money would be withheld until the states submitted detailed preparedness plans.

The money is part of nearly $3 billion the Department of Health and Human Services will spend this year on bioterrorism preparedness, roughly 10 times what the agency spent last year. Congress appropriated the additional money after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the October anthrax attacks.

"Anybody that has been in the public health arena has wanted resources available to build a strong local and state public health system," Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of health and human services, told reporters this afternoon in announcing the department's plans. "We've never been able to get the political or financial resources to do that. We have it now."

State health officials said today that they were eager for the money but were concerned that it would not last. "Yo-yo funding has been the history of public health," said Dr. Georges C. Benjamin, president of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.

Dr. Leslie M. Beitsch, the health commissioner in Oklahoma, said, "I think it's a very significant commitment, but the question then becomes, is it a long-term commitment?"

Mr. Thompson indicated today that it would be. He said President Bush intended to ask Congress for an increase in bioterrorism spending in 2003. Mr. Thompson would not specify the amount, but he said, "people will be happy."

The anthrax attacks, which killed five people and sickened more than 12, exposed holes in the public health system. Some states lack federally trained epidemiologists, the disease detectives who investigate outbreaks. Communication needs improvement; in some regions, health officials lack electronic mail or pagers and cannot be reached quickly in an emergency. Public health laboratories are understaffed. Hospitals lack coordinated plans for responding to a biological attack.

To help states devise plans, the federal health agency intends to release $200 million now. The rest will be distributed after the plans are approved. Mr. Thompson said his agency was devising a formula to determine what each state would get.

How much money states need is in dispute. The American Hospital Association estimated that hospitals alone would need $11 billion.

But federal health officials called the $1 billion a giant leap forward, saying it was roughly a twentyfold increase in what states had received in previous years.

--------

LABORATORY SECURITY
Bill Would Require Laboratories to Adopt Strict Security

New York Times
January 25, 2002
By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/25/politics/25LAB.html

WASHINGTON, Jan. 24 - In the months since the anthrax scare, Congress has hammered out legislation with universities and researchers to reduce the risk that viruses, bacteria and toxins might turn up in biological weapons.

It is now close to completing laws that will require laboratories, at significant expense, to adopt stricter security measures, inventory lethal agents and deny some scientists access to the materials altogether.

But except for smallpox, all of the pathogens that most concern lawmakers, some 40 in all, are freely available beyond American borders, often in the very regions that terrorists have come from, and scientists and international organizations that monitor disease outbreaks say the new laws, despite their time-consuming and expensive measures to reassure the public, may do little to keep deadly agents out of terrorists' hands.

Whether Rift Valley fever, found in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, Crimean- Congo hemorrhagic fever, which appeared last year in Afghanistan and Pakistan, or Ebola, which killed 23 people in Gabon according to today's World Health Organization report, the agents soon to be under lock and key in United States laboratories exist in abundance beyond American borders.

"Anybody trained in the most basic aspects of health care can go in and take a blood sample from anyone infected with one of these agents," said Glen N. Gaulton, a pathology professor who is vice dean for research and research training at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. "If it's blood or sputum, feces, body tissue, you'd isolate the organism, and then you'd just have to have somebody trained in general bacteriological principles grow it up. It's very simple."

Growing the organism from infected people or animals, scientists said, is a procedure done routinely in diagnostic laboratories and clinics, particularly in the third world.

At universities across the country, researchers said they did not think it was a mistake for Congress to tighten access to laboratory materials, which they acknowledge has generally been lax, but they cautioned against presuming the new laws would provide real protection against a deliberate release of a biological weapon.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, said tightening controls over deadly agents at American laboratories represented only a first step.

"The next step, clearly, once we get our house in order, is to proceed to effect some international protocols which govern the use of these pathogens," Ms. Feinstein said through a spokesman.

Mike Wheelis, a microbiologist at the University of California at Davis who is involved in the American Federation of Scientists Biological Weapons Verification Project, said gaping loopholes overseas did not mean that laboratory security in the United States should be ignored.

"The fact that there are many places in the world that do not have the resources or intention to institute comparable controls doesn't mean we don't have to get our house in order," Dr. Wheelis said.

With slightly different versions of a Bioweapons Protection Act having passed the House and Senate, university officials and lawyers are analyzing the bills to gauge just how much laboratories will have to change practices and, in some cases, infrastructure, to accommodate the new regulations. In recent years, Dr. Gaulton noted, the trend has been toward large, open space laboratories that promote collaboration between scientists.

He estimates that the University of Pennsylvania may have to spend $5 million to $15 million for security features like special filters and pressurized air for handling the 40 agents that can be used to make biological weapons - particularly if Congress rules that researchers working on any genetic or molecular pieces of a lethal organism must take the same precautions as scientists working with the organism in its entirety.

The U.S.A. Patriot Act, passed last November, expands the list of toxins considered highly dangerous, and requires background checks for scientists who work with them. It also bars so-called restricted persons - a category that includes citizens of states known to sponsor terrorism, convicted felons, people dishonorably discharged from the United States military, illegal aliens and people caught with illicit drugs - from working with the lethal agents.

"If you think of the 19 hijackers, I don't think any of them were citizens of states that sponsor terrorism, so they presumably would have been O.K.," said one Congressional aide.

In addition, the Senate and House versions of bioweapons protection bills passed last month require laboratories possessing the potential weapons agents to register with the Department of Health and Human Services, while the House bill requires labs to register individual scientists as well. One provision of the Senate bill that could prove particularly useful requires genetic identification of the strains present in each lab, which would ease tracking of any material used in an eventual outbreak. The bills will next go to a conference committee, to iron out differences between them.

Aside from the availability of lethal agents overseas, scientists noted other loopholes in the legislation as passed. While an inventory might prove useful for keeping track of nuclear materials, they said it provided only the illusion of security for biological materials, even those only found in laboratories.

"This is not the same as radioisotopes, where you can account for each one," Dr. Wheelis added, since a biological material can easily be multiplied.

Before the anthrax-laden letters turned up last year, laboratory safety measures aimed exclusively to prevent an accidental release of deadly agents. For the first time, lawmakers are grappling with the threat of a deliberate release, while the anthrax that terrorized the country last fall appears to have come from an American laboratory.

-------- business

[Bush the Bailout King. et]

Defense stocks rise with Bush's budget

By Carter Dougherty
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 25, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/business/20020125-94724200.htm

The stocks of major defense contractors moved higher yesterday in response to President Bush's proposal for a $48 billion increase in defense spending for the 2003 fiscal year.

Rather than redirecting a significant portion of defense spending toward specific anti-terror programs, Mr. Bush chose to ask Congress to continue funding for major weapons systems such as Bethesda-based Lockheed Martin's Joint Strike Fighter and Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman's Superhornet naval jets. The result was a windfall for the top five defense contractors, who also include Boeing of Chicago, Raytheon of Lexington, Mass., and General Dynamics, of Falls Church.

"Wall Street had not been anticipating anything near this kind of increase," said Paul Nisbet, an analyst with JSA Research in Newport, R.I. "The weapons were in the pipeline, but there was a lot of speculation that the programs would be cut and the money put into homeland security."

Stocks of the big five contractors rose between 2 and 5 percent yesterday.

The new budget, if approved by Congress as is, would boost overall defense spending by 13 percent to $379 billion. Of the increase, $10 billion would go into a "war reserve" contingency fund. The rest of the money would mostly go toward procurement, military health care, spare parts and replacement munitions.

The big surprise of the proposed budget was that it promises ample funding for existing "legacy" weapons systems that were developed and brought into production during the Clinton administration.

"When it comes to defense, the Democrats come up with the interesting ideas and the Republicans come up with the money," said Lorean Thompson, an analyst with the Lexington Institute in Arlington who added that he owns Lockheed stock.

Lockheed, for example, managed to persuade the Pentagon to keep funding the F-22 Raptor fighter, which is assembled in Marietta, Ga. Mr. Bush asked Congress to allocate $4.1 billion to buy 21 planes, well above the $3 billion for 13 aircraft that legislators approved last year.

"Lockheed Martin's near-term prospects look better than those of any other major defense contractor, and its stock has the greatest upside potential because its operations are concentrated in military aircraft, space systems and electronics - the three areas where the defense budget is likely to grow the fastest in the next decade," said Heidi Thompson, a defense analyst with Morgan Stanley Dean Witter in New York.

The budget also preserves money for systems that many observers expected would be curtailed or killed.

The Army's Crusader mobile artillery system, for example, had come under sharp criticism for being too heavy and difficult to transport, but managed to elude the budget ax. The Crusader is manufactured by Arlington-based United Defense Industries, which is owned by the Carlyle Group, the District-based private equity firm headed by former Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci.

Mr. Bush's plan would also steer money toward contractors who arm U.S. jets with the munitions they used to pound targets in Afghanistan over the past few months.

"If you're in a shooting war, the munitions makers always do well," said Christopher Hellman, a scholar with the Center for Defense Information, a research group.

Boeing, for example, manufactures the precision-guided bombs that the Pentagon relied on heavily during the Afghan campaign. General Dynamics produces more convention munitions that were also used. Both would see dividends from Mr. Bush's budget, the Lexington Institute's Mr. Thompson said.

-------- china

China backs off confrontations with U.S.

By David R. Sands
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 25, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020125-9502561.htm

China handled this year's spy-plane crisis far differently than it handled last year's spy-plane crisis.

The revelation last week that 27 high-tech bugging devices had been discovered on a U.S.-made personal jet ordered for Chinese President Jiang Zemin appeared at first to be a propaganda coup for Beijing, an opportunity to stoke anti-American feelings and demand concessions as happened in last April's standoff over a downed U.S. military surveillance plane.

This time, the response has been remarkably muted. The Foreign Ministry has not acknowledged that bugs have been found, no protests have been lodged with U.S. authorities and the incident has not even been reported in the China's domestic press.

Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi, meeting with reporters in Beijing yesterday, again played down the incident, dismissing it as "idiotic behavior."

On Monday, Mr. Sun said the flap would have no bearing on next month's visit by President Bush to Beijing, a visit expected to focus on the U.S.-led war on terrorism and economic ties after China's recent entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Larry Wortzel, director of the Heritage Foundation's Asian Studies Center, said the low-key response reflected the Chinese leadership's growing awareness that "the old policy of bellicosity and belligerence wasn't getting them anywhere with this administration in Washington."

"It took them about a year to get it, but they're finally getting it," Mr. Wortzel said.

Chinese Vice Prime Minister Qian Qichen softened the official line on another issue yesterday, telling reporters that members of Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) would be welcome to visit the mainland.

China has previously denounced the DPP and its leader, Chen Shui-bian, president of the Republic of China (Taiwan), as separatists. Mr. Qian said that the vast majority of DPP members would be allowed to come to China, with only an "extremely small number of die-hard independence elements" excluded.

The downing of the U.S. EP-3E surveillance plane last year after it collided with a Chinese fighter plane was just one of a series of incidents that set relations on a collision course early in the Bush administration.

Mr. Bush in an interview went far beyond previous U.S. presidents in announcing his determination to defend Taiwan, which China considered a renegade state, and he approved an extensive weapons sale to Taiwan over Beijing's protests.

However, the tone has changed dramatically in recent weeks. Mr. Bush's decision to proceed with a missile defense shield elicited only a mild response from Beijing.

Analysts offered a range of reasons for Beijing's softer diplomatic tone. They included:

•China's planned leadership succession. Mr. Jiang will cede power, most likely to the largely unknown Vice President Hu Jintao and a generation of younger leaders this fall. While Mr. Jiang cannot be seen as too soft on the United States, neither do Beijing's outgoing leaders want to provoke new crises with Washington.

"They don't want any drastic changes, for better or worse," said one Asian diplomat. "Any leader who suggests a major change right now just makes himself a target."

•The coming WTO revolution. Huang Ju, a member of the Chinese leadership, has warned publicly that the reforms and market opening that China must undertake as it joins the world trade club pose a serious challenge to the Communist Party's rule.

"WTO accession will have a serious economic and social impact on China," Lin Wen-cheng, director of the Institute of Mainland China Studies at Taiwan's Sun Yat-sen University, predicted in a recent analysis in the Taipei Times.

•A successful summit. Mr. Jiang has put a high priority on a successful visit to Beijing by Mr. Bush Feb. 21 and 22.

The prime minister is angling for a return invitation to the United States to cap his tenure, preferably a state visit to match the warm reception given by Mr. Bush to Russian President Vladimir Putin, both in Washington and at the president's Texas ranch.

•September 11. China has supported the U.S.-led military campaign in Afghanistan, but has watched with growing concern as the United States bolsters military and political ties with states on China's border. The United States has moved closer to Pakistan and several Central Asian states where Beijing has been attempting to increase its own sway.

-------- colombia

Colombia's guerrilla, military square off despite cease fire agreement

Friday January 25, 9:30 AM
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020125/1/2cro1.html

Colombia's military threatened a counteroffensive as FARC insurgents ratcheted up acts of violence -- just four days after guerrillas and government initialed a cease-fire accord.

Armed Forces commander General Fernando Tapias warned the military would not sit by "passively" if the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) continued with kidnappings and violence.

In the first comment by the military since Sunday's government-FARC accord setting a firm schedule of negotiations for a ceasefire by April 7. Tapias underlined, nonetheless, that the military would follow government decisions.

In the accord seeking to bring and end to four decade-long hostilities, Pastrana also said FARC could retain its Switzerland-sized southern Colombia safe haven until April 10.

"If they don't honor the deal agreed to, they will show the international community that they have no will for peace," Tapias added.

In the past 11 days, FARC has dynamited oil pipelines, bridges and 28 power lines, killing nearly 100 people despite the peace talks and ensuing accord.

"This is the 'total war' people are afraid of," said Tapias Thursday. "FARC cannot believe that while they are kidnaping, extorting, blowing up power lines that the army will stand idle."

Late Wednesday, Colombian President Andres Pastrana gave the order to the Armed Forces to counterattack FARC guerrillas in their current offensive.

"The president's order to the army is that we have to go out and fight those carrying out violence no matter who they are, because that is our responsibility: to protect the lives, honor and property of Colombians," Pastrana said.

And he indicated that some of the troops in position on the outskirts of the rebel safe haven, ceded to the FARC in 1998, would take part in any such counteroffensive.

Colombia's 38-year civil war has so far claimed 200,000 lives.

Despite talks between government and rebel representatives continuing on schedule, rebels carried out a threat to block the main highways into Bogota. Late Thursday, a truck carrying dynamite exploded, blocking one of those roads, said police.

FARC leaders gave no official confirmation of the road block measure, although more than 400 kilometers (240 miles) of road leading into Bogota were largely empty Wednesday night.

On Thursday, the guerrillas seemed to be backing off Sunday's accord, saying that a cease fire was too complex to negotiate by a deadline. FARC negotiator Simon Trinidad called April 7 "a tentative date."

The FARC is Colombia's largest insurgency with 16,500 men in arms and has been battling the government since 1964. Each year some 3,000 people die in the conflict.

Also involved in the conflict is the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) a paramilitary group of 8,500 who has taken up arms against the guerrillas.

AUC was not a party to Sunday's peace accord -- which requires the government to take action against the paramilitaries, accused of massacring farmers.

Leftist National Liberation Army (ELN), the country's second largest rebel group with around 4,500 fighters, also recently met in Cuba with government negotiators to analyze a ceasefire proposal.

----

Colombia destroys downed U.S. helicopter

World Scene
January 25, 2002
Combined dispatches and staff reports
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020125-31774530.htm

BOGOTA, Colombia - Colombia's military destroyed a U.S. government helicopter to keep it from falling into the hands of guerrillas who forced it down during an anti-drug mission, Colombian and American officials said yesterday.

Five Colombian police officers died protecting the downed UH-1N helicopter, and three Colombian soldiers were wounded. There were no Americans aboard the State Department helicopter when it was hit by ground fire last week.

The crew - including Colombian police and a Peruvian pilot working for a private American company contracted by the U.S. government for the drug war - was evacuated unharmed, the officials said.

-------- israel / palestine / lebanon

Some Israeli Reservists Balk

By Laurie Copans
Associated Press Writer
Friday, January 25, 2002; 4:57 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39318-2002Jan25?language=printer

JERUSALEM -- Fifty-two Israeli reserve soldiers said Friday they would no longer fight in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, claiming military actions there had nothing to do with security for Israel and were meant to control the Palestinians.

In an advertisement in Israeli newspapers, the soldiers, some with the rank of major, said Israel's stringent travel bans, which confine many Palestinians to their communities, needlessly punish the Palestinians. Israel says the closures are needed to prevent attacks by Palestinian militants.

"We declare that we will not continue to fight a war for peace in the (Jewish) settlements" in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, read the ad. "We will not continue to fight on the other side of the Green Line with an intent to control, expel, starve and degrade an entire people."

The Green Line refers to the line separating Israel from the territories it captured in the 1967 Mideast war.

The soldiers wrote that they decided to stop serving in the Palestinian areas when it became clear to them that the army orders "had nothing to do with security, and their only intent is to control the Palestinian people forever."

Such public criticism of the military by soldiers has been relatively rare in Israel, though throughout the years, there have been some groups of soldiers refusing to serve, including during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon and during the first Palestinian uprising against Israel in 1987-1993.

Friday's announcement marked the first time since the outbreak of the current round of fighting in September 2000 that a large group of soldiers announced it was refusing to serve in the Palestinian areas.

Israeli men do three years of compulsory military service, and then do reserve duty for about a month every year, until the age of 40.

Israel TV's Channel Two reported Friday that several soldiers who joined the group said they had been ordered to degrade Palestinians without reason. In one case, soldiers were ordered to demolish homes or greenhouses of Palestinians just because a Palestinian militant passed near the property on his way to attack Israelis, the report said.

"In another 10 to 15 years from today, people will look back, take their heads in their hands and say, 'What did we do?'" said Noam Livne, explaining why he had decided to refuse to serve in the Palestinian areas.

The army said in a response quoted by Channel Two that it weighed "ethical considerations against operational ones when making decisions" on security.

Maj. Gen. Uzi Dayan, the head of Israel's National Security Council, said the formation of the group concerned him.

"It worries us," Dayan told the television. "We have to allow these discussions but I say that it shouldn't be expressed in a refusal to serve."

----

Shin Bet bill nears final readings

Friday January 25, 2002
Jerusalem Post
By Dan Izenberg
http://www.jpost.com/Editions/2002/01/25/News/News.42312.html

JERUSALEM (January 25) - A special subcommittee of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and the Knesset Law Committee is due on Sunday to continue its preparation of the Shin Bet bill, which would specify for the first time in Israel's history the operational parameters of the country's internal security agency.

Last week, subcommittee chairman David Magen (Center Party) announced that the bill, which is being prepared for its final readings, will be put to a vote in the plenum by the end of the Knesset's winter session on March 13.

As early as Sunday, the subcommittee may vote on the most controversial element of the proposal, which would include permission for Shin Bet interrogators to use "moderate physical pressure," a euphemism for what many believe is torture, to extract information from "ticking bomb" suspects who may know about imminent terrorist attacks.

Although there is no written clause in the proposed legislation dealing with Shin Bet interrogation methods, MK Tommy Lapid (Shinui) confirmed that the issue is on the joint subcommittee's agenda.

MK Ran Cohen (Meretz) said there are MKs on the panel who are trying to introduce a section to the bill that would legalize the Shin Bet's interrogation powers. Cohen said he would not support the law if the interrogations matter is included.

"Such procedures should not be engraved in law," he said, noting that currently the attorney-general oversees the interrogations.

On the other hand, Cohen said the bill would be a step forward, since it would appoint a monitor to the Shin Bet's activities, whereas today the organization only reports to the Prime Minister's Office.

The Justice Ministry spokesman yesterday told The Jerusalem Post that the government opposes adding a provision to the Shin Bet bill about interrogations, and does not believe there is any intention to do so.

The government bill has been in the offing since 1997. The need for such legislation became evident to many after the disclosure of two scandals involving Shin Bet agents during the 1980s.

In one case, Shin Bet head of operations Ehud Yatom leaked the classified deliberations of a panel investigating the killing of two bound and captive terrorists in the Gaza Strip after they had hijacked an Egged bus.

In the other, senior Shin Bet official Yossi Ginossar admitted he had lied in court about using brutality to extract a false confession by Izzat Nafsu, an Israeli-Circassian IDF officer. The Shin Bet subsequently admitted that it had systematically lied to the courts for years to conceal its interrogation methods in order to convict suspected terrorists.

In 1998, the Knesset passed the Shin Bet bill in first reading. Two years later, on March 5, 2000, it voted to take up the legislation where it was left off by the previous Knesset. The Ministerial Law Committee, under then-justice minister Yossi Beilin, made some changes in the text of the bill on August 3, 2000. Six months later, then-prime minister Ehud Barak was replaced by Ariel Sharon, who decided to continue the legislative process.

For the past few weeks, the special subcommittee headed by Magen has been meeting each week to prepare the bill. Other subcommittee members include Knesset Law Committee chairman Ophir Pines and Haim Ramon (Labor), Cohen (Meretz), Moshe Arens and Yuval Steinitz (Likud), Uri Ariel (National Union-Yisrael Beiteinu), Lapid (Shinui), David Tal (Shas), and Shaul Yahalom (NRP.)

The bill establishes the political chain of command responsible for the Shin Bet in government and the Knesset, determines its areas of responsibility, and defines its special prerogatives. According to the bill, the head of the Shin Bet would be appointed by the government in accordance with the recommendation of the prime minister, who would be directly responsible for the agency together with a committee of five cabinet ministers.

The Shin Bet would also be answerable to a parliamentary subcommittee of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee's special committee on the secret services. The prime minister would also appoint an internal comptroller for the Shin Bet.

Paragraph 7, one of the key provisions of the bill, determines the agency's responsibilities. According to the proposed text, "The agency is responsible for safeguarding the security of the country, the procedures of the democratic regime and its institutions, and preventing the threats of terrorism, espionage, disclosure of secrets, and other related activities."

The bill stipulates that the Shin Bet must "advance the vital interests of the state regarding national security," and that it must act in "a non-partisan way. The agency will not be given missions meant to advance political party interests."

Paragraphs 8-11 list the special prerogatives granted to Shin Bet agents to help them discharge their duties. These include the right to gather information and pass it on to other organizations, investigate allegations, hire informants, search suspects at border crossing points, and, with the written permission of the prime minister, conduct secret searches on private property.

Steinitz said Israel should not have undertaken to pass the Shin Bet bill in the first place. "It is a total absurdity that we are the first democratic state to pass a law on these matters," said Steinitz. He blamed "liberal left-wing elements" for the fact that such a bill is being considered, and singled out the Supreme Court for special responsibility because "it failed to draw a clear line between a country fighting against internal crime and a country fighting for its life."

Steinitz said he would vote for the paragraph allowing the Shin Bet to use physical force to extract confessions from alleged "ticking bombs."

According to the Israel Democracy Institute and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, many Western countries - including the US, Britain, Canada, Australia, and Germany - have laws governing their secret services.

Steinitz said Israel should take its cue from the way the US is conducting its war against al-Qaida terrorists.

"The US established military tribunals on the spot to try suspects and empowered them to sentence convicted terrorists to death," he said.

"By avoiding criminal trials, the US does not have to cope with the difficulties of finding airtight evidence which is not always possible in these circumstances, does not expose itself to the dangers of hostage-taking by terrorists trying to liberate their friends, and does not give suspects the opportunity to spout off in court and propagandize for their cause.

"No one in America has protested against these tribunals and the US Supreme Court has not interfered in this policy."

(Nina Gilbert contributed to this report.)

----

Bush Says Arafat Is Not Doing Enough to Fight Terrorism

New York Times
January 25, 2002
By DAVID STOUT
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/25/international/25CND-DIPLO.html

WASHINGTON, Jan. 25 - President Bush expressed deep disappointment with Yasir Arafat today, accusing him of doing too little to stop terrorism in the Middle East and, indeed, allowing it to flourish.

"He must must make a full effort to rout out terror in the Middle East," Mr. Bush said at an airport stop in Portland, Me. "In order for there to be peace we've got to rout out terror."

But Mr. Bush went even further. "Ordering up weapons that were intercepted on a boat headed for that part of the world is not part of fighting terror," he said. "That's enhancing terror. We're obviously very disappointed."

The boat reference was an allusion to the recent seizure by Israeli commandos of a boatload of Iranian weapons that Israeli officials said were designed for terror attacks. Allies of Mr. Arafat have been linked by Israel to the thwarted smuggling.

The president's remarks, coupled with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's pointed comments in Washington today about Mr. Arafat, were an unmistakable warning to the chairman of the Palestinian Authority about the latest spate of violence in the Mideast. Taken together, they seemed to imply that the administration is seriously considering a significant shift in his stance toward Mr. Arafat.

"He knows what he needs to do," Mr. Powell said of Mr. Arafat, "and of course the United States has a full range of options available to us of a political and diplomatic nature."

The president was known to have spent time today with his most senior advisers reviewing United States ties to Mr. Arafat. Involved in the discussions were Vice President Dick Cheney and Mr. Powell.

The secretary of state spoke at length about Mr. Arafat when questioned by reporters at the State Department, and his signals were strong.

"I had a very long talk with Chairman Arafat the day before yesterday, and once again pointed out to him the necessity for him taking strong, resolute, irreversible action to get terror under control, to give answers to the international community about the ship that was carrying all of those arms, the Karine A, to bring under control those organizations under his authority that are conducting terrorist acts," Mr. Powell said.

"And so we continue to give, a strong message to Chairman Arafat that he must act, and we continue to review our policy with respect to the Palestinian Authority and to Chairman Arafat, and I expect they'll be speaking to him again in the future to see what he is able to do, or what progress we can make," Mr. Powell said.

Yet another signal came from the White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, who told reporters today that "the United States is appalled at the involvement of senior Palestinian officials" in the thwarted weapons-smuggling episode.

--------

Palestinian Suicide Bomber Strikes in Tel Aviv

January 25, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast.html

GAZA (Reuters) - Israeli F-16 fighter planes struck Palestinian security targets in the West Bank and Gaza Strip Friday night, witnesses said.

The missile strikes on security complexes in Tulkarm and Gaza City followed a Palestinian suicide bomb attack in Tel Aviv earlier in the day that wounded at least 25 people.

There were no immediate reports of casualties in the air strikes. The Israeli army said it had no immediate comment.

The new cycle of retribution plunged Israel and the Palestinians deeper into violence that has defied U.S.-led truce efforts.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the Tel Aviv attack which followed an Israeli helicopter missile strike that killed a member of the militant Hamas Islamic group in the Gaza Strip Thursday.

Israel said Palestinian President Yasser Arafat bore ultimate responsibility for the Tel Aviv bombing. The Palestinian Authority said in a statement after the attack that it condemned ``any action that harms Israeli civilians.''

-------- landmines

Landmine clearers welcome focus of Afghan aid

REUTERS AFGHANISTAN:
January 25, 2002
Story by David Fox
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/14193/story.htm

KABUL - News that aid pledges to Afghanistan have placed special emphasis on clearing landmines won a cautious welcome from demining groups this week.

But they warned that a massive task lies ahead after two decades of war that have made it one of the most extenively mined countries in the world.

"What we have heard so far is very encouraging," Nasir Ahmad, assistant programme manager of the Halo Trust, said of the cash promised by international donors at a meeting in Tokyo.

"It is obvious that you cannot begin real construction without getting rid of the mines but sometimes that is overlooked. Mine clearing is a crucial platform for reconstruction."

Afghanistan vies with Cambodia for the unwanted title of world's most heavily mined country and experts say thousands of people are killed or maimed each year by forgotten ordnance.

And the consequences of mines go beyond death and injury, according to the monitoring group Warchild, which found in a recent report that agricultural production could double or even treble in Afghanistan if the land was cleared.

Thousands of domestic animals - often a family's only source of income - were lost to mines each year it found. And households with a landmine victim were 40 percent more likely to have difficulty providing food for the family.

ENTERING A MINEFIELD

Anyone arriving in Afghanistan via Bagram air base north of the capital is immediately struck by the minefield they are entering - both physically and literally.

The drive from the airport into Kabul takes visitors through fields marked with red flags signaling the presence of mines, and one can scarcely see any sizeable group of Afghans without noticing at least one or two with an artificial limb.

Halo and other organisations estimate that there are over 10 million mines or other dangerous unexploded munitions scattered around the country despite clearance work in the past 10 years.

The International Security and Assistance Force for Afghanistan (ISAF), the British-led operation which aims to help the post-Taliban interim administration restore peace, have been given some idea of the task since their arrival.

"We have found a lot," Sergeant Myk Riley of the Royal Air Force's 5131 Bomb Disposal Squadron.

"I think we have already found more than 30 different kinds of munitions in the areas we are looking after."

Squadron Leader Mark Hollis, whose unit has been charged with clearing Kabul airport and its environs, said all his men had been struck by how heavily mined the country was.

"The children are playing right next to minefields," he said. "You can see farmers poking at bits of metal with their shovels ".

There are over a dozen groups in Afghanistan employing around 5,000 people in mine-clearing operations. Ironically, one consequence of relative peace descending for the first time in decades has been that their workload has increased tremendously.

"Our work has actually become more urgent because families are trying to return to areas that were formerly out of bounds. Halo Programme Manager Farid Homayoun, said of people going back to fields that were once front lines and still heavily mined.

"You can imagine the consequences."

-------- russia / chechnya

Putin said to exploit U.S. war

By David R. Sands
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 25, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020125-96542969.htm

Russia has exploited the post-September 11 war on global terrorism to increase its repression in the breakaway republic of Chechnya, the top diplomat for the self-styled Chechen Republic said in an interview.

Ilyas Akhmadov, foreign minister for the Chechen government, also said the Bush administration had not done enough to point out human rights abuses by Russian forces in the brutal Chechen conflict as it sought to improve ties with the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"Without a doubt, the tragedies in New York and Washington have had an adverse effect on our situation," Mr. Akhmadov said in a meeting with reporters and editors of The Washington Times on Wednesday. "Anyone can observe the obvious fact that Russia has utilized the tragedy for its own purposes and its own goals."

The Chechen minister, in his first visit to Washington since the September 11 attacks, met with lower-level State Department officials for more than two hours on Wednesday. Because the U.S. government did not recognize the separatist Chechen regime, the meeting was not held inside the State Department building.

A State Department spokesman declined to comment on the meeting, refusing even to confirm that it had taken place.

Mr. Akhmadov's previous visits to the United States and Western Europe have provoked sharp protests from the Russian government.

Moscow yesterday accused the United States of an "unfriendly step" in receiving Mr. Akhmadov, and urged Washington to stand by its commitment to fight terrorism.

"Such contacts, no matter what the justification, cannot be seen as anything other than an unfriendly step toward Russia, contradicting the spirit of cooperation and partnership of both countries in acting against international terrorism," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Chechen sympathizers considered Mr. Akhmadov's visit in March to Washington a diplomatic breakthrough. He met with the acting assistant secretary of state for the region, the first time he had been received at such a high official level.

The State Department would not identify who met with the Chechen minister on Wednesday, except to say the visit was not at the same level as the March meeting.

Both the Clinton and Bush administrations also have criticized the Russian military campaign in Chechnya and urged the Kremlin to seek a political settlement.

But Mr. Putin strongly pressed the case since September 11 that the Chechen rebels were "terrorists" linked to the al Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden. Moscow charges there are extensive personnel and training links between the Islamic fighters in Chechnya and the fundamentalist Islamic network bin Laden operated in Afghanistan.

Mr. Akhmadov in the interview flatly denied any ties between Chechen resistance groups and bin Laden, and said what he called "erroneous" Western press accounts about a linkage to al Qaeda had damaged his people's cause.

"Bin Laden has never mentioned Chechnya once in all his speeches," Mr. Akhmadov said. "I have had no contact with him whatsoever and no one I know of in our government has had any contacts."

He noted that U.S., British and other Western nationals had been identified among the prisoners captured in the U.S.-led military campaign against Afghanistan's Taliban regime - but not one Chechen.

Reed Brody, advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, said Russia had been among the nations attempting to link the new terrorism fight to long-standing conflicts within their borders.

"The Russian experience shows that this cynical strategy can work," Mr. Brody said.

Said Mr. Akhmadov: "Unfortunately, we have not seen any noticeable change in U.S. policy from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration. We are realists and we don't expect the American government to recognize our government, but we would like to see some recognition that a war against our nation, a genocide, is under way."

He said the periodic U.S. complaints about Chechnya "have very little influence on Russian behavior. They just discount it."

----

Bin Laden mafia

January 25, 2002
Inside the Ring
Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020125-67125491.htm

U.S. intelligence officials believe helicopters commandeered by Russian mafia cells entered Afghanistan after September 11 and ferried out al Qaeda members. There is no evidence they played taxi to Osama bin Laden or his top lieutenants.

Some of the flights were detected by U.S. spy assets. But the rules of engagement allowed for shooting down only a helicopter carrying bin Laden, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar or other top terrorists. The Russian mob maintains ties to bin Laden. The al Qaeda leader has hoped that the criminals could obtain a nuclear weapon for him. There is no evidence the terrorist mastermind ever got his hands on the nuclear bomb. But the Russians have supplied communications equipment.

----

Police in Chechnya Accuse Russia's Troops of Murder

New York Times
January 25, 2002
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/25/international/europe/25CHEC.html?pagewanted=all

GROZNY, Russia, Jan. 22 - Nearly two years after major hostilities ended here in Chechnya, the devastated republic in the Caucasus, Russian troops are killing civilians in a campaign of executions and looting that takes place alongside military operations aimed at destroying rebel forces, according to Chechen police officials.

Chechen police authorities working under the republic's pro- Russian government said in interviews over the past week that Russian Interior Ministry units, known by their acronym, Obron, have been scouting neighborhoods during mine-sweeping operations for residents who appear to have money or property worth stealing.

At night, the soldiers return in armored personnel carriers, some with identifying markings, and burst into the houses, stealing household goods and killing witnesses, Chechen police investigators say.

In the central Leninsky district of Grozny, skeletal shards of buildings teeter above a landscape of debris that evokes scenes from European cities destroyed in World War II. The rubble now lies sealed under a winter blanket of snow as thousands of Chechen families eke out an isolated existence in bomb-damaged homes.

In Leninsky, the largest of Grozny's four districts, Chechen investigators have documented 17 cases in the last 12 months implicating Interior Ministry troops in killing civilians during looting. One of the most notorious of the units is known as Obron-22, the Chechens say.

But in each case, military and civilian prosecutors have refused to bring criminal cases, the police said. Instead, the prosecutors set aside files as inactive or return them with demands to provide the names of soldiers involved.

"These units burst into people's houses on the pretext of `mopping up' operations and commit murders," said Alvi Magomed-Mirzoyev, a police lieutenant colonel who returned to Grozny from Moscow a year ago to lead a criminal investigation department in Leninsky.

In Moscow, the Interior Ministry, the Defense Ministry and prosecutors were asked to comment on these allegations, but declined.

Chechen police authorities are drawing up a republic-wide list of unsolved killings of civilians in which federal forces have been implicated by witnesses, but which prosecutors have refused to pursue. One senior member of the Chechen administration in Grozny, taking a significant risk, provided documents on 163 such cases compiled under the heading, "Some cases of detention by representatives of the federal forces of civilians who subsequently disappeared or were found dead."

"These are the conditions we are living under," he said as he handed over the document and disappeared into a police headquarters building where Chechen recruits are certified and inducted into the new force.

A typical case in the file is that of Magomed H. Vakhidov, 57, once mayor of Urus-Martan, just south of Grozny. He fled Chechnya when the second war with Russia broke out in September 1999; a year later he sought and received an amnesty to return home.

But at 3 a.m. on July 20, 2001, a squad of Russian soldiers fired smoke grenades into his home and then burst in and arrested him, according to the documents. Russian military authorities denied taking him into custody. On July 31, his body was found in the gardens of a state farm, badly mutilated from torture, electric shock, knife wounds and burns from a blow torch.

Russian officials routinely attribute such killings to "rebels." But, as one Chechen police official noted, "the rebels do not travel in armored personnel carriers."

A number of unsolved cases relate to Chechen rebels who took advantage of amnesties issued by Moscow and by Russian military commanders.

In March 2000, after Russian forces had driven rebel forces from Grozny, Roman S. Bersanukayev, 19, turned himself in to the commander of Russia's 245th Motorized Rifle Regiment near Martan-Chu, near Urus-Martan.

When his relatives asked the local office of the Federal Security Service about his status, they were given a document showing that no criminal proceedings would be lodged against him. They also received an amnesty certificate signed by the Russian military commandant for the district, Y. A. Naumov. But Mr. Bersanukayev then disappeared from federal custody and is feared dead.

"I am an officer and I took an oath to Russia to uphold the law," said Colonel Magomed-Mirzoyev, the policeman, "but I am sick and tired of being afraid and I hate the lawlessness that is going on here, and I want to do everything I can to bring it to an end."

On a visit to Paris this month, President Vladimir V. Putin asserted that Russian troops committing acts of violence against Chechen civilians were being held accountable and that judicial and law enforcement organs were functioning normally. "About 20 servicemen have already been brought to justice," he said.

By lending strong support to President Bush's war against terrorism, Mr. Putin has successfully blunted Western criticism of Russian conduct in Chechnya. Several governments have suggested that Russia had more justification for its actions than had been acknowledged. But the situation on the ground has continued to fester.

Chechnya's top prosecutor, Vsevolod Chernov, said this week that 212 criminal cases based on reports of missing people had been opened in the last year. "In some cases, the disappearance of people can be connected to special operations conducted by federal units," he said, but "sufficient legally substantiated evidence" was necessary to bring the cases to court.

Local police officials tell a different story. They say criminal cases sent to Mr. Chernov are technically open but are frozen by the inability of criminal investigators to interview Russian soldiers who may be witnesses or suspects involved in crimes against civilians.

The police investigators say that they have tried to gain access to Russian military units, but that they are afraid to approach Russian military prosecutors, who must approve any contact with federal soldiers.

The military prosecutors are housed at Russia's main military base, at Khankala, on the southeast edge of Grozny. The base is known to Chechens as a place where detainees are taken and sometimes never return.

"If the shelling of a civilian neighborhood involved federal servicemen, I wouldn't be able to send my investigator because he might not come back," Colonel Magomed-Mirzoyev said.

Earlier this month, a senior official of the new Chechen administration, Ruslan Yunusov, deputy minister of the Chechen Emergencies Ministry and a veteran of the Soviet military campaign in Afghanistan, was shot dead by federal troops in front of the Russian military police headquarters here when he tried to arrest Russian soldiers in an armored personnel carrier. The soldiers were suspected of wounding one of Mr. Yunusov's officers on Dec. 29.

Several high-profile cases against federal troops have been brought to court in the past year, like the murder trial of Col. Yuri Budanov, accused of the rape and murder of an 18-year-old Chechen woman in March 2000. The trial began nearly a year ago and has suffered numerous delays over demands for psychiatric evaluations by military officials to determine whether Colonel Budanov was temporarily insane when he strangled the woman in a fit of rage over the deaths of his comrades at the hands of rebels.

Chechen officials also point out that there appear to be no active investigations of reports of civilian massacres during the intense Russian military campaign that was begun in Chechnya by Mr. Putin after he became prime minister in 1999. That campaign followed incursions by armed men - Russia called them Islamic extremists - and terrorist attacks that left more than 300 dead in Moscow and other Russian cities.

A martial-style curfew is enforced so strictly here that ambulance service is halted at night, when lethal mayhem takes over. Russian forces hide in their fortified checkpoints as rebels creep into the city to shoot at them or to lay mines to blow up military convoys the next day.

In addition to reported abuses by Interior Ministry forces, regular Russian Army troops continue to inflict punitive raids on Chechen towns and villages, as they did earlier this month in Tsotsin-Yurt, just southeast of Grozny, after two suspected rebels fleeing federal forces took refuge in a house there on Dec. 30. The rebels were killed, and a large column of Russian armored forces surrounded the town.

Town residents said that over the next several days, soldiers seized young and middle-aged men from their homes and looted a number of houses, all in violation of military pledges made last year calling for Chechen authorities to be present to observe such "mopping up" operations.

Seven civilians died during the initial gun battle, town officials said, two of them after they were used as human shields by soldiers attacking the house where the suspected rebels holed up.

One of the men used as a shield was Idris Zakiyev, a 42-year-old tractor driver with four daughters. The other was Musa Ismailov, 43, an elder of the mosque who performed a traditional dance at Chechen funerals; he had five children.

"They were shot at short distance and their bodies showed signs of mutilation," said Ilyas Zakiyev, a brother of Idris.

Even now, weeks later, Russian units have blocked all roads into Tsotsin-Yurt and more than 15,000 residents are being held virtually as prisoners, forced to pay a bribe - amounting to a day's wages in many cases - to enter or leave. Entering Tsotsin-Yurt on Monday, this reporter saw Russian soldiers collecting these tolls from Chechen drivers passing the checkpoints.

Turko Aliev, 51, the chairman of the town elders' council, was among the first to meet with the Russian commander who ordered the assault on the town. The commander threatened to open an artillery attack in 30 minutes unless the elders sent the mayor out to meet him and to identify the seven corpses laid out before Russian news reporters as "rebels."

"I told him that was impossible because the mayor was in Grozny, but he replied, `You now have 28 minutes,' " said Ilyas Zakiyev, who accompanied the elders.

At that moment, Mr. Aliev stepped forward as chairman of the council and identified the bodies of Idris Zakiyev and Mr. Ismailov, the mosque elder.

The town officials were allowed to take the two bodies away in a car, which Mr. Aliev said he drove through a gantlet of checkpoints where one Russian soldier stopped him and threatened to kill him.

"Where can we complain?" asked Mr. Aliev, as he stood in a makeshift morgue at the town mosque to make the final grim accounting from the raid on the village: three bundles of tattered clothing that belonged to unidentified men blown up in a field on the edge of town.

-------- us

Bomber debate

January 25, 2002
Inside the Ring
Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020125-67125491.htm

One of the arguments used by anti-B-2 bomber forces in the Pentagon to keep the assembly line closed is the same argument used by its supporters - the war in Afghanistan.

Backers of the B-2 stealth aircraft said the war showed the new relevance of long-range bombers in the worldwide campaign against terrorism. The lack of nearby basing rights meant long-range aircraft dropped the majority of bomb tonnage. And the ever-improving Joint Direct Attack Munition (JADAM) means bombers can achieve both strategic and tactical goals, programming the satellite-guided bomb target by target.

But opponents of restarting the Northrop-Grumman line (among them Pentagon's acquisition chief Pete Aldridge) also point to the war in Afghanistan.

They note that the B-2 flew a total of six missions on the first three days of the war. They note the 70 hours it took each plane to get to Afghanistan, drop bombs, fly to the Diego Garcia support facility in the Indian Ocean for a new crew and then fly back to its home, Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo. They also point out that the plane's high-maintenance, radar-absorbing "skins" are problematic.

Of the 21 B-2s at the 509th bomb wing, 55 percent were mission-capable when the bombing began Oct. 7. In November, the rate fell to 49 percent.

In Kosovo, where the B-2 made its combat debut, six B-2s executed 45 missions, dropping JADAMs on a variety of targets.

Asked about the bomber debate, Air Force Secretary James Roche said last week, "I can't speak for other people in our building. I can certainly speak for myself. I am not wrestling with more B-2s."

Mr. Roche then seemed to wrestle with the issue. He gave reporters a long explanation of why the Air Force does not need more B-2s, but does need new fighter bombers, such as the top-priority F-22.

"In the case of the bombers," he said, "they are still superb going after a large collection of fixed-point targets ... things that don't move and that you can pre-plan ... In the current conflict, we have had in total less than 20 bombers available and they have dropped something like 80 percent of the munitions, but you don't need as many bombers because you carry so many bombs per bomber and each of them is so accurate, that you don't have the problem of the old days where you had to drop 100 to get a hit."

Writing class

Amid Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's drive to transform the armed forces, he is also tackling a smaller reform: convincing military personnel they need to write with more clarity.

Pentagon sources tell us Mr. Rumsfeld prefers simple, declarative sentences in tightly written policy memos. But he often receives bureaucratic-style memos crammed with the military's favorite vernacular - acronyms.

"They want to see things written clearly," said one source, referring to Mr. Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. He described both men as speed readers who devour a large number of reports and memos each day.

A typical senior military officer attends a variety of schools on the way to the top. But few, if any, classes deal with William Strunk Jr.'s classic writer's guide, "The Elements of Style."

----

ON CAPITOL HILL
Congress considers new kind of draft Legislation would require military training of all young men

By Jon Dougherty
WorldNetDaily
FRIDAY JANUARY 25, 2002
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=26197

A bill before the House Armed Services Committee would require the induction of young men into the military "to receive basic military training and education for a period of up to one year," according to a summary of the measure.

The bill, called the "Universal Military Training and Service Act," introduced last fall, was sponsored by Reps. Nick Smith, R-Mich., and Curt Weldon, R-Pa. If passed, it would require all males 18-22 to "receive basic military training and education as a member of the armed forces," unless otherwise exempted under provisions of the measure.

"Except as otherwise provided in this section, a person inducted as a conscript or accepted as a volunteer pursuant to this Act shall receive basic military training and education as a member of one of the armed forces for a period of not less than six months, but not more than one year," the bill says.

With approval, draftees could stay for an additional six months of training.

The measure currently has no co-sponsors. It was referred to the Armed Services committee Dec. 21.

Besides basic military training, conscripts would be given courses on homeland security as well as "United States and world history [and] vocational training. ..."

Subject to the needs of the military, the bill also allows draftees to choose which branch of service they'd like to serve. Those opposed to serving in the armed forces or bearing arms on the grounds of moral or religious principles would be granted "conscientious objector" status, but they would be required to participate in "a national service program."

Once discharged, persons "shall not be subject to any further training or service under this Act," but could be subject to recall - given certain age requirements and the needs of the Pentagon - if the U.S. were engaged in a major conflict or were attacked.

Officials with the Selective Service System - the agency that would administrate the draft - could not immediately be reached for comment, but according to information published on the agency's website, any new draft would be "dramatically different" from the last time men were drafted for military service, during the Vietnam War.

For one thing, SSS would use a "lottery system under which a man would spend only one year in first priority for the draft - either the calendar year he turned 20 or the year his deferment ended."

"Each year after that, he would be placed in a succeedingly lower priority group, and his liability for the draft would lessen accordingly. In this way, he would be spared the uncertainty of waiting until his 26th birthday to be certain he would not be drafted," the agency said.

Also, a college student can only have his induction postponed until the end of the current semester, while seniors "can be postponed until the end of the academic year." During Vietnam, thousands of men received perpetual deferments for the entire time spent in college.

"If a draft were held today, there would be fewer reasons to excuse a man from service," the agency said.

----

HAWAII COUNTY OPPOSES EXPERIMENTAL SONAR

January 25, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2002/2002L-01-25-09.html

HONOLULU, Hawaii, The Hawaii County Council has unanimously passed a resolution opposing the U.S. Navy's plans to deploy an experimental low frequency active sonar system in Hawaiian waters.

The Surveillance Towed Array Sonar System (SURTASS) Low Frequency Act (LFA) Sonar is a powerful system the Navy seeks to deploy in 80 percent of the world's oceans. The passive SURTASS system is used to listen for noises produced by submarines, while the active LFA enhancement adds the ability to broadcast sounds, so the sonar array can listen for reflections of the sounds off of submarines.

The SURTASS LFA system has been blamed for injuries to marine mammals including whales and dolphins. Several studies have linked loud noises to inner ear damage in the mammals, which may disorient the animals and lead them to strand on beaches and in shallow water.

"The protection of whales and other marine mammals is of great concern to the citizenry of the County of Hawaii," the resolution reads. "Numerous scientific and environmental groups have proffered evidence that the use of SURTASS LFA sonar may be linked to internal bleeding, disorientation and hearing loss, resulting in whale deaths and strandings."

In fact, "according to the Navy's own test results, certain low frequency sonar levels may have harmful effects on humans who swim or dive in nearby waters," the resolution notes.

The Council argues that other technologies could perform the same function as SURTASS LFA without the harmful side effects.

"The protection of marine life in Hawaii's waters is not just an ecological, biological, or cultural concern, but also a matter of economic necessity because a healthy ocean environment is an integral part of Hawaii's visitor driven economy," the Council said.

The Hawaii County Council has resolved to oppose deployment of SURTASS LFA "unless and until scientific evidence clearly and independently establishes that no harmful effects on the marine environment will result from the program."

The Council is asking the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to reject the Navy's application for a permit to harm or even kill marine mammals during the deployment of SURTASS LFA "unless and until it is established that no harmful effects will result from such deployment." The Council wants NMFS to hold public hearings in Hawaii regarding the proposed deployment.

Copies of the resolution have been sent to President George W. Bush, Hawaii's Congressional delegation, governor and local mayor, the Secretary of Commerce, the Secretary of the Navy, the Secretary of Defense, and the National Marine Fisheries Service.


-------- POLICE / PRISONERS

$37.7 Billion for Homeland Defense Is a Start, Bush Says

By Bill Miller
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 25, 2002; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34753-2002Jan24?language=printer

President Bush said yesterday that he wants to nearly double the nation's spending on homeland security, telling an audience of mayors that his request for $37.7 billion signals the start of a long-term commitment to an anti-terrorism campaign that will rely heavily on local police, firefighters and other "first responders."

Reflecting the changing priorities brought on by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Bush said he will ask Congress to set aside $3.5 billion to train, equip and aid police, fire and emergency medical technicians, a tenfold jump from the current fiscal year.

Although the allotment for first responders represents the biggest increase in the homeland security budget, it isn't the largest expense. Border security leads the list, with $11 billion, according to sources familiar with the proposal.

The package includes about $6 billion for bioterrorism prevention, including medical research on vaccines; $5 billion for aviation security; $1 billion for intelligence systems and more than $11 billion for other programs, including making structural improvements and shoring up security at government buildings, the sources said.

Bush mostly confined his remarks in the East Room of the White House yesterday to the overall spending level, repeatedly comparing it with the $19.5 billion spent on homeland defense in the current fiscal year. He revealed only the first-responder part of his agenda, tailoring his presentation for the mayors, who have been clamoring for help with unprecedented costs.

"This is a two-front war," Bush told 300 mayors in Washington for a meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. "Overseas we're fighting, and at home we're fighting."

Appearing at the White House with Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge, Bush promised that his fiscal 2003 budget request to Congress would mark "the beginning of a homeland defense initiative which is going to last throughout my administration."

The announcement came as the White House continued a push to build support and momentum leading into next Tuesday's State of the Union address and the subsequent budget process.

Ridge took office in October amid congressional concerns that he lacked budget authority, but he wound up getting even more money than he was seeking, White House officials said. The budget numbers continued to rise in recent weeks, officials said, and the former Pennsylvania governor set the priorities that formed the budget blueprint.

Much of the money will be distributed to departments and agencies throughout the federal government, creating a challenge for Ridge and Congress.

"It's going to be spread across some 2,000 accounts in the federal budget. How are we going to track this?" asked G. William Hoagland, the Republican staff director of the Senate Budget Committee.

Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) also expressed concerns, saying she had hoped to hear Bush outline a security strategy that went beyond budget numbers.

"We've all been waiting for the strategy of homeland defense," she said, adding that the mayors provided Bush with a "dream audience" to share a broader vision.

The mayors, however, said they were glad to get relief. The money for first responders includes $2 billion for equipment, $1.1 billion for training, $245 million for preparedness drills and $105 million for developing emergency plans. Money will go to state and local agencies through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which will lead federal efforts in coordinating training and response.

Mayors have said that their forces are on the front line if terrorists strike. The country has nearly 2 million local law enforcement officers, firefighters and emergency medical technicians.

"Today is a giant step forward," said New Orleans Mayor Marc H. Morial, who is president of the mayors group. "This president heard the mayors and local officials and police chiefs of America."

He and other mayors said they were satisfied with the commitment and the role given to FEMA. Later in the day, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson announced plans to begin distributing $200 million to state and local governments to build up public health systems, part of a $2.9 billion bioterrorism package for fiscal 2002 passed by Congress last fall.

However, Bush's plan provides no reimbursement for overtime costs generated by local police departments so far. Several mayors, including James K. Hahn of Los Angeles, said they will continue to push Congress and the White House for help.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y) said she was encouraged by the first-responder proposal but would prefer money go directly to cities and states, an approach advocated by Hahn and other mayors.

----

Some Security Duties May End

By Pauline Jelinek
Associated Press Writer
Friday, January 25, 2002; 4:20 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36078-2002Jan25?language=printer

WASHINGTON -- Pentagon officials are trying to shed some of the extra homeland security burden troops took on after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Army Secretary Thomas White wants the Army National Guard relieved of its security duties at the nation's airports in the coming months, a spokesman said Thursday.

He wrote to Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta asking for civilian federal employees to take over the jobs in the next two or three months, said Army spokesman Col. Joe Allen.

Already this month, the Air Force said it was rethinking how to handle extra security it has provided with air patrols over American cities.

After terrorists crashed hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania countryside, President Bush asked state governors to post National Guard troops at the nation's airports as a step to use federal control of airline security to coax Americans back into the skies.

The effort put some 6,000 Guard troops at more than 400 airports around the country. Bush envisioned them there for up to six months, which would mean through March.

"That's what we needed - an immediate fix," Army spokesman Allen said. "And the military can do that.

"But ... as soon as a permanent solution can be implemented, the secretary has indicated he would like to get the Guard out," Allen said. He said that's what White told Mineta in his letter.

In it, White said he hoped the transportation secretary could get the planned civilian security operations in place at airports in the next 60 to 90 days, Allen said.

He said White asked the Mineta to get his security plan in operation "as soon as possible ... so we can begin pulling the Guard troops."

The Guard is needed to help out with next month's Winter Olympics in Utah, other homeland security jobs and for their normal duties, Allen said.

An Air Force contribution to Operation Noble Eagle, the name for homeland defense, are jet fighter patrols that have flown round-the-clock over Washington and New York and at random times over other major metropolitan areas and crucial installations since Sept. 11.

Some 250 airplanes and thousands of people staff the operation, in which jets also are on alert at 30 bases to scramble if called. The planes include some 100 fighter jets as well as tankers for refueling in flight and AWACS - Airborne Warning and Control System - planes for radar.

Officials knew from the outset that the continuous use of manpower and equipment couldn't be kept up without end, officials said.

Now that four months have passed and aviation security has been improved somewhat, some wonder if it might be time to start talks about a scaled-back alternative to the patrols, the official said.

From Sept. 11 to Dec. 10, the operation flew 13,000 sorties. The cost was $324 million, officials say.

The combat air patrols are the first of their kind over the United States since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.

The fighter pilots have been mostly from Air National Guard units.

------

Bush seeks to double budget for homeland security

AFP
FRIDAY, JANUARY 25, 2002
Times of India
http://www.timesofindia.com/articleshow.asp?art_ID=2037957417

WASHINGTON: US President George W Bush announced on Thursday that he would seek to nearly double the budget for homeland security to $38 bn for fiscal year 2003, part of a larger effort to protect the country from terrorism.

The announcement unveiled another facet of the plans Bush will present in his first state of the union speech to both houses of Congress next Tuesday.

On Wednesday Bush said he would request $48 billion in fresh funds for the US defense budget, bringing it to more than $366 billion -- a 15 per cent increase, the steepest in two decades.

Speaking to a conference of mayors at the White House Thursday, Bush said that after winning the war on terrorism, "the second priority of our government -- a priority which will be reflected in my budget -- is to make sure that we protect people at home".

"Therefore I will be calling on Congress to pass... a total request for homeland defense of $38 billion. It's the double of 2002."

"It's the beginning of a homeland defense initiative which is going to last throughout my administration," he said.

Bush stressed the importance of full support for local fire and police departments who are charged with responding first to terrorist attacks.

"It's your police forces, your emergency medical teams, your firefighters who are responsible for the first response on any terrorist attack, and are responsible for saving lives," Bush said as he announced a ten-fold increase in federal government support for such programs to $3.5 billion.

"I think America is now coming to appreciate the definition of sacrifice; sacrifice for freedom, sacrifice for human life. That's something our first-responders have known for a long time, and it's important for America to recognize that contribution they make," he said.

New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial, the president of the conference, welcomed the new funds for fire and police forces as "a giant leap in the right direction".

"Making sure that the first responders are ready to respond is our first objective," he said.

Bush warned that Americans should stay on the alert "because we're still under attack.

"They still want to come after us. These are evil people that are relentless in their desire to hurt those who love freedom. And since we're the bastion of freedom, the beacon of freedom, we're their target.

"And we're going to respond, and we're going to deal with it by working together," he said.

----

Afghans to carry on stoning criminals

By Alex Spillius in Herat
25/01/2002
Telegraph (UK)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/01/25/wtal325.xml&sSheet=/news/2002/01/25/ixnewstop.html

CRIMINALS in Afghanistan will face Taliban-style punishments including amputations and stonings as part of the interim government's drive to keep down crime, the chief justice said yesterday.

The remarks will raise concerns among Western donors who have made the restoration of the rule of law a priority in the shattered country's reconstruction.

Chief Justice Fazul Hadi Shinwari said he wanted adulterers whipped or stoned to death, the hands of robbers amputated and murderers publicly executed. Proselytising Christians may face the death penalty and Muslims who drink alcohol could be given 80 lashes.

Mr Shinwari criticised the Taliban for "turning Islam into a monster", but said: "God says that some people need to be present to witness the punishment as a lesson." The Taliban regularly held executions and amputations at sports grounds, often interrupting football matches so they would be guaranteed an audience. Offenders and political opponents were hanged from the goalposts.

Unlike the Taliban system, Mr Shinwari promised that criminals would be fairly investigated and tried. "The charges and the punishment will be dropped if we don't have witnesses and reliable proof," he told Reuters.

Crime has increased since the defeat of the Taliban and a functioning legal system has yet to be re-installed. There have been 80 shootings in Kabul during the past six or seven weeks. Old scores frozen during the Taliban era have been settled and criminal gangs have started to reclaim their territories.

In the capital and other cities armed groups which opposed the Taliban and had a reputation for lawlessness have returned. Many of their heavily armed members are blamed for robberies, extortion and murder.

Supreme court officials said a number of criminals - suspected murderers and robbers among them - had been arrested already and would be publicly punished once legal procedures were completed.

"The main issue here is that infidels or Westerners protest against a hand being chopped for theft," said Mr Shinwari. "But since the robber has committed a crime then he has to be punished for obvious and justified reasons - ridding society of crime." He also warned foreigners against trying to convert Afghans from Islam.

"The Islamic government, according to sharia, is bound to punish those who get involved in anti-Islamic activities," he said. "We can punish them for propagating other religions - such as threaten them, expel them and, as a last resort, execute them, but only with evidence."

It remains to be seen whether the 67-year-old chief justice's wishes will be be put into practice. There is likely to be a struggle between radical Islamists in the new government and more liberal figures such as its leader, Hamid Karzai, who would favour a more Western-style legal system while preserving the country's Islamic integrity and culture.

His legal model would lean more towards a modern Muslim-majority state such as Malaysia rather than the draconian Saudi Arabia. The Bonn agreement which created the interim authority leaves plenty of room for argument.

It says the "domestic justice system" should be rebuilt "in accordance with Islamic principles, international standards, the rule of law and Afghan legal traditions".

-------- death penalty

Neb. Court Overturns Death Sentence

January 25, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-BRF-Sentence-Overturned.html

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) -- A federal appeals court overturned the death sentence of a 21-year death row inmate Friday, saying the state's definition of ``exceptional depravity'' in capital cases is too vague.

The 2-1 ruling by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sends the case of Carey Dean Moore, 42, back to a lower court for a new sentencing.

Moore was convicted in 1980 of murdering two Omaha cab drivers during a robbery.

The state Supreme Court and a federal judge had upheld Moore's sentence, saying the killings were exceptionally depraved because Moore practiced calling cabs to see how long they took to come and chose older victims because they would be easier to kill.

But the appeals court said: ``We hold that the definition of exceptional depravity, inclusive of the purposeful selection of a victim on the basis of age, remains unconstitutionally vague.''

Attorney General Don Stenberg said the state will appeal.

At least three of Nebraska's six other death row inmates could also have their sentences overturned because of the ruling.

-------- terrorism

NATIONAL
American Charged as a Terrorist Makes First Court Appearance

New York Times
January 25, 2002
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/25/national/25WALK.html

ALEXANDRIA, Va., - Shorn of his bushy beard and long dark hair, John Walker Lindh looked thin, pale and a bit bewildered today as he stepped into a courtroom here to begin his defense against charges that he aided terrorist organizations and conspired to kill his countrymen.

Dressed in an olive drab short- sleeve jumpsuit with PRISONER in white on the back, he was led into the courtroom by two federal marshals. He wore no handcuffs or leg irons. He blinked repeatedly and made no eye contact with anyone in the courtroom, including his parents, whom he had seen before the hearing through a glass partition. That was the first time they had seen each other in two years.

Mr. Lindh, a 20-year-old Californian, said in a soft vaguely foreign accent that he understood the charges against him.

"Yes, I do, thank you," he mumbled to the judge in what is formally called an identity hearing, held to explain the charges to him and to ensure that he had legal representation.

Standing outside in drizzle after the hearing, his mother proclaimed her unconditional love and his father proclaimed his son's innocence.

"John loves America," his father, Frank Lindh, said. "We love America. John did not do anything against America. John did not take up arms against America. He never meant to harm any American, and he never did harm any American. John is innocent of these charges."

His five-man legal team made clear its intention to try to stage what could become the trial of the new century. "The American people love trials, that's why there are so many on television," James J. Brosnahan, the lead lawyer, told the more than 200 journalists outside the courthouse. "Don't miss this trial. Be there. There will be witnesses. There will be F.B.I. agents. They will be examined and cross-examined."

Mr. Brosnahan hinted that his defense would be built on the notion of an innocent abroad who was inadvertently drawn into a global terror network. The jury, he said, would hear "what happened to John Lindh," implying that Mr. Lindh was a passive bystander.

Mr. Brosnahan would not say whether he would seek to have the trial broadcast. Federal trials never have been broadcast, and it is not certain whether there will be a trial. Negotiations could lead to a settlement instead of a trial, but Mr. Brosnahan made no such suggestion.

He asserted that his client had been denied a lawyer. "For 54 days, the United States government has kept John Lindh away from a lawyer," Mr. Brosnahan said, calling him by his family name. He corrected reporters when they referred to his client as John Walker, the name the government has used in its statements about him. "He began requesting a lawyer almost immediately, which would have been Dec. 2nd or 3rd. For 54 days, he was held incommunicado."

On Dec. 9 and 10, the Federal Bureau of Investigation interrogated him in Afghanistan. It emerged with a 12-page complaint in which it said Mr. Lindh was advised of his rights to a lawyer, had understood those rights and had waived them. The complaint said he had signed a form waiving his rights and agreeing to be questioned by the bureau without a lawyer.

Legal experts said that Mr. Brosnahan was trying to establish that his client had made his statements involuntarily. If the statements were involuntary, they could be thrown out and the government would have to rebuild its case. A judge has not been chosen for a trial. The selection will be done by random rotation among the four active district judges.

Hanging in the balance is the future of a young man who converted to Islam from Catholicism in 1997 at 16. While his advocates have portrayed his life as a spiritual quest, the complaint against him said that during questioning in Afghanistan Mr. Lindh said he had trained in explosives and firearms at a terrorist camp run by Al Qaeda, had fought shoulder to shoulder with the Taliban before he was captured, had met with Osama bin Laden and knew that Mr. bin Laden had ordered suicide attacks against the United States.

As summarized this morning in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, the charges against him are: conspiring to kill Americans outside the United States, which carries a penalty of life in prison; providing material support and resources to a foreign terrorist organization, the Harkat ul- Mujahedeen, which carries a penalty of 10 years in prison; providing material support to another foreign terrorist organization, Al Qaeda, which carries a penalty of life in prison (a more severe penalty because of the nature of Al Qaeda); and providing goods and services to the Taliban, which carries a penalty of 10 years.

Attorney General John Ashcroft defended the Justice Department's handling of the case. Mr. Lindh "chose to join the terrorists who wanted to kill Americans," Mr. Ashcroft said today, "and he chose to waive his right to an attorney, both orally and in writing, before his statement to the F.B.I." Mr. Ashcroft added that Mr. Lindh "will be held responsible for those choices in court."

The government has up to a month to seek an indictment. The judge at today's hearing, Federal Magistrate Weldon Curtis Sewell, set Feb. 6 for the next hearing. If a grand jury hands up an indictment before then, the preliminary hearing would be skipped and Mr. Lindh would be arraigned shortly thereafter.

The initial skirmish will be over Mr. Lindh's statement to the F.B.I., which legal experts said could make or break the case. As Leon Friedman, a Hofstra Law School professor and author of "The Law of War," said, Mr. Brosnahan has to fight the validity of the statement "because if these statements go in, the ball game's over."

Howard Kushner, head of the criminal justice department at Long Island University and an expert on terrorism, said the case raised "deep constitutional questions" about whether an American caught fighting his country was entitled to the same protections that would be granted in the United States.

Nonetheless, Mr. Kushner said, the defense strategy seemed to be to raise those questions. "He wants people to think that if the government is so sure he's guilty, why not give him a lawyer?" he said.

Philip B. Heymann, a former deputy attorney general who teaches at Harvard Law School, agreed that there was "a lot of doubt" about whether legal protections applied in a battle against one's country.

"But I think if you were in a wartime situation with a terrorist group and people wanted to interrogate you to prevent further terrorist acts," he said, "not having a lawyer is not unfair or necessarily illegal."

Lawyers said that the defense was trying to humanize Mr. Lindh, and that if the public could not sympathize with him, they could at least sympathize with his mother, Marilyn Walker, who said she had not seen her son for two years.

"It was wonderful to see him this morning," she said, appearing to struggle to control her emotions. "My love for him is unconditional and absolute and I'm grateful to God that he's been brought home to his family, me, his home, his country."


-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

Irish green energy firm in Scottish Energy deal

Reuters REPUBLIC OF IRELAND:
January 25, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/14185/story.htm

DUBLIN - Irish green energy firm eirtricity yesterday said it had signed a 100 million euro deal with Scottish and Southern Energy Plc to import renewable power from Scotland.

Eirtricity, which recently won approval to build a 640 million euro ($560 million) wind farm off the Irish coast, said the deal makes it the first company to make use of a newly commissioned electricity link between Britain and the island of Ireland.

"This contract will give us access to sufficient green power to grow our customer base in advance of our Irish-based wind farms being constructed," said eirtricity managing director Eddie O'Connor in a statement.

"This gives us a major strategic flexibility and will take a lot of the risk out of the wind farm development process - by allowing us to get the customers before building the wind farms."

Eirtricity currently has planning permission for more than 100 megawatts of onshore wind energy projects, with a further 300 MW in the planning process.

The offshore farm, given the green light by the Irish government earlier this month, will generate 520 MW.

Under the deal with Scottish and Southern renewable energy purchased in northern Scotland will be channelled onto the 500 MW Moyle Interconnector, owned by Northern Ireland Electricity, linking western Scotland with Northern Ireland.

From there the power will be transferred onto Ireland's north-south interconnector and into the Irish Republic's energy market.

----

Gephardt envisions 'Apollo project' on alternative fuels

January 25, 2002
By Stephen Dinan
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020125-263777.htm

House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt yesterday called for an "Apollo project"-style push over the next decade to end American dependence on foreign oil, proposing tax breaks to encourage the use of alternative fuels.

"We need to begin today to reach the goal of making America energy self-sufficient, using clean and safe sources of energy," he said. "I believe that with strong leadership - and a real energy policy - we can meet this goal within a decade."

In a speech to the Democratic Leadership Council, Mr. Gephardt called on President Bush and congressional leaders to convene an economic summit to plan economic growth for the rest of the decade. The Missouri Democrat also laid out his plan to increase spending to combat terrorism, as well as proposed legislation to boost the number of teachers in the country.

But his main focus yesterday was on producing a sustainable energy policy. He proposed tax credits and government spending on research to make sure a majority of cars are not powered solely by gas by 2020, and that public-transportation vehicles use hydrogen fuel cells.

Mr. Gephardt joins a chorus of Democratic leaders who have given major policy speeches in recent days. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, and Massachusetts Sens. Edward M. Kennedy and John Kerry have given speeches outlining their visions for the future. With the exception of Mr. Kennedy, all of the speakers are considered potential candidates for president in 2004.

Mr. Gephardt in his speech distanced himself from Mr. Kennedy's call for a freeze on the part of the administration's $1.35 trillion tax cut that benefits upper-income families. Mr. Gephardt said the tax cuts should go forward.

"It's my view that we shouldn't be reconsidering tax cuts in the middle of a recession. And in any case, the president has taken them off the table. I think we would be wise not to spend all of our time and energy this year debating an issue we know will end in gridlock," Mr. Gephardt said, adding that Mr. Bush's tax cut "did not consider our long-term economic needs."

Among his other proposals, Mr. Gephardt said he wants to:

•Offer legislation to create a universal pension system that will allow portability as workers change jobs.

•Give a tax credit of $500 for every newborn baby, with the money eventually being used to pay for college or a home.

•Create a Teacher Corps to recruit 21/2 million new teachers by the end of the decade.

Republicans yesterday said the recent number of Democrats making major policy speeches shows that the Democratic Party is adrift.

"Leaders of the Democratic Party are in disarray; there is no clear Democratic agenda. They're all trying to one-up each other and trying to steal the spotlight from each other," said Kevin Sheridan, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee.

But Mr. Gephardt said the Republican Party is also internally divided, and he called on Mr. Bush to distance himself from the conservative wing of his party.

"Given the choice between doing the right thing and listening to their right wing on domestic issues, too often the White House has given in to pressure from right-wing zealots in the Congress. Too often the party has been dragged so far right it's wrong," Mr. Gephardt said.

---

Gephardt says US should seek energy independence

REUTERS USA:
January 25, 2002
Story by Thomas Ferraro
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/14187/story.htm

WASHINGTON - U.S. House of Representatives Democratic leader Richard Gephardt, a potential 2004 White House contender, says the United States should seek to become energy independent by the end of this decade.

Stepping up as the latest possible presidential candidate to offer his vision for the future, Gephardt spelled out a variety of proposals to promote long-term economic growth.

In a speech prepared for delivery yesterday before the Democratic Leadership Council, Gephardt called on the nation to end its energy dependence by 2010 by developing "environmentally smart, renewable energy solutions."

He also urged the nation to upgrade its work force by implementing new financial aid for students, recruiting 2 million more teachers by the end of the decade and increasing access to worker-training programs.

In addition, Gephardt called for pension reform in the wake of the collapse of energy firm Enron Corp., and to deploy new technologies to better protect the public, arguing that economic security and personal safety go hand in hand.

Gephardt's speech followed addresses earlier this month in Washington by two other possible 2004 Democratic presidential contenders - Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota.

Lieberman, the Democratic vice presidential candidate in 2000, said on Jan. 14 that the war on terrorism could not be won until Iraq's Saddam Hussein was removed from power. He also said the United States must wage a comprehensive effort worldwide to combat terror.

Daschle, in Jan. 4 speech, argued for targeted tax cuts and investments in homeland security to spur economic growth, while decrying U.S. President George W. Bush's $1.3 trillion tax cut last year as a major reason for the return of federal deficits.

On energy, Gephardt staked out a position similar to that of Massachusetts Democratic Sen. John Kerry, another likely presidential aspirant. In a speech on Tuesday, Kerry criticized Bush's energy plan as "old thinking" and said it would not reduce the country's dependence on foreign oil.

Aides said Gephardt plans a series of major addresses in the coming year.

In his prepared speech yesterday, Gephardt said, "Less than one week from today, the elected representatives of the American people will meet in a joint session to hear the president of the United States report on the state of the union."

"For most Americans, that question has been already answered," Gephardt said, noting how the nation pulled together in response to the Sept. 11 attacks. "The state of our union is strong."

"For me, the question before us today is not just what is the state of our union, but what is the state of our vision?" the Missouri Democrat said.

----

Dane wind shares down on doubt over offshore plans

REUTERS DENMARK:
January 25, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/14194/story.htm

COPENHAGEN - Shares in Danish wind turbines manufacturers NEG Micon and Vestas fell around four percent this week on a media report saying the government plans to scrap plans for three large offshore wind power farms.

At 0830 GMT NEG Micon traded at 205 crowns, down nine crowns or 4.2 percent from Tuesday's closing price.

Vestas shares were off seven crowns or 3.5 percent at 208 crowns, while the Copenhagen bourse's top 20 index KFX was 0.1 percent down.

"It's bad news for Danish wind power shares, but I don't expect them to fall further," one dealer said.

Financial daily Borsen said this week that Denmark's new Economy Minister Bendt Bendtsen will drop plans to install three offshore wind power farms by 2008 with a generating capacity of 450 megawatts.

"We are very concerned about the costs for society and for Denmark's competitiveness, if we continue to expand the use of green energy," Bendtsen told Borsen.

Bendtsen said that 27 percent of Denmark's energy consumption currently stemmed from sustainable energy, above the target of 20 percent by 2003.

-------- energy

DOE Rebuffs Energy Policy Suit

WASHINGTON IN BRIEF
Friday, January 25, 2002; Page A04
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35276-2002Jan24?language=printer

The Bush administration rebuffed a lawsuit by the Natural Resources Defense Council seeking the list of companies, individuals and groups that helped develop the White House energy policy.

In a legal reply to the NRDC lawsuit, filed in December, the Department of Energy denied that its officials had refused to release the names of individuals and groups the agency consulted in preparing the report -- the first time that the administration has made such an assertion in court. Officials have said earlier that the administration has provided many of the documents requested.

The NRDC will ask the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to force the agency to release the information.

Lawmakers of both parties have also called on the administration to disclose the information.

----

Cheney again refuses to give energy policy details

REUTERS USA:
January 25, 2002
Story by Randall Mikkelsen
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/14188/story.htm

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney's office again refused this week to turn over details of how the White House formulated its energy policy - including bankrupt Enron Corp.'s involvement - despite increased pressure from Congress.

The investigative arm of Congress has been seeking more information about contacts between industry and the administration's energy task force, headed by Cheney.

"Our statement of Aug. 2 (rejecting the request) stands," senior Cheney aide Mary Matalin told Reuters.

The agency, the General Accounting Office, is contemplating going to court to force the White House to provide information. Environmentalists say they were largely shut out of the policy-making process.

Four Democratic senators involved in probes of Enron sent a letter to the GAO this week supporting its efforts to pressure Cheney for further details.

The energy plan announced in May called for more oil and gas drilling and a revived nuclear power program. It contained many provisions sought by Enron.

Cheney was likely to face questions on the issue when he appears on television talk shows on Sunday to discuss Bush's pending State of the Union address but will not release the information, Matalin said.

"He (Cheney) is happy to answer questions regarding the principle, how important it is for the country that the executive branch, just like the executive branch, be able to get candid information, candid opinions" for formulating policy, she said.

Matalin also said the GAO has no constitutional authority to investigate the issue.

The White House has already revealed that Cheney or the energy task force staff met six times last year with Enron representatives but has refused to provide other details on how the administration's policy was crafted.

"I think all this information will come out in the very near future," said Sen. Don Nickles, an Oklahoma Republican and the assistant Senate Republican leader.

The four Democratic senators who sent a letter to Comptroller General David Walker, head of the GAO, backed his efforts to get information about the makeup and deliberations of the Bush administration's energy task force.

"Who helped shape the administration's energy policy?" they asked in the letter. "What did they recommend? ... The American public deserves answers to these questions."

The letter was signed by Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, whose Governmental Affairs Committee will hold a hearing yesterday into Enron's collapse. It was also signed by Carl Levin of Michigan, who chairs the Governmental Affairs subcommittee that has issued 51 subpoenas in its Enron probe.

The other two signatories were Sen. Ernest Hollings of South Carolina, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, who last month chaired a hearing that heard from Enron workers who lost their savings when the company's stock collapsed.

"The four senators said they feel the Senate deserves the information prior to its consideration of the energy bill," said a statement from Dorgan's office. It noted that Sen. Fred Thompson, a Tennessee Republican, had publicly said that the administration should release the information.

Enron went in a few weeks from Wall Street titan to filing the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history on Dec. 2.

Its downfall refocused congressional attention on the administration's refusal to give details of how it formulated its energy policy. Walker began his pursuit of the energy task force last spring at the request of Rep. Henry Waxman of California and Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, both Democrats. (Additional reporting by Susan Cornwell).

-------- environment

Toxic Waste Landfills Pose Birth Defect Risks

January 25, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2002/2002L-01-25-03.html

LONDON, United Kingdom, Women living within three kilometers (two miles) of a hazardous waste landfill site have a 40 percent greater risk of conceiving a child with a chromosomal birth defect, such as Down's syndrome, concludes a new study published today in the medical journal "The Lancet."

The findings are a companion to 1998 results suggesting a 33 percent increase in the risk of non-chromosomal birth anomalies such as spina bifida.

Both studies were carried out under the European Commission funded "Eurohazcon" project, and involved epidemiological research in the vicinities of 23 landfills accepting hazardous waste in Denmark, Italy, Belgium, France and England.

UK landfill (Photo courtesy UK Dept. of Environment)

The latest findings have sparked a battle in the UK where eight of the study landfill sites are located. Friends of the Earth UK said the research "adds to our concerns for babies born near toxic landfill sites," and called for immediate government action to reduce landfilling of hazardous wastes by increasing landfill tax rates and setting statutory targets.

Britain's waste industry responded angrily, dismissing the Eurohazcon research as "irrelevant and sensationalist." The article "relies on an obsolete, superseded and widely criticised benchmark," said trade association ESA, and "is quite simply irrelevant to modern regulated landfills".

The UK health ministry was more cautious, downplaying health fears but confirming more research. Last year, a government funded study found a one percent increase in the risk of birth defects in babies born from mothers within two kilometers (1.25 miles) of a landfill site, and a seven percent increase for those born from mothers living near sites accepting hazardous waste.

Friends of the Earth charges that the government's Waste Strategy does little to reduce the amount of hazardous and industrial waste sent to landfill, merely setting a non-statutory target to reduce the amount by 15 percent by 2005.

The Eurohazcon researchers acknowledge their findings do not prove a causal link. They suggest more research into chemical causes of chromosomal anomalies and levels of resident exposure to substances from landfills.

Locations of toxic landfills are available online at: http://216.31.193.171/asp/lf_q_simple.asp?language=English

----

Environmental group gives Bush 'D-minus'

By Kathy A. Gambrell
UPI White House Reporter
1/25/2002
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=24012002-052146-5781r

WASHINGTON, Jan. 24 (UPI) -- President George W. Bush on Thursday received an overall grade of "D-minus" on the League of Conservation Voters annual report card on environmental performance.

The group was especially critical of Bush for his proposal to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It also said he deserved low marks for breaking his campaign promise to curb carbon dioxide emissions.

"Bush's D-minus strips away the administration's pro-environment claims to reveal a pattern of corporate interest-driven activity that undermines the very environmental policies Americans want to see preserved," said Deb Callahan, president of the league, an environmental advocacy group.

The White House defended its record on the environment, saying that Bush proposed in 2002 the second-largest operating budget for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, maintained the Land and Water Conservation Fund and provided money for the upkeep and maintenance of the national parks.

"The president believes in a new way of thinking. He's working with the states and communities, and using 21st-century technology to improve the water and protect the land," said Deputy Press Secretary Scott McClellan.

McClellan said the administration is strengthening the national standard for arsenic in drinking water and implemented tougher rules for diesel emissions.

The annual 2001 Presidential Report Card grades the Bush administration on appointments, budget, initiatives ranging from energy and climate change, pollution and public health. The low grade demonstrates the continuing tensions between the environmental community and the Bush administration that began almost as soon as Bush assumed office one year ago.

Within his first six months in office, Bush pulled out of international global climate change talks, reversed his campaign vow to reduce carbon emissions, and delayed new regulations on arsenic levels in drinking water from being implemented.

The league did praise Bush for maintaining the 10 parts per billion as the standard for arsenic in drinking water.

The report gave Bush a "D" on his appointments of Gale Norton as Interior secretary and J. Stephen Griles as deputy Interior secretary. It described his choices as "part of a troubling pattern" of filling Cabinet and sub-Cabinet posts with industry lobbyists. Norton, it said, aggressively supports drilling in the ANWR and has hired former oil industry executives as lobbyists to push the plan through Congress. At the same time, LCV called Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman "a bright spot" in the administration's record.

The league criticized the administration's 2002 budget, which it said proposed cutting more than $600 million from the U.S. Department of Energy. Hit hardest was funding for solar, hydrogen, biomass, geothermal and wind energy research, all of which faced major cuts from current levels.

Solar research funding would have taken the biggest reduction, with a cut of nearly 54 percent from $92.7 million to $42.9 million. Geothermal, hydrogen and wind research programs all faced funding cuts of 48 percent.

Congress finally approved a spending bill funding renewable energy research and development of $396 million -- $120 million more than the president requested, the group said.

Bush is expected to release his 2003 federal budget proposal next week. Among environmental initiatives, he is expected to double the funds available to clean up and revitalize brownfield sites from $98 million to $200 million.

The Bush administration received a "D" for its policies on pollution and public health, the report said. It pointed to the EPA's plan to review regulations affecting power plants and oil refineries to determine what impact they were having on investment in new or expanded facilities.

"The plan would collapse five of EPA's most stringent pollution enforcement programs into one national approach that sets caps on three major pollutants -- sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury, but not carbon dioxide -- and allows companies to trade pollution credits," the report said.

Among the regulations to be scrapped under the Whitman plan are measures to reduce mercury emissions, lower emissions from Midwestern power plants by 85 percent, reduce emissions that cross state lines, protect the health of people who live near power plants, and restore visibility in the skies over national parks. The league, however, praised the administration for moving forward on prosecution of federal Clean Air Act violators.

----

U.S., N.J. Utility in Cleanup Pact

WASHINGTON IN BRIEF
Friday, January 25, 2002; Page A04
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35276-2002Jan24?language=printer

The government and a New Jersey utility reached a settlement yesterday in which the company agreed to pay $1.4 million in penalties and spend more than $340 million to reduce air pollutants from two power plants by tens of thousands of tons annually.

The settlement is only the second of its kind under new environmental rules adopted in the mid-1990s and could prompt similar agreements to resolve lawsuits seeking pollution reductions at aging coal-fired plants throughout most of the eastern United States.

It requires Public Service Enterprise Group Fossil LLC to install new pollution controls to curb sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from coal-fired plants in Jersey City and Hamilton, N.J.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman, a former governor of New Jersey, said the settlement "will improve the air quality for those who live around the Mercer and Hudson plants."

Frank Cassidy, president of PSEG Power, which includes the PSEG Fossil subsidiary, said the 10-year program for cutting emissions at the two plants resulted from talks the company initiated with EPA more than a year ago.

-------- genetics

Scientists Herald a Versatile Adult Cell

New York Times
January 25, 2002
By NICHOLAS WADE with SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/25/science/25STEM.html

Researchers in Minnesota say they have discovered a new and highly versatile class of adult stem cell, a finding being cited in the debate over the use of similar cells obtained from embryos.

The work, by Dr. Catherine M. Verfaillie and colleagues at the University of Minnesota, has not yet been published or confirmed in other laboratories, an essential step in scientific inquiry, but is being publicized by opponents of embryonic stem cell research.

Most adult stem cells are confined to producing new cells for one specific tissue, but those described by Dr. Verfaillie can turn into many different types of cell.

Stem cells have been the subject of growing medical interest because, as principal components of the body's own repair kit, they may hold the key to reversing the degenerative diseases of age. Scientists do not yet know whether adult stem cells or embryonic stem cells will prove more useful. Embryonic cells, although more versatile, are obtained by destroying the blastocyst, or early stage embryo, and opponents of abortion are strongly against work with them.

The cells Dr. Verfaillie discovered, which she has isolated from the bone marrow, could in principle be extracted from a patient and converted into cells of the heart muscle, brain, liver or skin, depending on which of the patient's tissues needed repair.

The cells also share a striking property with embryonic stem cells. At least in mice, the cells can be inserted into blastocysts, or very early embryos, and will then contribute to almost all the body's tissues.

Dr. Verfaillie said it was too soon to tell whether the adult stem cells she found would be as potent as embryonic stem cells.

But opponents of research involving embryonic stem cells drew attention to her work this week, contending that it made such research redundant.

"Science continues to prove that destructive embryonic stem cell research is unnecessary," said Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas. Mr. Brownback opposes work with embryonic stem cells..

The bone marrow has long been identified as the source of the stem cells that continually replenish the red and white cells of the blood. Last year the marrow was found to be the home of the long-sought stem cells that replenish the heart's muscle cells. It is also the source of mesenchymal stem cells, which can form cartilage, muscle and tendon.

Dr. Verfaillie says she has found a new class of bone marrow stem cell that can grow into each of the three major lineages of body cells, and into many subtypes of cell as well.

Dr. Stuart H. Orkin, an expert on blood-forming stem cells at the Harvard Medical School, said: "If the cells are what she says - and I have no reason to dispute that but no one has demonstrated it yet - it's pretty remarkable. For people interested in tissue regeneration, this would be the cell to work with."

Since Dr. Verfaillie has not yet published the bulk of her work on the new cells, other scientists have not had the chance to repeat her experiments, a standard procedure with important scientific assertions.

No one yet knows the relationship between the embryonic stem cells, which exist in the fertilized egg and can give rise to all body tissues, and the adult stem cells that maintain the various tissues of the adult body. One possibility is that a small population of embryonic stem cells lingers on in the adult, morphing into the various types of adult stem cell as needed.

"Are these remnants of embryonic development, set aside?" Dr. Orkin asked. "I don't know."

Another possibility, he suggested, is that Dr. Verfaillie had somehow reprogrammed the cells back to a semi-embryonic state. In other words, the versatility of the stem cells she discovered might be something created in the laboratory, not a natural property.

Dr. Verfaillie proposed the same two explanations, saying her cells had some of the markers characteristic of embryonic stem cells but lacked others. She calls the cells "multipotential adult progenitor cells" and rejects the term "ultimate stem cell," assigned to them by an article in New Scientist.

At a Senate hearing yesterday, Dr. Irving Weissman of Stanford University cautioned lawmakers that the research had yet to be repeated by other scientists. Dr. Weissman said afterward that even if it is independently verified, that would be no reason to restrict research cloning.

Dr. Weissman served as chairman of a National Academy of Sciences panel that concluded last week that while cloning for reproduction should be banned by Congress, research cloning should be permitted to go forward.

The issue before the Senate is whether to do as the academy suggests and ban only reproductive cloning, or to follow the House of Representatives, which in July enacted legislation that would ban cloning both for reproduction and research. President Bush is urging the Senate to enact the House bill, and Senator Brownback has introduced legislation to do so.

But Mr. Brownback's bill will now face competition from legislation sponsored by Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa. The Harkin bill would prohibit making babies by cloning, but leave the door open to research.

-------- health

AIDS Set to Surpass Black Death as Worst Pandemic

January 25, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-aids.html

LONDON (Reuters) - AIDS will surpass the Black Death as the world's worst pandemic if the 40 million people living with HIV/AIDS do not get life-prolonging drugs, a public health physician said Friday.

The illness has killed 25 million people since the early 1980s and an estimated 14,000 people are infected each day with HIV, which destroys the immune system.

Without antiretroviral drugs most people living with HIV/AIDS will die, pushing the death toll beyond the 40 million killed by the Black Death that ravaged Asia and Europe in the 14th century.

The Black Death, or bubonic plague, was caused by a bacterium carried by rats. Infection spread through rat flea bites.

``Despite the impressive advances in medicine since then, HIV/AIDS is likely to surpass the Black Death as the worst pandemic ever,'' said Peter Lamptey, president of the Family Health International AIDS Institute a non-governmental agency based in Arlington, Virginia.

``If we don't improve access to treatment in the next 10-15 years we could have as many as 65 million deaths from this disease,'' he said in a telephone interview.

Ninety-five percent of new infections are in the world's poorest countries where life-prolonging drugs are not available to most sufferers.

The illness has decreased life expectancy, increased infant mortality and orphaned millions of children -- particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, home to more than 28 million HIV/AIDS sufferers.

In a review of the latest information on AIDS, Lamptey said a lack of international and national commitment, inadequate resources and stigma and discrimination were stalling efforts to control the pandemic.

``We urgently need an effective and safe vaccine, an affordable cure, and intensified prevention, care and support programs,'' he said in the latest issue of the British Medical Journal which focuses on the AIDS catastrophe.

AFFORDABLE DRUGS

David Berwick, president and chief executive officer of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in Boston, Massachusetts, praised international drugs companies which have slashed the prices of anti-AIDS drugs, but said it was not enough.

``The initial acts of generosity only set the stage for what the world really needs: a dramatic, unprecedented, and unequivocal decision by the boards and executives of several important pharmaceutical companies to make their anti-HIV drugs free,'' he said in the journal.

But Richard Sykes, chairman of drug giant GlaxoSmithKline Plc, said the key problem in getting anti-AIDS drugs to the world's poor was not the cost of the drugs, but the lack of an infrastructure to deliver and administer them.

Malegapuru William Makgoba, president of the Medical Research Council of South Africa, said he was convinced the only real hope of combating the pandemic was an effective vaccine, which he believed would be available in seven to 10 years.


-------- activists

Pot-banging web-page reflects Argentine discontent

AFP
FRIDAY, JANUARY 25, 2002
Times of India
http://www.timesofindia.com/articleshow.asp?art_ID=2100395620

BUENOS AIRES: Banging on pots and pans has become a popular way for Argentines to demonstrate their discontent, reflected in a web page named cacerolazo after the particular form of protest -- which probably would be translated as a casserolade if there were such a word.

The site is a good place to find out where the next noise-making march will take place.

It's also the place to join a cacero-chat, become a cacero-correspondent, or simply to vent a little foul-mouthed anger between protests.

For those who used up all their cooking implements at the last rally, the site offers a free recording of a casserole concert.

A moving picture of a lid banging a pot illustrates how it is done.

Not that Argentines need any lessons in this art form.

Last month, massive cacerolazos, which ended in violence, led to the collapse of two governments.

More recently, an estimated 80,000 people took to the streets of Buenos Aires, banging on pots and pans, drumming on plastic containers, blowing whistles, honking horns and generally making a racket.

Not a day passes by without similar, though smaller protests. Sometimes, people simply make noise in their own neighborhoods, sometimes they will serenade politicians, judges or anyone else deemed responsible for the mess the country is in.

Neighbourhood associations have called for a nationwide "caserolazo" to be staged on Friday to demonstrate popular anger with banking restrictions that set limits on the amount of cash Argentines can withdraw from their bank accounts.

But the protests are not limited to cash-strapped middle-class Argentines. Many participants have no money in the banking system, or anywhere else for that matter.

"If I were not in uniform, I'd be with them," a police officer said during a recent protest near the presidential palace in Buenos Aires.

"I have to work a second job as a security guard to make ends meet, and that's barely enough," he said.

The officer, a father of four who asked to be identified only as Jorge, said his police salary amounted to only 500 pesos -- the equivalent of 500 dollars before this month's devaluation, but now about half that much.

The pot-bangers come in all political shades and from most sectors of society -- President Eduardo Duhalde has admitted his own daughter participated in one, though he would not say whether it was directed at him or one of his predecessors.

The producers of the website -- c-a-c-e-r-o-l-a-zo.com.ar -- stress they have no links whatsoever with "governments, dictatorships, political parties, religious organizations ... terrorists, organised crime, the mafia, guerrilla fighters or drug dealers."

----

I was (almost) John Walker

January 25, 2002
Glenn Sacks
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20020125-87113829.htm

I was almost John Walker. At age 19, I quit school and, using a few thousand dollars I'd saved, left the United States to look for adventure and a cause to believe in.

There were a lot of young men like me in hostels and train stations in many parts of the world - disaffected youths who felt stifled in their own countries and had set off alone to see the world. Wherever the hot spot was, that's where we wanted to go. A guerrilla war in the Spanish Sahara? Let's go there. Downtrodden masses fighting civil wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador? The honorable thing to do, of course, is to go there and help them.

John Walker's parents are excoriated by many who blame them for their son's actions and his "lack of values." Well, my parents instilled good values in me and raised me well, and when I was 19 they couldn't do a thing with me. Even my father, whose simple reproach I feared as much as any child ever fears his mother's rage or his father's belt, was unable to stop me.

John Walker's foolish cause was Afghanistan. Mine was Zimbabwe.

Two decades ago Zimbabwe, formerly known as Rhodesia, had recently thrown off its oppressive white minority government after a long guerrilla war. The new regime, led by victorious guerrilla leader Robert Mugabe, promised to be the world's first socialist parliamentary democracy and to pursue an unheard-of racial reconciliation. While traveling in then-communist Eastern Europe, I met Zimbabweans who were being educated by the Soviets, who at the time were posing as friends of anti-colonial Africans. They spoke to me of the poverty and backwardness of their country, and of their bright hopes for their nation's future.

I believed them, and I wanted to help. I wrote letters to the Zimbabwean government. I traveled to Africa and contacted their officials. I volunteered to be a "teacher, worker, soldier, or whatever the revolution needs me to be." I imagined nothing nobler than a white American repenting for the sins of the rich white world by going to Zimbabwe and helping black Africans begin their own, new, egalitarian country.

Fortunately for me, despite all my efforts, the Zimbabwean revolutionaries wouldn't take me. Looking back now, it is clear that Mr. Mugabe is a brutal leader who unleashed horrific ethnic strife and bloodshed on his country, and who hasn't done a thing for his people in his 21 years of rule. Had the Zimbabweans taken me and had there somehow been a conflict between them and the United States, I might have ended up in the same impossible situation that John Walker is in today.

After my rejection by the Zimbabwean government, I returned to the United States and poured my idealism into political activism and later into my career as a high school teacher. Am I embarrassed today at what I did when I was 19? Of course. Am I ashamed? Absolutely not.

It is said that anyone who is a radical at age 40 has no sense, but anybody who isn't a radical at age 20 has no heart. John Walker was certainly foolish to think that helping the radical Taliban - founders of the "world's first pure Islamic state" - was a noble cause. Recent reports indicate that he may have gone farther than that, and trained in terrorism, which is vastly more difficult to excuse. Reportedly, he has now come to his senses and, according to Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is providing the United States with valuable information on the Taliban.

We don't know and we may never know what led Walker to do what he did. He certainly has a lot of courage, and he may well have a lot of heart. Unfortunately, he allowed his extraordinarily poor judgment to eclipse them both.

Glenn Sacks, a columnist, is an adjunct professor at College of the Canyons.

----

A 'Pragmatic Idealist' Pursues Justice for All

By Nora Boustany
Friday, January 25, 2002; Page A22
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35278-2002Jan24?language=printer

At the height of the Watergate scandal, Alex Arriaga watched the news on television at dinnertime, wondering why President Richard M. Nixon was resisting taking a lie-detector test if he was telling the truth.

In her first political and moral act, she wrote Nixon a letter urging him to take the test -- and please, she said, don't fire my father, a Berkeley professor whom she imagined to be vulnerable to presidential anger. Arriaga was 8 years old at the time and in third grade, with a devotion to dance lessons.

The upbringing and career of Arriaga, now 38 and director of government relations at Amnesty International USA, have thrown her into the heart of human rights work. She joined Amnesty at the end of last summer, just before the shock of Sept. 11. Since then, the petite woman has been gliding through the halls of Congress with the grace of a ballerina, pondering how to protect rights in an age of terrorism.

"What does it mean to seek justice, and how do you build a future and go forward from here?" she asked. She and other activists have seized on the issues of military tribunals, secret trials and the legal rights of the Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. She was closely involved in the negotiations that got access to the prisoners for the International Committee of the Red Cross and is now seeking the same for Amnesty.

"There is a logic to promoting human rights as a form of promoting long-term national security," said Arriaga, who calls herself a "pragmatic idealist."

The daughter of an Argentine father and a Chilean mother, Arriaga was born into a family that has experience with political oppression going back generations.

Early in the 20th century, her mother's parents fled what is now Turkey for Chile so that Arriaga's grandfather would not have to serve in the Ottoman Empire's army, which mistreated Jews and often positioned them on the front lines in World War I. She has Spanish ancestors who sought refuge in Greece and Turkey following the Spanish Inquisition.

Her parents came here from their home countries, which were politically turbulent at the time, to teach and study at Berkeley, and Arriaga grew up in the United States, on both coasts.

"Maria Alejandra," as her parents named her, felt she was protected as a U.S. citizen, but on trips to her parents' home countries as a girl, she became aware that others were not so lucky.

In Chile, during the years of military dictatorship, she recalls the din of banging pots and pans of protesters, sandbags surrounding machine guns at street corners and buses exploding when gunfire hit their fuel tanks. "There was this over-arching sense of fear and intimidation, of not knowing who your friends are," she recalled.

Despite a budding interest in human rights, Arriaga contemplated a career in dance. At age 18, she won a summer scholarship with the Joffrey Ballet in New York, auditioned for a longer position and got it. After a year of dancing seven hours a day, living on a 450-calorie diet and fasting on weekends, Arriaga decided she missed her friends, reading and having the energy to do other things.

So she entered the University of Virginia, taking up Latin American and Russian studies and studying Russian and Portuguese,

Out of college, Arriaga got a job on the Hill with Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), working with his wife, Annette, who helped found the Congressional Human Rights Caucus. "I watched her grow and take hold of a very complicated job," saidAnnette Lantos. "When congressmen came to her with a problem of one of their constituents, she would organize hearings, send out letters. . . . She was effective as a spokeswoman for human rights and in activating those who had the power. For her, it was not a job, but a mission."

Tom Lantos went further: "We are just convinced she will be one of the major human rights figures in the country."

In 1995, Arriaga was hired as an adviser to John Shattuck, then assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor. "She has drive, and a clear focus, and the ability to take conversations in Congress and State and interpret them to develop strategies for achieving realistic objectives for human rights," Shattuck, now chief executive of the John F. Kennedy Library and Foundation in Boston, said in a telephone interview. "She made us do things we otherwise would not do."

Arriaga traveled to Bosnia, the one place she admitted being afraid of, as part of the State Department's task force there.

When Arriaga was asked to work in the office of President Bill Clinton's special envoy to the Americas, Buddy MacKay, she jumped at the chance. "She is quite ambitious and talented," MacKay said. "I would rather have a hard charger who sometimes needs to be reined in than someone you constantly have to push."

That job ended with Clinton's departure from office, and after a five-month stint with the Inter-American Dialogue last year, she was offered the government relations job at Amnesty. "This is what gets me excited and what I feel matters," Arriaga said.

The United States, she said, should expose the crimes of terrorists and demonstrate that "theirs is not a cause but a crime against hundreds and hundreds of individual victims." But at the same time, she said, it must respect the rights of its prisoners.

In her view, "it is very dangerous for the United States to have a go-it-alone attitude and set its own rules. The Bill of Rights refers to all people, and the United States is a precedent-setter for other countries.

"We have to be consistent, especially in times of crises," she said. "It takes a special kind of leadership."

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Obituaries in the News

January 25, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Deaths.html

PARIS (AP) -- Pierre Bourdieu, an internationally renowned French sociologist and philosopher who ventured outside the academic world to join protest movements, died of cancer Wednesday. He was 71.

Bourdieu's writings dealt with subjects from the 1960s social upheavals in France to the influence of television and the media.

Later in life, Bourdieu was involved in the struggle against social injustices, supporting striking rail workers, students and the homeless. He also joined anti-globalization protests and once said he believed ``sociology is a combat sport.''

Much of Bourdieu's early writing focused on culture and education. He argued that success in school or society depended on an individual's ability to conform to the social ethos of the dominant class.

Other works touched on literature, politics, poverty and gender inequality. In 1997's ``On Television,'' he described TV as a ``symbolic instrument of oppression.''

Since 1981, Bourdieu had held the chair of sociology at the prestigious College de France.

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Activists Mobilize After Shooting

January 25, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Police-Shootings.html

MIAMI (AP) -- Activists demanded expanded powers for the civilian panel that investigates police brutality cases after a black man was shot Friday, the second in a week.

Demonstrators took to the streets after Miami police shot and wounded an armed 23-year-old man in the back following a struggle over the victim's weapon.

On Monday, Miami-Dade police fatally shot an unarmed 20-year-old man in a stolen vehicle near a parade honoring Martin Luther King Jr. A rally Tuesday drew more than 150 protesters.

It was at least the third fatal shooting of a black man in Miami-Dade County by police officer in the last year. Four times in the last 22 years Miami has erupted in riots after police killed a black man or the officers involved were cleared, the last time in 1995.

``This new shooting takes us beyond where we were before. People are really upset,'' said Max Rameau of Brothers of the Same Mind, a black activist organization. ``It's like lighting two matches instead of one in a room full of dynamite.''

Police said Orette St. Elmo Kerro of Miami was in serious condition Friday.

The two shootings have renewed interest in the use of independent civilian review boards to monitor police misconduct.

Miami voters approved the creation of a civilian board to investigate allegations of police wrongdoing. On Thursday, the city commission voted to deny the police chief the power to decide when a civilian panel can move forward in its investigation.

Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, president of the Miami chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the board could have been strengthened if it was given subpoena powers with the ability to grant immunity to witnesses and the right to make directives to the police chief.

``The expectation is that this panel will provide a window for the community to be able to analyze the actions of police and the policies of police to make sure they're sound,'' she said.

Two officers -- Roderick Passmore, who is black, and Eric Gonzalez, who is Hispanic -- struggled with St. Elmo Kerro, who was convicted of burglary and grand theft charges in 1996 and was recently arrested for possessing cocaine and a firearm, said Miami police spokeswoman Herminia Salas-Jacobsen.

St. Elmo Kerro allegedly pulled out a handgun that discharged near Gonzalez's face, leaving severe powder burns on his face. The struggle continued until Passmore fired a shot in St. Elmo Kerro's back, Salas-Jacobsen said.

The latest shooting was defended by police, who said the two officers were protecting themselves against a convicted felon carrying a firearm.

``When can we say that a convicted felon is allowed to try to kill a police officer who is working? Is that acceptable?'' Salas-Jacobsen said.

On Monday, a Miami-Dade detective who was part of a group tracking stolen vehicles shot and killed Eddie Macklin, who was driving a stolen car near the parade.

Miami-Dade Police Department Director Carlos Alvarez has called Macklin's shooting a tragedy.

``If the police officer thought that his life was in danger, then his actions are consistent'' with the law, Alvarez said. ``There is no winner in this situation. Everybody loses.''

Residents said police were overzealous in using a gun near the parade route.

``I cannot see how that relates to protecting people from robberies that might occur from the Martin King Day celebration,'' said Bradford Brown, president of the Miami chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

U.S. Rep. Carrie Meek, D-Miami, has asked the Justice Department to open a civil rights investigation into Macklin's shooting.

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Civil Rights Curbs Surprise Writer

January 25, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-People-Helen-Thomas.html

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) -- Veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas admitted there is no road map to deal with terrorism, but said she has been struck with how easily Americans have given up some civil liberties.

Thomas told the Lincoln Chamber of Commerce on Thursday she understands the need for more airport security after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. But she said racial profiling, wire tapping and government intrusions on private property are too much.

``We cannot be ruled by fear,'' she said. ``That's not us.'' Thomas' journalism career has spanned 60 years and nine presidents. She resigned as the United Press International White House correspondent in May 2000, and was hired as a columnist by the Hearst Corp.

``I've always felt privileged to cover the White House and to have that ringside seat to history,'' she said.

``We have all watched Helen on TV,'' said Gov. Mike Johanns as he introduced her to a chamber audience of about 700 people. ``I told her, 'I feel like we know you so well, I should have you over for dinner.'''


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