------- Index of Articles
NUCLEAR
Taming the Nuclear Monster
Britain Scuttles Plans to Publish Iraq Dossier
Chinese missiles concern Pentagon
North Korea to Resume Talks With U.S.
US grants N Korea nuclear funds
U.S. Says Ready for NKorea Dialogue
Counter-terrorism, bit by bit
Westinghouse seeks OK for new nuclear plant design
SCRIBA: BRIEF NUCLEAR PLANT EVACUATION
N.M. Discusses 'West Wing' Scene
Bush's Mideast policy criticized
MILITARY
Courted by U.S. and Iran, an Afghan's Influence Rises
New Afghan Troops Finish Training
Colombian Air Force Bombs Rebels
Colombia Crop Program Faces Disarray
U.S. says Iran helps al Qaeda flee Afghanistan
Israel Widens West Bank Assault as Palestinians Hide in Church
Palestinian Authority Urges Struggle Against Invasion
Gunmen seek Bethlehem sanctuary
U.S. to Start Radio Broadcasts to Chechnya
China Calls for Ban on Weapons in Space
Russia Warned U.S. About FBI Agent
Shin Bet, Mossad oppose exile plan
U.N. and European Union Press for Cease-Fire
Arab States Push UN to Demand Israeli Withdrawal
POLICE / PRISONERS
IQ of Death Penalty Inmate Questioned
ENERGY AND OTHER
France to spend 10 bln euros on boosting wind power
India plans 6,000 MW wind power in next 10 years
UK says may change power mkt to help green sector
Iowa Senator seeks Calif switch to ethanol by 2003
Army Engineers Undertake Environmental Restoration
China invests in electric cars to combat pollution
ACTIVISTS
Tonight on West Wing: nuclear waste!
Yucca Mountain Transport Danger Dramatized on West Wing
Peace Advocates in Arafat Compound Hope to Deter Israeli Troops
Washington's Secret - Busters Tested
Protesters Clash at Beirut Embassy
Parents of Activist Flee NYC Home
Local Jews protest outside PLO mission
Activists oppose new PG board
Activists held in Ecuador pipeline protest freed
Fighting for Our Lives
-------- NUCLEAR
Taming the Nuclear Monster
By Richard Falk and David Krieger,
April 3, 2002
http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/02.04/030403kriegerfalktaming.htm
Not since the dawn of the nuclear age at the end of World War II has the danger of nuclear war been greater. And what is as troubling, this danger is not widely understood. Several developments account for this most disturbing situation.
The US Government has apparently adopted contingency plans that look for the use of nuclear weapons against specific countries and in a wide range of circumstances. Terrorist networks with genocidal agendas have been making strenuous efforts to acquire nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. The spread of biological and chemical weapons increase political incentives to threaten nuclear retaliation. The American push for missile defense is likely to lead other nuclear weapons states to increase their arsenals. India and Pakistan, hostile neighbors, continue their conflict over Kashmir with their nuclear arsenals lurking in the background. And, in addition, the atmosphere created by the September 11 attacks has given rise to a good and evil worldview that seems less inhibited with respect to nuclear weaponry.
It is against such a background that the parties to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) will meet from April 8-19 to review progress on the treaty and, most important, on its Article VI commitment to nuclear disarmament. The recent revelations of the classified US Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), which was first released in partially unclassified form in January 2002, indicated contingency plans for the potential use of nuclear weapons against at least seven named states. These revelations are sure to have alarmed these governments, and hopefully awakened the international community generally to an atmosphere of mounting risk.
Any US plans to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons would be contrary to international law as well as to long-standing US assurances not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states. It also constitutes a provocative threat to the named states and others as well as to international peace and security overall.
This US approach to planning nuclear weapons use, as well as other developments that increase the risk of nuclear war, will undoubtedly adversely affect the approach taken to non-proliferation by all countries. It is likely to induce further nuclear proliferation and to weaken seriously the non-proliferation regime. US policy toward nuclear weapons use, combined with its plans to develop and deploy missile defenses, is almost certain to encourage the expansion of nuclear weapons programs by Russia and China as well as the development of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction by other countries. It is also likely to give rise to destructive new arms races.
The fact that the US is developing contingency plans to use nuclear weapons is viewed by most of the world as a dangerous expression of bad faith. In the past, nuclear weapons have been reluctantly tolerated, but only as a deterrent against the use of nuclear weapons by other states. The US Nuclear Posture Review reveals that nuclear weapons are apparently being integrated into a full spectrum of potential war fighting situations.
US policy seems to make nuclear weapons no longer weapons of last resort, but rather instruments that may be used in fighting wars, even against non-nuclear weapons states. Detrimental steps have already been taken following the US lead. The UK announced that it is also prepared to use nuclear weapons against any state that may attack it with any weapon of mass destruction. Such an expanded role for nuclear weapons is bound to have other destabilizing effects.
In the post-September 11 world it is vital that the US and other nuclear weapons states assume full responsibility for assuring that nuclear weapons and weapons grade materials, particularly in the former Soviet Union, do not fall into the hands of terrorists. It is also crucial that leading nations do their utmost diplomatically and by way of the United Nations to defuse war-prone tensions in South Asia and the Middle East.
The most urgent challenge at this time involves steps that should be taken to restore the restraints on this most menacing of all weaponry. Just as it is accepted that it is essential to establish reliable regimes of prohibition for biological and chemical weapons, it is long overdue to give the highest priority to establishing a comparable regime for nuclear weapons. Non-nuclear states should insist that nuclear weapons states at least adhere to the declared Chinese position of no-first use, thereby retaining nuclear weapons only for nuclear deterrence purposes until they can be eliminated altogether.
In this vein, the US and the UK should retract their dangerous and destabilizing plans for nuclear war fighting and, in their own interests as well as those of the rest of the world, provide leadership toward eliminating nuclear weapons and ending the nuclear weapons threat to humanity and all life. The states that are parties to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty cannot afford to remain passive, but should use their leverage to remind the world that we are all facing an unprecedented and growing danger that nuclear weapons will be somehow used for the first time since 1945.
Richard Falk is professor emeritus of international law and practice at Princeton University, and visiting distinguished professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org).
-------- britain
Britain Scuttles Plans to Publish Iraq Dossier
New York Times
April 3, 2002
By WARREN HOGE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/03/international/03CND-BRIT.html
LONDON, April 3 - With skepticism over American foreign policy on the rise across Europe, Britain has scuttled plans to publish an intelligence dossier on Iraq's secret arms programs it had planned to release on Washington's behalf prior to this weekend's meeting between Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush.
The file was meant to disclose efforts by Saddam Hussein to develop biological, chemical and nuclear weapons and was similar to the document Britain released in October to help its American ally answer demands for proof that Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda organization were behind the terror attacks of Sept. 11.
Mr. Blair, the United States most vocal foreign backer in the war against terrorism, is to spend the weekend with Mr. Bush on his Crawford, Tex. ranch, and the wide-ranging agenda includes talk on Iraq and the role that Britain might play in any military action against Baghdad.
Mr. Blair is traveling in his favored role of providing a bridge between Europe and the United States, but at a time when the gap between the two continents' view of world events is widening. Criticism of the United States for its targeting of Iraq has redoubled with the escalation of violence in the Middle East.
"I think so far Blair has gotten away with being pro-American and a loyal European and not having to choose because America has not done something that is so awful that if he supports the U.S., he will lose Europe," said Charles Grant, director of the Center for European Reform.
"But the Middle East is possibly more dangerous for him now than Iraq because public opinion across Europe is very, very anti-Israeli, and people all think the U.S. can do something about it," Mr. Grant said. "It's the time for Tony Blair to be constructively critical, to be a candid friend."
Public opinion surveys have shown that the British public, which overwhelmingly supported American and British action in Afghanistan, is against military action in Iraq. Clare Short, a member of Mr. Blair's cabinet who left office 11 years ago because of Britain's involvement in the Persian Gulf war, has threatened to quit again if Britain commits to a campaign in Iraq.
Mr. Blair's apparent acquiescence to Mr. Bush's focusing on Iraq has emboldened left-wing critics within his own party who were already restive over a range of domestic issues including his government's stalled response to a slide in public services, its fight with trade unions over privatization measures and his own personal style, which they fault as too presidential and controlling.
Mr. Blair has said he shares Mr. Bush's view that something must be done to remove Mr. Saddam from power, and he has indicated that British troops would be available if Washington asked. More than 120 members of parliament have signed a motion expressing "deep unease" over this posture, and commentators have portrayed Mr. Blair as obedient and servile to Mr. Bush, or, in a repeated reference, as "America's poodle."
On Tuesday, his spokesman vigorously protested this characterization. "It's not that he's going to Texas to sign on the dotted line," he said. "He's going to think through the options." He said it was wrong to think of the meeting as a "council of war."
Mr. Blair has made a number of diplomatic missions helping explain American policy to countries in Asia and the Middle East, and Britain has committed 1,700 combat troops to the current United States-led campaign in Afghanistan to flush out remaining Taliban and al Qaeda fighters.
He and Mr. Bush are reported by both American and British officials to have established an easy and candid relationship, with telephone conversations between Downing Street and the White House as frequent as they were when his friend Bill Clinton was in office.
Mr. Blair has claimed that his support for Mr. Bush gives Britain unrivaled influence in Washington, but some Europeans are asking whether this access has brought increased influence. They wonder whether it has given Mr. Blair the chance to air European grievances and obtain a sympathetic hearing for them in the United States.
"I think by and large European leaders still welcome Blair's role with the U.S., but if he doesn't start articulating European concerns in public, he may start to lose his influence in Europe," Mr. Grant said.
The decision to pull back the intelligence dossier comes at a moment when the government is arguing that that public anxiety over Iraq is misplaced because there are no plans for any imminent action. One reported reason for withholding the document was that its release now would give the contrary impression and fuel more panic and anger.
Also, government ministers who saw drafts of the dossier were reported to believe it was not convincing enough and would therefore not serve to calm critics of the need to act against Baghdad. It was reported to contain evidence about the development of biological weapons including anthrax and botulinum toxin, but the findings were largely based on what United Nations inspectors learned before their expulsion by Baghdad in 1998.
-------- china
Chinese missiles concern Pentagon
April 3, 2002
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020403-93497416.htm
China's buildup of short-range missiles near its southeastern coast is "threatening" to Taiwan and poses a danger to sea lanes and ports in the region, the Pentagon said yesterday.
"These missiles are clearly designed to project a threatening posture and to try and intimidate the people and the democratically elected government of Taiwan," said Pentagon spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Jeff Davis.
"We're monitoring China's force modernization opposite Taiwan very carefully, including the [People´s Liberation Army´s] growing arsenal of tactical ballistic missiles," he said.
Cmdr. Davis declined to comment directly on a report in yesterday's editions of The Washington Times that Beijing recently added new short-range missiles near Taiwan. "On specific intelligence, we're not going to comment," he said.
China's overall buildup of forces is less a worry than its military modernization effort near Taiwan, he said.
"The modernization itself doesn't bother us," Cmdr. Davis said. "China is a major regional power and it's appropriate that it has a military commensurate with its stature," he said.
"What is a concern to us are the things that raise tensions vis-a-vis Taiwan, in particular their missile deployments."
U.S. intelligence officials disclosed to The Times that China in the past three weeks moved some 20 additional CSS-7 short-range ballistic missiles to a base at Yongan, within striking distance of Taiwan.
The missiles are regarded as destabilizing because their presence increases tensions and the danger that an incident could trigger a conflict.
In the past, the Pentagon has declined to comment on reports of threatening Chinese military activities or exercises.
The Chinese missile force near Taiwan has increased from fewer than 50 in 1997 to more than 350 today. The Defense Intelligence Agency estimates that the missile force of both CSS-6s and CSS-7s will grow to as many as 650 by 2005.
Cmdr. Davis said China's naval buildup also posed a threat to sea lanes used by Taiwan and the region.
"The other area of modernization that we are watching closely is their navy," Cmdr. Davis said. "We're watching closely for the potential impact of China's naval modernization on Taiwan's sea lanes of communication or access to its ports."
The naval buildup could threaten Taiwan's freedom of navigation, he said.
The Bush administration announced last year that it would supply Taiwan with up to eight diesel-electric submarines to bolster its defenses against China's growing military power. It also offered Kidd-class guided-missile destroyers, but stopped short of offering more advanced Arleigh Burke-class warships, which included Aegis battle-management systems that could be used in future missile defenses.
China has purchased two Sovremenny-class destroyers from Russia that are equipped with SSN-22 Sunburn anti-ship missiles, and recently has ordered two more.
In addition to missile deployments and ship purchases, China also has acquired advanced Su-27 and Su-30 warplanes and is building a new class of attack submarines.
Its strategic nuclear buildup includes two new long-range mobile missile systems and a new class of ballistic-missile submarines.
-------- korea
North Korea to Resume Talks With U.S.
April 3, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Koreas-Dialogue.html
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korea said Wednesday that it will resume dialogue with the United States, warning that it will call off any future talks if the Washington ``slanders'' the isolated communist country again.
The United States has said it wants talks aimed at persuading the North to stop alleged development of weapons of mass destruction. Last month, U.S. officials met North Korean representatives in New York and proposed a resumption of dialogue.
Such talks had been held under the Clinton administration, but President Bush halted them when he came to office and ordered a policy review.
In January, Bush branded North Korea as part of ``an axis of evil'' along with Iran and Iraq, saying it had ambitions to develop weapons of mass destruction. But the next month, on a visit to South Korea, Bush offered to start talks with the North.
North Korea rejected Bush's offer at the time. But on Wednesday, it said it ``carefully examined the U.S. side's position and decided to resume the negotiations, taking its request into consideration.''
The statement by a Foreign Ministry spokesman, carried by the North's official news agency KCNA, did not specify what the agenda of the dialogue would be.
But the spokesman said the North had made clear during the New York meetings between U.S. special envoy Jack Pritchard and North Korea's U.N. mission chief, Pak Kil Yon, that ``groundless slanders against (the North) should not be repeated and, if such things happen, it will regard the U.S. position as deceptive.''
The North Korean spokesman said the North will also resume talks with a U.S.-led international consortium building two modern reactors in the impoverished country in return for its 1994 agreement to freeze its nuclear facilities suspected of being used to build atomic bombs.
North Korea complained of delays in the $4.6 billion reactor project. In retaliation, it is denying U.N. inspectors full access to its nuclear laboratories, making it impossible to determine whether it is operating a clandestine weapons program.
The North made its announcement Wednesday after a South Korean special envoy, Lim Dong-won, arrived in the country to meet Northern leaders and pass on messages from the United States -- including, Lim said, the offer to restart talks.
Lim met in Pyongyang with Kim Yong Sun, a close confidant of leader Kim Jong Il, and was expected to meet the top the North Korean leader later during the three-day visit, officials in the South said.
U.S. and South Korean officials believe that North Korea may have enough plutonium to make one or two atomic bombs. The North already has stockpiles of up to 5,000 tons of biochemical weapons and is developing a missile that could carry a significant payload to Alaska, Hawaii and parts of the continental United States, U.S. officials say.
U.S. officials also designated North Korea as a major exporter of missile technology to countries such as Iran, Libya, Syria and Egypt.
Lim, the South's envoy, also urged North Korea to restart stalled inter-Korean projects aimed at helping reconciliation on the divided peninsula -- including reunions of separated family members and a cross-border rail line, Lee Bong-jo, a South Korean official, told journalists in Seoul.
The Koreas, divided in 1945, share the world's most heavily armed border. About 37,000 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea as a deterrent against North Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War.
Inter-Korean ties, which warmed after the first-ever summit of their leaders in 2000, have cooled since Bush took office last year.
-------
US grants N Korea nuclear funds
Pyongyang threatened to pull out of the nuclear deal
Wednesday, 3 April, 2002
BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/asia-pacific/newsid_1908000/1908571.stm
The US Government has announced that it will release $95m to North Korea as part of an agreement to replace the Stalinist country's own nuclear programme, which the US suspected was being misused.
Under the 1994 Agreed Framework an international consortium is building two proliferation-proof nuclear reactors and providing fuel oil for North Korea while the reactors are being built.
In releasing the funding, President George W Bush waived the Framework's requirement that North Korea allow inspectors to ensure it has not hidden away any weapons-grade plutonium from the original reactors.
President Bush argued that the decision was "vital to the national security interests of the United States".
Deal under threat
North Korea has repeatedly threatened to withdraw from the agreement in recent weeks.
It has been angered by President Bush's accusation that Pyongyang was part of an "axis of evil" producing weapons of mass destruction.
This annoyance was compounded by Washington's decision to withhold this year's certification that North Korea is keeping its side of the Agreed Framework.
It has systematically refused to allow International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors into its nuclear facility at the Yongbyon research base north of the capital.
Delayed Pyongyang has justified its refusals by pointing out that the reactors are way behind schedule.
They were originally expected to have been completed next year, but now construction is not expected to even begin until August.
Another issue is the different interpretations of the inspections' timing.
According to the Framework, North Korea should be fully compliant with IAEA safeguards when "a significant proportion" of the project is completed.
The builders say that will be around May 2005, and given the inspections will take at least three years, this means that North Korea should start admitting inspectors now.
But Pyongyang believes that they should only allow the inspections to start, rather than finish, by that date.
The head of the Non-proliferation Policy Education Centre in Washington, a critic of the Agreed Framework, has warned that even when the new reactors are completed they may not be tamper-proof.
"These reactors are like all reactors, They have the potential to make weapons. So you might end up supplying the worst nuclear violator with the means to acquire the very weapons we're trying to prevent it acquiring," Henry Sokolski told the Far Eastern Economic Review.
--------
U.S. Says Ready for NKorea Dialogue
April 3, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-North-Korea.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- As North Korea offered to reopen peace talks, a White House spokesman said Wednesday that the United States is ready for dialogue with the communist Pyongyang regime ``anytime, anywhere.''
But White House press secretary Ari Fleischer brushed aside the condition that North Korea set for future talks: that the United States cease its ``groundless slanders.''
Asked if President Bush was willing to stop using the term ``axis of evil'' to describe North Korea, Iran and Iraq, Fleischer told reporters at the White House, ``The president will continue to speak out forthrightly about what he sees as ways to make peace throughout the world.
``Our position has always been and will continue to be that we welcome dialogue with North Korea anytime anywhere,'' Fleischer added.
North Korea's official news agency KCNA quoted that country's Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying Wednesday that Pyongyang has decided to resume talks with the United States so long as ``groundless slanders against (North Korea) should not be repeated.''
During a visit to South Korea in February, Bush repeated his assertion that the North Koreans are evil but also renewed an offer to start talks with the North on ending its development of missiles and weapons of mass destruction. Pyongyang rejected that offer.
U.S. and South Korean officials say that North Korea may already have enough plutonium to build one or two atomic bombs. But Pyongyang has kept United Nations inspectors out of its nuclear facilities.
The Koreas, divided in 1945, share the world's most heavily armed border. Since the 1950-53 Korean War ended without a peace treaty, about 37,000 U.S. troops have been stationed in South Korea as a deterrent against invasion by the North. Inter-Korean ties, which warmed after the first-ever summit of their leaders in 2000, cooled after Bush took office last year.
-------- terrorism
Counter-terrorism, bit by bit
April 3, 2002
Washington Times
Saul B. Wilen
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20020403-88457226.htm
Consider what might be called the Washington Mall Scenario. Several nuclear "dirty" suitcase bombs are detonated between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. The result: No humans could be permitted on this land and the surrounding radius of several miles (almost the entire city of Washington) for hundreds of years (U.S. Department of Energy information on radiation impact). This is no fantasy, and it highlights the marked limitations of our nation's strategy based primarily on responding to terrorism.
The awakening of September 11 put America's vulnerabilities and weaknesses into sharp perspective. The approaches instituted to date (codified in the Patriot Act) are primarily reactive in nature, waiting for terrorist events to occur and then responding through disaster preparedness and crisis management.
Disaster preparedness and reactive interventions are necessary and should be supported. But the present equation for terrorist prevention and preparedness is markedly out of balance. Knowing the futility of a reactive strategy, terrorist expert after terrorist analyst after terrorist consultant can now be heard saying that the major focus of our efforts must be prevention of terrorism.
America does not have the resources to employ primarily a reactive strategy. The Federation of American Scientists has warned, since the 1970s, that the United States is unable to handle the casualties of even a modest nuclear attack on a handful of urban targets simultaneously. Our lack of experience with mass quarantine enhances our vulnerability to terrorist-caused smallpox virus exposures in multiple, distant population centers. Consequently, millions of people would have to be quarantined.
Our resources to react to the release of toxic chemicals into the subway systems of several cities would quickly be exhausted. The medical experts at the St. Luke's International Hospital in Tokyo, Japan, who treated large numbers of the 1995 Sarin gas victims, have estimated that, if the terrorists used undiluted Sarin gas, the attack would have resulted in thousands and thousands of deaths and injuries, far beyond any capability for an effective response.
The antiquated information systems being used by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) actually interfere with its vital role in prevention and protection. How many other agencies are similarly hampered? Had the towers of the World Trade Center fallen over as was expected by Osama bin Laden, instead of imploding, the human and physical devastation would have been beyond our ability to ever respond. The general economic impact of terrorist attacks and threats diverts our resources and undermines our economic stability.
American society has historically been reactive, waiting for a cataclysmic event and then rallying support to create the needed response. But this support soon wanes, and America returns to complacency. The September 11 tragedies exposed our vulnerability and led President George W. Bush to declare a global "war on terrorism." Direct military confrontation to mortally wound terrorism will take many years with no assurance of accomplishment. What must be done differently? We must institute terrorism prevention now.
Prevention will be accomplished by molding our unique ability to mobilize technology, use information optimally, create effective communication, employ education, and apply our physical resources into the weapon to defeat terrorist threats. We have the information we need - but it is not integrated to be of real use.
The prevention weapon consists of computer-based systems that utilize the multiple existing databases - many housed in different government agencies - domestically and globally in real-time. Information will continue to be gathered, incorporated and shared on multiple levels. The new and unique horizontal integration technology allows the data to be subdivided immediately into essential elements for evaluation to support effective decision-making and action. The information presently stored in the multiple agency and entity databases, such as that relating to terrorist attacks, government buildings, and biological agents, would be merged into a functional "one-source-reservoir" used by these agencies for strategic prevention analysis. This technology exists now and can be readily implemented. But the job, logical as it seems, has yet to be done, while future terrorist attacks are being planned. There is no time to wait.
Current database systems use vertical data access whereby the data is not connected, but is separated into individual data blocks. These can only be accessed one block at a time. Horizontal data integration accesses and merges the information resulting in detecting the early trends in real-time that unmask terrorists, terrorist activities, and their threats. This horizontal process allows for prevention and has applications for the Office of Homeland Security, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Department of Defense, Department of Justice, Department of Transportation, Department of Commerce, Health and Human Services, FBI, Department of Agriculture, CIA, municipalities and states.
This is the time for clear thought and decisive action. We must learn from history and seize the opportunity to institute prevention as a full and equal component in our planning and strategies, provide the necessary education for all Americans, establish meaningful and valid communication among all responsible agencies and entities, and motivate cooperation for the present and the future. As America continues to target terrorism we need leadership to guarantee that the principles of prevention be applied to create enduring, positive results, thereby assuring security for future generations.
Dr. Saul B. Wilen is a member of the U.S. Secret Service's New York Electronic Crimes Task Force and the Commerce Department's Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office Working Group on Community Structure for Crisis Management, Planning, Preparedness and Recovery.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Westinghouse seeks OK for new nuclear plant design
REUTERS USA:
April 3, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15289/story.htm
WASHINGTON - Westinghouse Electric Co has asked U.S. regulators to approve a new design for nuclear power plants which would rely on gravity and pressure differentials to safely shut down the reactor in an accident, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said yesterday.
The company's proposal comes amid the Bush administration's urging to the U.S. nuclear industry to build several new plants by 2010 to boost electricity supplies.
Westinghouse is a unit of Britain's state-owned BNFL Plc.
Westinghouse wants U.S. regulators to certify the company's new AP1000 standard plant design for new plants able to produce about 1,100 megawatts of electricity, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in a statement.
The design would use modular construction to speed up construction of a nuclear plant to just three years from start to finish. Each would have an operating life of 60 years.
The Westinghouse AP1000 is similar to the company's AP600 design approved by regulators in 1999, except larger and more economical to operate. The AP1000 design would use natural forces such as gravity to ensure safe operation, as well as fewer valves and less piping, control cable and pumps.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has certified three other standard reactor designs for utilities to use in designing a new plant.
The agency said its review of Westinghouse's application would require several steps, including a draft safety evaluation report as well as technical analysis.
In February, BNFL and British Energy agreed to study whether the Westinghouse AP1000 could replace British Energy's existing nuclear power stations in England. British Energy is also consdering a rival design known as the Canadian CANDU.
Makers of both designs have set an informal target of trying to get the construction cost down to about $1,000 per kilowatt.
Another proposed design - known as the pebble bed modular reactor - is also being developed by a consortium that includes Exelon Corp . That design would produce much smaller plants with a capacity of 120 to 130 megawatts.
The Bush administration said in February that it would help pay for studies of three federal sites in Ohio, South Carolina and Idaho for potential new nuclear power plants being considered by Exelon and Dominion Resources Inc .
Critics say they are concerned about safety issues - such as the recently discovered corrosion at an Ohio nuclear plant - and the growing volume of dangerous radioactive waste generated by plants nationwide.
No new U.S. commercial nuclear power plants have been built since the 1979 Three Mile Island accident. In that $1 billion accident, the plant's water cooling system failed and led to the partial melting of a reactor's uranium core.
Nuclear power currently provides about 20 percent of U.S. electricity.
-------- new york
SCRIBA: BRIEF NUCLEAR PLANT EVACUATION
New York Times
April 3, 2002
Metro Briefing: New York
Winnie Hu (NYT)
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/03/nyregion/03MBRF3.html
Hundreds of employees at the Nine Mile Point Nuclear Station were briefly evacuated early yesterday morning after a small amount of carbon dioxide was accidentally released in a turbine building. The gas came from hoses in the plant's fire prevention system. The employees returned to work in less than an hour, after the discharge was isolated and the plant was found to be safe. Bob Burtch, a spokesman for the plant, said the cause of the accident was not immediately clear.
-------- us nuc waste
N.M. Discusses 'West Wing' Scene
April 3, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-West-Wing-New-Mexico.html
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) -- This just in: Martin Sheen is not president.
Just in case New Mexico television viewers were wondering, the state Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department wanted them to know that an episode of ``The West Wing'' scheduled to air Wednesday night is fictional.
The NBC drama series about life in the White House was to feature a story line about a crash of a heavy rig bearing uranium fuel rods in a remote Idaho tunnel.
``The scenario described is completely fictional,'' the department said in a news release issued Tuesday, later adding, ``New Mexico has no tunnels.'' Neither, it added, does Idaho.
In fact, New Mexico does have a tunnel on U.S. 82 between Alamogordo and Cloudcroft.
Anne Clark, the department's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant coordinator, said Wednesday that the news release should have said New Mexico has no tunnels on roads designated for vehicles hauling radioactive and other hazardous materials.
Diane Kinderwater, spokeswoman for Gov. Gary Johnson, approved the release, issued on the governor's letterhead.
``We're not trying to offend anybody's intelligence but they see vignettes and think that it could happen,'' Kinderwater said. ``Why not try to give correct information?''
Kinderwater said the idea for the release came from state Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Secretary Betty Rivera.
The release was prepared by Clark, who said Wednesday the issue portrayed on the show is ``going to be hot on people's minds because of Sept. 11.''
``We want to assure people that this is not a possible scenario and we're prepared for anything that could happen in terms of an accident or some kind of security issue,'' she said.
WIPP, which opened in March 1999 near Carlsbad, is a federal underground storage facility for plutonium-contaminated waste from defense work. It does not store nuclear fuel rods from civilian power plants.
``As officials of the state, they (Rivera and Clark) felt this was the time to let the public know that they don't have anything to fear from anything on the program,'' Kinderwater said. ``Sometimes the power of television is very strong. They're just trying to be responsible.''
Maria Stasi of Warner Bros. Television Publicity said no one was available Tuesday evening to comment. A ``West Wing'' publicist also did not return a phone call late Tuesday.
On the Net:
The West Wing Web site: http://www.nbc.com/The--West--Wing/index.html
-------- us politics
Bush's Mideast policy criticized
April 3, 2002
By Bill Sammon
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020403-70615135.htm
President Bush, whose handling of the war on terrorism and other foreign policy crises has won broad bipartisan praise, suddenly finds himself unable to please anyone on the Middle East.
Mr. Bush yesterday refused to answer reporters' shouted questions on the burgeoning violence, preferring to let Secretary of State Colin L. Powell explain the administration's evolving position for the second day in less than a week.
At a fund-raiser last night, Mr. Bush mentioned the conflict in broad terms. But he did not criticize Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's response to the wave of suicide bombings in Israel and did not specifically exhort Mr. Arafat to do more to counter them.
The president's actions have done little to satisfy Democrats, Republicans, an increasingly critical news media or the Palestinians.
"I believe that the administration ought to be working on a broader plan, beyond the security issue, for the overall political settlement," said Sen. Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Republican, on Fox News Channel.
"It's important to elevate the talks," he added. "The matter is so critical at this moment that Secretary of State Colin Powell ought to become directly involved in the negotiations, in my opinion."
Mr. Specter is not the only member of Congress to criticize the president's Middle East policy in recent days. So have Rep. James P. Moran, Virginia Democrat, and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, Connecticut Democrat, who said the administration is sending mixed signals on the deepening crisis.
Those mixed signals continued yesterday when Mr. Powell voiced support for Israel's latest counteroffensive, even though the United States called for Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian territories in a U.N. resolution during the weekend.
Mr. Powell explained in five TV interviews that Israel is merely cleaning out terrorist cells from Palestinian lands and will then withdraw.
"Israel will not buckle under and suddenly make the kinds of concessions that Palestinians would like to see them make in the presence of this kind of violence," Mr. Powell told Fox News.
Such shifts in Middle East policy are becoming an almost daily occurrence at the White House. On Monday, Mr. Bush refused to label Mr. Arafat a terrorist, even though the president has long equated terrorists with those who harbor them.
During his State of the Union speech in January, Mr. Bush singled out terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah, which are sympathetic to Palestinians, as part of the "axis of evil" that also includes Iran, Iraq and North Korea.
In recent days, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has replaced North Korea with Syria on the list of the top three states harboring terrorists. But he, like the rest of the administration, refrained from including the Palestinian Authority on that list.
On Monday, the president explained, much to the chagrin of some conservatives, that he is making an exception for the Palestinians because Mr. Arafat "has negotiated with parties as to how to achieve peace."
But in the next breath, Mr. Bush criticized Mr. Arafat for not sufficiently condemning the suicide bombers who have multiplied in recent weeks. Yesterday was the first day in a week that no bomber struck in Israel.
"Whatever happened to the president's clear formulation that anyone who harbors a terrorist or helps a terrorist will be treated as a terrorist?" the Weekly Standard argued in an editorial this week.
At the Philadelphia fund-raiser, Mr. Bush expressed sympathy for both sides, saying he hoped Palestinians would get "their own peaceful state" and Israel could have normal ties with its Arab neighbors.
Mr. Bush muted his criticism of Mr. Arafat and his support for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, mentioning neither by name and vowing that the United States would work to stop "terrorist activities" aimed at derailing peace efforts.
"I've got a vision for the Middle East that says Israel must be allowed to exist," Mr. Bush said. "I hope that [the Palestinians] can have their own peaceful state at peace with their neighbor Israel, a self-governing country, a country in which there is economic prosperity."
Although the president appears to distrust Mr. Arafat - he has never met with the Palestinian leader and has talked to him on the phone only once - Mr. Powell yesterday opposed Mr. Sharon's suggestion that Mr. Arafat be exiled.
"Sending him into exile will just give him another place from which to conduct the same kinds of activities and give the same messages that he's giving now," Mr. Powell said on ABC's "Good Morning America."
Saeb Erekat, a spokesman for Mr. Arafat, pleaded last night on CNN for Mr. Bush's personal involvement.
"Palestinians and Israelis need help and the international community must step up its intervention," Mr. Erekat said. "President Bush has the responsibility to take command" and implement the weekend's U.N. resolution.
Mr. Erekat also suggested that the Palestinians would engage in more attacks if their demands were not met.
"If this continues, we have not seen the worst yet ... President Bush should realize that Palestinians will not live under occupation for the rest of their lives," he said.
Mr. Bush also is feeling increased pressure on the home front to become more engaged in Middle East peace efforts. His administration made a conscious decision not to repeat the mistake of former President Clinton, who sponsored the all-or-nothing peace talks at Camp David that ended in failure.
But now that Mr. Bush's arms-length approach has also failed to quell the violence, the president is facing almost daily calls from Democratic quarters to immerse himself in the debacle.
"I regret very much that this administration has not been as fully involved as we were," said Madeleine K. Albright in an appearance Monday night on CNN, during which she called for Mr. Powell to visit the region personally.
"I think they very much felt that we were over-involved, whereas, I think that we were acting responsibly in trying to bring the parties together," Mr. Clinton's secretary of state said.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's national security adviser, said Mr. Bush's policy "literally doesn't make much sense" and predicted "a drift towards an abyss ... unless the United States rapidly and quickly steps into the breach."
The president is unaccustomed to widespread criticism of his foreign policy. Early in his administration, he won bipartisan plaudits for his handling of the crisis over a U.S. reconnaissance plane that was downed in China. Mr. Bush managed to navigate that diplomatic minefield without excessive saber rattling.
His foreign policy credentials were burnished even further after the September 11 terrorist attacks. Most Democrats consider it political suicide to attack the president's prosecution of the war.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
WARLORDS
Courted by U.S. and Iran, an Afghan's Influence Rises
April 3, 2002
By AMY WALDMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/03/international/asia/03HERA.html
HERAT, Afghanistan - United States Army Special Operations soldiers based here say they have formed a close relationship in recent months with Ismail Khan, the powerful governor in western Afghanistan who American officials fear is being courted by Iranian hard-liners.
The soldiers meet with him once or twice a week, several of them said. He has even taken them horseback riding (with an audience of about 1,000 spectators, to the soldiers' chagrin). "He's a down-to-earth guy," one American soldier said.
That closer bond, along with international pressure, appears to have driven Iranian conservatives underground in their efforts to gain influence in western Afghanistan, international officials and Mr. Khan's commanders say.
Mr. Khan now seems to be playing America and Iran off each other to the region's advantage. Iran is reconstructing the road from Herat to its border. America has promised to clean out the area's canals.
But while foreigners vie for his favor, Afghans, including some of his own commanders, are expressing frustration with the self-proclaimed emir. He is refusing to confirm four appointees appointed by the central government in Kabul to posts in Herat. He has appointed mullahs and archconservatives to key positions. An office for the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice, a Taliban-era fixture, has reopened here. And ethnic Pashtuns say soldiers and commanders loyal to Mr. Khan, an ethnic Tajik, are beating, robbing and imprisoning them.
Halfway through the interim government's tenure, Herat illustrates perhaps better than anywhere else the challenges in governing the border regions of Afghanistan, where neighboring countries vie for influence and warlords rule. Mr. Khan shows how warlords with foreign backing can be a force for stability. But that backing may entrench such men so deeply in their posts that it will be hard for the transitional government meant to take office later this year to dislodge them.
United Nations officials and Mr. Khan's commanders say his military strength has clearly been bolstered by Iran, even though its open efforts to gain influence have tapered off recently. Much of Iran's aid came after Mr. Khan's return to Herat - which he had governed in the early 1990's - in early November, and before the inauguration of Hamid Karzai, the country's interim leader, in late December.
In that period, top Iranian military officials ensconced themselves in Herat. One Iranian military group that set up shop was the Helpers, who had aided in the fight against the Taliban, according to Zaher Jan Azimi, one of Mr. Khan's top commanders. He said the group was later asked to leave, because "it wasn't clear who they were working for."
Several hundred soldiers from the Iranian Army of Muhammad - a force trained in Iranian camps to help take on the Taliban - also returned to Herat after the Taliban fell, Mr. Azimi said. Around 100 of them have been integrated into Mr. Khan's military corps, under the direction of the Party of Unity, a Shiite, mostly Hazara group which has historically had close ties to Iran.
Mr. Azimi said under an agreement between Iran and Burhanuddin Rabbani, who acted as president from the fall of the Taliban until the Bonn agreement took effect, Iran sent the Herat police around 500 MP-5 submachine guns in December.
In addition, a United Nations official said, he saw Iranian Kalashnikovs being unloaded from a truck at a security commissary; the official said weapons were also flown into the southern Shindand air base, which reopened in January. Afghan soldiers who defected to one of Mr. Khan's rivals say they were being trained by Iranians several months ago at a base overlooking Herat.
Mr. Azimi said he could not say for certain that the Party of Unity had stopped receiving Iranian aid. Its officials deny any such assistance.
Whatever help was provided to Mr. Khan, his army is now a military machine - 50,000 to 60,000 strong and omnipresent. Rows of tanks sit on a hill, their barrels trained on Herat. Soldiers are everywhere, even in hamlets. Even some of Mr. Khan's aides have suggested to him that perhaps he does not need such a large, visible army.
A sign in the headquarters of his Fourth Army Brigade reads, "To have a national army protects our freedom and our Islam." But United Nations officials say Mr. Khan has been slow to come into line with the idea of a national army because he does not want to give up his own.
It is hard to see how the central government will persuade him to do so: it has no economic leverage over him. In addition to the customs duties and taxes that Herat secures from its borders with Iran and Turkmenistan, it has a lot of cash left behind by the Taliban, who departed in haste. Bank officials here say Mr. Khan's coffers are almost as full as those of the central government, which has about $6 million in its treasury.
He was offered a position as head of a national commission on disarmament, which some Heratis saw as a way to ease him out of the governorship. But United Nations officials say his communication with Kabul has been so poor that it is not clear whether the offer still stands.
Mr. Khan's intelligence chief and close aide, Nasir Ahmad Alavi, dismissed all of those criticisms. "People want to show Ismail Khan - a famous man from jihad - is against the interim government," he said. "This is not the truth."
Mr. Alavi was equally dismissive of dozens of Pashtun accounts of robbery, beatings and imprisonment at the hands of Mr. Khan's soldiers or commanders. Such charges, he said, come from "Talib commanders now living in Kandahar who want to cause division and make trouble."
In fact, the accusations come from ordinary Pashtuns interviewed in Herat and surrounding districts; in two local refugee camps; in Kandahar, where many Pashtuns have gone to seek help from the governor; and at the Pakistani border, which many Pashtuns are seeking to cross. Some of the stories, too, are from Pashtuns who fled persecution in the north, in the territory controlled by Gen. Rashid Dostum, only to be harassed by Mr. Khan's soldiers. Many have described relatives being taken to jail, where soldiers demand money for their release.
Mr. Alavi did say that until recently, when more than 200 prisoners were set free at the behest of elders from Kandahar, there were more than 500 Taliban - meaning Pashtun - in Herat's central jail. He also said that Herat's highest-ranking Taliban prisoner, the former governor of Badghis, had been released. Those remaining, he conceded, are low-level, but they are to stay in jail until their innocence can be determined.
"If we release them all now, it will create a kind of instability," he said.
Mr. Khan has been quite open about his antipathy to the country's exiled Pashtun king, Mohammed Zahir Shah, who is now scheduled to return in mid-April. And in this, too, he is in line with Iran, where he lived after escaping from a Taliban prison. Some say that this time around, Mr. Khan is showing other signs of Iran's ideological influence, too.
He appointed as university head a conservative theologian who used his first speech to vow that he would never allow coeducation. If he could not find enough female teachers, he said, the women's section would be closed. The university was coeducational during Mr. Khan's previous tenure.
The reopened office to promote virtue and prevent vice is in a new location with no jail. But it has banned female vocalists, told shopkeepers to take down alluring pictures of female singers and jailed some who did not listen.
Sayed Mahmad Houssein Hosseini, 29, who is temporarily overseeing the office, said it was needed because a society liberated from the Taliban had become too libertine. He said the office had no military officers, though a car containing a mullah and five soldiers pulled out of its parking lot a few minutes later.
--------
New Afghan Troops Finish Training
April 3, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghanistan.html
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- The first 600 troops in the new Afghan army completed six weeks of basic training Wednesday, eagerly performing their skills before Prime Minister Hamid Karzai and other dignitaries.
The men -- drawn from every province and ethnic group in Afghanistan -- are to be the vanguard of a 68,000-strong army that Karzai says will bring an end to the ``warlordism'' that has kept the country mired in decades of civil war and destruction.
But making that army a reality is many months and many hundreds of millions of dollars away. On Wednesday in Geneva, Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah asked donor countries for $422 million to rebuild the army and police. President Bush has asked Congress to approve a $278 million package of extra aid for Afghanistan, nearly half of which will go for security. Britain, Russia, Pakistan, India, China and Iran also pledged support.
Afghanistan is also waiting for most of the $4.5 billion pledged by international donors in January, none of which is earmarked for the army.
At Wednesday's military ceremony, Karzai said his interim administration was staying on top of the donors.
``The countries that have promised us money, they should know we're after them,'' he said.
The new troops, dressed in green camouflage uniforms and green berets and armed with machine guns, demonstrated their response to a mock attack with a long burst of machine-gun fire and smoke grenades, finally apprehending the bad guys hiding in a ditch.
``Today, after many long years, we have our own national army in Afghanistan. The task before this army is to defend its country, its people, and its religion,'' Karzai said as the troops stood at attention on a dusty field in Kabul. ``I assure the people of Afghanistan that this national army will work in defense of their rights and their security.''
The men, many veterans of the war against Soviet occupation in the 1980s, were chosen by local governments and approved by the Defense Ministry of the fledgling administration. Because many local governments are controlled by rival warlords, one challenge is to ensure the troops remain loyal to the central government and not their former bosses.
Afghan authorities aim to create an army and air force of 68,000, a border guard and a 74,000-strong police force. But they also need to disarm at least 70,000 combatants following 23 years of war.
``We will not allow groups of armed people to call themselves armies ... in other words, no warlordism,'' Karzai said.
The prime minister said he felt ``a volcano of emotion'' upon seeing the troops and hoped the men would be the beginning of a force that ``will stand on its own feet in defending Afghanistan and in fighting terrorism and all other evils.''
French, German, Dutch, Italian, Turkish and British instructors trained the troops. The 18 nations in the International Security Assistance Force donated the equipment. American instructors are to take a lead role in training subsequent battalions, said Flight Lt. Tony Marshall, a British spokesman for the peacekeepers.
The new troops said they were eager to be a force for stability.
Col. Ahmadullah, 35, who is in charge of 20 soldiers, said he was a shopkeeper during Taliban rule, but fought against the Soviets.
``I joined the new army so that I can defend my country,'' said Ahmadullah, who like many Afghans uses only one name. ``We are not trained to fight innocent people, but only to fight tyranny and terrorism.''
In other developments:
-- One of the 300 prisoners the U.S. military is holding in Cuba claims he was born in Louisiana to Saudi parents and is an American citizen, the Pentagon said. The claim, if true, could lead to his transfer from the detention center at a Navy base. The Justice Department found a birth certificate in the state that appears to match the man's claim, Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said, declining to identity the prisoner.
-- Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California, leading a delegation of U.S. congressmen on a one-day trip to Afghanistan, called on Washington to compensate Afghans who lost family members in misdirected American bombings. The other eight congressmen on the trip emphasized what they said was a pressing need to follow up U.S. military successes in Afghanistan with economic aid.
-- U.S. Ambassador Robert P. Finn presented his credentials to Karzai, pledging U.S. friendship and saying Washington looks ``forward to an Afghanistan that is master in its own house, that builds a secure future for its people, and that has peaceful relations in the region.''
-- Elections were being held at Kabul University and other higher education centers in the capital to pick chancellors, deans and members of academic councils. ``After two decades of ideological tyranny, for the first time, democracy will be tested on our campuses,'' the Ministry of Higher Education said of the elections, which wrap up Thursday.
-------- colombia
Colombian Air Force Bombs Rebels
April 3, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Colombia-Violence.html
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- The Colombian Air Force bombed a rebel column in the south, killing at least 40 guerrillas, an air force colonel said Wednesday.
The rebels were discovered on a highway built by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, 125 miles south of Bogota, according to Col. Flavio Ulloa.
Bombers were sent into the area Tuesday night and air force officials showed the press a videotape of the operation. People could be seen fleeing the attack. Ulloa said between 40 and 80 rebels died. There was no immediate way to independently confirm the death toll.
Meanwhile, two mayors in Arauca state were kidnapped Wednesday by men dressed in military uniforms, police said. Three other local government officials in Aruaca disappeared Tuesday, police said, but the circumstances were not clear.
Members of illegal, right-wing paramilitary forces have been known to wear Colombian military uniforms.
Colombia's various armed groups use kidnapping to intimidate local politicians, and to collect ransom.
Colombia's 38-year civil war pits the FARC and a smaller rebel group against the paramilitaries and government forces. Some 3,500 people are killed every year in the fighting.
-------- drug war
Colombia Crop Program Faces Disarray
April 3, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Colombia-US-Drugs.html
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- A U.S.-backed program to help poor farmers abandon drug crops is in disarray because Colombia's cocaine heartland isn't suitable for most other crops, according to a new study.
The study, paid for by the U.S. Agency for International Development, throws into doubt efforts by the Colombian government to help farmers switch from growing coca, the main ingredient of cocaine, to legal crops.
The study found that in Putumayo state, the heart of Colombia's coca region, only a small percentage of the farmers who signed agreements to abandon coca have actually done so, according to a U.S. Embassy official.
The Colombian government promised to pay the 38,000 farmers who signed the pacts as much as $1,000 each to help them grow other crops. But as of early April, only 9,500 had been paid, according Colombian government figures.
The farmers of Putumayo have been skeptical from the start that the government would uphold its end of the bargain, and said they would uproot their coca bushes only when development aid began arriving.
The new study, which was first reported by the Los Angeles Times, has led the U.S. government to decide not to fund any more of the deals, or pay for most crop substitution projects. Instead, the $52 million in aid has been switched to infrastructure projects and social spending to reward communities that eradicate their coca crops, the official said.
The problem in Putumayo state, an isolated jungle region on the edge of the Amazon basin, is that few crops other than the hardy coca bush thrive in the thin soil, meaning that commercial-level farming of food crops is impractical, the report said.
The study concluded that tree crops could work in Putumayo and USAID is contributing to projects like the development of a hearts of palm industry. The tree projects take time to yield results and don't solve the problem of how farmers who abandon coca will earn a living in the near term.
Colombian officials defended their crop-substitution efforts.
Gonzalo de Francisco, the Colombian official in charge of the project, said he understood that few crops could be grown in the region on a large scale to be competitive commercially with food crops from Colombia's more fertile regions. He insisted that Putumayo's farmers must be given some way to survive if they give up growing coca.
``We don't agree with the idea that Putumayo is not viable,'' he told a press conference Tuesday. ``There are 200,000 people living there. We have to respect them.''
De Francisco said more than 2,470 acres of coca have been voluntarily eliminated in Putumayo. Overall, the project is making progress, he insisted, adding that Colombian government will go forward with the program, even without U.S. support.
The U.S. government has pledged more than $1 billion to Plan Colombia, President Andres Pastrana's program to dramatically reduce Colombia's drug output. Most of that money is for military equipment and training so the Colombian government can fumigate vast areas of the country where coca and heroin poppies are grown.
-------- iran
U.S. says Iran helps al Qaeda flee Afghanistan
April 3, 2002
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020403-78733379.htm
Iran has emerged as an underground route for Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda warriors fleeing their former safe haven of Afghanistan.
Officials believe Tehran, part of what President Bush calls an "axis of evil," is allowing the terrorists to use the overland route to rendezvous with Middle Eastern extremist groups operating in Lebanon.
Officials said some may have reached Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula. There are no confirmed reports of their settling in Somalia on the Horn of Africa, a generally lawless country where al Qaeda members might go.
The number of al Qaeda transiting Iran is believed to be in the scores, or low hundreds, said officials who asked not to be named. The major escape route continues to be Pakistan, whose porous border with Afghanistan and its al Qaeda-friendly tribal areas is the most inviting sanctuary.
Yesterday, for a second straight day, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld singled out Iran for helping bin Laden's foot soldiers escape.
"There is no question but that al Qaeda have moved into Iran and out of Iran to the south and dispersed to some other countries," Mr. Rumsfeld told a Pentagon press conference.
"They are not operating out of Iran in the sense that they were out of Afghanistan, so there's that distinction. But I can't think of a thing I've said that anyone, by the wildest stretch of their imagination, could characterize as 'helpful.' They're all harmful and contributing to the problems with respect to the global terrorists."
The defense secretary predicted that one day the people of Iran would oust their harsh Islamic rulers.
"I think that Iran is a country where ultimately the people are going to change their circumstance," he said. "The people are being repressed."
Bush administration sources say Iran, while publicly supporting the interim Afghan government, is attempting to undermine it behind the scenes. The sources say Iranian intelligence officers and special operating forces are attempting to buy the loyalties of warlords in western Afghanistan and pit them against interim leader Hamid Karzai.
Mr. Rumsfeld on Monday unleashed an even stronger verbal attack on Iran, which, with Iraq and North Korea, make up Mr. Bush's "axis of evil."
"Terrorists have declared war on civilization," Mr. Rumsfeld said, "and states like Iran, Iraq and Syria are inspiring and financing a culture of political murder and suicide bombing."
He said his remarks were prompted by reports that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein is offering an inducement of $10,000 to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. "I would suggest that that is very actively trying to kill innocent men, women and children," he said. "That's exactly what the Iraqis intend to be doing by doing that."
He said Iran and Syria have a history of sending terrorists into Lebanon to conduct attacks on Israel.
"These countries are not only trying to kill people outside their countries, but they are repressing their own people," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "They have an active program of denying the rights of the people in those three countries, that is vicious, repressive and, unfortunately, successful."
Iran, Iraq, Syria and North Korea are all designated by the U.S. government as state sponsors of terrorism. But the administration has singled out Iraq for potential covert or military action to oust Saddam and end the country's development of weapons of mass destruction.
The State Department's 2000 report on global terrorism states: "Iran remained the most active state sponsor of terrorism in 2000. It provided increasing support to numerous terrorist groups, including the Lebanese Hizballah, HAMAS, and the Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ), which seek to undermine the Middle East peace negotiations through the use of terrorism. Iraq continued to provide safe haven and support to a variety of Palestinian rejectionist groups, as well as bases, weapons, and protection to the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), an Iranian terrorist group that opposes the current Iranian regime. Syria continued to provide safe haven and support to several terrorist groups, some of which oppose the Middle East peace negotiations."
-------- israel / palestine
Israel Widens West Bank Assault as Palestinians Hide in Church
April 3, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast.html
BETHLEHEM, West Bank - The Israeli army invaded two more West Bank towns Wednesday and Palestinian gunmen in Bethlehem remained holed up in one of Christianity's holiest sites.
Tanks rolled into Salfit and Jenin in the northern West Bank after the Palestinians dismissed Israeli talk of exiling their embattled leader Yasser Arafat, under siege by Israeli forces surrounding his headquarters in the city of Ramallah.
Israel has reoccupied a string of West Bank towns and villages since Prime Minister Ariel Sharon sent tanks to Ramallah Friday, two days after a suicide bombing in Netanya killed 25 Israelis at the start of the Jewish Passover holiday.
Sporadic battles erupted in Bethlehem, where a Palestinian policeman and a member of an armed wing of Arafat's Fatah movement bled to death after being wounded in a clash with Israeli troops Tuesday, Palestinian security sources said.
The first ambulance allowed to collect Palestinian casualties took the bodies of three civilians and two wounded men from a district near Manger Square to Beit Jala hospital.
``We expect there are at least 10 more (bodies) from that area,'' hospital director Peter Qumri told Reuters.
Israeli paratroopers moved street by street, fingers on triggers, peering down alleys. Water gushed from pipes supplying houses, apparently shot up in fighting. Cars crushed by tanks or burned by shelling littered the streets.
About 200 Palestinians, many of them armed, remained in the Church of the Nativity, built over the spot where Christians believe Jesus was born, after taking refuge there Tuesday.
``(The situation) is complicated because it's a sacred place and we don't want to use live fire (against it),'' army spokesman Ron Kitrey told a news briefing in Jerusalem.
NEGOTIATIONS UNDER WAY
``There are several channels of negotiation (going on) to try to achieve as close to a peaceful solution as possible.''
The army said Palestinians fired on soldiers from inside the Sicilian Church, but did not hit any. Fire was not returned.
Loud explosions and gunbattles shook Jenin as dozens of tanks advanced from three sides and helicopter gunships fired on a refugee camp outside the northern West Bank town. Israel says the camp harbors militants involved in suicide bombings.
Three Palestinian gunmen, a civilian woman and a 13-year-old boy were killed in the Jenin area, according to Palestinian security sources. Four Israeli soldiers were wounded, army spokesman Ron Kitrey told a briefing in Jerusalem.
Palestinians obtained self-rule in major West Bank and Gaza Strip towns under interim peace deals in the 1990s but rose up against continued occupation elsewhere 18 months ago after talks on a final settlement became deadlocked.
Sharon dispatched the army back into autonomous areas to ''root out terrorist infrastructure'' after an escalating series of suicide bombings in recent weeks against Israeli civilians.
The U.N. Security Council was due to meet for the fourth time in six days. Palestinian diplomats, pushing for a fresh resolution, are demanding that the council enforce its weekend call for Israel to withdraw from Palestinian-ruled areas.
Israel, apparently with U.S. approval, argues that a cease-fire, also sought by the council, should precede any pullout from Palestinian cities, including Ramallah, where Arafat is confined to a few rooms in his ruined compound.
SECOND FRONT?
Concerned that another front could open on its northern border, Israel Tuesday urged the United Nations to ask Syrian and Lebanese authorities to stop Hizbollah guerrillas from building up their forces across the Lebanese border.
Wednesday, the Lebanese army said Syria planned to move the roughly 20,000 troops it keeps in Lebanon to areas nearer the Lebanese-Syrian border within a week.
The Israeli army declared Jenin a closed military zone.
``You cannot actually look out of your window. We hear a lot of shooting. There are Apache helicopters overhead, tanks in the middle of town, and quite a bit of firing,'' Ali Jarbawi, a university professor, said by telephone.
``Anyone would be crazy to go outside. So it's an effective curfew. There's no electricity, although we have running water.''
Shaher Estya, the mayor of Salfit, said the power went off after tanks and troops entered at 3 a.m. (midnight GMT).
A Palestinian official in the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA) said the army had freed around 120 of 700 Palestinians rounded up in Ramallah since Friday.
Witnesses said 150 tanks and armored vehicles were poised around Nablus, a city of 180,000, where fighters had barricaded entrances to the old Casbah area with containers.
Around 20 APCs were advancing on a major refugee camp, which Israelis consider a source of suicide bombers, on the eastern side of Nablus. Palestinian gunmen fired on the convoy and the soldiers fired back, witnesses said.
Israel has pursued its military drive despite pressure on Sharon from many world leaders to end it -- although the United States has said it understands Israeli actions.
Israel says it wants to isolate Arafat and halt suicide attacks. Palestinians accuse Israel of seeking to kill or expel Arafat and dismantle his Palestinian Authority.
Israel has faced at least seven actual or intended suicide attacks since the Passover holiday began a week ago.
Sharon stoked controversy Tuesday by saying Arafat could have a ``one-way ticket'' to exile. Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Arafat would never leave his homeland voluntarily.
European Union president Spain called an emergency meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg to discuss the crisis.
At least 1,151 Palestinians and 403 Israelis have been killed since the Palestinian revolt began in September 2000.
--------
Palestinian Authority Urges Struggle Against Invasion
April 3, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-mideast-palestinians-resistance.html
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The Palestinian Authority called on Palestinians on Wednesday to mobilize their resources to wage a prolonged struggle against Israel's invasion of Palestinian-ruled areas in the West Bank.
The Authority, in a statement carried by the official WAFA news agency, also accused the United States of backing Israel's ''criminal aggression'' and urged it to rein in the Jewish state.
``The Palestinian leadership urges our people to close ranks in a long-term struggle against this occupation and to mobilize all its resources...to confront this unjust and criminal war,'' the statement said.
It did not specify what resources would be mobilized against Israel's much better armed forces.
Israel says it wants to isolate Arafat and halt the wave of suicide attacks since Palestinians began an uprising against Israeli occupation more than 18 months ago.
The Authority's statement said the aim of the Israeli military campaign was ``to destroy the (Palestinian) National Authority, Palestinian civil ... society and to reoccupy all Palestinian areas.''
``The Palestinian leadership, headed by President Yasser Arafat, asserts that this invasion, regardless of how great its terror, destruction and killings, will fail to break the will of the Palestinian people to achieve independence and freedom,'' it said.
The statement was issued as the Israeli army sent tanks to the West Bank city of Nablus, widening its six-day-old invasion of Palestinian cities and towns handed over to the Palestinian Authority under 1993 interim accords.
Israel has occupied a string of West Bank towns since Prime Minister Ariel Sharon sent tanks to Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah on Friday, after a suicide bomber killed 26 Israelis at the start of the Jewish Passover holiday.
Israeli tanks have been ringing Arafat's compound in Ramallah since Friday and troops have now moved into most of the major West Bank cities and towns handed to the Palestinian Authority since a 1993 interim peace deal.
The statement said the Palestinian Authority would continue to ``stand against all forms of terrorism even at the critical moments we are facing.''
``We call on the U.S. administration to stop providing cover for this criminal aggression and the massacres committed by the occupation army and to force Israel -- and it is able to do that -- to stop this crime that will leave big scars on the peace process and the peace, security and stability of the region,'' the statement said.
The Israeli army has dismissed accusations of committing massacres during the offensive.
The statement said the Palestinian Authority would accept no solution short of full Israeli withdrawal from all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, including Arab East Jerusalem.
--------
Gunmen seek Bethlehem sanctuary
April 3, 2002
By Dan Ephron
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020403-99631308.htm
JERUSALEM - Palestinian gunmen yesterday sought sanctuary from Israeli soldiers at one of Christianity's holiest sites - Jesus' birthplace in Bethlehem - as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon offered Yasser Arafat a "one-way ticket" to exile.
Elsewhere in the West Bank, about 400 Palestinians trapped in the compound of West Bank security chief Jibril Rajoub surrendered to Israeli troops in a deal brokered by U.S. and European officials.
But at least 10 men described by Israel as fugitives stayed behind, and the army said it was determined to arrest them.
At least 13 Palestinians and one Israeli soldier died in gunbattles that spread to Jenin and other towns in the West Bank.
Today, on the sixth day of the offensive, Israeli tanks swept into Jenin and Salfeet.
At least 30 tanks rumbled into Jenin from all sides during the pre-dawn incursion, and they exchanged heavy machine-gun fire with Palestinians in the city and at the entrance of a refugee camp, witnesses said. Israeli forces took over several tall buildings that provided views into the refugee camp, witnesses said.
A Palestinian woman, Fadwa Jammal, 27, died after she was shot in the abdomen, said Mohammed Abu Ghali, director of the city's hospital.
In Salfeet, the Israeli tanks did not appear to be meeting with armed resistance.
The Israeli offensive was touched off by a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings during the weeklong Passover holiday that began last Wednesday and ended yesterday.
The heaviest clashes erupted near Manger Square in Bethlehem, where Palestinian fighters battled to keep Israeli troops at bay before seeking refuge in the Church of the Nativity, built on the site where Christians believe Jesus was born.
Tanks entered the square early yesterday for the first time since Israel captured the West Bank in 1967. A shell fired from an Israeli tank slammed into a home in the area, killing a mother and her son.
Mr. Sharon, during a visit to soldiers, told reporters the government was considering new measures, including sanctions against the families of the bombers, to combat suicide attacks.
Then, switching from Hebrew to English, he proposed that foreign diplomats fly Mr. Arafat into exile, adding that his Cabinet would have to approve the offer if Mr. Arafat accepts it.
"It has got to be a one-way ticket. He would not be able to return," the Israeli leader said.
In Washington, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell dismissed the offer, saying Mr. Arafat should not be forced out.
"We think that Chairman Arafat still has a role to play," Mr. Powell told ABC television. "Until he decides to leave the country, it seems to me we need to work with him where he is."
Israel has demolished most of Mr. Arafat's Ramallah compound and confined him and a few dozen aides to just two rooms.
Mr. Sharon said in announcing the offensive last week that he aims to "isolate" Mr. Arafat and prevent him from orchestrating attacks on Israel, but he promised the United States to refrain from harming the Palestinian leader or banishing him from the West Bank.
Some analysts suggested that yesterday's remark was Mr. Sharon's way of signaling a retreat from that promise.
Palestinians quickly rejected the offer and accused Mr. Sharon of scheming to kill Mr. Arafat.
"Under no circumstances will President Arafat accept going into exile," said Saeb Erekat, a member of his Cabinet.
Hard-liners in Mr. Sharon's government have long advocated ousting Mr. Arafat and encouraging other Palestinian figures to take his place.
But security officials warn that Mr. Arafat would continue serving as the Palestinian leader and could cause more trouble if allowed to trot the globe and drum up support for his people.
"I think Chairman Arafat abroad can do much more damage than when he's inside under siege," said one official.
Though Washington has voiced support for the Jewish state's offensive, Mr. Powell's remarks yesterday showed how far apart Israel and the United States are on Mr. Arafat.
Arab states have warned Israel that touching Mr. Arafat would ignite the region. Tens of thousands of Arabs have staged anti-Israel protests in Jordan, Egypt and other countries in the region in recent days.
In Lebanon, the Islamic militant Hezbollah group has hinted it might open a second front against Israel in order to support Palestinians. The group shelled a disputed area on Israel's northern border yesterday, drawing Israeli air strikes.
Israeli military officials said Hezbollah also fired two Katyusha rockets into the Jewish state for the first time since Israel withdrew its troops from southern Lebanon two years ago.
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said yesterday that Israel views the government in Beirut and also Syria, the main powerbroker in Lebanon, as responsible for the attack.
"We have this strange feeling that the Syrian leadership thinks this is a simple matter. It doesn't understand the depth of the danger. The Lebanese government thinks again it will be able to wash its hands of responsibility for this matter," Mr. Peres told reporters.
Israel already has mobilized 20,000 reservists to join the fighting in the West Bank and Gaza.
Some Israeli commanders were surprised at the extent of resistance Palestinian militants put up in Bethlehem, according to one military officer.
Khaled Abu-Bader, a leading activist in an armed group linked to Mr. Arafat's Fatah faction, said in Bethlehem: "We are determined to be victorious in this battle or to become martyrs."
But as tanks tore up the narrow streets of Bethlehem's Old City, dozens of gunmen fled to the Church of the Nativity, hoping Israeli troops would not enter such a significant Christian holy place.
The Rev. Amjad Sabbara, a Franciscan priest, said he asked priests and nuns to remain in the church in order to prevent Israeli troops from entering and killing the militants.
"We hope to have a solution to this situation by tomorrow. We cannot allow places of worship to be used as a battlefield," Father Sabbara said.
Bethlehem residents said the army killed eight persons in the town, including Yahya Daamseh, who was high on Israel's most-wanted list. But five of the dead were civilians.
-------- russia / chechnya
U.S. to Start Radio Broadcasts to Chechnya
April 3, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/03/international/europe/03CAUC.html
PRAGUE, Czech Republic - Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty will start broadcasting to the North Caucasus region this week, officials said today, after a month's delay thought to have been caused by concerns about angering Russia.
Sonia Winter, a spokeswoman for the American government-financed broadcaster, said the two-hour daily programming would start on Wednesday, produced by nine staff members of the newly established North Caucasus service.
The service will be in the regional languages Chechen, Avar and Circassian, as well as Russian.
The broadcast had been scheduled to begin Feb. 28 but was delayed at the request of State Department officials reportedly worried that it could set back efforts to start a dialogue on ending the Chechnya war.
In Washington, however, Philip Reeker, a State Department spokesman, denied this, saying the delay had been sought to allow the department time to consult Congress on the best use of money.
Ms. Winter said today that the last meeting of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees American international radio broadcasters, decided to proceed with the programming.
"We take no sides in any local conflict," Ms. Winter said.
In January, Russia warned the radio service that officials would closely monitor its coverage of the war in Chechnya and might take away its license if they saw a pro-rebel bias.
Today, President Vladimir V. Putin's chief spokesman on Chechnya, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, said, "We are not going to feel pessimistic at all in advance, but we shall keep an eye on the programs to be broadcast in these languages."
Another Russian official, Aleksei Volin, warned that "members of radical Chechen groups" would use the radio service to encourage extremism, Interfax news agency reported.
Radio Free Europe, established in 1949 to spread pro-Western news to Eastern Europe, was merged in 1975 with Radio Liberty, which was broadcasting to the Soviet Union.
In 1998, the station started broadcasting to Iran and Iraq.
On Jan. 30, as part of the American-led war against terrorism, it restarted broadcasts to Afghanistan in the Dari and Pashto languages after a pause of nearly 10 years.
-------- space
China Calls for Ban on Weapons in Space
April 3, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-arms-china.html
BEIJING - China, fresh off the successful launch and recovery of its third unmanned spacecraft, called for a global covenant to prevent an outer space arms race, state media said Wednesday.
``The international community should adopt effective preventive measures and make a special international agreement to ban any weapons of destruction from outer space,'' the Xinhua news agency quoted Vice Foreign Minister Qiao Zonghuai as saying.
China proposed banning weapon experimentation, as well as placing and using any space arms in outer space, on earth, or within the earth's atmosphere, he told a Sino-U.N. sponsored arms control conference.
Qiao also called for banning the use or threatened use of arms against any object in outer space, Xinhua said.
``China is willing to join hands with the international community to exert every effort to come to such an agreement and to strive for peace in outer space,'' he was quoted as saying.
Military strategies to gain an upper hand in outer space could spark an extraterrestrial arms race, Qiao said, in a veiled reference to recent U.S. policies.
Washington pulled out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty last year to forge ahead with plans to develop a missile defense system, much to Beijing's displeasure.
China fears a U.S. missile shield, if operational, could emasculate its small nuclear force and protect Taiwan, which it considers a wayward province to be reunited by force if necessary.
Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan urged the global community to keep arms out of space.
China is celebrating after the successful return this week of the Shenzhou III capsule, its third unmanned spacecraft.
Beijing plans to send people into outer space in the foreseeable future and eventually to man a permanent space station, state media said.
The Shenzhou III capsule, fitted with dummy astronauts, landed successfully in China's Inner Mongolia region Monday after orbiting the globe 108 times, reports said.
-------- spy agencies
Russia Warned U.S. About FBI Agent
April 3, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-FBI-Hunting-Spies.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Nearly a decade before Robert Hanssen was convicted of spying, Russia complained to the United States that a ``disaffected'' FBI agent tried to give U.S. secrets to one of its military intelligence officers, according to a new study on security at the bureau.
The disclosure that Russia itself provided details that might have led to Hanssen's arrest is the latest in a string of embarrassments suggesting the FBI flubbed the investigation into its most damaging spy case ever.
The bureau previously acknowledged that Hanssen's brother-in-law, an FBI agent, had voiced suspicions to the FBI as early as 1990 that Hanssen might have been spying for the Russians. And another FBI agent caught spying for Russia -- Earl Pitts -- told the bureau in June 1997 that Hanssen deserved a ``look-see'' because of suspicious activities.
The FBI study, which runs more than 100 pages, reveals that in 1993 Hanssen identified himself to the Russian officer as ``Ramon Garcia,'' the cover name Hanssen used while spying for Moscow since at least 1985, according to people familiar with the report. Fearing discovery, Hanssen had curtailed his spying during the previous two years and apparently was seeking to re-establish contact.
But the Russian officer -- unaware of Hanssen's previous espionage activities -- rebuffed Hanssen's offer of documents and convinced his government to formally complain to U.S. officials about the incident, the new FBI study said. The Russians told the U.S. government at the time that Hanssen described himself as a ``disaffected FBI agent'' during the encounter, which took place inside the parking garage of the Russian officer's apartment outside Washington.
Assistant FBI Director John Collingwood said Wednesday the FBI investigated the matter when it was first brought to the bureau's attention ``and there was simply not enough information to identify the agent.''
The FBI report does not suggest why the Russians might have lodged a formal complaint with the U.S. government about the 1993 encounter, but diplomats have complained when they believe they were being entrapped in a counterespionage sting.
FBI spy-hunters investigated the Russian complaint, the FBI study said. But Hanssen surreptitiously monitored the investigation by tapping into the FBI computer files, and he backed off his espionage activities until 1999 out of fears the bureau might identify him, said people who asked not to be identified publicly.
When Hanssen did resume contact, in October 1999, his Russian spy-masters wrote: ``Welcome! It's good to know you are here. ... We express our sincere joy on the occasion of resumption of contact with you.'' The FBI began following Hanssen as early as December 2000.
The security report also reveals that FBI officials found hacking software on Hanssen's computer at work while fixing a broken hard drive. When confronted, Hanssen explained that he needed the software, used to reveal a user's passwords, to connect a new color printer when he couldn't reach administrators authorized to do the work. Officials accepted his explanation because they knew he was familiar with computers.
Hanssen himself told investigators that he initially feared the FBI might identify him as a rogue agent after he paid cash for an expensive addition to his home, but he knew that the FBI wasn't conducting in-depth financial checks on employees.
The report, prepared by a commission led by former FBI and CIA director William H. Webster, could be released as early as this week. It harshly criticizes lax security inside the agency.
Anticipating the study's conclusions, FBI Director Robert Mueller said Wednesday that the bureau will dramatically expand the use of lie detectors on its agents and do more to verify their financial dealings as part of its overhaul stemming from Hanssen's arrest in February 2001.
Mueller acknowledged issues of privacy and trust. But he said FBI employees must realize that security needs to be improved after the betrayal by Hanssen, who has pleaded guilty to selling secrets to Moscow in exchange for about $1.4 million during at least two decades.
``In the FBI, every employee is proud to say they're FBI agents. When you have something like Hanssen happening, it diminishes your pride in the institution,'' Mueller said. ``We've got to balance privacy concerns, have to balance the necessity of making sure there never again is a Hanssen with showing that you trust your employees, which we do.''
Mueller, appointed FBI director months after Hanssen's arrest, candidly acknowledged past security failures.
``I will say, anybody who looks at our organization realizes that security was not a priority,'' he said. ``We've moved to address that.''
Some members of the seven-person Webster commission met with Hanssen over four days while preparing the study. Webster, who said he did not meet with Hanssen, is to testify next week about the findings before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Mueller and his new chief for internal security, Kenneth H. Senser of the CIA, said the FBI will soon administer new lie-detector tests to 1,000 more employees.
--------
Shin Bet, Mossad oppose exile plan
April 3, 2002
By Anton La Guardia
LONDON DAILY TELEGRAPH
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020403-91267262.htm
JERUSALEM - Israel's intelligence services are urging Prime Minister Ariel Sharon not to send Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat into exile, saying it could create even greater political and military chaos.
"Chairman Arafat can do much more damage abroad than where he is under siege," a senior Israeli security source said. "He will go all over the world presenting himself as a pacifist, and some leaders will believe him."
Mr. Sharon, who has said Israel is now fighting a "war" for its own existence, blames Mr. Arafat for the onslaught of Palestinian suicide bombings and shooting attacks.
He has openly said he regrets giving assurances to the United States that the Palestinian leader would not be harmed.
Yesterday, Mr. Sharon even offered Mr. Arafat a one-way ticket into exile.
But every time the Cabinet has met to discuss Israel's response and the prospect of getting rid of Mr. Arafat, Mr. Sharon has faced the unanimous opposition of the heads of Israel's foreign intelligence service, Mossad; the domestic arm, Shin Bet; and military intelligence.
It is an irony of the worsening conflict that Israel intelligence services, which have spent decades clamping down on Palestinian groups and targeting militants, should now be urging that Mr. Arafat, the ultimate symbol of the Palestinian revolution, be allowed to remain in Israeli-controlled territory.
Labor Party members of the coalition Cabinet also object to plans to expel Mr. Arafat and have threatened to bring down the government if their wishes are ignored.
America is also urging Israel not to take such a drastic step.
According to the security sources, the purpose of large-scale army incursions into the West Banwk - in an operation called Protective Wall - was to round up as many of the senior militants as possible.
The army started with Ramallah, even though many of the suicide bombers came from other towns and refugee camps in the West Bank, because it is the effective capital of the West Bank and many of the "brains" of the militant movements live there.
Israel has raised the stakes in its operation by seeking out senior militants, such as Marwan Barghouti, the leader of the Tanzim militia, who had previously been left untouched.
The security source claimed that many senior wanted men were holed up in Mr. Arafat's besieged headquarters and in the nearby headquarters of the Preventive Security intelligence agency headed by Jibril Rajoub.
"We will not leave without those men," the security source said. "This is an operation that will not take days or weeks, but maybe months."
Apart from the political damage that Mr. Arafat's eviction may cause to Israel, there is a wider strategic problem for Israel's intelligence chiefs: However bad Mr. Arafat may be, the alternatives are worse, and Israel will have very little control over who becomes the next Palestinian leader.
As long as Mr. Arafat was alive, the security source said, no Palestinian would dare take his place.
-------- un
DIPLOMACY
U.N. and European Union Press for Cease-Fire
New York Times
April 3, 2002
By BARBARA CROSSETTE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/03/international/middleeast/03NATI.html
UNITED NATIONS, April 2 - The Security Council, deflecting an Arab request for a stronger resolution demanding Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian cities, met today in two private sessions with the representatives of Israel and the Palestinians to urge an end to the conflict.
Council members said before the meetings that the two diplomats - Yehuda Lancry of Israel and Nasser al-Kidwa of the Observer Mission of Palestine - would be asked to press their governments on demands for a cease-fire, the most recent of which was made in a resolution early on Saturday. The Council has no means of enforcing that resolution or earlier ones, however, and Arab nations had been seeking, at a minimum, to increase pressure for compliance, particularly from Israel.
Spain, which has assumed the rotating presidency of the European Union, brought in Israel's ambassador in Madrid to demand that Israel do essentially what was requested in the United Nations resolution: pull troops out of Palestinian areas, agree to an immediate cease-fire and allow Mr. Arafat to go free.
In addition, the European Union has called an extraordinary summit meeting of foreign ministers for Wednesday in either Brussels or Luxembourg to step up pressure on Israel.
Also, the Arab League, the 22-nation group that met in Beirut last week to endorse the peace plan advanced by the Saudi crown prince, said it would also meet in Cairo on Wednesday to discuss ways to help Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader.
At the United Nations today, Singapore proposed holding follow-up meetings with Israeli and Palestinian representatives, drawing on a tactic used in the past in other wars. Council members agreed that this was a better course than adopting what a diplomat called a "we really mean it" resolution so soon after the Saturday vote.
The Council met over lunch today with Secretary General Kofi Annan, who attended the Arab League meeting last week in Beirut. Mr. Annan, briefing the Council on Monday, said he feared that "the parties are locked in the logic of war."
The Arab nations have appeared weaker as a group because they are no longer speaking with a single voice here, Council members say. Syria, a Council member since January, publicly protests Israeli attacks on Palestinians but is considered generally hostile to Mr. Arafat. The animosity dates from the Oslo accords in which Mr. Arafat did not, the Syrians argue, take their interests into account in talks with Israel.
Diplomats said the rift between Syria and the Palestinians has left Mr. Kidwa, the United Nations Palestinian observer, without a strong voice on his behalf in the Council chamber. Syria became a Council member for two years because the Arab nations have a policy of rotating the seat in a more or less strict order. A European diplomat said the Syrians arrived untutored in "dialogue, discussion and compromise." The Syrian delegation has refused twice in recent weeks to join a Council consensus on the Middle East.
Tonight, Mr. Kidwa said that the Arab group would resubmit its resolution, possibly on Wednesday, and that this time, the Syrians would lend support. "This is a positive development, which we welcome," Mr. Kidwa said.
Diplomats have also been watching the United States delegation, though for different reasons. Over the last month, the Americans have for the first time in half a century taken the initiative to involve the Security Council in action on the Middle East, which had been considered the preserve of Washington, not the United Nations.
Today, several diplomats said the American delegation, led by Ambassador John D. Negroponte and his deputy, Ambassador James B. Cunningham, both career envoys, has been flexible and helpful in drafting evenhanded resolutions critical of Israel as well as the Palestinians. An American-sponsored resolution on March 12 stated clearly that there should be two nations in the region, Israel and Palestine, living in peace. Last weekend, the Americans were part of the consensus that produced a 14-0 vote on a resolution asking Israel to withdraw from Ramallah and other Palestinian towns, and urging a cease-fire on both sides.
Security Council members said there was no sequence of events in those demands, despite comments from the White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, that appeared to give priority to the cease-fire. This is not the first time that the Security Council has appeared to receive conflicting signals from Washington, with the United States mission here prepared to blame both sides while President Bush and other administration officials seem to place more blame on the Palestinians.
--------
Arab States Push UN to Demand Israeli Withdrawal
April 3, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-mideast-un.html
UNITED NATIONS - Arab nations vowed late Wednesday to push to a Security Council vote a draft resolution demanding the withdrawal of Israeli forces from West Bank towns.
The measure, however. appeared to be unacceptable to the United States. U.S. envoys, who earlier had threatened a veto, said only that Washington was now studying it.
The council agreed to delay a vote until Thursday to allow time for further negotiations.
``My guess is a majority of the council wanted to avoid a train wreck tonight,'' British Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock said in explaining the delay.
Diplomats said Washington, Israel's closest ally, was seeking to balance protecting the interests of the Jewish state with preserving council unity on one of the world's most intractable crises.
``We have to hear from Washington to get some instructions,'' a U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. ``We requested a delay in consideration so we would have more time to go back to capitals.''
But Palestinian U.N. representative Nasser al-Kidwa vowed to press ahead. ``The Israeli attacks continue, and we want the council to adopt a resolution as soon as possible,'' he said.
The decision to delay a vote until Thursday came after over 10 hours of emotional debate in the council's fourth Middle East debate in six days. More than 60 nations spoke as the council plowed through the day.
The Arab draft would express grave concern ``at the further deterioration of the situation on the ground'' in the Middle East and demand the immediate implementation of all provisions of two resolutions approved by the council last month.
In particular, a resolution approved during an emergency council session just last Saturday called for an Israeli pull-out from Palestinian cities including Ramallah, where Israeli tanks have pinned Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.
NO LET-UP IN CARNAGE
After its approval, however, Israel and then the United States indicated a withdrawal could come only after a long-elusive cease-fire had been reached. That led Arab nations to issue their demand for yet another resolution.
Since Saturday, ``painfully there is no let-up in the scale of carnage. More people have died and violence has generated more violence,'' Pakistani Ambassador Shamshad Ahmad said.
``This only demonstrates how helpless the Security Council has become, and how scant is the respect for its resolutions and decisions,'' he said.
Al-Kidwa acknowledged many council members felt it was too soon for another Middle East vote. But ``it can never be too early while suffering and human tragedy continues, while the siege continues,'' he said.
In his latest statements, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ``spoke of war and of war alone. It seems as if he is determined to take us all to the precipice in the Middle East. He has rejected a cease-fire,'' al-Kidwa told the council.
While Sharon said he launched the operation to ``root out terrorist infrastructure'' and make Israelis safe from suicide bombings, the suicide attacks were ``undertaken by groups outside the law and condemned by the Palestinian Authority,'' al-Kidwa said.
But Israeli Ambassador Yehuda Lancry said the Palestinians had made ``a strategic choice to engage in terrorism for the achievement of political objectives.''
He acknowledged critics have blamed a long series of failed cease-fire attempts on the failure to discuss Palestinian political goals along with Israeli security concerns.
But ``one need only look at a lengthy list of agreements reached in the past decade, the Security Council resolutions that have been adopted, and the broad international consensus -- including among the Israeli people -- that the Palestinians are entitled to establish their own independent state.''
Lancry urged the council to twin a call for an Israeli withdrawal with a call for an end to the Palestinian bombings, saying that move could lead to a Middle East cease-fire.
``This would not only be a more fair and balanced position but could be the impetus needed to achieve a genuine cease-fire, begin the withdrawal of Israeli troops and ultimately put both parties back on the path toward a process of dialogue and negotiations,'' he said.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS
-------- death penalty
IQ of Death Penalty Inmate Questioned
April 3, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Death-Penalty-Retarded.html
CONROE, Texas (AP) -- A convicted killer whose death sentence was twice overturned by the Supreme Court is competent to stand trial despite IQ tests showing he may be mildly mentally retarded, prosecutors said Wednesday.
Johnny Paul Penry, 45, has spent half his life locked up for the fatal stabbing of Pamela Moseley Carpenter in 1979 at her home in Livingston.
Twice he has been convicted and sentenced to death, and twice the Supreme Court has thrown out his sentence -- most recently in June. Both times, the court said jurors were not given sufficient instructions on how to weigh his mental condition when they decided punishment.
As testimony began Wednesday in a competency hearing, the prosecution characterized Penry as a psychopath and manipulator.
``Look at the whole picture, not just the IQ tests. His IQ tests are jumping all over the place,'' District Attorney Joe Price told jurors in opening remarks. ``It doesn't mean he has to be a rocket scientist. If you took away his criminal functions, he could survive in society.''
Defense attorney John Wright, though, likened Penry to a 6- or 7-year-old. ``People are understandably skeptical when someone suggests some kind of mental impairment,'' he said. ``The state will say he's faking it. Obviously, he's not.''
If the jury finds Penry competent, a sentencing trial will be held at which he could be resentenced to death or given a life term. The competency hearing was expected to last into next week.
Death penalty opponents point to Penry, who says he believes in Santa Claus and likes coloring books, as a reason why Texas should prohibit executions of the mentally retarded. A bill approved by the Legislature last year to ban such punishment was vetoed by Gov. Rick Perry.
Dr. Sheila Reed, a psychologist at Vernon State Hospital hired by the defense, testified Wednesday that her assessments showed Penry is mildly retarded and suffers from brain damage.
``I do not believe Johnny Paul Penry is competent to stand trial,'' she said.
Penry's IQ has been measured as high as 63, seven points below the threshold set by the Supreme Court for retardation.
He was on parole for rape when he was charged with murdering Carpenter, the 22-year-old sister of former Washington Redskins kicker Mark Moseley. She was stabbed in the chest with scissors but lived long enough to describe the man who attacked her. Penry, who lived nearby, was arrested and confessed to police. He later recanted the confession.
In June, the Supreme Court is expected to rule on a Virginia case questioning the constitutionality of executing the mentally retarded.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
France to spend 10 bln euros on boosting wind power
REUTERS FRANCE:
April 3, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15292/story.htm
PARIS - France, a European wind power laggard, said yesterday it planned to invest 10 billion euros ($8.81 billion) to build 10,000 megawatts of wind generating capacity by 2010 to boost its dependence on renewable energy.
France wants to increase its renewable energy sources to 21 percent of total demand in 2010 from the current 15 percent, mainly by tapping wind power, Industry Minister Christian Pierret told a conference.
"Wind power will be the largest contributer to this growth, because it has great potential in France," Pierret said.
"It is reasonable to estimate 20 to 30 terawatt hours (TWh) of windpower will be required to keep to our (European Union) commitments, which means about 10 MW of installed capacity or 10 billion euros of investments," he added.
France is hosting a global conference this week on wind power, a growing source of clean energy, amid fears of continued high oil prices and international concern about so-called greenhouse emissions blamed for warming the atmosphere.
The conference comes on the heels of tension within France's centre-left ruling coalition over the place of nuclear power in supplying the country's energy needs, less than three weeks ahead of elections.
Although Europe's top electricity exporter, France is still only the region's fourth smallest generator of wind power since it currently relies on nuclear reactors to supply nearly 80 percent of its needs.
By the end of last year, France had 78 MW of wind power generation, just a fraction of Europe's wind powerhouse Germany with 8,754 MW of windpower capacity.
Wind power is also a tiny part of France's total generating capacity of 115,000 MW, with the rest of its renewable energy supplies coming from hydroelectric dams.
By contrast, one single nuclear reactor produces 1,000 MW.
To allay fears that wind farms can be an eyesore, France says it is planning to develop wind farms offshore. For now its wind farms are all on dry land.
"We need to call for tenders for at least 1,500 MW of offshore windpower generation as soon a possible," Pierret said.
In a report in January, the industry ministry said it would have to boost investment in renewable energy and curb energy demand to prevent power shortfalls over the next nine years.
----
India plans 6,000 MW wind power in next 10 years
REUTERS FRANCE:
April 3, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15290/story.htm
PARIS - India said yesterday it plans to produce 6,000 megawatts (MW) of electricity from private investment in wind power in the next 10 years with the help of a new electricity law.
"The industry is facing some problems because the states have different policies and the government policy is not correctly followed by the states," M. Kannappan, India's minister of non-conventional energy resources, told Reuters on the sidelines of a wind power conference in Paris.
"To make it mandatory, we are planning to bring out a new electricity act to have uniform participation by all states. It will make investment a lot easier," he said, adding that the bill was being considered by an expert committee.
Investment in India, which opened up its power sector to foreign investors in the early 1990s, has been overshadowed by a dispute between its biggest foreign direct investor, collapsed U.S. power group Enron Corp, and a local state utility.
To attract 100 percent private investment in renewable energy, including wind power, the government is offering policy and fiscal incentives such as soft loans, concessional rates of customs duty, exemption from excise duty and sales tax, income tax benefits and accelerated depreciation, Kannappan said.
India is implementing one of the world's largest renewable energy programmes and has installed over 3,400 MW of capacity based on renewable energy, including wind, solar, biomass and small hydropower plants.
It plans to boost this clean energy production by 10,000 MW by 2012, mainly by tapping the wind, Kannappan said.
India is already the fifth largest wind power producer in the world, with over 1,500 MW of capacity, but it is looking to expand output by 6,000 MW, especially for remote villages where the costs of linking up to a grid would be too expensive.
"In India, the planning strategy has to be different from the industrialised world," Kannappan said.
Investment in existing wind farms has been limited to local investors, but Kannappan remained optimistic on his country's potential for foreign investors.
"We will not wait for you to come and invest, but we expect foreign investors to come in because there are good returns and it is good for them too," he said.
----
UK says may change power mkt to help green sector
REUTERS FRANCE:
April 3, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15291/story.htm
PARIS - Britain will change the rules of its recently launched electricity trading market if the system hurts the expansion of the renewable power sector, Energy Minister Brian Wilson said yesterday.
Small generators and green power schemes complain they are penalised by the new electricity trading arrangements (NETA), launched by energy regulator Ofgem a year ago.
"We are taking a very close look at impact of NETA and what it has done to CHP (combined heat and power) and small generation," Wilson told a wind power conference in Paris.
"If NETA is contrary to our policy on renewables and emissions, then something needs to be done about NETA. We are not going to change the policy on renewables or emissions."
NETA has sent UK wholesale electricity prices to record lows but the government is worried about its impact on the green power industry.
The government is keen to encourage the expansion of renewable power as part of its strategy to cut greenhouse gas emissions to meet its commitments under the Kyoto climate change protocol.
It wants renewables' share of Britain's electricity generation to rise to 10 percent by 2010 from three percent currently.
Small generators and renewable firms like wind farms whose output is unpredictable complain they are penalised by NETA's central balancing mechanism which favours large producers that can guarantee their output.
The government recently launched a study into the impact of NETA on the renewable sector.
"We will reporting very soon on our initial study on NETA and we will closely monitor it," said Wilson.
"I am absoultely determined that we should have a single and not two policies which are potentially in conflict with one another."
-------- energy
Iowa Senator seeks Calif switch to ethanol by 2003
REUTERS USA:
April 3, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15294/story.htm
WASHINGTON - Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa said yesterday he would offer legislation next week that would force California to stick to its 2003 ban on the gasoline additive MTBE and switch to ethanol to make cleaner-burning fuel.
Grassley, whose corn-growing state would benefit from more ethanol demand, told reporters he would put forward the measure as part of the Senate's scheduled debate next week on a broad U.S. energy policy to encourage more production and conservation.
"We will try to amend energy bill to overrule the governor of California so that they have to start using ethanol on Jan. 1," Grassley said, criticizing a recent decision by California Gov. Gray Davis to delay by one year, until 2004, the state's ban on MTBE.
Davis, a Democrat, last month announced a postponement of the state's planned Jan. 1, 2003 deadline for halting use of MTBE, a so-called oxygenate added to gasoline to make it burn cleaner. But MBTE also has been blamed for groundwater contamination.
Davis said the delay was necessary to avoid a sharp spike in gasoline prices and tight supplies in the nation's most populous state. Some experts have expressed concern that California gasoline prices could surge because of the lack of enough pipelines or other transportation to get large amounts of ethanol shipped there promptly.
Greater use of ethanol is widely supported by farm state senators, including Majority Leader Tom Daschle, eager to find new markets for crops. The energy bill pending in the Democratic-led Senate includes incentives that would roughly double ethanol use by 2012.
-------- environment
Army Engineers Undertake Environmental Restoration
April 3, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/apr2002/2002L-04-03-09.html#anchor5
WASHINGTON, DC, The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has acquired 30,700 acres of mitigation lands along the lower Missouri River and is establishing 28 mitigation sites for fish and wildlife habitat in Missouri, Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska. This information comes from a progress and cost report about the Missouri River Mitigation Project, which the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Civil Works) transmitted to Congress today as required by the Water Resources Development Act of 1999.
Sites include the Tieville-Decatur Bends Project in Iowa that is scheduled to begin construction in March 2002; Tobacco Island in Nebraska, completed in December, 2001; and Eagle Bluffs, Missouri, completed in January 2002.
Dominic Izzo, the principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army for civil works, the mitigation project demonstrates the Army's dedication to its environmental restoration mission as well as its desire to contribute to a net gain of wetlands nationwide.
Congress has authorized the Corps to acquire 166,750 acres for fish and wildlife mitigation purposes as annual funding is available. This would represent almost one-third of the original river habitat lost due to channelization of the lower Missouri River and is the Corps says it is "arguably the most ambitious riverine habitat restoration plan in the world."
v Congress authorized the Corps to acquire and develop 48,100 acres in 1986 and another 118,650 acres in 1999.
The Corps and others are developing these mitigation lands to replace the loss of fish and wildlife habitat because of past channel development efforts dating back to 1912 as well as the continuing navigation operations on the Missouri River.
The Mitigation Project will restore or preserve shallow water, wetland prairie, bottomland forest and other native habitats in ways that the Corps says "will make an important contribution to restoring the natural ecosystem."
The report says that acceleration in land acquisition "will be essential if the agencies are to overcome the lag time between habitat development and the recovery of native fish and wildlife species." This is especially true for an endangered species, the pallid sturgeon, which may benefit from the new habitat.
This mitigation project has involved a multi-agency team from the Corps, the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, the Missouri Department of Conservation, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In addition, levee districts and private landowners have worked together to help make each site a success.
Additional information about the mitigation program is available at: http://www.nwk.usace.army.mil/projects/mitigation/index.htm
--------
China invests in electric cars to combat pollution
Wednesday, April 03, 2002
By Reuters
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2002/04/04032002/reu_46837.asp
BEIJING - China plans to invest 880 million yuan (US$106 million) to develop electric vehicles to combat air pollution, state media said on Tuesday.
Domestic companies would be funded by the government over the next few years to develop vehicles that run on electricity or other power sources, the China Daily newspaper said.
"Developing electric vehicles is significant in the effort to save oil energy, minimize air pollution, and give an impetus to the development of the country's auto industry," it quoted Ministry of Science and Technology official Li Jian as saying.
Car emissions are a major source of serious air pollution in many Chinese cities. Electric vehicles would be used for transport services when the capital Beijing hosts the Olympics in 2008, Li was quoted as saying.
The Beijing city government has promised to spend billions of yuan on cleaning up the environment and moving dirty factories away from the city center in time for the Olympics.
Electric-powered vehicles might also reduce heavy reliance on crude oil imports, the paper said.
China has been a net oil importer since 1993 due to growing demands for energy in the fast-developing country.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Tonight on West Wing: nuclear waste!
Date: Wed, 03 Apr 2002
From: "Noel Petrie" <NPETRIE@citizen.org>
In this week's episode of the NBC drama The West Wing, the fictional Bartlet administration will try to cope with an accident that occurs while transporting high-level nuclear waste by truck. Unfortunately, such a scenario is not too far-fetched. The Bush administration is pushing forward a plan to build a permanent nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada - a risky scheme that could lead to this prime time plot becoming a real-life catastrophe. A single accident could contaminate a 42-square-mile area and cost $620 million to clean up. Did you know that:
· Transporting 77,000 tons of waste from the country's commercial nuclear reactors and weapons facilities would mean that more than 50,000 - and as many as 100,000 - shipments of radioactive waste would pass through 44 states and District of Columbia by truck, train and barge.
· This unprecedented nuclear shipping campaign would introduce new risks to major urban centers along shipment routes and impose an enormous new burden on local emergency response and public health teams that are ill-equipped to effectively respond to a nuclear accident.
· Currently licensed nuclear waste shipping casks have never been physically tested; limited physical tests performed in the 1970s on now-obsolete casks have not been repeated.
When Martin Sheen has to struggle through this disaster, it's interesting television, but if the government follows through on this dangerous plan, it's going to be communities' safety and health at risk!
What you can do:
1. Send this email to all your friends, colleagues and relatives who might be watching West Wing tonight.
2. Visit www.atomicroadshow.org
3. Contact your members of Congress to say you don't want dangerous nuclear waste traveling through your communities, near your homes and schools. Send a free fax from www.citizen.org/fax/background.cfm?ID=42&source=1
4.Phone or Email NBC and congratulate them on the show
---
Yucca Mountain Transport Danger Dramatized on West Wing
April 3, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/apr2002/2002L-04-03-03.html
LAS VEGAS, Nevada, The nuclear industry has a fat war chest to lobby for the permanent disposal of the nation's high level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, but the project's opponents including Nevada lawmakers have been failing to bring in big funds to fight it.
A report issued Monday by the pressure group Public Citizen Critical Mass said a review of lobby disclosures found the nuclear power industry spent more than $25 million to lobby Congress in 2000, the last time nuclear waste storage in Nevada was debated.
Nevada Governor Kenny Guinn is a determined opponent of Yucca Mountain. (Photo courtesy Office of the Governor)
But Nevada Governor Kenny Guinn and U.S. Senators Harry Reid and John Ensign had little luck with their pitch last week for $10 million for a national TV ad campaign that will urge members of Congress to vote No on Yucca Mountain.
The Yucca Mountain proposal, which President George W. Bush has approved, means that 77,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel rods and other highly radioactive material generated by power reactors and nuclear weapons production must travel by road and rail across the country to Nevada.
Currently, the waste is stored in temporary surface storage facilities located at 131 sites in 39 states. Nevada is, by law, the only site being considered for the nuclear waste dump.
If Yucca Mountain is permitted to go forward, radioactive waste will travel the nation's highways and railroads through 43 states and thousands of communities, day after day for upwards of 40 years, the governor warns. "A severe transportation accident or successful terrorist attack in an urban area could release radioactive materials to the environment, causing hundreds of latent cancer fatalities and costing hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars for cleanup and compensation."
Martin Sheen plays President Jeb Bartlett on "West Wing." (Photo credit unknown)
The concern over an accident on any route over which the waste could travel will be dramatized tonight on "West Wing," the NBC television series about life in the White House. The episode will feature a story line about the crash of a truck carrying uranium fuel rods in a remote Idaho tunnel. Martin Sheen, who plays President Jeb Bartlett on the political series, is an outspoken environmental activist who has been arrested at several protests.
Nevada Congresswoman Shelley Berkley will be watching "West Wing" tonight with her constituents in Las Vegas. An opponent of Yucca Mountain, as are all Nevada lawmakers, Berkley has on her website a video showing a TOW missile penetrating a nuclear waste cask in a U.S. Army test. The video demonstrates the dangers of nuclear waste transportation, and makes the case for on-site storage, Berkley says.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham recommended the site 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas to President Bush as scientifically suitable to receive the nation's high level nuclear waste "based on sound science and compelling national interest."
The waste must be safely contained for at least 10,000 years. Abraham says he relies on more than 20 years and $4 billion in scientific study that demonstrates Yucca Mountain is scientifically and technically suitable for development. He makes the case for the Yucca Mountain dump in volumes of material on the Energy Department website.
Senator Harry Reid says President Bush "betrayed our trust and endangered the American public by deciding to ship 77,000 tons of nuclear waste across the entire country and store it at Yucca Mountain." Reid's website displays a map showing in detail, state by state, the routes by which the waste would travel.
"A central repository would actually increase the risk of terrorism," says Berkley, "by guaranteeing that hundreds of nuclear targets will be traveling on America's roads and rails every day for at least the next 30 years. Also, even if a central repository is created, nuclear waste will never be entirely removed from on-site locations; for, as plants continue to generate waste, they must also continue to store that waste until a long term solution has been found."
Yucca Mountain 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas (Photo courtesy U.S. Energy Dept.)
Berkley points to a safe alternative to transport advanced by PECO (Philadelphia Electric Company). Under this plan, the nation's 103 nuclear power plants build storage facilities and, in return, reduce their payments to the Nuclear Waste Trust Fund. The U.S. Energy Department becomes titleholder, owner and operator of the waste and facilities. "This is an attractive solution because it lets utilities remove spent fuel from their reactors, as well as costs and liabilities from their books," the congresswoman says.
President Bush's approval of Yucca Mountain will be vetoed by Governor Guinn on behalf of the state of Nevada. The proposal then goes to Congress, which by a simple majority vote could override Nevada's veto.
To influence public opinion away from Yucca Mountain, Guinn had hoped to raise $4 to $6 million in addition to the $4 million appropriated by the Nevada Legislature last year for legal expenses and a public information campaign.
So far, donations amount to about $2 million including $1 million from Clark County. Bob Loux, administrator for the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, says a few private donations have come in, the largest $300,000 from the Nevada Resort Association which represents the gaming industry.
Tonight's episode of West Wing is a bit of free television advertising for the anti-Yucca Mountain cause.
---
DOVES
Peace Advocates in Arafat Compound Hope to Deter Israeli Troops
New York Times
April 3, 2002
By JOEL GREENBERG
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/03/international/middleeast/03PEAC.html
JERUSALEM, April 2 - Declaring that they want to protect him from the Israelis, more than 30 foreign activists holed up with Yasir Arafat at his besieged office in Ramallah have become a complicating factor in Israeli calculations of how to proceed against the Palestinian leader.
The foreigners, mostly Europeans, are part of an ad hoc group that arrived several days ago for a series of actions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in support of the Palestinians and in protest against the Israeli military presence there.
Their televised walk through a ring of tanks into the compound on Sunday caught Israeli soldiers by surprise, and they have effectively become human shields. Their continued presence in Mr. Arafat's offices has flustered the Israelis, complicating their self-declared mission of isolating the Palestinian leader.
The gunfire around the building has died down, supplies have been allowed in, and Palestinian concerns about an imminent Israeli assault have receded.
"We thought that as long as there were internationals here, there would be no vicious Israeli attack," said Claude Leostic, from Brest, France, in a telephone interview from the besieged office. "And we've been right so far. We're here as a deterrent against shelling and missile attacks."
Neta Golan, an Israeli peace advocate who is with the foreigners at Mr. Arafat's office, said she believed that the group's presence was having a restraining effect on Israeli troops.
"We're hoping that our presence on the front line with the Palestinians will make the soldiers more cautious about shooting without reason," Ms. Golan said. "The death of Europeans or an Israeli would cause a stir that Palestinian deaths are not causing."
The overall operation had been going on for months, attracting modest media attention and serving as a mild irritant to the army. However, when the Israelis launched their broad offensive into West Bank towns this week, the protests gained sudden prominence.
The foreigners in the compound, many from Italy and France, came on a visit organized by two West Bank groups that have organized nonviolent action against Israeli forces there: the International Solidarity Movement and Grass-roots International Protection for the Palestinian People.
During the 18-month Palestinian uprising, the actions have included removing roadblocks, planting trees in place of those uprooted by the Israelis, demonstrating in front of Israeli tanks and trying to walk through army checkpoints that restrict Palestinian movement.
However, the march into Mr. Arafat's office by more than 40 foreigners took the protests to a new level, because it broke a tightening Israeli ring of armor and gunfire that appeared perilously close to reaching Mr. Arafat himself.
The Israelis responded by banning foreigners, including journalists, from Ramallah, and by arresting and deporting a group of French protesters who had left the compound, among them José Bové, the union leader and antiglobalization protester.
Like the rest of Ramallah, Mr. Arafat's offices have been hit by power blackouts and disruption of water supply after electric cables and water pipes were damaged by the Israeli tanks, and the foreigners have been rationing food supplies with the office staff and guards.
A shipment of food, water and medicine was allowed in today by the Israelis. An army statement said the food included 66 containers of yellow cheese, 600 pieces of pita bread, 40 cans of halva, 23 cans of tuna, 13 cans of hummus, 34 crates of mineral water, more than 140 pounds of coffee and 55 cans of sardines.
Caoimhe Butterly, an activist from Ireland who helped collect the supplies, said Israeli soldiers filmed her and Ms. Leostic as they stepped out of the office, and called them over for a chat in an area where there were waiting police vehicles, an apparent attempt to lure them into arrest. The two women refused to go.
Ms. Butterly said that despite the persistent tension and siege, morale at Mr. Arafat's offices had improved greatly and the Israeli assault had abated after the arrival of the international group on Sunday.
On Saturday night, she said, Palestinians in the building were readying themselves to die in an Israeli attack after they refused an ultimatum to surrender.
The foreigners have also appeared in other West Bank locations that are targets of the Israelis. One group defied an Israeli checkpoint and walked into Bethlehem on Saturday; another marched through the neighboring town of Beit Jala on Monday after it had been invaded by Israeli troops, drawing gunfire that wounded seven demonstrators. Other foreigners have gone to homes of Palestinians in neighboring refugee camps in an effort to offer protection and support.
At Mr. Arafat's compound, the foreigners say they will stay as long as it takes for the Israelis to withdraw.
"It makes a difference," said Miriam Ferrier, from Paris.
"We are a voice for the Palestinian people."
----
Washington's Secret - Busters Tested
April 3, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Secret-Busters.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Washington's secret-busters are used to long odds -- it's always Big Government vs. Little Them.
Even so, they've been able over the years to make the CIA budget public (a battle won, then lost), get the government to share information on environmental hazards and keep White House officials from pressing the delete button on e-mails in the last days of the Reagan administration.
But these are especially tough times for exposing what government is up to.
The Bush administration is secretive by nature and even more so by circumstance: Defining the boundaries of openness and secrecy has gotten more difficult since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
In the 1980s, Gary Bass won accolades for helping get a right-to-know law passed, giving the public access to environmental information on government databases.
Since Sept. 11, he's been getting hate mail from people who think he is aiding terrorists by trying to keep the information spigot open. One person wondered ``how much blood will be on your hands,'' said Bass, director of OMB Watch, which keeps an eye on the White House Office of Management and Budget.
``The biggest battle now is the slippage from right-to-know to need-to-know,'' said Bass.
Steven Aftergood once helped persuade the government to detail the CIA's budget, only to see the victory reversed. He says prying secrets from the feds is like detective work without the gumshoe glamor or shootouts.
``There's not much sex and violence, but there are unexpected discoveries and leads to track down,'' said Aftergood, who is with the Federation of American Scientists. ``That's what makes the work exciting.''
The excitement comes in measured steps, though.
``You need to have the endurance to get past the first obstacle -- the glacial pace,'' he said. ``Beyond that, you have to be a kind of library rat.''
The secret-busters are well aware of the David vs. Goliath nature of what they do.
Kate Martin is still amazed that she and a fellow lawyer, armed with a word processor and a lot of nerve, were able to face off against a dozen government lawyers in 1989 and win.
The two succeeded in stopping White House officials from deleting e-mails on President Reagan's last full day in office. They argued these records should be preserved along with the rest of Reagan's papers.
Martin, now director of the Center for National Security Studies at The George Washington University, today is a lead attorney in a Freedom of Information Act case seeking the disclosure of the identities of hundreds of individuals who were arrested and jailed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Because of the clampdown, there's a lot people don't know, on top of the volume of material they haven't been able to squeeze out of the government in the past.
``The objective of this administration is to cut back as far as it can on openness,'' said David Vladeck, director of the Public Citizen Litigation Group, which has fought some 300 lawsuits challenging government secrecy since 1972.
``You see it with respect to Congress, the public,'' he said, ``and much of it predates 9-11.''
Even the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, has trouble getting information out of the White House. The GAO has sued to get access to records showing who met with Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force as it developed energy policy.
Even the secret-busters, though, are taking a second look at what they're making it easier for the public to access.
Aftergood, who has posted a trove of online information about U.S. weapons and strategic installations, deleted floor plans of nuclear weapons storage sites from his group's Web site after the attacks.
``I take the administration's actions to be mostly in good faith,'' Aftergood said. ``There are people out there intent on killing Americans and they are trying to respond accordingly.''
But the wider goal of getting out the most information remains.
``Information is power, and if you want to participate in the political process, access to information is a prerequisite,'' he said.
Over the years, hundreds of millions of pages of government records have been released as the result of federal law, freedom-of-information lawsuits and other dogged pursuits.
Greatest hits include President Nixon's papers and tapes and records about the assassination of President Kennedy.
There are hundreds of other lesser-known examples: grand jury records in the spy case of Alger Hiss; thousands of pages from notebooks kept by Lt. Col. Oliver North of the Iran-contra scandal; documents revealing the risks of silicone breast implants; names of companies that made shoddy air bags.
Steven Garfinkel was once a gatekeeper of government information as director of the office that oversees security classification programs. Just before he retired in December, he joked he was a ``government hack defending the right of the government to keep information secret.''
``I leave government most proud of having protected every bit of the classified information in which I have been entrusted,'' Garfinkel said.
But he conceded: ``No one can be expected to take secrecy seriously if far too much information that is no longer sensitive remains classified.''
On the Net:
Center for National Security Studies: http://cnss.gwu.edu
Public Citizen: http://www.citizen.org
OMB Watch: http://www.ombwatch.org
Information Security Oversight Office: http://www.nara.gov/isoo/about/what.html
---------
Protesters Clash at Beirut Embassy
April 3, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Mideast-Palestinians.html
BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Lebanese and Palestinians shredded an American flag and clashed with security forces outside the fortified U.S. Embassy compound, one of many angry protests Wednesday throughout the Arab world against Israel and the United States.
About 25 people, including nine members of the security forces, were slightly hurt in a melee involving 5,000 people, mainly students, outside the suburban Beirut embassy. The injured were hit by stones or overcome by tear gas, police and witnesses said.
The scene was a replay of what has become a daily ritual since Friday, when Israel began invading Palestinian cities and confined Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to a few rooms in his West Bank headquarters. The military offensive seeks to crush Palestinian militias after a wave of daily, deadly terror attacks against Israelis.
Arabs have been venting anger at Israel and the United States, which they accuse of blindly supporting Israeli actions. They also are demanding their own governments take action.
Demonstrators also took to the streets Wednesday in the capitals of Iran, Iraq, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan and Syria. In Saudi Arabia -- where demonstrations are banned -- word emerged Wednesday of rare protests in support of the Palestinians.
Witnesses told The Associated Press that Saudi police rounded up about 300 demonstrators in the northern Jof province after a confrontation Tuesday with 3,000 Saudis who burned U.S. and Israeli flags in a pro-Palestinian march.
The protesters threw stones at police and security forces who had arrived to disperse them, the witnesses said on condition of anonymity. A smaller pro-Palestinian protest was held briefly in the Saudi capital of Riyadh late Tuesday, but it broke up before security forces arrived, witnesses there said.
On Wednesday, the official Saudi television read a terse statement from Interior Minister Prince Nayef denouncing an incident in Jof, without mentioning what it was.
Nayef said it was carried out by about 150 youths ``driven by fervor over what is happening'' in the Palestinian areas. ``This behavior is unacceptable and will not be allowed to be repeated,'' he said, according to the statement.
In Egypt, the first Arab country to sign a peace agreement with Israel, more than 2,000 students protested at the Cairo University campus, some raising Palestinian flags.
More than 1,000 students spilled out to the street but police prevented them from marching to the nearby Israeli Embassy. On campuses across Egypt, some 30,000 university students demonstrated, but no clashes were reported.
``There is no solution but war,'' said Ahmed Assem, 19, a student of economics and political science. ``The least (Egyptian President Hosni) Mubarak could do is to expel the Israeli ambassador.''
Many protesters have been calling on Egypt and Jordan to sever all relations with Israel. Egypt announced Wednesday that the government was limiting contacts with Israel to those that ``serve the Palestinian cause.''
The step fell short of cutting ties, and appeared largely symbolic since Israel and Egypt have little more in the way of relations than those political contacts used to try to defuse Israeli-Arab crises.
The Gulf Cooperation Council, which groups six Gulf nations, issued a statement Wednesday urging the international community, and particularly the United States, to enforce implementation of a U.N. Security Council resolution passed Saturday that calls for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Palestinian towns, including Ramallah.
Lebanese lawmakers called on Arab countries to break relations with Israel. Prime Minister Rafik Hariri told a special session of Parliament that the Arab public feels ``utter bitterness and insult'' as a result of Israeli attacks on the Palestinians.
Hariri said the Bush administration should be ``just'' in its policies and try to end the Israeli attacks.
U.S. policy has been a chief target of demonstrators.
Clashes at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut began Wednesday when students carrying placards and waving Palestinian flags tried to march on the compound, cordoned off by hundreds of policemen and soldiers. Security forces fired tear gas and sprayed water. Demonstrators started throwing stones; policemen picked up stones and hit back.
In Amman, Jordanian riot police blocked about 50 demonstrators from approaching the U.S. Embassy compound.
In another Beirut protest, several thousand Lebanese and Palestinians from nationalist, communist and militant Islamic groups staged a noisy demonstration outside the downtown U.N. office.
Thousands also demonstrated outside U.N. offices in Baghdad, Iraq, burning Israeli flags and vowing to sacrifice themselves for the Palestinian cause. Similar but much smaller protests were held outside U.N. offices in Cairo and Tehran.
Maurice Motamed, the Iranian parliament's only Jewish legislator, told The Associated Press in Tehran that ``the Jewish society of Iran has been one of the first Jewish communities around the world to condemn these attacks against Palestinians.''
----------
Parents of Activist Flee NYC Home
April 3, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Arafat-Visitor-Backlash.html
NEW YORK (AP) -- The parents of an American activist who visited a besieged Yasser Arafat in his West Bank headquarters have fled their Brooklyn home after receiving death threats, another son said Wednesday.
Adam Shapiro, 30, a member of a group in solidarity with Palestinians, has been denounced by some who compare him to John Walker Lindh, the American who fought for the Taliban.
His schoolteacher parents, Stuart and Doreen Shapiro, have left the state for an undisclosed location, son Noah Shapiro said. He said uniformed police officers were posted outside his home in Brooklyn.
He said his parents, who are Jewish, decided to leave after receiving threats by phone and e-mail. Callers told the Shapiros they were ``fake Jews'' and equivalent to terrorists, Noah Shapiro said. One caller ``said my family could go burn in hell and he'd like to take us there,'' he said.
Fliers also were put up asking people to call a telephone number to hear a recording that offered the Shapiros' purported home address.
``We think Adam Shapiro is the John Walker Lindh of the Jewish community,'' said Ron Torosin, a spokesman for the Jewish youth group Betar. ``He's a despicable, terrible individual who should be held accountable for his actions.''
Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish group, said he called law enforcement officials on behalf of the Shapiro family. He called the threats against the Shapiros ``sinister and serious. We find it reprehensible to target anybody based on what they believe and what they stand for, whether or not we believe in their actions.''
Adam Shapiro, who says he does not follow any particular religion, made numerous TV appearances and was quoted in news accounts describing the siege by Israeli troops on Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah. The invasion followed a series of terrorist bombings, including one that killed 25 people at a Passover meal on the first night of the holiday.
Shapiro said he was trying to help evacuate wounded Palestinian guards when he was trapped inside the compound.
``I can't express the shock and sorrow that I'm feeling that people would respond in this way, with such hatred,'' he said by telephone Wednesday.
Shapiro was trapped with Arafat for 24 hours, sharing breakfast with the Palestinian leader and about six aides Saturday morning. Israeli troops let Shapiro leave the compound that evening.
Shapiro is part of the Palestinian-led International Solidarity Movement that has appealed to foreigners to bring attention to conditions among Palestinians. He has been living in Ramallah for three years.
---------
Local Jews protest outside PLO mission
April 3, 2002
By Guy Taylor
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020403-25542740.htm
Dozens of Jewish activists rallied outside the Palestine Liberation Organization's Washington mission yesterday, protesting a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings in Israel.
"Israel is suffering, our friends and families are suffering," Peter Hebert shouted through a hand-held megaphone during the street-corner rally, which attracted curious lunchtime onlookers downtown.
"No cause justifies suicide bombings," Mr. Hebert said. His Bethesda-based group, Friends and Family in Israel, called on Jewish congregations from across the region to gather with prayers, picket signs and Israeli flags.
Inside the mission, officials said the demonstrators were "gathered in the wrong place." They should protest in front of the Israeli Embassy "because that is where the terrorism is coming from," said the mission's chief representative, Hasan A. Rahman.
"I assure you, when you ask a Palestinian suicide bomber, 'Why do you do this?' he will tell you, 'Give me an F-16 fighter plane or an Apache helicopter or a tank and I will not use my body as a bomb,'" Mr. Rahman said. He said his grandfather was killed by Israeli soldiers last summer.
Several Jews at the rally said they also had lost loved ones in the violence since the current Palestinian intifada, or uprising, began in September 2000. Last Wednesday, a Palestinian blew himself up in the dining room of an Israeli resort as guests gathered to celebrate Passover. The attack killed 24 Israelis and wounded more than 140.
Ron Hyatt, from Rockville, said peace with the Palestinians seems impossible because they "don't articulate what they want."
"They have been offered deal after deal, which they turn down again and again," he said. "The world needs to focus on making the Palestinians focus on what they want beyond creating terror in Israel."
--------
Activists oppose new PG board
April 3, 2002
By Vaishali Honawar
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/metro/20020403-23755060.htm
Prince George's County parents and activists say an all-appointed school board will rob them of their democratic rights and leave them with no voice in the school system.
A day after the county's Senate delegation voted 7-1 to scrap the current school board structure, community members said they were surprised by the decision and hope that the measure does not become law.
"We are devastated. This is a terrible bill. The senators are just hanging the county's citizens out to dry," said Janis Hagey, coordinator of People's Report Card, a group of about 200 parents, community activists and county businesses formed last fall to oppose legislation for an appointed board.
"This is an affront to the voters, and we will continue to lobby against this bill," said Mrs. Hagey, whose group has organized several rallies in Annapolis to fight bills to restructure the board.
"I am insulted," said county administrators union chief Doris Reed. "I have been a county resident for 20 years. I elected these senators, and now they think I am not smart enough to elect school board members."
The General Assembly has considered stepping in to fix the troubled school system before, but the problems took on new urgency this session when the ongoing feud between the nine-member school board and Superintendent Iris T. Metts boiled over. In February, the board voted to fire Mrs. Metts, but was overruled by the state board of education.
County residents say that they are tired of the disputes between the board and Mrs. Metts, who was hired three years ago, but that they don't believe that the Senate's proposal is the right solution for the 137,000-student school system.
Besides creating an appointed board, the measure would also replace the superintendent with a chief executive officer and create the positions of chief academic, chief financial and chief accountability officers. The governor and county executive would jointly name school board members, who would be replaced by an elected board in 2006.
Judy Mickens-Murray, president of the county PTA, said she was disappointed by the Senate delegation's decision.
"In my opinion, the delegation did not listen to the voters," she said.
Both the county PTA and the county teachers union support a board with a mix of elected and appointed officials. The House has approved such a bill, which would comprise five elected and four appointed board members.
"The situation in the county has caused major concern, but the key thing we need to get is a balance," said Celeste Williams, president of the county's 8,000-member teachers union.
Other solutions have been suggested. The People's Report Card, for instance, had supported a bill proposed by Delegate Joan B. Pitkin, Prince George's Democrat, that would have allowed voters to recall school board members. The bill did not find any backing in the House.
The bill approved by the county's senators Monday will go to the Senate Budget and Taxation Committee. It will have to clear the House and Senate, and get Gov. Parris N. Glendening's approval to become law.
The board, meanwhile, says it will move ahead with plans to sue on constitutional grounds if the legislation passes.
Board member Robert J. Callahan of Bowie said he would recommend that the board take action in federal court on civil rights grounds.
"This is an extreme miscarriage of justice that effectively takes away the rights of parents and voters in the oversight of the school system," Mr. Callahan said yesterday.
Under the Senate proposal, county schools could get as much as $28 million in additional funds next year and more than $20 million extra each year through 2007. Mr. Callahan said that tying the funds to the proposal for an all-appointed board was "blackmail."
Howard Tutman, vice president of the county PTA, said that tying the extra funding to an appointed board would not help because the amount proposed would not fulfill the school system's needs.
"The appointed school board is going to say we are still short of money," he said. "Even if we get these extra funds, we will still be overcrowded and we will still be losing teachers."
Residents also expressed concerns about who would be on the appointed board. Mr. Tutman said it would be a problem if members were appointed based on their political ties.
Mrs. Hagey said there was no proof that an appointed board would do any better than an elected one.
"For instance, there is no evidence that appointed board members will make any decisions about reducing class sizes," she said.
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Activists held in Ecuador pipeline protest freed
REUTERS ECUADOR:
April 3, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15297/newsDate/3-Apr-2002/story.htm
QUITO, Ecuador - Five European environmental activists were freed this week after being detained last week and accused of damaging property during protests against the construction of a new oil pipeline.
Quito Deputy Mayor Efren Cocios accepted demonstrators' request for habeas corpus, declaring they were unfairly detained and not read the charges against them in their native languages, as stipulated by Ecuadorean law.
The three Germans, one French and one Irish activist were immediately freed from a Quito jail, where they had been held since last week.
Provincial authorities ordered last week the deportation of 14 foreign environmental activists for damage allegedly caused by the protests. Nine activists left Ecuador this weekend. The rest were freed this week, but still face deportation.
Ecuador's government is counting on the new pipeline to boost oil transport capacity to 850,000 barrels a day, from a current 400,000 bpd, flooding government coffers with fresh revenues needed to boost the economy.
Environmentalists have camped out in the woods near Mindo protected forest and bird habitat, some 16 miles (25 km) outside Quito, for several weeks to protest the route for the new heavy crude pipeline set for completion next year.
Mindo is home to nearly 450 bird species, making it one of the most important bird areas in South America, and is popular with eco-tourists.
Construction firm Techint, part of consortium OCP Ecuador SA building the pipeline, has said that activists' protests have hampered construction.
OCP is made up of Alberta Energy Co. Ltd., Agip Petroleum, Kerr-McGee, Occidental Petroleum Corp., Spain's Repsol-YPF and Argentina's Perez Companc and Techint.
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Fighting for Our Lives
Helen Caldicott, M.D., Anti-Nuclear Crusader
by Janet Allen,
April 3, 2002
http://www.wholelifetimes.com/Caldicott.html
We have it within our power to begin the world again. -Thomas Paine
The setting was downtown Los Angeles-a magnificent view of the city all dressed up in its eveningwear, a multi-colored embroidery of lights twinkling their nighttime splendor. Under ordinary circumstances, the convened members of Physicians for Social Responsibility might have gazed out the panoramic windows with a sense of peace, accomplishment, and appreciation. But having gathered to hear the group's founder, Helen Caldicott, M.D., speak about her new book, The New Nuclear Danger: George Bush's Military Industrial Complex and the current world crisis, the mood on this night was eerily different from most.
According to Caldicott, an Australian pediatrician-turned-activist who single-handedly spearheaded the Nuclear Disarmament movement two decades ago, we are in a more dangerous position now than we've ever been. Back during the Reagan years, public awareness of the nuclear threat was at its height, but now, people have let down their guard, Caldicott said. "At least we all knew we were close to nuclear war then and worked like mad to eradicate the threat. Today, the risk is much worse because our population is totally ignorant about it. Everyone thinks we're safe; people don't know that the weapons are still in existence and are in a higher state of alert. And with President Bush ratcheting up the aggression throughout the world and building the outrageously expensive Star Wars system ($90 billion to date), we're more likely to have a nuclear war by anxiety, by design, by accident. The whole thing is illogical, irrational, and insane."
Caldicott is back on another mission to raise awareness of the still very possible specter of nuclear war, because, she said, it's what people don't know that puts the fate of this planet in the most extreme danger:
· That the U.S. national military policy "is still to win a nuclear war against Russia. It's written in the Defense Department documents. It's still in the public domain."
· That on Sept. 11, our "early warning system went into the highest state of alert, Defcon II, the stage just before George Bush could press the button."
· That during the year 2000, the Pentagon under Clinton administration lost this nuclear attack detection system for eight months when its computers went down, yet neglected to tell U.S. citizens. "Dr. Patch Adams and I kept ringing the press, warning them that Y2K could cause an accidental nuclear war, but they were bored with the end of the world."
· That despite the Cold War having ended in 1989, both the U.S. and Russia each still have 3,000 nuclear missiles (6,000 total) on hair-trigger alert, pointed at 240 major metropolitan areas in the northern hemisphere. "Scientific analysis shows that if you drop 1,000 bombs on 100 cities, you'll create such a pall of black, radioactive, oily smoke, it will cover the earth for a year, block out the sun, and produce nuclear winter and the end of life on earth. Cockroaches might survive, the algae, the moss, but certainly not us."
· That in 1995, we were only 10 seconds away from having those missiles launched in our direction until Russian President Boris Yeltsin realized it was just a computer false alarm. "We need to remember that nuclear war can happen within half an hour."
· That similar close calls occur every year, leaving us continually on the brink of nuclear war and annihilation. "Ten years ago, 105 documented cases of near-misses were documented in the American early warning system alone. In Russia, where the system is rusty and antiquated, numbers are probably higher."
Caldicott is furious that American tax dollars are being utilized by the new robber barons of the military-industrial complex-Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, TRW, Raytheon-to pay for a monstrosity that she says won't and can't work. "Bush wants to spend $3.5 trillion in the next 10 years on the military. If you'd spent a million dollars a minute since Jesus was born, you still wouldn't have spent a trillion dollars. Half your discretionary budget or more goes to the Pentagon, and you don't have a free health care system, which is your right and your due!"
Physicians for Social Responsibility Executive Director of the L.A. chapter Jonathan Parfrey is equally perturbed. (Physicians for Social Responsibility is a national organization representing 22,000 doctors, nurses, health care professionals, and concerned citizens devoted to nuclear disarmament, violence prevention, and environmental health.) "The Bush Administration has dramatically made America much less secure. First, they abrogated the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty-the first time ever the U.S. has been the first to cut out of an international treaty. Second, our government's plans to test its missiles will be in direct violation of the international testing moratorium. Consequently, once the U.S. deploys a missile defense, China (which currently possesses 18 missiles that can hit America) will likely respond by building hundreds of nuclear weapons, compelling India and Pakistan to follow suit. Russia, too, may very well feel pressured to deploy more complex and dangerous missles called 'MIRVs' (Multiple Independent Re-entry Vehicles)."
What with the post-September 11 patriotic fervor, the President's high approval rating (common during wartime), and Congress standing up and applauding Bush several dozen times during the recent State of the Union address, Helen Caldicott is deeply concerned with the overall display of subservient complicity. "This administration has a Congress that just lies down in front of them. If I didn't have a tight skirt on, I'd lie down on the floor and show you."
Corporate Puppets, Corporate Bias
The esteemed pediatrician proceeded to give the audience a brief lesson in modern-day politics. For disbelievers, she was careful to say that all statements were referenced and documented in her book. "What is this administration? They didn't win the election; they were put in by the Supreme Court. This is a corporate administration with a corporate Congress, not democratically elected at all. They are just representatives of the military-industrial complex that put them into power, and they aren't representing the people of America one bit. They're corporate prostitutes, and you can see that with the Enron scandal-the immense funding given to Bush, both for his gubernatorial and his presidential campaigns, as well as the ties that the whole administration has with Lockheed-Martin.
"Do you all know who the Heritage Foundation is?" Caldicott continued. "They're called a conservative, right-wing think tank, but they're actually an advertising agency for corporations like Lockheed-Martin, Reader's Digest, Hertz Rent-a-Car, Holiday Inn, Coors Beer, and the big military-industrial complex. If you look on Jim Lehrer or Ted Koppel or Charlie Rose or Nightline most nights, or read the New York Times, very often you'll see a fellow from the Heritage Foundation-very intelligent, very well spoken. They don't believe in big government or any government. Their philosophy is total deregulation so corporations can do what they will, like Enron. The group spends $29 million a year, 40% of that on media propaganda, so that's what we're up against."
Furthermore, Caldicott has evidence that most of the people in the administration were either appointed by Heritage or shuttled in through the government-industry revolving door. "Many are Lockheed-Martin people, including Stephen Hadley and Vice-President Dick Cheney's wife Lynn, who held a paid position on its board for about 20 years. Our military leaders in the Army, Navy, and Air Force are all corporate men: White, the head of the Army, comes from Enron."
Caldicott continued undaunted while the fascinated, somewhat disheartened audience sat frozen in their chairs, attempting to keep on track with this runaway choo-choo of political who-what-wheres. "So in fact, this is not a Democracy, and this administration and Congress are being run by the corporations who just want to take all your money and then go bankrupt, running away with $101 million dollars in their pockets. You lose your retirement benefits; tens of thousands of people get fired. The social ramifications of the Capitalist system at this time in history are inhumane and, therefore, things must change.
"We need a revolution. I'm sure you can all work that out, because it's your country."
Ending the Nuclear Age
As a physician and mother, Caldicott always stands up first and foremost for the younger generation. In fact, she was initially spurred into action back in 1971 when the rainwater falling on Adelaide, Australia contained radioactive fallout from French atmospheric tests-carcinogenic radiation that would concentrate in breast milk and enter the bodies of babies. "We cannot ignore the nuclear threat which faces us every minute of every day, because even more faces our children. These kids are growing up to inherit a lethal world, so complex, set up by us and our generation. The irresponsibility of adults takes my breath away! Why haven't we got any guts?"
After retiring into her private life in Australia in 1987, she came back to anti-nuclear work out of necessity-not a good sign.
"When I realized that Clinton hadn't abolished nuclear weapons when the Cold War ended, I felt really deeply betrayed, because I'd spent about 20 years trying to stop the nuclear arms race. When the Berlin Wall came down, I thought that would naturally happen. I gave up my life, my career, my vocation to try to save the world from nuclear war.
"I'm 63, and when I look back now and realize the weapons are still in place, I don't just feel cheated, I feel deeply saddened." She sighed mournfully, and I was touched to glimpse the sensitive side of this strong, dedicated woman who has been my hero for almost two decades.
"I know that I influenced millions of people in the '80s, and they're still out there. I see now my job is to re-stimulate those people, re-educate them and tell them that we haven't finished our work. I foresee that in five years we can end the Nuclear Age."
An interactive dialogue began. Said one audience member: "I think it is a real misconception that America has to be the Peace Keepers. We need to become more aware of being Peace Builders. You have to start it at the ground level, the grassroots level, and change people's sensibilities and psychology."
"There isn't time to do grassroots stuff anymore," Caldicott replied. "It's beyond time to talk to the government."
An older gentleman offered his solution: "Teach peace in every school in the U.S." "Well," responded Helen, "it's a great idea, but you know what? There isn't time. The children don't have time to grow up and take political action."
Her sense of urgency was unmistakable and contagious. "The earth is acutely ill, and we are in the Intensive Care Unit! Being a physician, you've got to be pragmatic. If you've got little time and your patient's got acute Meningococal septicemia, unless he gets his penicillin right now, he'll be dead tomorrow. Similarly, in helping our planet to survive, if we don't understand the origin of the disease, we can't cure it.
"The cause of the nuclear arms race and Star Wars, all the murder and violence, is man's psyche. We've got to start analyzing what's going on, figuring out what drives this brain of ours, and call our leaders on it like the Nazis were called on their crimes, because if we don't, we won't be here much longer."
The Terrorist Threat
Radioactive contamination is no doubt a significant health risk in the nuclear age. Whether used violently to wipe out human populations at the flip of a switch, or more "benignly" to sterilize our food and medical supplies, nuclear isotopes are a constant source of danger, at risk of exploding, leaking, being mishandled by untrained workers, improperly stored or disposed of, even stolen. Explained Caldicott, "Terrorists don't need nuclear weapons; they've got 'em. A hundred and one reactors, free, scattered around America. Inside each one is as much long-lived radiation as that released by the explosion of a thousand Hiroshima-sized bombs, and in the cooling pools is 20-30 times that amount. We're a sitting target for a terrorist. I think it's going to happen."
She spoke it so calmly a chill went up my spine. Apparently, even Europe may be starting to realize the risk of terrorist groups targeting these sites. Several weeks ago, Germany decided to phase out all of its 19 nuclear power plants within the next few years.
"Ending the nuclear age is the ultimate longevity issue," she continued. "If terrorists hit a nuclear power plant, and you happen to be living in the vicinity, like an area the size of Pennsylvania, you could die immediately from acute radiation illness, or you could get leukemia five years later, or cancer 15 years later. Also, there could be a meltdown from an accident. So, all the nuclear reactors have to be closed down. That's the first thing.
"The second thing is that we have to completely abolish nuclear weapons. America has no enemies now, even though the administration says we do. China's not a threat; Russia's a friend. Yet still, there could be a nuclear war tonight. We're lucky to wake up in the morning. We're in terrible danger every minute of every day and every night."
Whether fiddling with the nuclei of atoms to create huge external explosions (bombs), or rearranging DNA and creating unpredictable health and environmental consequences (Genetically Modified Organisms), it appears that the innovations of both our scientists and government are affecting us on both the microcosmic and macrocosmic levels. Caldicott is understandably alarmed by this: "Nuclear waste-either from nuclear reactors or the production of nuclear weapons-creates random, compulsory, genetic engineering for the rest of time. It is the destruction of the process of evolution genetically. The depleted uranium they've used in Iraq, and probably Afghanistan and Kosovo, has got a half-life of 4.5 billion years. In my book Nuclear Madness, I explain the bio-magnification of this radioactivity in the food chain: once in the environment, nuclear isotopes are concentrated at each step by orders of magnitude, so when we eat the food, our genes are attacked. It was expressed best by Einstein, who said, 'The splitting of the atom changed everything, save man's mode of thinking, thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.'"
Changing the Political Climate
Caldicott is convinced that the American people are hungry for real visionary leadership, and are ready for someone with integrity- perhaps a woman-to lead the electorate into a positive future, teaching and guiding and inspiring them with a prophetic voice. She encourages the implementation of quick, effective strategies to shift the balance of power into the hands of truly "wise, visionary, courageous leaders who will do the right thing for the people of this country-not the corporations, but the people, and by extension the entire world."
Caldicott is thrilled by France's recent 'parity law' requiring that 50% of all candidates running for office must be women. She believes the Equal Rights Amendment was nothing compared to this. "It's time that women rise up and take their rightful place in government. We are 53% of the world's population, we hold up 53% of the sky, yet we have no power at all. The three hormones-testosterone versus estrogen and progesterone-have very different and obvious effects upon the psyche. I could go on at length about the physiology of those hormones, how they affect the brain and behavior. It's imperative that there be gender balance now."
Counteracting the Corporations
Caldicott emphasized the importance of taking full advantage of the public broadcasting system to get the anti-nuclear point of view heard. "I'm setting up an institute equal and opposite to the Heritage Foundation so that Rumsfeld, Cheney, and their other spokespersons never again go on television unchallenged and lie to the American people. I may need about $1 million a year, but I guarantee, we'll do them in. We'll just put the best, most brilliant people on news and talk shows all over the country to disclose the whole truth, to educate the citizens, and we'll end the Nuclear Age."
Caldicott has experienced censorship in attempting to get equal time on television and in print. GE, whose slogan is, ironically, "We bring good things to life," is one of the two American manufacturers (along with CBS-owner Westinghouse) of nuclear weapons, nuclear space probes, and nuclear reactors/power plants for domestic and overseas markets. "As they own NBC, they predictably would be antithetical to speaking about the medical problems of what they're actually doing. After writing a book called If You Love This Planet, in which I used GE as an example of a very bad corporation, I was scheduled to go on the Today Show and was very excited. Then they read the book and I was cancelled.
"There is a conspiracy of silence in this country," she said. "The European Parliament has been up in arms, frantic because so many foreign soldiers who fought in Kosovo and the Gulf are getting leukemia. Articles are flooding the European press, yet there's nothing in this country at all."
Awakening the Numbed
According to Caldicott, the manic denial of reality, or "psychic numbing," is an epidemic state of mind amongst Americans when it comes to acknowledging the immediate and ongoing possibility of nuclear war. "'Displacement Activity' is described when you put rats in a cage and threaten them with a lethal situation. They then tend to run away and do something totally irrelevant to that which threatens them. Similarly, people are running around engaged in all sorts of insignificant, smaller activities that they can get their brains around." Such distractions and obsessions are not difficult to see imbedded in daily American culture: addictions to technological toys such as television, computers, video games, gourmet food, designer fashions, and spectator sports.
"There can be no more important issue than saving the planet from nuclear destruction. If we set the priority of all moving together towards the abolition of nuclear weapons and power plants, that in itself will create a massive change of perspective within the country and empower the other groups to get going on their issues." In other words, first things first.
"Our children know they have no future. It's grim. Furthermore, they see no sign that the adults are willing to protect them or fix it for them. To be good parents and grandparents, it is implicit that we take responsibility to save their future. Certainly in Australia, where we only have 19.5 million people, the male teenage suicide rate is higher than ever before, and many are profoundly depressed. That's the time you're supposed to look forward with great passion and enthusiasm for life, to fall in love, to discover your dreams. The teenagers here are just as well educated-they watch television and listen to the radio, they hear who's lying, they know the truth. Talk to primary school children, they all know. If I were a teenager now, I would be deeply depressed."
Compassionate Alternatives
"The day of Sept. 11, I had to address 3,000 people at a university in Wisconsin, located in a very Christian, Bible-thumping belt. The students came in totally shocked and upset, and I thought, "What am I going to do?" I remembered how a U.S. Admiral once told me, 'Our mission is to destroy property and kill people.' So I said to them, 'You know, being a Christian doesn't mean going to church on Sundays or going up to heaven to meet Jesus when you die. It means living what he preached. What does it say in the Old Testament, the Ten Commandments, given to Moses by God? 'Thou shalt not kill.'
"Then I read to them from Luke: 'Love thine enemies. Do good to those who hate you.' And if this country had done that-Ghandi would have done it, Gorbachev would have done it, Mandela and King would have done it-the whole of the human race would have been elevated to a higher spiritual and moral level, and we would have had a chance to save the Earth."
"A massive new nuclear arms race would be the end, and my grandchildren would not live out their natural lifespan. Is this the legacy we, the most 'intelligent, adaptable' species, are choosing to leave our children? Or can the human race snap out of its lethal hypnotic state in time and boldly access our power to begin the world again?"
· Take Action! Senator Dianne Feinstein needs letters of support in her efforts to defund Bush's misguided missile defense plan. For more information, contact Physicians for Social Responsibility in Los Angeles at 213.386.4901, or visit their Web site at www.psrla.org. The Southern California independent chapter, which has 3,000 local members, assists groups and individuals by hosting regular meetings, providing literature, coordinating grassroots action, and helping identify legislation that can make a difference.
-For more information on Dr. Helen Caldicott's books and organization (The Institute for Common Sense in the Nuclear Age), visit her Web site at www.nuclearcommonsense.org.
-Janet Allen has been a health, food safety and environmental journalist, public speaker and activist for 18 years. She is a coordinator with the Organic Consumers Association and has founded her own non-profit organization, Wild Blue Planet.
Photos: Francine Kokenas
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