------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
DU Uses R&D Project Review, held April 9-10, 2002, at ORNL
Uranium Quick Facts
S.Korea Tells North It's a Possible U.S. Target
US defence shield may use nuclear missiles
From the Pakistani War Front to the Strategic Ivory Tower
Activists: No Nuclear Imports
Russia aims to build Vietnam nuclear power plant
U.S., Russia Report Progress on Weapons
Russia and U.S. Near Agreement on Warheads
Deadlock looms over NPT Prep Com at UN
Planning to be Surprised
Nevada Sues Over Yucca Mountain - Again
Nuclear Plant Gets Good Marks
Standoff Over Plutonium Shipments
S.C. Gov. Blocks Plutonium Shipments
DOE Could Ship Plutonium Over South Carolina Objections
South Carolina Battles U.S. on Plutonium
McKinney implies Bush knew of Sept. 11 plot
McKinney's statement today on her comments, the administration

MILITARY
U.N. Is Expanding Its Investigation of Several Mass Graves
China-made artillery seized in Afghanistan
Ashcroft Urged To Drop New Rule On Gun Sales
Pentagon's Missteps Stalled New Vaccines
Chemicals Discovery Halts Alaska Missile-Site Work
Germ Warfare Expert Acquitted in S. Africa
Drug Charge Dropped in Case Criticized by Rights Groups
Boy Sickened by Heroin He Swallowed
Iraq Talks With U.N. Postponed
Explosion in Jerusalem
The Number of Dead Is in Dispute
Calls begin for war crimes trial for Israelis
Marine to Head U.S. Forces in Europe
Rebels Kill 54 People in Nepal
Manila Court Upholds U.S. Training Exercise
Intelligence agencies put their heads together
War Crimes Court Created Over Fierce U.S. Objection
War Crimes Tribunal Becomes Reality, Without U.S. Role
President of Venezuela Resigns Under Pressure From Military

POLICE / PRISONERS
Court Martial Changes Issued
Study Urged for National ID System

ENERGY AND OTHER
Enron Trading Gave Prices Artificial Lift, Panel Is Told
Senator Criticizes White House Over Limits on Pollutants Treaty
China Raises H.I.V. Count in New Report
Gays in China Step Out, With One Foot in Closet

ACTIVISTS
Closed-Door Meeting With Ridge Riles Lawmaker
Generals Revolt in Venezuela After 10 Protesters Are Killed
Louder Voices on Streets as Mideast Strife Grows
Mass Protests Engulf Arab World
Indian Police Break Up Mainly Peaceful Hindu Rally
War Tax Resistance: An Idea Whose Time Has Come . . . Again?




-------- NUCLEAR


-------- depleted uranium

DU Uses R&D Project Review, held April 9-10, 2002, at ORNL

4/11/2002
http://web.ead.anl.gov/uranium/news/index.cfm

A Depleted Uranium (DU) Uses R&D Project Review was held April 9-10 at Oak Ridge National Laboratory by the Project's Advisory Committee. The members of the Advisory Committee include Ray Wymer (national academy committees member, advisor to U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission), James Miller (Argonne National Laboratory), and Paul Harrington (Yucca Mountain Project). The status of the project was found to be the following:

Depleted uranium dioxide can vastly improve the performance of the spent nuclear fuel (SNF) repository through improved nuclear criticality control and retardation of radionuclide release. DU could be used as fill material in the voids of waste packages, as inverts or as backfill.

Depleted uranium-steel cermet is a new material that, when used in SNF casks, could reduce casks dimensions and weight, enable higher SNF heat loads, and possibly enhance physical protection against assault.

Depleted uranium heavy concrete (DUCRETE) is a new material that enables SNF casks to be smaller, lighter weight, have a higher SNF heat source (less cool-down time), and possibly better physical protection against assault. Experiments under exposure conditions much more severe than expected within a solidified concrete paste matrix show that aggregate paste interactions with depleted uranium aggregate (DUAGG) are very slow and therefore DUCRETE should have long-term durability. Experiments are continuing.

Experiments have shown that urania (UO2) is a very good catalytic material. The structure of the catalyst is an important parameter in controlling its reactivity. First experiments with volatile organic compound (toluene) pollutants show that although urania is very good, it is not as good as current platinum catalysts. Experiments are proceeding to examine uranium catalysts with halogenated volatile organic compounds, e.g. chlorobenzene. It will be interesting to see if uranium catalysts can match platinum catalysts, and determine if they are deactivated by chlorine. Experiments indicate that urania is a very good semiconductor material. Experiments indicate that it has excellent bandgaps for thermophotovoltaic (TPV, infrared) and photovoltaic (e.g. solar cell) applications. Uranium diodes and transistors have been fabricated. Uranium based thermoelectric devices appear possible. The driver for examining uranium semiconductor devices is the capability of uranium to withstand very high temperatures (the UO2 melting point is ~3150K). This is much higher than conventional capability.

International collaborations are focused on possible work with the Russians. Three potential tasks have been identified and the Russians are developing proposals in these areas: (1) sorption/ion exchange of radionuclides on hydrated uranium oxides, a task related to DU benefits to a repository, (2) manufacture and testing of depleted uranium dioxide-steel cermets, a task related to using DU in casks, and (3) development of DUO2 concrete casks. Tasks have just begun on the subjects of depleted uranium batteries, fuel cells, DU use in hydrogen production, and regulatory support for DU use in unregulated areas.

For more information see the Potential DU Uses section of this web site

or contact

M. Jonathan Haire, PhD Depleted Uranium Uses R&D Project Oak Ridge National Laboratory P. O. Box 2008 Oak Ridge, TN 37831-6179 (865) 574-7141 FAX (865) 574-9512 E-mail: hairemj@ornl.gov

DUF6 Acquisition Contract Status Update

4/8/2002

The contract for the acquisition of facilities and services for conversion of depleted Uranium Hexafluoride (DUF6) has not been awarded. The Department is reviewing its requirements for the number and location of conversion facilities to be constructed. The Department anticipates making this decision in early 2003 and will then continue the acquisition process.

For more information about the contract, please visit the DUF6 Conversion Acquisition of Services web site at http://www.oro.doe.gov/duf6disposition/

----

Uranium Quick Facts

http://web.ead.anl.gov/uranium/guide/facts/

A collection of facts about uranium, DUF6, and DOE's DUF6 inventory.

Over the years, the Department of Energy has received numerous inquiries from the public and particularly from school-aged children, who were interested in understanding more about the Department's inventory of depleted uranium hexafluoride and ultimately, how the Government is going to address the disposition of this legacy material. The Department put together the following "fun facts," as a means of putting into perspective the characteristics of this material, in terms recognizable from everyday life. It is our hope that you will find these "fun facts," interesting and thought-provoking, in terms of understanding the challenge before the Department in managing this material and providing for its ultimate conversion and disposition.

Discovery of Uranium
Uranium was discovered in 1798 by Martin Klaproth, a German chemist, who isolated an oxide of uranium while analyzing pitchblende samples from the Joachimsal silver mines in the former Kingdom of Bohemia located in the present day Czech Republic.

Discovery of Uranium Fissionability
It took until 1938 to discover that uranium could be split to release energy, that is fission. This was accomplished by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman.

Discovery of Uranium Radioactivity
Henri Antoine Becquerel discovered that uranium was radioactive in 1896.

DUF6 Cylinder Weight Comparisons
A Ticonderoga-class cruiser is about equal in weight to 706 cylinders of depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6). It would take over 70 cruisers to weigh more than the Nation's inventory of DUF6! The Navy owns only 27 Ticonderoga-class cruisers.

DUF6 Cylinder Weight Comparisons
7,142 cylinders of DUF6 weighs as much as a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier. The entire inventory of 57,634 cylinders weighs more than all eight of the Navy's Nimitz-class aircraft carriers combined!

DUF6 Cylinders
Stacking 57,600 standard DUF6 cylinders end to end would make a tower 720,000 feet tall! That's over 136 miles high!

Energy from Uranium
One ton of natural uranium can produce more than 40 million kilowatt-hours of electricity. This is equivalent to burning 16,000 tons of coal or 80,000 barrels of oil.

Isolation of Uranium
Uranium was isolated in 1841 by French chemist Eugène Péligot.

Naming of Uranium
Uranium was named after the planet Uranus, discovered only eight years earlier in 1791.

Natural Abundance of Uranium
Concentration - uranium ranks 48th among the most abundant elements found in natural crustal rock.

Nuclear Power and Carbon Emissions
Nuclear power plants helped avoid 90 percent of all carbon emissions averted in the U.S. energy sector between 1981 and 1994.

One Pound of Uranium
One pound of uranium will make a ball only 1.3 inches in diameter. Make an "OK" sign with your forefinger and thumb to see how big that ball would be.

Price of Uranium
The price of uranium was approximately $8.75 per pound at end of 1998.

U.S. Nuclear Power Plants
There are currently 105 operating U.S. nuclear power plants that produce over 20 percent of U.S. electricity.

Uranium Abundance
Uranium is 40 times more naturally abundant than silver.

Uranium Baseball
A major league baseball weighs about 5.25 ounces. A uranium baseball would weigh over 8.5 pounds!

Uranium Burning Point
Finely divided uranium burns readily in air at 150 to 175 degrees Celsius (300 to 350 degrees Fahrenheit).

Uranium Density
Uranium is very dense. At about 19 grams per cubic centimeter, it is 1.6 times more dense than lead. Density increases weight. For example, while a gallon of milk weighs about 8 pounds, a gallon container of uranium would weigh about 150 pounds.

Uranium Glass
Uranium has been used to color glass for almost 2 millennia. A uranium-colored glass object was found near Naples, Italy, and dated to about 79 A.D. Uranium oxide added to glass produces a yellow to greenish hue.

Uranium Isotope Proportions
Naturally occurring uranium is 99.2745 percent uranium-238, with uranium-235 (the energy producing isotope) making up about 0.720 percent, and uranium-234 filling in the remainder at less than 0.0055 percent.

Uranium Melting Point
Uranium boils at about 3,818 degrees Celsius (about 6,904 degrees Fahrenheit).

Uranium Nucleus
A uranium-238 atom has 92 protons and 146 neutrons in its nucleus.

Volume of DOE DUF6 Inventory
If converted to uranium metal, all of the uranium in the Nation's DUF6 inventory would cover a football field to a depth of about 15 feet. It would take water almost 290 feet high on the same field to weigh as much!

Volume of DOE DUF6 Inventory
The uranium in the Department's inventory of DUF6, if converted to metal, would make a cube about 30 meters (about 95 feet) on each side.

Weight of DOE DUF6 Inventory
The 704,000 metric tons of uranium hexafluoride in the Department's inventory is over 1.5 BILLION pounds! For comparison, the Great Pyramid of Egypt weighs more than 10 billion pounds.

Weight of DOE DUF6 Inventory
The 704,000 metric tons of DUF6 contains about 476,000 metric tons of uranium and 228,000 metric tons of fluorine. In English, that means over 1 Billion pounds of uranium and over 500 million pounds of fluorine!

Weight of Uranium
A gallon of milk weighs about 8 lbs. A chunk of uranium metal the size of a gallon milk jug weighs over 150 lbs!

World Uranium Production
World uranium production in 1996 was 35,199 metric tons or 78.8 million pounds.

Worldwide Nuclear Power Production
Worldwide, there are about 442 nuclear power plants that supply about 23 percent of the world's electricity.

-------- korea

S.Korea Tells North It's a Possible U.S. Target

April 12, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-korea-north.html

CHEJU CITY, South Korea - South Korean President Kim Dae-jung bluntly told North Korea it could be a U.S. military target if diplomatic non-proliferation efforts fail, the president's envoy said on Friday.

In unusually candid remarks, South Korean envoy Lim Dong-won told the Cheju Peace Forum conference on North-South relations he had taken a ``very long and detailed letter'' from President Kim to North Korean leader Kim Jong-il when he visited Pyongyang last week.

Lim's talks, including five hours with Kim Jong-il, yielded a resumption of stalled North-South exchanges and helped set the stage for what would be the first full-scale dialogue between North Korea and the administration of President Bush.

Bush has branded the North part of an ``axis of evil'' for trying to develop and proliferate weapons of mass destruction.

``In the letter, President Kim first of all emphasized that Chairman Kim must accept and understand that the global strategy of the United States has fundamentally changed,'' Lim said, referring to world security and the U.S.-led war on terrorism since the September 11 attacks on the United States.

``He went on to point out that when diplomatic efforts at non-proliferation fails, then the United States is prepared to resort to military means of counter-proliferation and that Chairman Kim must fully, and clearly, understand that North Korea itself is also included in the possible targets for such military efforts by the United States.''

``RIGHT UNDERSTANDING OF RISKS''

Lim, one of the key architects of Kim Dae-jung's ``Sunshine Policy'' of engaging the North, said the North Korean leader had told him he understood the ``extreme gravity'' of the situation on the peninsula, divided since a devastating war 50 years ago.

``Kim made it clear that he will pursue dialogue with the United States,'' Lim said. ``They know that dialogue and cooperation are the only way to guarantee their very survival.''

Lim told reporters Kim Dae-jung's main aim was to reduce tension on the peninsula and Kim Jong-il knew what was at stake.

``I came to the conclusion he had the right understanding of the risks associated with counter-proliferation,'' he said, referring to measures that could be taken if talks fail and the North resumes missile tests or nuclear research.

Lim later shrugged off a statement issued overnight by the North's official KCNA news agency saying North Korea would only talk with the United States when conditions were ripe.

``The DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) is of the view that such an environment has not yet been created,'' KCNA quoted a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying.

``You have to differentiate between real policy and proclaimed policy,'' Lim told Reuters.

``This is proclaimed policy,'' he said, waving a copy of the KCNA report. He said it did not reflect the North's real thinking, but signaled it wanted the Bush administration to tone down its rhetoric against the North.

STOP CLINGING TO THE PAST

The North's note of caution came as a U.S. special envoy on Korean affairs, Jack Pritchard, wrapped up a South Korean trip on Friday that had sparked reports he would soon visit Pyongyang and meet North Korean diplomats in New York.

Former U.S. defense secretary William Perry, a central figure in setting U.S. engagement with North Korea under Bill Clinton, told the conference it was too early ``to pocket the results'' of resumed dialogue but the post-September 11 world and Bush's anti-proliferation focus made those talks vital.

Lim said President Kim's letter also urged the North Koreans to ``stop clinging to the past and to explore new ways to effectively talk and deal with the current administration.''

Clinton came close to visiting North Korea. Perry said the impoverished North's decision to move toward negotiating was ''self-interest'' rather than caving into Bush's hardline or responding to Kim Dae-jung's more mellow approach.

The forum was being held on the South Korean island of Cheju, venue for a number of rounds North-South talks and the planned location of a peace studies center expected to open next year.

Lim said there were bound to be disappointments ahead but he believed inter-Korean relations were entering a new era.

``I am certain that a workable peace process has finally begun,'' he said. ``We must free ourselves from the rigidity that has restricted us for the past 50 years.''

-------- missile defense

US defence shield may use nuclear missiles

Katty Kay in Washington
April 12, 2002
UK Times
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,3-264382,00.html

THE US is studying a plan to use nuclear warheads in its missile defence shield, a proposal rejected in the 1970s as dangerous and technically difficult.

The disclosure of the nuclear interceptor study, which is being promoted by Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defence, is likely to increase fears that America is lowering the threshold for using nuclear weapons.

The plan would involve nuclear warheads exploding some 60 miles above ground as they intercepted incoming enemy missiles. The nuclear interceptors would not have to be so accurate as the current non-nuclear interceptors and would be able to wipe out everything in the area.

Recent missile defence tests show that America has become good at hitting a small object in space so long as it knows exactly where the object is at what time. But the shield programme with its non-nuclear interceptors has not found a way of coping with decoys or with submunitions, dozens of small exploding bomblets that could contain biological weapons.

Non-nuclear interceptors destroy an incoming missile by force of direct contact. A nuclear-tipped interceptor, on the other hand, could send a large explosion up into space which could hit everything that was being fired at America. It would deal with the problem of decoy tactics an enemy may use to confuse the interceptor. But the nuclear warhead would have to be very large effectively to wipe out biologically loaded bomblets.

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, President Bush gave warning that America could one day be hit by missiles sent by terrorist organisations. He said such missiles could be loaded with biological weapons.

Enthusiasm for the missile defence programme increased after the attacks on New York and Washington. In December Mr Bush cited the argument of a potential terrorist attack to withdraw the US from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia, despite objections from Moscow.

In January, however, a CIA report suggested that a missile attack either by terrorists or by a foreign government was not very likely. The intelligence review concluded that the US was more likely to suffer a nuclear, biological or chemical attack from terrorists using lorries, ships or aircraft.

The US experimented with nuclear-tipped interceptors in the 1950s and 1960s and for a short time in the 1970s Washington deployed an anti-missile system that relied on them. The programme was abandoned because the idea of nuclear weapons exploding above US cities was politically unpopular.

There is also the problem that a large nuclear explosion would disrupt electronics over tens of thousands of miles, destroying not just electrical equipment on the ground but satellites in space as well.

The disclosure that America was studying a nuclear-armed missile defence shield came just a month after Europeans and Russians became alarmed at a Pentagon nuclear policy review which suggested that the US was putting new emphasis on nuclear strikes.

Until now, defence officials have been reluctant to explore the nuclear option even though the Pentagon has undertaken to get a missile defence capability in place by the autumn of 2004.

The only other country that has experimented with a nuclear-armed missile defence system is Russia, which built a ring around Moscow in the 1960s. The shield, though antiquated, is still in place today, but Russia says that it has removed the nuclear warheads from the interceptors because of security concerns.

-------- pakistan

From the Pakistani War Front to the Strategic Ivory Tower

By Nora Boustany
Friday, April 12, 2002
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34637-2002Apr11?language=printer

Some generals and warriors are able to become the most reasoned diplomats. This certainly holds true for Brig. Gen.Feroz Hassan Khan, one of Pakistan's most prominent nuclear specialists, who though not exactly a "peacenik" is trying to devise a formula for strategic stability in South Asia.

"We love to talk about weapons and how to use them. We never talk about the management of nuclear practices. It is all shrouded in secrecy," said Khan, who has made it his business to worry about the most dreaded of scenarios, with a focus on security, safety and survivability as the main components of stability.

Khan said that it was India and Pakistan's war over the disputed Kashmir region in 1965, when he was 13, that made him sense what it was to be a Pakistani patriot. "We were not able to liberate Kashmir -- it was like a draw -- but we were able to defend the homeland. It was a peak moment," Khan recalled in his office at the Woodrow Wilson Center here. The most heroic and prestigious thing for a young man to do then was to join the armed forces, he said. He was a 19-year-old second lieutenant in 1971 when neighboring India intervened with tanks and troops in what was then known as East Pakistan, helping the region break from West Pakistan to become what is now Bangladesh.

"It was cold. To be in the trenches and see soldiers die as tanks advanced and to be deafened by the crack of tank shells over your head was a shock. I was a raw . . . cadet but felt it was my duty to die. I was coming from that 1965 moment," he reminisced.

Khan was among a number of officers selected for graduate studies in the United States. He spent 2 1/2 years at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and hoped to stay on for a doctorate. "That time made me think more in terms of intellectual security in the larger sense, rather than in the narrow-minded military sense," he said. In 1991, however, he was plucked from academic comfort and the shade of pink azaleas along Massachusetts Avenue to confront the harsh reality of an assignment as an officer in charge of 48 military posts in the Siachen Glacier, north of Kashmir.

His men were dying of frostbite, gangrene and other serious ailments while "fighting a futile, useless war" over these heights. "It did not make any strategic sense. It was more about prestige and ego," he said. After 2 1/2 years at the front,he returned to army headquarters. He was still thinking in broader terms, and feeling "like a fish out of water. . . . I was frustrated," Khan said. Then he formed a small "cell," a kind of think tank. He finally found his niche when the group grew into a policy planning unit linked to Pakistan's Foreign Office.

Pakistan, he said, was faced with the challenge of keeping its nuclear program covert until 1998, when India and Pakistan conducted tests. The debate in Washington, meanwhile, was about disarmament and nonproliferation in the post-Cold War period.

When Khan, 49, arrived in Washington to begin a fellowship at the Wilson Center a week before Sept. 11, he was hoping to cloister himself in his sunny office and lead the quiet life of a scholar, at least for a while. Nearing the end of his term of active duty, after 30 years in the armed forces, he was determined to distill his experience into a study of regional dynamics and a proposed mechanism for mutual restraint between the two nuclear antagonists.

Instead, he became one of the "hottest commodities" around, giving talks, television interviews and traveling around the United States, said Robert Hathaway, director of the Asia program at the Wilson Center. "It was a stroke of good fortune for us and the policy community," he said.

Khan falls in the mainstream of Pakistan's strategic thinking in his belief that a nuclear arsenal is necessary to offset the asymmetric balance of power with India. His calm and intellectual approach made him attractive as a candidate for the fellowship at the center.

"He is a thinking general," commented Dennis Kux, a specialist on South Asia and author of several books on India and Pakistan. "He takes it all very seriously, the possibility of problems arising, accidents. He can explain problems of doctrine, as well as where things could go wrong in the nuts and bolts of safeguards," he said. "His presence here has been useful. You can talk to him, and he talks to people back home. You have a channel."

Khan met with the Pakistani president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, when he came to Washington last February. Khan's niece is married to Musharraf's son.

With international attention currently focused on the crisis in the Middle East, however, there have been signals that tensions between India and Pakistan could reignite in the absence of a nuclear doctrine defining when and how such weapons could be used. In an article published on Monday in Germany's Der Spiegel magazine, Musharraf made it clear that Pakistan was prepared to use nuclear weapons if threatened. India massed troops and tanks along its border with Pakistan after an attack by suspected Pakistan-based Islamic militants against the Indian parliament last December. Indian officials are demanding that Pakistan hand over 20 men wanted in India for the attack and are suspicious that Pakistan-trained guerrillas in Kashmir are ready to cross into Indian-held territory as the winter snow melts.

"The conflict is not unending, but the rivalry is unending. It is centuries old," Khan said. "The incompatibility of these two nations is due to Muslim nationalism" as ithas developed in South Asia "and because of the intolerance of Hindus. Muslims have felt persecuted, but a state based on religion is a challenge."

-------- russia

Activists: No Nuclear Imports

The Moscow Times
Friday, Apr. 12, 2002
http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2002/04/12/015.html

The Nuclear Power Ministry does not intend to import any spent nuclear fuel this year or in the next few years, environmentalists said Thursday after a meeting with Nuclear Power Minister Alexander Rumyantsev.

"The minister said that in the coming years he does not see a market for the import of spent nuclear fuel," said Ecodefense co-founder Vladimir Slivyak, who attended the meeting Wednesday along with representatives of six other environmental groups.

Rumyantsev's remarks appear to contradict earlier ministry statements that plans were going ahead to import 20,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel for storage, a scheme it estimated would earn Russia about $20 billion over 12 years.

President Vladimir Putin signed a controversial bill allowing the imports last July, despite protests from environmentalists who warned Russia would be turned into a nuclear dump.

Nuclear Power Ministry officials could not be reached for comment Thursday. "Just as we thought, no market for the import of spent nuclear fuel exists," Slivyak said.

Slivyak also said environmentalists were pleased with their talks with Rumyantsev, although the meeting took place a year after his appointment.

"We saw that the minister considers environmentalists to be a major force that will not allow him to implement many of the dubious projects thought up by his agency," Slivyak said.

----

Russia aims to build Vietnam nuclear power plant

REUTERS VIETNAM:
April 12, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15451/story.htm

HANOI - Russia has offered to build Vietnam's first atomic power plant, a senior Russian executive said yesterday, in a long-term project which could take about a decade to materialise.

The executive from Atomstroyexport, an affiliate of Russia's Ministry of Atomic Energy, told Reuters Russian nuclear experts gave presentations to Vietnamese officials, including some from state utility Electricity of Vietnam (EVN), yesterday.

The executive, who did not want to be identified, said the Vietnamese audience included officials from the Planning and Investment Ministry and EVN's Energy Institute, which is in charge of planning Vietnam's first nuclear plant.

"We are interested in building such a plant in Vietnam and Russia is ready to do it," the executive said at a business meeting on the sidelines of an international trade fair in Hanoi.

Earlier this month, Vietnam's official media said energy authorities planned to complete a pre-feasibility study for a 2,000-megawatt atomic power plant, that would cost about $4 billion, by late next year. Local media did not say how Hanoi would fund the project.

Vietnam and Russia signed an agreement on cooperation in nuclear power last month during a visit by Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, but industry sources have said Japan and South Korea are also interested in building the plant.

The Russian executive said Russia was not concerned about competition given its experience in the field. He said it was currently building plants in Iran, China and India.

Last month official media said Vietnam aimed to start operating its first atomic power plant in 2017 or 2019 to meet rising energy demand, even though the country has plenty of natural gas and coal, and suitable conditions for hydropower.

Four possible locations, all in southern Vietnam, have been selected. Two are in Ninh Thuan province, one in Binh Thuan and another in Phu Yen.

Vietnam's official media last week quoted Nguyen Manh Hien, head of EVN's energy institute, as saying it would take at least eight years to build an atomic plant and around 15 years to train personnel to run it.

-------- treaties

U.S., Russia Report Progress on Weapons

WORLD In Brief
Friday, April 12, 2002
Alan Sipress
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34638-2002Apr11?language=printer

MADRID -- Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and his Russian counterpart, Igor Ivanov, reported progress yesterday toward an agreement to cut nuclear stockpiles but said crucial differences remained over how to count the reductions.

Both sides have expressed hope for a deal when President Bush visits Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow in late May. Arms experts have scheduled more negotiations in Russia in two weeks, followed by another round of talks between Powell and Ivanov in Washington early next month.

--------

Russia and U.S. Near Agreement on Warheads

New York Times
April 12, 2002
By TODD S. PURDUM
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/12/international/12ARMS.html

MADRID, April 11 - After a day and a half of meetings here, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov of Russia said today that they had made progress toward negotiating an agreement on reductions in nuclear warheads that could be signed by President Bush and the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, at a summit meeting in Russia next month.

But they did not offer concrete details of the advances. While they echoed optimism that Russian and American negotiators have expressed for many weeks, both men said that important details remained to be worked out, including precisely what form the agreement would take and how it would handle the disposal of warheads.

American negotiators have proposed that excess warheads could be warehoused, while the Russians have said they want them destroyed.

"It is a very difficult, complex document that requires comprehensive analysis of all aspects," Mr. Ivanov said at a news conference here. He repeatedly referred to the document as a "treaty," but some officials in the Bush administration have said they would prefer some kind of less formal document. Asked about his use of that word today, Mr. Ivanov repeated that both sides had agreed that any document would be "legally binding," a commitment Secretary Powell had earlier made.

"We have an understanding between the parties that this would have to be a legally binding document," Mr. Ivanov said. "The Russian side stands for making the reductions real and not virtual, so that we have a real understanding on both sides which levels of nuclear warheads and delivery means each of us possess."

Secretary Powell has said in the past that the document could be an executive agreement that requires approval by a majority of both houses of Congress, or a treaty that requires two-thirds ratification by the Senate.

Senator Joseph R. Biden, Democrat of Delaware and the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and Senator Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina and the committee's ranking member, have written President Bush asking that any agreement be a formal treaty.

A senior American official said that President Bush had concluded that "what really mattered was the number of operational warheads." Mr. Bush and Mr. Putin have each pledged to reduce nuclear arsenals by about two-thirds over the next decade, to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads.

It is still not clear precisely what verification procedures would be used to confirm compliance. The senior American official said that some were already in place and noted that, in contrast to the days of Soviet-American mistrust, "the idea is that there should be a lot of openness in any agreement."

The official said a "slightly updated version" of draft language had been exchanged. But American officials said that Secretary Powell and Mr. Ivanov had spent so much time discussing the Middle East and other issues that they had not delved as deeply into arms control as originally envisioned.

Expert negotiators for both sides are to meet in Moscow again next week, and Mr. Ivanov is due in Washington for further negotiations in early May.

-------- treaties

Deadlock looms over NPT Prep Com at UN

From: Maryna Harrison <mharrison@gracelinks.org>
Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2002

It looks as if this situation is resolved, but for your information here is what happened, as reported by Gunnar Westby of Sweden:

The Nonproliferation treaty, which has been in place since 1970 is a treaty, some say the only treaty, on nuclear weapons that the present US administration values highly. The agreement, which has been in place since 1970, aims to further and control the peaceful use of nuclear power while stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons to countries other than the original five that possessed them in 1968. This treaty has been very successful. Without the NPT regime, we might today have nuclear weapons in scores of countries instead of the present eight.

However, the treaty from its conception also demands, according to its central Article VI, that the nuclear weapons states must work for the complete abolition of all nuclear weapons. In the NPT Review Conference in 2000 a strenghtened review process was unanimously agreed on that included the obligation for all states to report on the implementation of this Article VI. The agreement on this reporting contains specific requirements regarding the content of these reports.

A Preparatory Committee meeting, PrepCom, is going on for two weeks starting April 8 at the UN headquarters in New York, with the intention to monitor the progress of this work. The committee shall prepare for the next Review conference that is set to take place in the year 2005.

However, suddenly there is a threat to this process. The USA, and to some extent France, has declared that it does not accept a timetable for the reporting during the meeting. It seems that the USA does not want any other party to the NPT to evaluate or discuss the report.

It seems that almost all other delegations find this attitude from the US delegation to be contrary to the agreements reached two years ago. Especially the non-aligned countries are opposed to an agenda without a specificied timetable.

The chairman of this PrepCom, ambassador Henrik Salander of Sweden, declared on Wednesday evening that this disagreement must be solved if the committee shall be able to continue. He will on Friday April 12 present a timetable that will have to be agreed upon by all parties on Monday morning. If not, the Preparatory committee will be adjourned "indefinitely".

This may seem provocative position by the chairman. However, for the large majority of the 187 member states to the NPT the defiance of the US to agreed proceedings makes continued deliberations meaningless. There is an obligation to report on the progress to a world free from the threat of nuclear.

This impasse might be solved by Monday morning. If not, the non-proliferation treaty may well be in jeopardy, proliferation of nuclear weapons to more countries would then be likely and the risk of nuclear war, regional or omnicidal destroying our world will increase.

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

"Planning to be Surprised":
The US Nuclear Posture Review and its Implications for Arms Control

April 2002
NUMBER 39 • ISSN 1353-0402
By Mark Bromley
http://www.basicint.org/BP39.htm

U.S. Nuclear Policy
http://www.basicint.org/US_nukepolicy.htm

The US Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), the first of its kind since 1994, was released in January 2002. It capped a year of discussion and debate within the Bush administration about the future size and role of the US nuclear arsenal. In advance of its release many questioned the extent to which September 11th and the ongoing war on terrorism would affect military thinking. In particular, would the need to maintain good relations with Russia and other allies lead to a less aggressive policy on controversial issues like arms control, missile defence and nuclear testing? Also, would the altered perception of the threats faced by the United States lead Washington to lessen its reliance on nuclear weapons?

The Review confirmed many of the worst fears of those in the arms control community. Its findings indicated that the United States is determined to keep nuclear weapons at the heart of its military planning indefinitely. In addition, it demonstrated more clearly than ever that the United States is turning its back on binding arms control agreements as a means of promoting non-proliferation and arms control. Instead, the Review called for a flexible force posture, able to deter and respond to any and all emerging threats. This radical new approach by Washington poses a serious challenge to current forms of multilateral arms control supported by many US allies.

A new triad

Whilst the NPR remains classified, its key components became apparent in January during a Pentagon press briefing with J.D. Crouch, assistant secretary of defence for international security policy, and Senate hearings with other key officials. This outline was further augmented in early March, when details of the NPR were leaked to both the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. The Review's central proposal entails a paradigmatic shift in US strategic thinking. Whereas current US strategic forces are based almost exclusively around the nuclear triad of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs ), bombers and submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), the NPR envisions a new triad consisting of nuclear and non-nuclear forces, defensive forces and the "responsive infrastructure".

This shift in strategic planning is justified on the grounds that the current triad is geared towards the Cold War deterrence relationship with Russia, and ill-suited to the kind of threats the United States now faces, and may face in the future. Hence, the United States should no longer structure its nuclear arsenal to counter the Russian threat. Instead, the United States should develop a "capabilities-based approach" by assessing what technologies it needs to counter current and emerging threats, and ensure it is able to deploy those technologies.[1] As Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary of defence for policy, said in Congressional testimony on the NPR, the United States must "plan to be surprised".[2]

However, in pursuing this new level of flexibility the United States risks doing irrevocable damage to existing arms control and non-proliferation efforts. In order to ensure the ability to develop and deploy the forces it feels it may need, the Bush administration is seeking to abandon all restraints on US nuclear planning. In addition, by dramatically extending the range of situations in which the United States would contemplate nuclear use, Washington is lowering the threshold at which these weapons could be used. Each part of the new triad, as discussed below, has huge implications for US nuclear policy and for international security.

Upcoming cuts

Remaining as part of the US triad, nuclear weapons still form the key component of US deterrence policy as reflected in the NPR. However, the Review reflects new thinking about the size of the arsenal and the usability of nuclear weapons to counter future threats.

The Review concluded that the United States will reduce its nuclear arsenal to 3,800 operationally deployed warheads by 2007, and 1,700-2,200 warheads by 2012. Short-term reductions will include retirement of 50 MX (Peacekeeper) missiles, which each carry 10 warheads; shifting four Trident submarines, which each carry 96 warheads, from strategic to conventional use; and promising that the B-1 bomber will not be reinstated in a nuclear role.

From a high point of 15,000 deployed strategic warheads in 1987, the United States has enhanced world security by pledging to make drastic cuts to its arsenal. In addition, all of the short-term reductions - those designed to cut the arsenal to 3,800 warheads by 2007 - were planned under the terms of the START II Treaty, which is almost certainly dead under the weight of enormous pressures added to the Treaty by US and Russian legislatures. However, proposed reductions to 1,700 to 2,200 warheads by 2012 represent a slower pace of reduction than envisioned by the Clinton administration, which agreed with Moscow in 1997 to cut Russian and US nuclear arsenals to between 2,000 and 2,500 warheads by 2007.[3]

Trust but don't verify

While the pace of the arms reductions is open to criticism, a far larger question mark hangs over the manner in which they are to be carried out. The NPR commits the United States to maintain a "responsive infrastructure". This component of the US arsenal, also known as the hedge, is designed to allow the reversal of arsenal reductions since they lie outside the scope of all arms control treaties to date. According to the NPR, the responsive infrastructure "retains the option for the leadership to increase the number of operationally deployed forces in proportion to the severity of an evolving crisis."[4]

The US nuclear hedge was devised in the 1980s and formally approved in the 1994 Nuclear Posture Review. Designed to act as a guarantee against possible technical problems with the deployed forces or a resurgent threat from Russia, it currently consists of around 2,500 nuclear warheads spread across the inactive and active stockpile. The US hedge is comprised primarily of the warheads that were slated for retirement under the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force Treaty and the 1991 START I accord, both of which required the destruction of delivery vehicles but not warheads. [5]

The NPR divides the strategic nuclear force into two new categories: the 1,700 to 2,200 warheads will comprise the "operationally deployed" force, and some of the remaining warheads will become part of the "responsive force". The hedge will be placed in storage, but will be maintained and ready to be uploaded onto bombs and ballistic missiles if Washington chooses to increase its arsenal over a period of weeks, months or years (depending on the system). In March defence officials indicated the 'responsive force' would include 2,400 warheads.[6] Combined with non-strategic warheads and inactive warheads, by 2012 the United States will be able to deploy not 1,700 to 2,200 warheads, but closer to 10,000 warheads.[7]

The Bush administration argues that by making the US nuclear force correspond directly with its actual nuclear deployments, it is employing "truth in advertising".[8] However, it also enables Washington to present its nuclear cuts as being far greater than they actually are and, most importantly, ensures that the Pentagon can reverse any reductions in the future.

PNIs, a mixed heritage

Maintaining the nuclear hedge exemplifies the Bush administration's opposition to formalising upcoming arms reductions in a legally binding, irreversible treaty with Russia, which would set the "permitted features" of the US nuclear arsenal.[9] The NPR instead advocates a process of reciprocal, unilateral arms reductions outside of a concrete treaty framework. This approach follows a precedent, which President Bush views as highly successful.

The Presidential Nuclear Initiatives (PNIs) of 1991 were a series of parallel, unilateral actions by the United States and Russia to withdraw from foreign deployments and eliminate both ground-launched and ship-borne tactical nuclear weapons. While the PNIs represent an example of unilateral arms control achieving a critical goal simply and quickly, the subsequent failure to implement effective methods of verification has led to persistent doubts over Moscow's enforcement of the agreement. Current estimates of the Russian tactical warhead stockpile vary from 4,000 to 20,000, and some experts question whether even Russia itself has a reliable inventory.[10]

The dangers posed by a failure to agree a binding agreement with Russia are highlighted by the legacy of the PNIs. While serving a vital purpose at the time, the lack of effective verification measures and agreed arsenal limits in the PNIs has left the Russian tactical nuclear arsenal as one of the main proliferation concerns in the world today. Washington currently has the opportunity to bind Moscow into irreversible and verifiable reductions of its strategic arsenal. However, the Bush administration may pass up that opportunity because of a perceived need to maintain US force flexibility.

While the United States seems certain to maintain the nuclear hedge, Washington is currently sending out mixed signals over the kind of agreement it will conclude with Moscow. The Defence Department has broadly hinted that verified limits are not a topic for negotiation but in response to Russian protests the State Department has developed a more placatory line. In early February the secretary of state, Colin Powell, confirmed that the United States would work with Russia to codify proposed cuts in a "legally binding" agreement, though it remains unclear what form this might take.[11] This debate is unlikely to be resolved until Presidents Bush and Putin meet in May 2002.

Conventional weapons vs. new nukes

The NPR's new triad shows the United States shifting from a strategic force based almost entirely on nuclear weapons to one based on a mixture of nuclear and non-nuclear forces. The increased role for conventional weapons reflects an ongoing debate over the implications of the so-called Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) for US military planning. As the congressionally appointed National Defence Panel noted in 1997, "Advancing military technologies that merge the capabilities of information systems with precision-guided weaponry and real time targeting and other new weapons systems may provide a supplement or alternative to the nuclear arsenals of the Cold-War."[12]

The belief that conventional weapons can play a greater role in strategic planning is reflected in the findings of the NPR. The Review calls for the development of a "fast-response, precision-impact, conventional penetrator for hard and deeply buried targets" and also "the modification of a strategic ballistic missile system to enable the development of a non-nuclear payload."[13] The development of both systems indicates the extent to which the Pentagon wishes to develop new conventional systems to fulfil the kind of missions previously reserved for nuclear weapons.

However, the United States will continue to examine the possibility of developing new, low-yield, nuclear warhead for use against hardened and deeply buried targets in "states of concern". The NPR calls for a three-year study into developing a nuclear-tipped, earth-penetrating weapon and also establishes "advanced warhead concept teams" at the nation's three nuclear weapons laboratories to work on new warheads or warhead modifications.[14] In particular, the review calls for research to begin on fitting an existing nuclear warhead into a new 5,000-pound "earth penetrating" munition.[15]

According to Congressional testimony, any new system is more likely to be a modification of an existing warhead than a completely new weapon. However, the NPR also requests that the Department of Energy accelerate the amount of time required to prepare a nuclear site from its current two to three year period to "something substantially better".[16] Along with endangering the existing testing moratorium on nuclear testing that President George Bush Senior instigated in 1992 and threatening the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), increasing test site readiness gives a further boost to those who support the development of entirely new nuclear weapons designs including a low-yield warhead.

A contradiction in terms?

The NPR's attempt to both increase and decrease the role of nuclear weapons in US military planning needs to be viewed in light of the overriding aim of the NPR: to give the United States maximum flexibility in developing and deploying strategic systems. Giving conventional weapons an increased role in strategic missions widens the range of options available to military planners when seeking to either deter or target adversaries. Meanwhile, developing new low-yield weapons gives the United States another means of tackling hardened and deeply buried targets.

However, insisting on this level of flexibility will come at a price. Development of new nuclear weapons would further erode the taboo against nuclear use, which has developed since the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In addition, there are strong doubts that a low-yield nuclear strike could be as "surgical" as some argue. A report by the Federation of American Scientists concluded that a warhead with a yield of just one percent of the 15 kiloton Hiroshima weapon would blow out "a massive crater of radioactive dirt, which rains down on the local region with an especially intense and deadly fallout."[17]

In addition, the development of more usable warheads would serve to further highlight the question of whether or not the United States would use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear weapon state. Washington first issued so-called "negative security assurances" to this effect in 1978 and they have been restated over the last 24 years; it is believed that they were crucial to achieving the indefinite extension of the NPT in 1995. Nonetheless, in private many policy makers in Washington view nuclear deterrence as a useful tool against biological and chemical attack, which can complicate the strategic calculations of aggressors. For example, in 1997 a presidential decision directive (PDD-60) on nuclear policy reportedly allowed for the use of nuclear weapons either to deter or respond to chemical and biological weapons.[18]

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher has indicated that the Bush administration will be maintaining the policy of deliberate ambiguity pursued by its predecessors. He stated that the United States would not use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear weapon state unless the state attacked the United States or its allies in conjunction with a nuclear state but added that the United States reserved the right to any kind of military response if it or its allies come under attack by chemical and biological weapons.[19] This debate took a worrying twist when the leaked version of the NPR revealed that the US will draw up contingency plans for using nuclear weapons against Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Libya, Syria on the grounds that "all have long-standing hostility towards the United States and its security partners. All sponsor or harbour terrorists, and have active WMD and missile programs."[20]

While it is welcome move by the Bush administration to restate previous negative security assurances, developing new, more usable nuclear weapons and actively talking up the possibility of using nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon states will continue to raise questions about US policy.

Missile defence and "first strike"

In the new triad outlined by the NPR, the third leg is made up by missile defences. The Review asserts that by mixing nuclear forces, non-nuclear forces and missile defences and ensuring that it has the capability to rebuild and extend its forces, the United States can develop a flexible strategic posture with which it can deal with the threats it will face in the modern world.

Part of the rationale behind developing this new, more flexible nuclear posture can be found in the work of Keith Payne, director of the National Institute for Public Policy, which is believed to have heavily influenced the NPR. Payne argues that the Cold War strategic framework that equates "a rational opponent and a lethal U.S. threat with the certainty of deterrence effectiveness" is not capable of dealing with current security concerns. He also argues that with the number of variables and unknowns so greatly increased, "old fashioned nuclear deterrence", as practiced with Moscow, will likely fail in the event of a dispute with China over Taiwan or an ICBM-armed North Korea. [21] Finally, he concludes that if the United States is to avoid being deterred from projecting its conventional forces into areas of strategic importance it will need a functioning missile defence system coupled with an array of nuclear and non-nuclear strategic weapons.

However, what US force planners may view as an attempt to "strengthen" deterrence, China and others may see as the development of a "first strike" potential. Deployment of missile defences combined with a mixture of nuclear and non-nuclear weapons would greatly increase Washington's chances of a successful pre-emptive nuclear attack. The fact that Washington's actions may be viewed in this way, and the potentially destabilising effects this could have, must be taken into account.

The threat to arms control

In its attempt to develop a new way of dealing with the deterrence needs of the modern world, the United States is seeking greater flexibility in its offensive and defensive capabilities. In so doing Washington is reinventing arms control based on trust, not treaties; turning its back on the CTBT and irreversible arms reductions; and seeking to develop new, more usable nuclear weapons. All of these developments pose grave threats to the health of individual arms control agreements that have taken years to put in place. However, the greatest threat in terms of nuclear proliferation stems from the possible undermining of the NPT.

While the current situation regarding nuclear proliferation is far from perfect, it is worth remembering how much worse the situation would be without the NPT in place. In recent years this has been emphasised by the number of states who have abandoned their nuclear weapons programmes and joined the NPT as non-nuclear weapon states, including Argentina, Belarus, Brazil, Kazakhstan, South Africa, and Ukraine. In addition, while many view the examples of North Korea and Iraq as indicative of the failings of the NPT, it was only through the norms and mechanisms laid down by the Treaty that their nuclear programmes were first discovered and then halted.

A recent report from the US Defence Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) supports this assessment. It concludes that the collapse of the NPT would encourage "states to review their nuclear policies and to adopt more aggressive policies. In the long run, this strategic environment would likely foster vertical and horizontal proliferation of nuclear weapons."[22] The dangers posed by a weakened NPT are real and universally recognised.

While it is likely that the Bush administration will seek to retain the NPT in some form, given that it maintains the existing nuclear status quo, a continued failure by the United States to fulfil its Treaty commitments will make this ever harder to achieve. The Bush administration's agenda as laid down by the NPR runs contrary to promises made by the United States under the NPT and poses a serious threat to the long term health of that agreement. A rejection of irreversible arms reductions, the development of new nuclear weapons, and targeting non-nuclear weapon states run contrary to both the spirit and the letter of the NPT.

Under article VI the United States is committed to engaging in "good faith" participation in international negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament. In addition, the Programme of Action agreed at the 2000 NPT Review Conference commits the United States to apply "the principle of irreversibility" to "nuclear disarmament, nuclear and other related arms control and reduction measures." Many will feel that retaining both the ability and the right to reverse proposed arsenal reductions runs contrary to these undertakings.

Under the terms of the Programme of Action the United States is also committed to pursuing "A diminishing role for nuclear weapons in security policies to minimise the risk that these weapons ever be used and to facilitate the process of their total elimination." Ongoing attempts to develop new, more usable nuclear weapons, and a refusal to rule out their use against non-nuclear weapon states raises doubts about Washington's commitment to this pledge.

Implications for allies

Some countries have welcomed the Bush administration's attempt to question many of the existing assumptions about arms control and non-proliferation. Britain, for example, conceded that the current international security environment required "a review of the 'counter-proliferation toolbox,' with a view to countering the spread of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and missiles."[23] Others, especially France and Germany, remain suspicious of this new approach. In June 2001, on the eve of President Bush's arrival in Europe, President Chirac of France and Chancellor Schroeder of Germany issued a joint declaration underlining European support for the principles of multilateral arms control, stating, "France and Germany consider that the risks of ballistic proliferation necessitate a strengthening of the multilateral non-proliferation instruments."[24]

In many ways the United States is correct to question the value of the existing framework of arms control and disarmament efforts. The current impasse at the Conference on Disarmament and the unresolved NPT status of Israel, Pakistan and India point to a system badly in need of restructuring. In addition, the Bush administration deserves credit for breaking the logjam on nuclear disarmament and for making positive statements regarding reducing US dependency on nuclear forces. In addition the United States is eager to engage on certain arms control issues, in particular the Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty (FMCT).

However, Washington would get a more positive reception to its reassessment if it were able to convince the world that it was based on something more than an attempt to loosen constraints on US nuclear planning. While an increased ability to respond militarily in the world may increase US security in the short term, the challenge facing the global community is to convince Washington that true security can only be achieved by developing an effective binding and verifiable multilateral arms control framework.

Although US allies have their work cut out if they are to be successful in this endeavour, preserving the NPT in some form and keeping track on the Russian nuclear arsenal are two specific issues that Washington is likely to support. The former is indicated by the recent report from the DTRA and other statements from the Bush administration, while as regards the latter, Washington recently increased its funding for programmes aimed at securing and dismantling the Russian nuclear arsenal. The challenge is to convince Washington that fulfilling its NPT commitments is integral to achieving both of these goals.

Key objectives will be to push Washington to take further steps towards re-affirming its moratorium on nuclear testing in order to ensure that the CTBT does not collapse before the political climate in Washington becomes more amendable to ratification. Another priority must be to convince Washington of the importance of making its upcoming arms reductions with Russia irreversible and of the need to restate its negative security assurances. If non-nuclear weapon states are to be convinced of the value of staying within the NPT they will need to be convinced that the nuclear weapon states are taking active steps towards eliminating their nuclear arsenals and decreasing rather than increasing the chance that they will be used. Upcoming meetings of the G8, NATO and the NPT PrepCom in April all present opportunities for European governments to make the case for these objectives.

On the one hand, it should be recognised that the current environment is clearly not conducive to substantial gains being made in this area at this time. As the United States continues apace with its war on terrorism it is becoming increasingly impatient of European criticism of the way the war is being fought, the treatment of prisoners at Camp X-Ray and its policies towards the "axis of evil". It is therefore unlikely to heed any further critique of its arms control agenda. On the other hand, however, as the NPT is one of the few multilateral arms control agreements the United States wishes to preserve, Europeans may find that it is an area where Washington is more amenable to active engagement.

Conclusion

The 2002 US NPR is a severe setback to the Programme of Action agreed only two years earlier at the 2000 NPT Review Conference. The Programme raised expectations that the nuclear weapons states would at last begin to discuss seriously the elimination of nuclear weapons. There will be a sense of betrayal amongst all the non-nuclear weapon states at the continuation and further development of US nuclear doctrine as outlined in the NPR. This will not lead to immediate withdrawals or threats, but over time, loyalty to the NPT will wane and gradually a larger number of states may begin to acquire nuclear weapons to solve their own security problems. Such proliferation would increase the chances of a regional nuclear war- whether by accident or design- in the next half century.

--

End Notes

[1] Statement of the Honourable Douglas J. Feith Undersecretary of Defence for Policy, Senate Armed Services Hearing on the Nuclear Posture Review, February 14, 2002

[2] ibid.

[3] "Nuclear Review Retains Old Posture" by Joseph Cirincione and Jon B. Wolfsthal, Carnegie Analysis, January 17, 2002

[4] "U.S Nuclear Plan Sees New Weapons and New Targets" by Michael Gordon, New York Times, 10 March 2002

[5] "The Unruly Hedge: Cold War Thinking at the Crawford Summit" by Hans M. Kristensen, Arms Control Today, December 2001

[6] "U.S. Will Hold 2,400 Warheads in Short-Term Reserve" by Jonathan Wright, Reuters, 22 March 2002

[7] "Faking Nuclear Restraint: The Bush Administration's Secret Plan For Strengthening U.S. Nuclear Forces", National Resources Defence Council, 13 February 2002

[8] Douglas J. Feith Statement

[9] ibid

[10] See Controlling Non-Strategic Nuclear Weapons: Obstacles and Opportunities, Jeffrey A. Larsen and Kurt J. Klingenberger eds. (United States Air Force Institute for National Security Studies, 2001)

[11] "Powell Says U.S. Plans To Work Out Binding Arms Pact" by Todd S. Purdum, New York Times, 6 February 2002

[12] "Transforming Defense - National Security in the 21st Century", Report of the National Defense Panel, December 1997

[13] Douglas J. Feith Testimony

[14] "Nuclear Plans Go Beyond Cuts, Bush Seeks a New Generation Of Weapons, Delivery Systems" by Walter Pincus, Washington Post, 19 February 2002

[15] "Secret Plan Outlines The Unthinkable" by William M. Arkin, Los Angeles Times, 10 March 2002

[16] Special Briefing on the Nuclear Posture Review, J.D. Crouch, Assistant Secretary of Defence for International Security Policy, Department of Defense News Transcript, 9 January 2002.

[17] "Low-Yield Earth-Penetrating Nuclear Weapons" by Robert W. Nelson, FAS Public Interest Report, January/February 2001

[18] "New US nuclear policy maintains ambiguity" by Jeff Erlich, Defense News, 6-11 January 1998

[19] "US Adopts Clinton Policy on Use of Nuclear Weapons" by Jonathan Wright, Reuters, 22 February 2002

[20] "Secret Plan Outlines The Unthinkable" by William M. Arkin, Los Angeles Times, 10 March 2002

[21] The Fallacies of Cold War Deterrence and a New Direction by Keith B. Payne (The University Press of Kentucky, 2001) p.193

[22] "The Future Integrity of the Global Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime Alternative Nuclear Worlds and Implications for US Nuclear Policy", Defense Threat Reduction Agency, Advanced Systems and Concepts Office, April 2001

[23] "British-US Relations", Report of the UK Foreign Affairs Select Committee, 18 December 2001

[24] "Franco-German Defence and Security Council Declaration", Seventy-Seventh Franco-German Summit, Freiburg, 12 June 2001

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

-------- nevada

Nevada Sues Over Yucca Mountain - Again

April 12, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/apr2002/2002L-04-12-09.html#anchor1

CARSON CITY, Nevada, The state of Nevada has filed another lawsuit challenging the legality of the proposed high level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.

The suit filed Thursday against the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) challenges the legality of its Yucca Mountain licensing rule issued last November.

"Nevada will leave no stone unturned in our attempt to remind the nation why the Yucca Mountain project is a bad idea," said Nevada Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa. "The Yucca Mountain project will not achieve the geological isolation required by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, and the transportation component of the program will potentially expose 123 million Americans to unacceptable risks as this material is moved continuously by truck and rail through 43 states and many of the nation' s major cities over a 38 year period."

The NRC's Yucca Mountain Licensing Rule establishes the parameters for licensing the Yucca Mountain repository system to meet the health and safety requirements established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The Nevada suit charges that while the NRC rule embodies the Department of Energy's (DOE's) "total system performance assessment" approach for licensing the repository, it ignores the fundamental requirements in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act that, regardless of design, the repository must serve to isolate radioactive waste primarily by geologic means.

"Under the Part 63 rule, NRC could issue a license for the repository even though it is fundamentally unsafe from a long-term geologic perspective," said Joe Egan, Nevada's lead nuclear lawyer and a former nuclear engineer. "This violates the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, and departs radically from the recommendations of the global scientific community."

The statutory timeframe for licensing is three years with a possible one year extension. NRC's licensing rule for Yucca Mountain requires only that DOE demonstrate that radioactive emissions from the repository will meet EPA's emission standards for 10,000 years, the hoped for life of the manmade waste packages inserted into the mountain.

Radiation emissions are projected to increase after that time, when the waste packages are presumed to have failed. Due to geologic deficiencies discovered by DOE in the late 1990s and outlined by former Yucca Mountain director John Bartlett, Yucca Mountain is no longer expected to isolate radioactive waste when the waste packages fail.

"When Congress considered disposal alternatives, it spoke of isolation for 250,000 years, which only good geology could provide," said Egan. "The National Academy of Sciences recommended a million years. NRC's Yucca Mountain rule would allow the repository to be licensed on the shores of Lake Tahoe, since it really only considers the projected performance of a manmade waste package. This is legally and scientifically unsound."

The state of Nevada has also filed legal challenges against the DOE's use of water for the Yucca Mountain site. Cases pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit include Nevada's challenge to the Yucca Mountain radiation standard and the state's, Clark County's and Las Vegas' consolidated geology case challenging DOE's siting guidelines and the secretarial and presidential decisions recommending the Yucca Mountain site.

The state is also expected to file claims related to the DOE's environmental impact statement for Yucca Mountain.

-------- new york

Nuclear Plant Gets Good Marks

New York Times
April 12, 2002
By WINNIE HU
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/12/nyregion/12NUKE.html

BUCHANAN, N.Y., April 11 - A federal agency reported today that the Indian Point 3 nuclear power plant operated safely last year, and assigned its most favorable performance rating to one of the plant's two reactors.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials presented their findings to the plant's owner, Entergy Corporation, this afternoon during a two-hour meeting at a firehouse just southwest of the plant that drew about two dozen Entergy employees and others, including Assemblywoman Sandra R. Galef.

Though widely expected, the commission's positive review of Indian Point 3 contrasted sharply with its earlier assessment of Indian Point 2, which received the worst performance rating of any reactor in the nation after a series of minor leaks and safety lapses. As a result, the N.R.C. has heightened its scrutiny of Indian Point 2 operations.

In today's report, N.R.C. officials noted that they had conducted 6,094 hours of inspections at Indian Point 3, and recorded only 17 findings of "very low safety significance." They said that no additional oversight was necessary.

Peter Eselgroth, the N.R.C. branch chief for Indian Point, said that while both reactors had similar equipment, Indian Point 3 had benefited from effective management. "Plant performance boils down to people," he said. "How they take care of equipment, and how they respond to occurrences."

Entergy united the two reactors last year after buying Indian Point 2 from Consolidated Edison, and Indian Point 3 from the New York Power Authority. Since then, Entergy officials have merged the once separate work forces into one, and implemented technical and safety procedures that are used at the company's other nuclear power plants.

Bob Barrett, vice president of operations at Indian Point 3, said the change in ownership had already brought improvements to the plant. "Being part of a larger fleet has given us access to processes, people, experiences and resources at the other end of the phone," he said.

Assemblywoman Galef, a frequent critic of Indian Point whose district covers the plant, said after the meeting that she was reassured by the N.R.C.'s findings about Indian Point 3. "I'd like to see Indian Point 2 get the same kind of rating," she said.

But Ms. Galef continued to voice concerns about safety issues at Indian Point, ranging from the effectiveness of the emergency evacuation plan to the storage of radioactive wastes at the site.

-------- south carolina

Standoff Over Plutonium Shipments

By Amy Geier
Associated Press Writer
Friday, April 12, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36443-2002Apr12?language=printer

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- South Carolina's governor and the federal Energy Department are locking horns over planned plutonium shipments to the state - a dispute federal officials say is delaying nuclear cleanup nationwide.

The Energy Department wants to ship plutonium from a former nuclear weapons site in Rocky Flats, Colo., to a plant near Aiken, S.C., where it would be converted into fuel for nuclear reactors.

Gov. Jim Hodges says he supports the idea, but he won't allow the weapons-grade material into the state until the government agrees to make the shipping agreement legally binding.

It appeared the standoff had ended Thursday after the governor agreed to a written proposal from Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham that said he would send a 30-day notice of when the shipments would begin. But Hodges also wanted a consent order filed in federal court that would have let a judge order the Energy Department to remove the plutonium if it did not meet the terms of the agreement.

The department rejected that request, and Hodges said the situation is back to square one.

Hodges wants the Energy Department to provide a document outlining schedules to fund the construction of Mixed Oxide, or MOX, fuel treatment facilities, when to expect the shipments and when they would leave South Carolina.

"All I want to know is whether I've got something I can run down to the federal courthouse if they don't honor the terms and get a judge to stop shipments," he said Thursday.

Abraham said the agency addressed Hodges' concerns in the proposed agreement by establishing annual funding targets, committing to notify the state of all plutonium shipments and including firm dates that the material would be removed from the state if the Energy Department was unable to come up with the funds to build the MOX facility.

President Bush included $384 million to fund the plutonium disposition program in the next fiscal year, beginning July 1. The budget also noted that the project would require funding of $3.8 billion over the next 20 years, Abraham wrote.

The standoff springs from the federal government's plan to clean up Rocky Flats, northwest of Denver, and turn it into a wildlife refuge.

Rocky Flats made plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons for 40 years, but it closed in 1989. To meet the 2006 conversion deadline, the Energy Department needs to begin shipping plutonium soon, although department officials won't give an exact date.

The state and federal governments' inability to reach an agreement has held up cleanup activities at former nuclear plants across the nation, Abraham said. It also jeopardizes the 2000 U.S.-Russian plutonium disposition agreement, he said.

"We need to move forward with the MOX plant that will be used to dispose of the plutonium at issue in order to honor our commitments to the Russian Federation," Abraham wrote.

----

S.C. Gov. Blocks Plutonium Shipments

Fri Apr 12, 2002
By ROBERT GEHRKE,
Associated Press Writer
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020413/ap_on_re_us/surplus_plutonium_3

WASHINGTON (AP) - Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham (news - web sites) renewed his plea to South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges on Friday to permit weapons-grade plutonium shipments to South Carolina.

But Hodges' staff said the governor still was not satisfied with the Energy Department's assurances and would lie in the road to block the shipments, if necessary.

"The governor is dead serious about this," Hodges' spokesman, Jay Reiff, said Friday.

Abraham has said that on Monday he will give the go-ahead for shipments to begin, with or without Hodges' consent.

The Energy Department wants to send plutonium from a former nuclear weapons facility in Rocky Flats, Colo., to a plant near Aiken, S.C., where it would be converted into nuclear reactor fuel.

Hodges wants Abraham to sign documents enforceable by a federal judge assuring the plutonium won't be stranded in South Carolina if the Energy Department changes its plans.

Abraham has promised $3.8 billion for the project over the next 20 years and provided for removal of the plutonium from the state if plans change. He also said he would push Congress to adopt legislation specifying DOE's obligations.

Friday afternoon, Sen. Strom Thurmond (news, bio, voting record), R-S.C., and Sen. Wayne Allard (news, bio, voting record), R-Colo., agreed to work together to get the necessary assurances added to a Defense Department spending bill that the Senate is expected to begin work on within the next two weeks.

But Abraham said it is inappropriate for the Executive Branch to involve the slow-moving federal courts in issues of national security.

"This is especially true at this time, when we have clear evidence that terrorist groups are seeking access to nuclear materials," Abraham wrote in a letter to Hodges on Friday.

If Hodges resists, Abraham has said he will issue a notice Monday to allow shipments to begin in 30 days with no guarantees or concessions from the department.

Reiff said Friday that if Abraham issues the order, the governor will do whatever is necessary to stop the shipments, ranging from filing a lawsuit in court to stopping the shipments at the border.

"The governor wants the future leaders of South Carolina to have the leverage and force of law to make sure (the Department of Energy (news - web sites)) lives up to its commitments," Reiff said.

Reiff said DOE had signed legally binding agreements with former Idaho Gov. Phil Batt before sending nuclear waste to that state.

But Abraham's spokesman Joe Davis said those agreements were different because they dealt with spent nuclear fuel, not weapons-grade plutonium, and were not matters of national security.

Davis also noted that 75 percent of the plutonium at Rocky Flats came from South Carolina reactors.

Abraham said waste shipments must begin soon in order to honor nonproliferation commitments in a treaty with Russia and to meet a goal to clean up Rocky Flats by 2006.

Congress is spending $7 billion to convert the former nuclear weapons facility northwest of Denver to a wildlife refuge.

Allard, who shepherded the Rocky Flats cleanup through Congress, has criticized Hodges for holding up the shipments. He said the governor's brinksmanship is jeopardizing national security.

"Sen. Allard has been patiently trying to let this thing work itself through the process. At a particular point in time, the governor of South Carolina is going to have to show some trust," said Allard spokesman Sean Conway.

---

DOE Could Ship Plutonium Over South Carolina Objections

April 12, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/apr2002/2002L-04-12-01.html

COLUMBIA, South Carolina, The Department of Energy intends to dispose of 34 metric tons of weapons grade plutonium by the end of 2019, through the conversion of the material to a mixed-oxide fuel (MOX) for use in commercial nuclear power reactors. But these plans have hit a snag in the office of South Carolina Governor Jim Hodges.

Governor Jim Hodges of South Carolina (Photo courtesy Office of the Governor)

Hodges, a Democrat, said the federal government has promised not to store the plutonium in his state, where it would be processed, but has failed to make a legally binding pledge. He is demanding a court decree enforcing the federal government's promise. Without that, the governor warned, he will physically stop plutonium shipments from entering South Carolina.

But Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham Thursday threatened to transport the plutonium into South Carolina without the governor's agreement.

He wants the highly radioactive material to be shipped to the federal nuclear processing facility known as the Savannah River Site. It is on the Savannah River at the Georgia border, and is close to several major cities, including Augusta and Savannah, Georgia as well as Columbia, Greenville, and Charleston, South Carolina.

The weapons usable plutonium is now located at Rocky Flats, Colorado, which the federal government is legally bound to close in 2006, at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California, and at the PANTEX Facility in Amarillo, Texas.

The shipments and construction of a MOX production facility are necessary for two reasons - first, to fulfill a U.S. plutonium disposition agreement with Russia, and also to meet the closure date of 2006 for the DOE's Rocky Flats Facility where nuclear weapons were produced for nearly 50 years.

The Energy Department intends to construct two major facilities at the federal Savannah River Site: the nation's first MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility (FFF), to be in operation by July 2007, and a Pit Disassembly and Conversion Facility, to be in operation by October 2009. Pits are the classified components at the core of nuclear weapons.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham at his desk (Photo courtesy Office of the Secretary)

Citing an "overriding national security interest in disposing of surplus plutonium in a prompt, effective, and safe manner," Energy Secretary Abraham sent a letter to Governor Hodges Thursday offering a written agreement and, for the first time, legislation to back it up. He promised that the plutonium would not be permanently stored in South Carolina after it was processed at the Savannah River Site or in case the two facilities were never built.

Abraham's proposal includes a "firm commitment to fully fund and carry out this program" at the project cost of $3.8 billion over 20 years, and establishment of annual funding targets.

The energy secretary offered, "A commitment to maintain a pathway out of South Carolina for any plutonium brought into the state, including firm dates by which such material would be removed from the state if, for any reason, full funding necessary for the plutonium disposition program were not secured."

If the governor cannot accept those assurances by Monday, Abraham wrote, he will revoke them and "direct issuance of the requisite a 30 day notice of our intent to begin shipping."

Jay Reiff, spokesman for Governor Hodges, says the governor's position on the plutonium issue has never changed. He wants a legally enforceable agreement in the form of a consent decree filed in federal court, or he wants the federal government to hold off on the plutonium transport until the newly offered legislation is enacted.

"The governor wants to support the legislative process," Reiff said, "but the problem is that the Department of Energy wants to start shipping plutonium here before that legislation is passed and gets the presidential signature. That's like moving your furniture into a house before you go to closing."

Abraham said, "We have gone to extraordinary lengths to accommodate South Carolina's concerns."

MOX nuclear fuel assembly at Cogema's Melox plant in France. The state owned company has been fabricating MOX fuel assemblies for nuclear power plants since 1995. (Photo courtesy Cogema)

"The Secretary's characterization of our negotiations is not accurate," Reiff told ENS. "We could take the agreement that the secretary has offered up, get a consent decree from a federal judge, and start shipments immediately. That would meet our needs, and that would keep the '06 closure timeline on track in Colorado. The Department has been unwilling to do that."

"This is not about this governor or this secretary or energy," Reiff explained. "This is about whoever is going to be governor of South Carolina 10 years down the road. Governor Hodges wants to give that governor the ability to have some leverage to make sure that plutonium leaves the state in a timely manner. If we don't have a legally enforceable agreement, South Carolina simply has no leverage to do that."

Secretary Abraham offered that if unforeseen technical, fiscal, international, legal or other circumstances preclude completion of the MOX FFF, the Energy Department would package the plutonium and remove it from the state.

Sunset at the Savannah River Site (Photo courtesy DOE)

Secretary Abraham offered to proposed legislation providing that, "If the MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility is not producing at least one metric ton of MOX per year by January 1, 2009, the Secretary of Energy shall, consistent with the NEPA and other governing laws and subject to the availability of appropriations, remove at least one ton of weapons-usable plutonium by January 1, 2011, and shall remove an amount of weapons usable plutonium equal to the amount of weapons usable plutonium transferred to the Savannah River Site after April 15, 2002 by January 1, 2017."

If such legislation is not enacted by October 15, 2002, DOE will halt plutonium shipments and the parties will immediately consult to determine an alternative path forward, the secretary wrote in his letter to Governor Hodges.

But the governor wants a consent order in federal court or legislation in place before the shipments begin. Reiff says, "Our track record with the Department of Energy is such that promises aren't enough. We want to make sure that promises are kept."

"Our experience here with the plutonium issue is that plans within the last two years have already changed, and this process could take 10 or 15 years. What the governor wants to be assured that future governors have a legal remedy that's enforceable if funding or timelines or even the whole program is scrapped, that South Carolina doesn't end up holding the plutonium bag."

If the DOE attempts to force plutonium shipments into South Carolina before a legally binding agreeement is in place, Reiff says any truck carrying the plutonium would be turned around at the border and would not be permited to enter the state.

----

South Carolina Battles U.S. on Plutonium

New York Times
April 12, 2002
By DAVID FIRESTONE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/12/national/12NUKE.html

ATLANTA, April 11 - Unable to reach agreement on the future of plutonium shipments to South Carolina, the governor and the federal Department of Energy threatened each other today with a showdown over the processing of nuclear waste that the government says is vital to national security.

Spencer Abraham, the secretary of energy, sent a letter to the governor, Jim Hodges, offering a written agreement and new legislation ensuring that the plutonium would not be permanently stored in South Carolina after it was processed at the Savannah River Site in the southern corner of the state.

If the governor cannot accept those promises, Mr. Abraham wrote, the Energy Department will revoke them on Monday and begin shipping the waste into South Carolina.

But Governor Hodges said the government had failed to make a legally binding promise not to store the plutonium in his state, and he demanded that the two sides get a court order enforcing the promise. Without an agreement that the promise was enforceable in court, he said at a news conference today, he will physically prevent the Energy Department's trucks from rolling over the state line.

"We want to make sure South Carolina has the legal tools available to make sure the government keeps its promises," Mr. Hodges told reporters today. "There will be no plutonium shipments until they do so."

The 34 metric tons of plutonium under debate was left from the production of nuclear weapons, and much of it is stored at the defunct Rocky Flats Arsenal in Colorado, which is scheduled to be dismantled by 2006.

In 1996, in an effort to prevent the plutonium from falling into the wrong hands, the United States and Russia agreed to take equal amounts of plutonium out of their nuclear stockpiles, and the government plans to convert the material to fuel for nuclear power plants at the South Carolina site and then distribute it to nuclear plants around the country. (The fuel cannot be used for weapons.)

In his letter, Mr. Abraham committed the federal government to processing and removing the fuel, or removing the plutonium if for any reason it could not be processed. He offered to submit legislation to Congress that would guarantee such a removal, and said the government would stop shipping plutonium if the legislation was not passed by Oct. 15.

"I believe we have gone to extraordinary lengths to endeavor to accommodate your concerns on every point," the secretary said in his letter. Any further delay, he said, would undermine the disposal agreement with Russia and would jeopardize other cleanup efforts around the nation, including the timely closure of Rocky Flats.

The governor responded that he would accept Mr. Abraham's terms only if they were entered into an order in Federal District Court. Otherwise, he said, a new administration or a new Congress could change its mind down the road and leave South Carolina holding the nuclear waste that no other state wants. But the Energy Department said that a matter of national policy could not be left up to the courts.

Clearly political considerations are part of the dispute.

Mr. Hodges is a Democrat and will win points in his state for standing up to Washington, while Republicans in South Carolina are backing the Bush administration and saying it has made a good-faith offer.

But underlying the politics is a familiar issue of national policy regarding which state will have to accept nuclear waste. Colorado wants to see Rocky Flats dismantled, and Senator Wayne Allard, a Republican from the state, accused Governor Hodges this week of endangering national security by playing politics with the shipments. Nevada officials are bitterly fighting the Bush administration's plan to store wastes in Yucca Mountain.

Turning the plutonium into nuclear fuel will solve part of the disposal problem, but Mr. Hodges made it clear this week that he was not willing to put his trust in the promise of such technology. Officials predicted today that the situation would be resolved short of a border confrontation, but both sides remember that Idaho stopped incoming shipments of waste in 1988 using the state police.

-------- us politics

McKinney implies Bush knew of Sept. 11 plot

The Washington Post
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
4/12/02
http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/news/0402/12mckinney.html

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) is calling for an investigation into whether President Bush and other government officials had advance notice of terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 but did nothing to prevent them. She added that "persons close to this administration are poised to make huge profits off America's new war."

In a recent interview with a Berkeley, Calif., radio station, McKinney said: "We know there were numerous warnings of the events to come on September 11th. ... What did this administration know and when did it know it, about the events of September 11th? Who else knew, and why did they not warn the innocent people of New York who were needlessly murdered? ... What do they have to hide?"

McKinney declined to be interviewed Thursday, but she issued a statement saying: "I am not aware of any evidence showing that President Bush or members of his administration have personally profited from the attacks of 9-11. A complete investigation might reveal that to be the case."

Bush spokesman Scott McLellan dismissed McKinney's comments.

"The American people know the facts, and they dismiss such ludicrous, baseless views," he said. "The fact that she questions the president's legitimacy shows a partisan mind-set beyond all reason."

In the radio conversation, McKinney delivered a stinging attack on the administration. In 2000, she charged, Bush forces "stole from America our most precious right of all, the right to free and fair elections." With the September attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania, McKinney said, "an administration of questionable legitimacy has been given unprecedented power."

She suggested that the administration was serving the interests of a Washington-based investment firm, the Carlyle Group, which employs a number of high-ranking former government officials from both parties. Former president George H.W. Bush -- the current president's father -- is an adviser to the firm. McKinney said the war on terrorism has enriched Carlyle Group investors by enhancing the value of a military contractor partly owned by the firm.

Carlyle Group spokesman Chris Ullman asked: "Did she say these things while standing on a grassy knoll in Roswell, New Mexico?"

During her five terms in office, McKinney has often given voice to radical critiques of U.S. policy, especially in the Middle East. She defied the State Department to investigate assertions that international sanctions are brutalizing innocent Iraqis.

With her comments concerning Sept. 11, McKinney, 47, seems to have tapped into a web of conspiracy theories circulating during the past six months among people who believe that the government is partially -- or entirely -- to blame for last year's attacks, which killed more than 3,000 people.

"What is undeniable is that corporations close to the administration have directly benefited from the increased defense spending arising from the aftermath of September 11th," McKinney charged. "America's credibility, both with the world and with her own people, rests upon securing credible answers to these questions."

None of McKinney's colleagues has embraced her allegations, but a few said they are familiar with the theories.

"I've heard a number of people say it," said Rep. Melvin Watt (D-N.C.), who quickly added, "I can't say that it would be a widely held view" among lawmakers.

Some lawmakers have a less charitable view of McKinney's penchant for publicity. Sen. Zell Miller (D-Ga.) called McKinney's comments "... very dangerous and irresponsible."

In a prepared statement, Miller said, "I hope President Bush will remember that this is the same Congresswoman who -- during each of his State of the Union addresses -- arrives early to get a coveted aisle seat, then leans way over as Bush walks down the aisle, hoping he will give her a kiss for all to see on national TV." Rep. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) said McKinney is simply trying to impress her constituents.

"She's demonstrated at home an ability to win," he said, "and she's demonstrated in Washington a total lack of responsibility in her statements."

Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), a friend of McKinney's, said the Georgia Democrat is adept at seizing on "red-meat" issues that resonate with her political base and have helped her fend off a series of GOP challengers.

"She's not as random as people think," Kingston said. "People always want to hear a political conspiracy theory."

---

McKinney's statement today on her comments, the administration

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
4/12/02
http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/news/0402/12mckinneytext.html

Friday's statement from Rep. Cynthia McKinney

The need for an investigation of the events surrounding September 11 is as obvious as is the need for an investigation of the Enron debacle. Certainly, if the American people deserve answers about what went wrong with Enron and why (and we do), then we deserve to know what went wrong on September 11 and why.

Are we squandering our goodwill around the world with what many believe to be incoherent, warmongering policies that alienate our friends and antagonize our allies? How much of a role does our reliance on imported oil play in the military policies being put forward by the Bush Administration? And what role does the close relationship between the Bush Administration and the oil and defense industries play, if any, in the policies that are currently being pursued by this Administration?

We deserve to know what went wrong on September 11 and why. After all, we hold thorough public inquiries into rail disasters, plane crashes, and even natural disasters in order to understand what happened and to prevent them from happening again or minimizing the tragic effects when they do. Why then does the Administration remain steadfast in its opposition to an investigation into the biggest terrorism attack upon our nation?

News reports from Der Spiegel to the London Observer, from the Los Angeles Times to MSNBC to CNN, indicate that many different warnings were received by the Administration. In addition, it has even been reported that the United States government broke bin Laden's secure communications before September 11. Sadly, the United States government is being sued today by survivors of the Embassy bombings because, from court reports, it appears clear that the US had received prior warnings, but did little to secure and protect the staff at our embassies.

Did the same thing happen to us again?

I am not aware of any evidence showing that President Bush or members of his administration have personally profited from the attacks of 9-11. A complete investigation might reveal that to be the case. For example, it is known that President Bush's father, through the Carlyle Group had -- at the time of the attacks -- joint business interests with the bin Laden construction company and many defense industry holdings, the stocks of which, have soared since September 11.

On the other hand, what is undeniable is that corporations close to the Administration, have directly benefited from the increased defense spending arising from the aftermath of September 11. The Carlyle Group, DynCorp, and Halliburton certainly stand out as companies close to this Administration. Secretary Rumsfeld maintained in a hearing before Congress that we can afford the new spending, even though the request for more defense spending is the highest increase in twenty years and the Pentagon has lost $2.3 trillion.

All the American people are being asked to make sacrifices. Our young men and women in the military are being asked to risk their lives in our War

Against Terrorism while our President's first act was to sign an executive order denying them high deployment overtime pay. The American people are being asked to make sacrifices by bearing massive budget cuts in the social welfare of our country, in the areas of health care, social security, and civil liberties for our enhanced military and security needs arising from the events of September 11; it is imperative that they know fully why we make the sacrifices. If the Secretary of Defense tells us that his new military objectives must be to occupy foreign capital cities and overthrow regimes, then the American people must know why. It should be easy for this Administration to explain fully to the American people in a thorough and methodical way why we are being asked to make these sacrifices and if, indeed, these sacrifices will make us more secure. If the Administration cannot articulate these answers to the American people, then the Congress must.

This is not a time for closed-door meetings and this is not a time for se crecy. America's credibility, both with the world and with her own people, rests upon securing credible answers to these questions. The world is teetering on the brink of conflicts while the Administration's policies are vague, wavering and unclear. Major financial conflicts of interest involving the President, the Attorney General, the Vice President and others in the Administration have been and continue to be exposed.

This is a time for leadership and judgment that is not compromised in any fashion. This is a time for transparency and a thorough investigation.


-------- MILITARY

-------- afghanistan

AFGHANISTAN
U.N. Is Expanding Its Investigation of Several Mass Graves

New York Times
April 12, 2002
By DEXTER FILKINS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/12/international/asia/12AFGH.html

KABUL, Afghanistan, April 11 - United Nations officials said today that they were sending a forensic team to the Bamian region to investigate what appeared to be several mass graves found near the city.

The announcement follows a visit by United Nations investigators last week, who were called to the area after local residents said they had found at least three graves containing several people. In a sign of the possible seriousness of the investigators' findings, officials said they were diverting a team of German law enforcement officials, here training the national police force, to secure the grave sites.

It is unknown who is buried in the graves, how many bodies are buried there and how long they have been there. Residents in Bamian, about 80 miles northwest of Kabul, say the graves are filled with ethnic Hazaras, a religious and ethnic minority who suffered some of the worst violence meted out by the Taliban. While access to the area was restricted during the period of Taliban rule, reporters visiting the region in recent months saw charred villages and listened to stories of mass executions carried out by Taliban fighters.

The Hazaras, noted for their Mongol features, worship in the Shiite branch of Islam in a country dominated by Sunni Muslims. The Taliban zeroed in on the Hazaras almost everywhere they went during their five years in power, killing as many as 15,000 Hazaras in their conquest of the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif in 1998.

The United Nations team visited two sites thought to contain bodies: a well in a hamlet called Zargaron, and a ravine in the village of Daoudi. In a summary of their report released today, the investigators reported seeing "the human remains of several persons," as well as rows of indentations said to contain more human remains.

"There are indications of other similar sites, yet to be investigated, elsewhere in the region," the investigators said. Bamian was the site of two 1,500-year-old Buddha statues, which were demolished by Taliban soldiers last year.

United Nations officials said that once the forensic investigation was completed, the bodies would receive proper burials in accordance with the wishes of local residents.

Meanwhile, the United Nations said today that it believed that one of its employees had been murdered in Mazar-i-Sharif this week, making him the latest victim in a series of attacks on aid workers in the northern Afghan city.

The employee, Shah Sayed, an Afghan who worked for the Food and Agriculture Organization, was taken from his home by three unidentified men and shot dead early on Wednesday. United Nations officials said nothing was stolen from Mr. Shah's house, suggesting that he had been murdered.

The shooting of Mr. Shah is the fourth incident this year in which Afghans working for Western aid agencies have been attacked in that city. In previous assaults, aid workers have been beaten, shot, raped and robbed. In one case in February, an Afghan working for an aid agency was kidnapped, and he has not been seen since.

"This is part of a disturbing pattern," said Manoel Almeida e Silva, a United Nations spokesman. "But we don't have the thread yet that connects them all."

Mazar-i-Sharif and the surrounding region is fraught with ethnic and tribal rivalries, with Uzbek, Tajik and Hazara militias uneasily sharing power in the city. The various militias have fought one another in recent months inside and outside the city. Mazar-i-Sharif and other large cities around Afghanistan operate without the presence of an international security force to help keep the peace. In Kabul, a 4,500-security force has been credited with reducing crime and containing ethnic conflicts.

In Mazar-i-Sharif, there seems to be no clear pattern in the attacks on aid workers; the victims include Uzbek, Pashtuns and Tajiks, officials said.

Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations special representative in the country, said in a statement today that he would fly to Mazar-i-Sharif to reassure the local aid workers and press local authorities to guarantee their safety.

--------

China-made artillery seized in Afghanistan

April 12, 2002
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020412-19963932.htm

More than 100 Chinese artillery rockets found in Afghanistan were either smuggled into the country from China or sent years ago during the Soviet military occupation, U.S. officials said yesterday.

The discovery raises new questions about China's past support of the Taliban militia and its al Qaeda terrorist allies.

A U.S. defense official identified the weapons found Wednesday near Kabul as multiple-rocket launchers.

Another U.S. official said the weapons included Chinese-made rocket-propelled grenades. "These are things that could have come in during the Soviet presence in Afghanistan, or they could have come in recently," said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Soviet military forces occupied Afghanistan during the 1980s, and the United States, China and Saudi Arabia supplied arms to anti-Soviet rebels. Many Arab guerrillas who fought against the Soviets formed the basis for the al Qaeda terrorist network.

The rockets and rocket-propelled grenades likely were "smuggled in from western China," the U.S. official said.

Chinese 107-mm rockets normally are deployed in launchers that carry 12 rockets and are towed on a two-wheeled chassis or deployed on the back of vehicles, such as a truck or jeep. The exact details of the rockets could not be learned.

However, earlier in the week, two 107-mm rockets landed near facilities in Kabul used by troops of the 18-nation International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

Authorities in Afghanistan believe those rockets came from the cache that was discovered Wednesday.

In Kabul, Gen. Deen Mohammad Joorat, chief of security for the Interior Ministry of the interim government headed by Hamid Karzai, told reporters that the 151 Chinese-made rockets were part of a weapons cache seized on Wednesday at a hide-out of suspected Taliban and al Qaeda fighters.

The capture of the weapons is expected to end the rocket attacks on the peacekeepers, Gen. Joorat said.

Mines and rifles also were discovered by the British-led international peacekeeping force.

The weapons were found as part of a series of arrests of people suspected of plotting the assassination of Mr. Karzai. As many as 160 persons have been detained since last week.

"We have also arrested a number of people in Kabul for firing rockets on installations of the ISAF," Gen. Joorat told Reuters news agency. "These people seem to have links with the Taliban and al Qaeda."

U.S. intelligence agencies stated in classified reports last year that China continued to supply arms to al Qaeda terrorists after the September 11 attacks. A week after the attacks, Beijing supplied a shipment of Chinese-made SA-7 shoulder-fired missiles to Osama bin Laden's terror network, according to senior U.S. officials.

A defense official said other Chinese arms have been found by U.S. forces since military operations began Oct. 7.

"These are not necessarily from the Chinese government," the official said. "I'm not sure the Chinese are very comfortable with having that kind of terrorism on their border. But this could have been from people just selling weapons to make money."

The Chinese weapons also could have been supplied to the now-ousted Taliban regime from Pakistan's Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, which has supported both Taliban and al Qaeda fighters in the past, the defense official said.

Four additional rockets wired to be fired with electronic timers were found aimed at peacekeeping forces' bases.

ISAF spokesman Flight Lt. Joel Fall said international peacekeepers and Afghan police forces found the weapons cache, calling it a "significant find."

The weapons were found in an area on the road between Kabul and the former Soviet air base at Bagram, which is a major staging area for U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said in December that a large stockpile of Chinese-made arms had been found in some caves used by al Qaeda fighters.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said at the time Mr. Rumsfeld made the remarks that he had no idea what the defense secretary was talking about and insisted that Beijing had observed a U.N. arms embargo against the Taliban regime.

A Taliban military commander stated in a published interview in October that China was secretly assisting the Islamic militia, which was ousted by U.S.-led forces in December.

The commander, Maulvi Jalaluddin Haqqani, said China was working with the Taliban regime and that Beijing was "also extending support and cooperation to the Taliban, but the shape of this cooperation cannot be disclosed."

China's government denied the commander's statement, saying it was a "fabrication." China has said it does not support terrorism.

U.S. intelligence officials identified two Chinese companies that were building a telephone-switching network in Kabul for the past two years.

Elements of the Chinese phone network were bombed during U.S. air strikes that began Oct. 7.

Haqqani said Taliban fighters were prepared to conduct a long guerrilla war against the United States and had maintained a sufficient stockpile of weapons in mountain hide-outs.

•This article is based in part on wire service reports.

-------- arms sales

Ashcroft Urged To Drop New Rule On Gun Sales
Policy Would Reduce Time Records Are Kept

By Cheryl W. Thompson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 12, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34513-2002Apr11.html

Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) yesterday called on the Justice Department to withdraw a proposal that would sharply reduce the length of time that gun transaction records are kept. Durbin claimed that shortening the time from 90 days to 24 hours would "have a serious negative effect" on keeping guns out of the hands of felons and terrorists.

In a letter to Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, Durbin said that a preliminary examination of National Instant Check System records by the General Accounting Office found that destroying records after one business day "could inhibit" police from retrieving firearms from people who should not have been allowed to buy them.

"The Justice Department's proposed rule clearly would jeopardize the FBI's ability to adequately enforce existing gun laws," Durbin wrote. "Destruction of this background information after less than 24 hours could leave more than 300 guns each year in the hands of individuals who should never have been allowed to have them in the first place."

Ashcroft announced in June that he would drastically reduce the time that records are kept. He has argued that accurate auditing of records can occur in a day. The attorney general's proposal, developed with input from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, has won the support of the National Rifle Association, which opposes retaining records for any period.

But the preliminary GAO examination found that records kept more than one day but less than 90 days were used to initiate more than 100 firearm retrieval actions during four months last year, according to the FBI.

"This information proves what we have said all along: NICS performs a critical function -- ensuring that criminals and other prohibited purchasers do not get guns," said Michael D. Barnes, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. "We call on Attorney General Ashcroft to do the right thing and immediately withdraw his proposal."

Justice Department officials, who have not finalized the measure, did not return a telephone call yesterday seeking comment. Ashcroft can change the policy without legislation.

NICS, operated by the FBI and state governments, is used to check the law enforcement records of gun buyers. It was mandated by the Brady Law, named for James Brady, President Ronald Reagan's press secretary who was wounded by a bullet during an attempt to assassinate the president in 1981. The Brady Law and its background checks have stopped nearly 690,000 criminals and others from buying guns.

-------- biological weapons

Pentagon's Missteps Stalled New Vaccines

By Guy Gugliotta
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 12, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34543-2002Apr11.html

Six months after last fall's deadly anthrax attacks, the Pentagon is scrambling to develop a new generation of vaccines to protect troops and perhaps the American populace from biological weapons.

But it will be years before any new vaccines are ready. And many experts inside and outside the armed forces say the rush could have been avoided if military planners had not ignored repeated warnings that the vaccine program was woefully inadequate, had not allowed the program to deteriorate for lack of funding and had avoided missteps in the few attempts that were made to develop, test and win approval for vaccines.

"There seemed to be no mechanism so that a good vaccine idea could be manufactured and clinically tested with all the assurances we associate with that," said Franklin H. Top Jr., executive vice president of Medimmune Inc., a Gaithersburg biotech firm. Top chaired a Pentagon-funded panel that produced a highly critical report on the vaccine program just two months before Sept. 11. "You needed to set up some sort of management structure," he said. "It was incoherent."

The result is that the nation has only two vaccines licensed for use: a smallpox vaccine that was used to immunize every American until the naturally occurring disease began to disappear in the 1970s and a cumbersome anthrax vaccine that even supporters agree should be replaced.

Supplies of an imperfect plague vaccine have all but disappeared and there are no approved vaccines for a host of other "threat agents," including botulism, tularemia, and many encephalitis viruses and hemorrhagic fevers. The failure to develop vaccines, experts say, has left the nation unnecessarily vulnerable to bioterrorists.

"Vaccines should be your bedrock; they give you solid protection against solid threats," said Donald S. Burke, director for the Center for Immunization Research at Johns Hopkins University. "The decisions for management for this were badly run and could have been much better. Our vaccine vulnerability is much higher than it needs to be."

The Pentagon declined comment, although Col. Edward M. Eitzen Jr., chief of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, the Pentagon's research arm for biodefense vaccines, acknowledged, "There's a new environment post-Sept. 11."

The anthrax attacks that killed five people last fall imposed new urgency on military efforts to develop and test vaccines, win approval for vaccines that have languished for years as experimental remedies and explore ways to produce vaccines reliably and in large amounts.

It was not that planners were unaware of biological warfare. Worries that Iraq would use biological agents during Operation Desert Storm prompted the Pentagon in 1991 to distribute 300,000 doses of anthrax vaccine and 8,000 doses of botulism toxoid to U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf.

The Pentagon also had a civilian company under contract to produce limited supplies of vaccines classified as "investigational new drugs" -- remedies that had not obtained FDA approval.

Most of the experimental vaccines, however, were doomed never to win FDA license because the human trials required by law were impossible. Injecting people with experimental vaccines and then challenging them with lethal biological warfare agents is an ethical taboo. Still, experimental vaccines can be administered in emergencies as long as the patient gives written informed consentand accurate records are kept. The Pentagon relied on this regulatory loophole for years and used it during the Gulf War.

"The attitude was, 'We'll never use these vaccines, and if we have to use them, the risk would be so high, the benefit would far outweigh the risk,' " said Army Col. David L. Danley, project manager of the Pentagon's Joint Vaccine Acquisition Program.

But that changed soon after the war, when some veterans complained of unusual illnesses they attributed to their Gulf service and suggested vaccines may have caused them. Investigators found the Pentagon had neither obtained informed consent from all of those injected nor kept accurate records. By 1992, the Defense Department had all but abandoned the experimental drugs. Henceforth it would seek FDA approval for all its vaccines. This new policy, however, was not accompanied by adjusted regulatory requirements. As a result, the human trial ban became a Catch-22 that curtailed, and, in some cases, halted Pentagon-contracted vaccine research for years.

Nevertheless, in 1994, Pentagon biodefense researchers at Fort Detrick asked the civilian contractors at a now-defunct division of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies to seek FDA approval of experimental vaccine for tularemia, which causes flu-like symptoms and sometimes pneumonia.

"We had terrible misgivings," said Ron Arndt, a former Salk scientist. Researchers hadn't done enough trials or testing of the vaccine and "we never got to first base," Arndt said.

In the mid-1990s, Fort Detrick scientist Michael Langford thought he had devised a way to circumvent the restriction on human trials by demonstrating that botulism toxin could be neutralized in mice using human antibodies. The experiment foundered, however, because Langford could not demonstrate measurable levels of immunity in the mice after one year.

"People may well have been protected," said Langford, now chief scientific officer at Frederick-based DynPort Vaccine Co. "But we couldn't show it." The research was abandoned.

Similarly, a new generation anthrax vaccine has never been approved because of the FDA's arduous and time-consuming requirements for testing and data collection. People "didn't consider that to license [a new vaccine] you would have to to do a number of things, and there was no strong data," said Michael Gilbreath, former medical project officer at the Pentagon's Joint Program Office for Biological Defense who is now a vaccine specialist at the National Institutes of Health. "There was also a lot of evidence of a safety profile with the old vaccine, something that would have taken years to get for a new one."

The old vaccine is impractical because it requires a six-shot injection regime. Pentagon scientists suspected they could get by with fewer shots but they had not done the research "because the attention was always on the new vaccine," said one scientist with direct knowledge of the program.

Closer attention to licensing over the past decade also led the FDA to look more carefully at existing vaccine facilities to see whether they were complying with guidelines. Often they weren't.

BioPort Corp., of Lansing, Mich., nearly went bankrupt and needed a four-year renovation before the FDA allowed it to resume making anthrax vaccine in January.

Other vaccines disappeared altogether. In 1995, the FDA demanded that Greer Labs Inc., of Lenoir, N.C., retest its plague vaccine, a remedy licensed as a treatment for infectious disease but also used by the armed forces in biodefense. Greer closed the facility after the Defense Department refused to help with funding.

"They lost plague . . . because of really shortsighted decisions," said Alexandria-based consultant James G. Kenimer, a vaccine specialist.

To avoid these problems, Defense planners after the Gulf War proposed that the Pentagon build its own vaccine factory. It would take five to seven years to complete and would cost nearly $400 million, but it would guarantee vaccine supplies.

The idea was approved but then discarded in late 1993 when Congress and the Pentagon decided it was "not cost-effective," said Anna Johnson-Winegar, deputy assistant to the secretary of defense and a leading advocate of the plan.

Instead, the Pentagon in 1997 hired DynPort as an outside contractor for $322 million, giving the company the task of moving as many as 17 different vaccines to licensing. Four years later, after staggering in its initial stages, DynPort has seven vaccines in research. The closest to being licensed is a new smallpox remedy, projected for 2005.

But Top's committee report damned the DynPort approach as "insufficient," and Top called it "a high-risk strategy."

"If you want a vaccine in five to seven years, you go with the big guys," Top said. "If you have 15 years, then you can do it small."

Meanwhile, Johnson-Winegar is chairing an interagency panel examining the desirability of a government-owned facility, but Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told Congress in January "I don't know of a time frame" on the panel's making a decision.

In the meantime, anthrax vaccine research appears finally on track. New generation vaccines are in development again, although FDA licensing is years away, and government scientists are testing the old vaccine with the aim of reducing the shot regime, perhaps beginning in 2004. Studies have also resumed on tularemia and botulism vaccines in hopes that both will be licensed -- tularemia in 2009 and botulism in 2012.

And finally, the FDA is readying a new regulation that will describe how researchers might substitute animal test data for human trials, thus circumventing the regulatory bottleneck that discouraged biodefense vaccine licensing. The first draft of this "animal rule" was written five years ago.

-------- chemical weapons

Chemicals Discovery Halts Alaska Missile-Site Work

Fri Apr 12, 2002
Reuters
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020413/ts_nm/arms_missiles_dc_1

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Ground clearing was halted at an Alaska site slated for a new national missile defense (news - web sites) system after workers dug up barrels holding what might be the aged remains of dangerous chemicals, the Army said Friday.

Workers at Fort Greely, a former chemical weapons test site, have found up to 20 of the barrels, which have lids labeled "US CWS," meaning the United States Chemical Warfare Service, an organization disbanded in 1946, the Army said. More barrels may be unearthed at the site, the Army said.

Some of the barrels were open, and workers found a frozen, crystallized material inside, the Army said. The discovery (news - web sites), made on Monday by the Army's contractor, Aglaq Corp., was reported on Wednesday, the Army said.

The Bush administration plans to use Fort Greely, about 100 miles southeast of Fairbanks, as a site for its ground-based missile defense system.

Site work, which included tree-clearing, earth-moving and placement of some construction equipment, has been suspended until officials can determine what is in the barrels, said Chuck Canterbury, an Army spokesman in Anchorage.

No illnesses or injuries have been reported among the workers, but protective measures are in place at the site.

Environmentalists said the discovery of potential chemical weapons remnants is proof that Fort Greely should be cleaned up before more weapons systems are deployed there.

Fort Greely was home to an experimental nuclear reactor from 1962 to 1972. It also was the site where biological and chemical weapons were tested in the 1950s and 1960s.

----

Germ Warfare Expert Acquitted in S. Africa

WORLD In Brief
Friday, April 12, 2002
Associated Press
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34638-2002Apr11?language=printer

PRETORIA, South Africa -- The head of apartheid South Africa's chemical and biological weapons program was acquitted on 46 counts of murder, fraud and drug dealing in a case that revealed the extent of the former government's efforts to dispose of its enemies and cling to power.

High Court Judge Willie Hartzenberg, a white judge appointed by the apartheid government, said prosecutors failed during the 2 1/2-year trial to prove that Wouter Basson was guilty of any crimes.

As the verdict was read, Basson, a cardiologist the South African media dubbed "Dr. Death," smiled and people in the courtroom applauded.

During the trial, scientists and former government agents described Basson as a calculating man who headed a secret agency -- with front companies across the world -- focused on finding better ways to kill apartheid's opponents.

Basson had denied responsibility for political assassinations carried out by agents using his toxins and said he was only following orders from senior government members. Prosecutors have accused the judge, who earlier dismissed other charges against Basson, of favoring the defendant. The government plans to appeal the verdict.

-------- drug war

Drug Charge Dropped in Case Criticized by Rights Groups

New York Times
April 12, 2002
By JIM YARDLEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/12/national/12STIN.html

HOUSTON, April 11 - Critics of a drug sweep in the tiny West Texas town of Tulia won a victory this week when a felony cocaine charge against a woman was dropped after she proved she was in Oklahoma City on the day that an undercover police officer said he bought drugs from her.

The dismissal of the charge against Tonya Michelle White, 33, is the latest development in a 1999 drug operation that is under investigation by the Justice Department and has drawn widespread criticism from civil rights groups.

The operation resulted in the arrests of 46 people, all but 3 of them black, meaning that roughly 12 percent of the town's black population was arrested.

Police drug operations across Texas have drawn scrutiny for months. In recent weeks, prosecutors in Dallas dismissed drug cases against more than 40 defendants after it was learned that evidence turned over by an undercover agent was actually gypsum from wallboard, not cocaine. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into the Dallas situation.

Jeff Blackburn, a lawyer for Ms. White, said the charge against her that was dismissed on Tuesday further undermined the credibility of the undercover agent in the Tulia operation, Tom Coleman. In nearly every case, Mr. Coleman was the lone witness and provided the only evidence in winning convictions. One case has been dropped because of false identification.

Critics say Mr. Coleman operated with almost no oversight.

Former colleagues described him in documents in a dispute over custody of his children as a compulsive liar. Mr. Coleman has also been charged with misdemeanor theft of gas from a government pump while he was a sheriff's deputy.

"This is the first time that we have proven through direct evidence that he made up an accusation against someone," Mr. Blackburn said of the White case. Last year, state lawmakers passed legislation known as the Tulia law that prohibits convicting a defendant solely on the testimony of an undercover agent.

Ms. White, who lives in Louisiana, had been a fugitive for two years before she turned herself in last November on a felony charge of selling 1.3 grams of powdered cocaine. If convicted, she would have faced five years to life in prison. But an investigator with Mr. Blackburn found that she had deposited a $168 worker's compensation check in Oklahoma City on the day Mr. Coleman accused her of selling drugs.

Because Ms. White had withdrawn $8 when making her deposit, the bank kept a record of the transaction, with her signature.

"Eight dollars saved her life," Mr. Blackburn said.

Terry McEachern, the local district attorney, said the bank document persuaded him to drop the charges against Ms. White. He characterized the case as a mistake by Mr. Coleman. Mr. McEachern said he did not think it suggested a pattern of deceit.

"I don't think he manufactured testimony intentionally," Mr. McEachern said of Mr. Coleman. Mr. McEachern noted that none of the convictions had been overturned by the state court of appeals.

Of the 46 people arrested, 22 were sentenced to prison. The rest received probation.

Mr. Blackburn said the White case could provide grounds to overturn other convictions. Already, national groups like the William Moses Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice and the American Civil Liberties Union have gotten involved.

Vanita Gupta, a spokeswoman for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc., said her group was representing two defendants in their appeals and had found lawyers in Washington or New York for the other 18 defendants who are in prison.

--------

Boy Sickened by Heroin He Swallowed

New York Times
April 12, 2002
By AL BAKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/12/nyregion/12MULE.html

Having swallowed 87 condoms filled with heroin, a 12-year-old boy who had been living in Nigeria landed alone at Kennedy Airport late Wednesday, but became ill after a cab ride through Brooklyn and Queens, the authorities said yesterday.

Noticing the child's pain, the driver took the boy, identified by the authorities as Prince Nnaedozie Umegbolu, to the Port Authority police desk at La Guardia Airport early yesterday. Officials said the boy described what was in his stomach and how it had gotten there. Officers called paramedics and investigators.

Yesterday, the boy was in stable condition on the pediatric floor of New York Hospital Queens, in Flushing. He was charged in Queens with juvenile delinquency possession of a controlled and dangerous substance, said Steven J. Coleman, a Port Authority spokesman, who said the case would be handled in Family Court.

Investigators were trying to piece together his potentially deadly trip across the Atlantic Ocean, in which, the authorities said, his small body was used as a vessel to hide heroin.

"International drug trafficking has reached a new low of degradation for exploiting a 12-year-old boy by allegedly turning him into a `mule,' and inducing him to swallow balloons filled with heroin to smuggle into the United States," Richard A. Brown, the Queens district attorney, said in a statement. Investigators are trying to find out how the boy got the drugs, where his trip originated and whom he was planning to meet in this country. "The true criminals in this terrible and tragic case are the cold-hearted and greedy dealers of death who risked a child's life," Mr. Brown said.

Mr. Coleman said that the boy's father is in a federal prison on drug charges, and that his mother lives in Norcross, Ga. One investigator said the boy was well educated.

The authorities identified the boy's father as Chukwunwieke Umegbolu. Mr. Umegbolu was convicted in federal court in 1995 in a case that prosecutors said shut down the largest heroin ring in Georgia. The prosecutor, Lawrence O. Anderson, now a lawyer in private practice, said the group used people in their late teens and early 20's as couriers.

Mr. Umegbolu's lawyer in the case, Barry V. Lombardo, said his client was arrested in Atlanta and charged with smuggling heroin in his shoe. He said the evidence against Mr. Umegbolu was circumstantial.

On Wednesday, the boy arrived at Kennedy Airport at 10:30 p.m. from London, Mr. Coleman said. He was carrying a United States passport because he was born here, the police said, though he had been living recently with grandparents in Nigeria.

Once in New York City, the boy hailed a taxi and went off looking for an address in Brooklyn, but the address did not exist, the authorities said. The boy made a phone call.

He then told the cabdriver to take him to La Guardia, Mr. Coleman said. The driver took him to the airport, but realized the boy was having medical problems and took him to the police desk.

A law enforcement official said the boy had been promised $1,900.

By midafternoon yesterday, 17 of the packages remained in the boy's system. Later, only 2 remained, the authorities said. "They gave him a laxative," an official said. "But you have to be very careful because if one is broken, he's gone."

-------- iraq

Iraq Talks With U.N. Postponed

April 12, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-UN-Iraq.html

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Talks slated for this month between Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan have been postponed at Baghdad's request, Annan's spokesman said Friday.

Iraq sought the delay because it didn't want to distract attention from the crisis in the Middle East, Annan spokesman Fred Eckhard said.

The talks had been scheduled for April 18-19 in New York City. No new date for the discussions was set immediately.

Annan and Sabri met March 7, their first high-level talks in a year. The secretary-general has said he hoped the new talks would focus on the return of U.N. arms inspectors to Iraq.

Baghdad is under sanctions imposed by the U.N. Security Council for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, and they cannot be lifted until inspectors certify that Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons have been eliminated along with the long-range missiles to deliver them.

Iraq has refused to let inspectors back in, insisting it has complied with the U.N. resolutions and demanding that sanctions be lifted. The inspectors left Baghdad in December 1998 ahead of U.S. and British airstrikes.

-------- israel / palestine

Explosion in Jerusalem Follows Powell's Meeting With Sharon

New York Times
April 12, 2002
By SERGE SCHMEMANN with TERENCE NEILAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/12/international/middleeast/12CND-MIDE.html?pagewanted=all&position=bottom

JERUSALEM, April 12 - A suicide bomber blew herself up at a bus stop in Jerusalem today, killing at least six people and wounding more than 50, the Jerusalem police said.

The explosion, near a downtown vegetable market crowded with shoppers before the start of the Jewish Sabbath, came three hours after Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon met for four hours to discuss an Israeli pullout from the West Bank. No progress was disclosed in those talks.

The bombing also came a day before Secretary Powell intended to meet the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat, and it followed a suicide bombing on a bus in Haifa on Wednesday that killed eight people.

It remained unclear tonight whether Secretary Powell would go ahead with his plan to hold talks with Mr. Arafat on Saturday. "He's looking at the whole situation in terms of the bombing and where we stand and where we are," said the State Department spokesman, Richard A. Boucher, who is traveling with the secretary.

The White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, asked at a news briefing in Washington if the secretary would cancel the meeting, said, "As of this morning the meeting was planned." But he said Secretary Powell was given the "maximum flexibility" to decide how to proceed.

Earlier, Mr. Fleischer told reporters that President Bush condemned the bombing but "will not be deterred" from seeking peace in the Middle East. He said Secretary Powell would urge the Palestinian leader "to do what he needs to do to stop the violence," adding at the briefing that today would be a good time for Mr. Arafat to step up and condemn terrorism and to show leadership.

Secretary Powell, whose helicopter hovered over the scene of the bombing as he flew to an army base in northern Israel, said that he had telephoned Mr. Sharon to express his condolences and that the bombing showed that a solution to the current situation had to be found.

There was no immediate sense here that Secretary Powell would abandon his efforts to bring about a cease-fire, but the bombing demonstrated the limitations of the current Israeli operation in curbing terror attacks.

Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade, an Islamic fundamentalist group linked to Mr. Arafat's Fatah group, claimed responsibility for the bombing, indicating that Mr. Arafat has not called off such attacks, as the United States has demanded. But there is so much fury in the Palestinian refugee camps about the Israeli incursions that there is no evidence that Mr. Arafat could halt the bombings even if he tried.

The Jerusalem police chief, Mickey Levy, told reporters, "Apparently it was a female suicide bomber," adding, "We are talking about a young woman." Mr. Levy said it appeared the Mahane Yehuda open-air market was the target but that the woman apparently changed course at the sight of the police guarding the market's entrance.

"She did not succeed at getting into the market and set off her bomb at a bus stop when a bus came to let off passengers," Mr. Levy said. "She set off a very powerful bomb."

He added: "As a result of the blast, there are more than 50 people wounded. There are around six killed."

Exact numbers of those wounded were not available as ambulances raced to the scene and took people to hospitals. Some reports placed the total of wounded at more than 70.

Secretary Powell and Mr. Sharon ended four hours of talks here today but announced no progress on a timetable for complying with American demands for a prompt Israeli pullout from the West Bank.

"I hope we can find a way to come to agreement on this point of the duration of the operations and get back to a track that will lead to a political settlement, because that is uppermost in everyone's mind," Secretary Powell said.

Mr. Sharon, for his part, repeated an oft-stated Israeli position. "Israel is waging war against the infrastructure of Palestinian terrorism and Israel hopes to conclude this war very soon," he said.

Secretary Powell said he came away from his conversation with "a commitment to peace, a commitment to finding a way forward . . . so that these two peoples can live together side by side."

"We recognize that eventually to reach the kind of solution that is needed the parties must talk," the secretary declared.

The two men met alone at the prime minister's residence and were later joined by the security cabinet.

If Secretary Powell's meeting with Mr. Arafat goes ahead the secretary is expected to insist that Mr. Arafat issue an appeal in Arabic for an end to terror attacks. But he has also said that Israel must deal with Mr. Arafat as a partner in the peace effort.

Mr. Sharon has branded Mr. Arafat an "enemy" and has declared the planned visit a "tragic mistake." Mr. Sharon is certain to refuse any negotiations in which Mr. Arafat is involved, but Israeli news media reports said he would consider political discussions if the Palestinian leader did not take part.

Though Israel withdrew on Thursday from about two dozen small villages, Mr. Sharon said his forces were "not about to leave" Ramallah, Bethlehem, Nablus and Jenin. Israeli forces also briefly moved into Kalil, near Nablus, where troops made arrests before leaving, the military announced today. Military activity also continued in Dura and Dahariyah, south of Hebron.

Last weekend President Bush personally and publicly called on Mr. Sharon to pull out "without delay."

But Mr. Sharon said the military operation is a prudent response to terrorist attacks, and although the prime minister did not commit to a timetable for a pullout, Secretary Powell said today that he was pleased that Mr. Sharon "is anxious to bring these operations to an end."

At the United Nations today, Secretary General Kofi Annan in his strongest expression of alarm about the situation facing Palestinians, called today for an international force to be sent to the Middle East.

Although Mr. Annan has no power to order United Nations troops to go anywhere, his unexpectedly strong remarks today, made to reporters in Geneva, lend strong weight to Palestinian demands for a peacekeeping force to be sent to the region and will certainly provoke a debate at the United Nations.

Asked on his last stopover on Thursday in Amman, Jordan, whether he regarded Israel's continuing actions as an affront to the president, Secretary Powell said he did not. Still, he said: "I think the president has made his position clear. He wants the incursion stopped. He has noted some progress, but he wants to see more progress."

Earlier Thursday the secretary said pressing on with the army offensive would not end terror. "The violence and anger and frustration which feeds that will still be there unless we find a negotiating process," he said.

The Israeli Army said Thursday that 4,185 Palestinians had been rounded up, nearly half of them in Jenin and Nablus, the towns that mounted the greatest resistance to the Israeli operation. Among them were 121 men on Israel's wanted list.

Israel has released most of the detainees, keeping only those it regards as terrorists for further questioning by intelligence services.

The Palestinian death toll in the operations has been hard to estimate because journalists and relief organizations have been given little access to the areas of operations.

Dr. Hussam Sherkawi, director of emergency services in the West Bank, said at least 140 Palestinians had been killed.

An Israeli Army spokesman, Lt. Col. Olivier Rafowicz, said about 100 Palestinians had been killed in Jenin alone, where 23 Israelis were also killed. Five Israeli soldiers were reported killed elsewhere.

The Israeli police said Thursday that they had found a belt with explosives in a Palestinian ambulance during a check at a roadblock inside the West Bank. The ambulance was headed toward Israel with the body of a Palestinian man, the police said, and they found the device alongside him. It was the second time in two weeks that Israel has reported finding explosives in an ambulance.

With images of devastation and reports of widespread suffering in the besieged towns turning ever stronger, the secretary's visit has assumed the character of a milestone, and every statement by him and Mr. Sharon was analyzed for signs of shifting positions.

The White House said Thursday that Mr. Bush intended to continue working with Mr. Sharon, whom he continued to regard as a "man of peace." The statement followed a report in The Washington Post that the White House had begun to distinguish between support for Israel and support for the hawkish prime minister.

Israeli officials said Mr. Sharon was aware of the support he had in Washington, and so was prepared to hold his ground for now. He also managed to recruit his fierce rival on the Israeli right, Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister, to argue Israel's case among American Jews and in Washington. Mr. Netanyahu met in Washington on Thursday with Vice President Dick Cheney and the president's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice.

Mr. Sharon, in a visit with police officers and border guards on Thursday, insisted in the strongest terms to date that Israel would leave the towns it has occupied only when it deemed its mission finished.

"Our activity will continue," he said. "We're not about to leave Jenin, Nablus or Ramallah or any other place we're in at present. We won't leave until there is a surrender agreement with the terrorists there inside. We shall carry out these operations until they are complete."

Specifically, Mr. Sharon said Israel would not pull out of Ramallah until it captured several wanted men that it believes are holed up with Mr. Arafat. He said they included the assassins of an Israeli minister and Afuad Shubaki, a Palestinian accused of organizing a shipment of arms from Iran that the Israelis intercepted in the Red Sea on Jan. 3.

Mr. Arafat has refused any talk of leaving his Ramallah compound, where he has been cooped up with several dozen aides, guards, journalists and stranded visitors. Israeli television played a smuggled videotape of him sitting at a desk, armed and reading an Israeli cabinet communiqué.

Israeli military officials said the raid on the refugee camp in Jenin, the most extensive operation of Israel's 13-day sweep through the West Bank, was largely over. Brig. Gen. Eyal Schlein, the commander of operations in Jenin, said: "The difficult center and the area is in our hands. Many of the most wanted men have been captured or killed, or were wounded and captured. The area is messy."

Initial images from the refugee camp showed vast destruction, with entire clusters of buildings reduced to rubble and long rows of buildings with their facades sheared off by tanks and bulldozers. But initial efforts by the United Nations agency that manages the refugee camps and by the International Committee of the Red Cross to enter the camp were blocked by the Israeli Army.

--------

THE AFTERMATH
The Number of Dead Is in Dispute, but the Destruction in Jenin Is Clear

New York Times
April 12, 2002
By JAMES BENNET
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/12/international/worldspecial/12JENI.html

JENIN, West Bank, April 11 - Toward dusk today, black smoke rose from the ruins of Jenin's refugee camp, a fortress of Palestinian resistance that has crumbled before overwhelming Israeli force.

No one knows how many people have died here. Israeli officials have given estimates of 100 to 200, and said that most of the dead were armed men. Palestinians estimated twice that many, and said the dead included civilians cut down by random fire.

Many people have fled, and others have been taken prisoner by Israel. Some are probably buried in the rubble.

This evening Jenin was motionless except for the Israeli armored vehicles that have taken command of the ragged streets. It was silent except for the occasional bursts of machine-gun fire or tank shells.

Gray cinder-block walls in the refugee camp were scorched black and punched through by shells. A broad boulevard that was sliced through the camp had been jaggedly paved with the remnants of smashed buildings.

From a distance, the camp's center looked as though a giant's fist had come down upon it. At the edge of the wreckage, a two-story-tall armored bulldozer trailing an enormous steel spike crunched its way through a wall.

This city, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon says, has been a major source of Palestinian terrorism for decades. The refugee camp has spawned many suicide bombers. Israel's hope is that it has now tamed Jenin.

Late tonight, a low-flying airplane dropped burning white flares in groups of three over Jenin. Trailing white smoke, they drifted slowly to earth, blotting out the stars while illuminating with a ghostly light the wreckage and the surrounding valleys, striped with gray limestone.

Some Palestinians here seemed stunned by the onslaught. "You collapse when you see them bombing and destroying the camp," Mufida Sabaani, 35, said outside her home late this afternoon. "We see missiles falling on the camp. We see shells falling. We see fire."

Others sounded simply furious.

Jenin's refugees are refugees once again. Across a steep, stony hillside here, a knot of women and children picked their way this afternoon around an Israeli patrol in the valley below. They were fleeing their home in the refugee camp, where they had been trapped by Israeli soldiers for a week, they said, 17 people held on one floor in their house.

"We just started feeding the kids now," said Wajeeha al-Huji, the matriarch of the clan. The group carried pita bread and water given them at the first house they had approached after making their escape. Their men were gone, they said, taken prisoner by Israel. They did not know what had become of them.

Seeking news in turn of their own families, Palestinian men detained for a few days and then released are wandering the neighboring West Bank villages.

They showed the burns and scabs on their wrists from plastic handcuffs they said they were forced to wear for days. They described similar treatment: being kept blindfolded the whole time they were in custody, and being asked only a handful of questions, for example, about their names and those of their relatives. They said they were denied food and water, a charge rejected by the Israeli Army.

The former detainees said they were told not to go back to Jenin because they had no homes to go back to. "They told me, `You have no house - it has been destroyed,' " said Izzat Muhammad, 28.

Amjed Ahmed Hazem, a 35-year-old electrician, said soldiers accused him of being a member of the Islamic group Hamas before finally releasing him after five days. "I don't know what happened to my family," he said. "I don't know where they went."

The army "has taken full control of the camp," said Jacob Dallal, an army spokesman. "It's now the closing stage of the operation. The soldiers are still going house to house." He said the troops were still encountering some sporadic gunfire.

Leaning into a gentle slope, Jenin faces a swath of rich fields, now bright green and patched with yellow mustard. From a distance in the last two days, it has seemed a peaceful, pastoral place. But on closer inspection, the dust clouds at its outskirts resolve into groups of armored vehicles moving to and fro, and the motes in the sky prove to be Apache helicopters, sometimes freezing in the air to let loose their machine guns.

In normal times, Jenin is a crowded, busy place, isolated by Israeli checkpoints but still sustaining a hopping central market and one of the best falafel restaurants in the West Bank. But because of its densely populated camp, it is also one of the toughest cities for refugees of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and their descendants. Before the attack, the camp contained about 13,000 people.

Children have been seen at dusk there making a game of shoving car parts and stones into the road, to block cars they suspect of containing undercover Israeli agents. Marching from the camp in mid-November, demonstrators hurled stones, small explosives and invective at scores of Yasir Arafat's security officers when the Palestinian leader attempted to rein in militants here.

Those protests were set off by the arrest of Mahmoud Tawalbeh, a popular leader of the uprising who was later released from prison in Ramallah during an Israeli incursion there. He was killed in the fighting here this week, Palestinians said.

In air raids during the 19-month conflict, Israel has destroyed Jenin's court, its police headquarters, its prisons and other public buildings.

Israelis and Palestinians traded accusations today about the status of the dead. Palestinians said Israeli soldiers had buried the dead in mass graves or carted them away to a nearby military base or collapsed houses on top of them. The Israeli Army denied all such charges. "They have not been touched," Mr. Dallal said of the bodies.

The Palestinians, armed with semiautomatic rifles and improvised explosives, were hopelessly outgunned by Israeli troops backed up by helicopter gunships, tanks and antiaircraft guns. But Israeli soldiers said the Palestinians knew the urban terrain, the twisting alleyways running through the camp, and had prepared booby traps in houses and sewers. Twenty-three soldiers died in the fighting.

It was difficult to assess the claims and counterclaims, because Israeli forces were still turning journalists away from Jenin today. Some reporters entered when the curfew on the city was briefly lifted this afternoon. Others later found their way in on foot. But no one was able to make a detailed study of the aftermath of the fighting.

Some Palestinians said that one result of the fighting was clear: Peace was now impossible with Israel. "After all we have seen - the bodies in the streets - who wants us to think of peace," asked Mr. Hazem, the electrician.

--------

Calls begin for war crimes trial for Israelis

April 12, 2002
By Nicholas Kralev
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020412-73662628.htm

Palestinian sympathizers in Europe and the Arab world called yesterday for the Israeli government to be investigated for war crimes, raising the prospect that leaders of the Jewish state could be among the first targets of the new International Criminal Court.

That court became a reality yesterday at a U.N. signing ceremony in New York, with representatives of 66 countries that have ratified the treaty establishing the first global war-crimes tribunal. The United States denounced the treaty as a violation of international law.

With the U.S. seat in the hall empty, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan vowed that "those who commit war crimes, genocide or other crimes against humanity will no longer be beyond the reach of justice."

As the Israeli incursion in the West Bank showed no signs of abating yesterday despite Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's arrival in Israel, an Israeli-Arab legislator suggested that members of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Cabinet be investigated for "war crimes" in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Mohammad Barakeh, a communist member of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, accused Mr. Sharon's government of "serious violations of human rights and humanitarian conventions." He named specifically Mr. Sharon and Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer.

"The Israeli army has indiscriminately shelled refugee camps, using helicopters, warplanes, tanks and heavy artillery, killing hundreds of people. Medical assistance has been denied; hospitals have been shelled," Mr. Barakeh said.

"The population is starving because of the curfew, while water pipes and electricity networks have been destroyed," he wrote in a letter to the International Court of Justice, quoted by Agence France-Presse.

But international legal experts said the International Criminal Court is a more appropriate place for such appeals to be directed because it can bring individuals to justice, while the International Court of Justice, as a U.N. organ, deals only with cases between states. The ICC, although negotiated by the United Nations, has its own statute, a U.N. official said.

The Israeli army on March 29 began its largest military operation in the Palestinian territories since the 1967 war, invading six major West Bank cities. It said the attacks, in which more than 200 Palestinians have been killed, were in response to a series of suicide bombings in Israel.

On Tuesday, Lebanese President Emile Lahoud called for the Israeli leadership to be brought before the International Court of Justice for the "massacres" committed by the army.

In Madrid yesterday, the Spanish judge who led international efforts to prosecute former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet for war crimes accused Israel of committing "crimes against humanity."

Baltazar Garzon, in a statement to mark his nomination as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize, said the "terrorist attacks" against Israel by Palestinian militants should end but that they "in no way authorize any state to engage in illegal responses."

Mr. Garzon welcomed the ratification of the ICC treaty and called it "a key peace initiative."

At the ceremony in New York, 10 countries brought the number of nations to ratify the 1998 Rome treaty to 66 - six more than needed for it to enter into force July 1. The tribunal is not expected to begin functioning until next year.

The United States signed the treaty with serious reservations at the 11th hour in December 2000, just before President Clinton left office. The Bush administration has said from the start that it will not submit it for ratification to Congress, even though all other NATO members have done so.

The administration is seriously considering withdrawing the U.S. signature, though no final decision has been made, State Department deputy spokesman Philip Reeker told reporters.

"It has a number of fundamental problems," he said of the international tribunal. "It purports to assert jurisdiction over nationals of states not party to the treaty, contrary to the most basic principles of customary international law governing treaties."

Mr. Reeker said the United States is concerned that its military and civilian personnel will be exposed to politically motivated investigations and prosecutions.

"Accountability is a serious problem," he said. "Relatively unrestricted powers of the prosecutor and the court may lead to politicized second-guessing of a state's ability or willingness to investigate its own personnel."

Rep. Henry J. Hyde, Illinois Republican and chairman of the House International Relations Committee, said yesterday that Washington should seek immunity from the court for all of its peacekeeping troops.

"We would oppose any future U.S. military participation in U.N. peacekeeping operations where the Security Council refuses to grant such immunity to our personnel," he wrote in a letter to Mr. Powell.

"The United States must begin now to implement policies to protect against the unintended consequences that will flow from establishment of the ICC," he said.

"The ICC is more likely to hinder than help efforts to prevent genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity," Mr. Hyde said, noting that "dictators with the blood of thousands on their hands will scoff at the threat."

-------- nato

Marine to Head U.S. Forces in Europe

April 12, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Military-Changes.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- For the first time, a Marine general may take command of U.S. and NATO forces in Europe.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld selected Gen. James L. Jones for the job, a senior official said Thursday. If approved by Congress, he would be the first Marine in the job since it was created after World War II.

In a potentially broader change, officials said the Pentagon is considering merging in part or in full two major commands -- the U.S. Space Command, based at Colorado Springs, Colo., and the U.S. Strategic Command, based at Omaha, Neb. The officials spoke on condition they not be identified.

Space Command is in charge of U.S. military assets and operations in space. Strategic Command is responsible for the planning, targeting and wartime use of U.S. strategic nuclear forces.

Jones, a decorated Vietnam veteran, has been commandant of the Marine Corps since July 1999. In the Europe post he would have dual responsibilities: command of all American forces in Europe and command of all NATO troops. The job is usually held by an Army general, although the incumbent is Gen. Joseph Ralston of the Air Force.

Rumsfeld also has decided that Gen. John Keane, the No. 2 officer in the Army, will replace Gen. Eric Shinseki as Army chief of staff when Shinseki's term expires in the summer of 2003, the official said.

The selections must be approved by the Senate.

Aside from the fact that Jones would be the first Marine to head U.S. forces in Europe, the selections are not a major departure from past practice and do not appear to signal a major shake-up in the military.

Rumsfeld has said his choices for new leaders of the military services and the warfighting commands are among the most important decisions he will make as defense secretary. He recently chose Adm. Thomas Fargo, commander of the Navy's Pacific Fleet, to become the next commander of U.S. Pacific Command, replacing Adm. Dennis Blair.

Jones, who was born in France and speaks the language fluently, built key political relationships while serving as Marine Corps liaison to Congress. He later became the senior military aide to William Cohen when Cohen was defense secretary during President Clinton's second term.

Keane, also a Vietnam veteran, is a former commander of the 101st Airborne Division.

The Washington Post, which first reported the Rumsfeld selections Thursday, said President Bush has approved the choices. It was not clear when the administration would announce them publicly.

One senior official said Rumsfeld also intended to make Air Force Gen. Ralph E. Eberhart commander in chief of a new military command, to be called Northern Command. Eberhart currently is commander of Space Command.

Northern Command would be responsible for U.S.-based forces and for the defense of U.S. territory. The commander would be responsible also for military-to-military relations with Canada and Mexico. The command's territory would include Pacific and Atlantic waters off both U.S. coasts.

-------- nepal

Rebels Kill 54 People in Nepal

April 12, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Nepal-Rebels.html

KATMANDU, Nepal (AP) -- Hundreds of government troops took control Friday of an area where rebels armed with bombs and guns attacked four towns in western Nepal, killing 48 policemen and six civilians, the government said. Security officials on the ground however said the number of deaths was nearly double.

Gunbattles raged into Friday morning between rebels and the police following the attacks Thursday night on the federal interior security minister's house, a police station, two banks and a bus in Dang district, 190 miles west of the capital, Katmandu.

``Reinforcement has been sent from both the capital and around in the area, who have launched a massive search,'' said junior internal security minister, Devendra Raj Kadel, who said that 48 police officers had been confirmed dead.

A Nepalese security official patrolling the Nepal-India border told The Associated Press that at least 82 police officers and some 10 civilians had been killed in the overnight attack. More than 3,000 troopers have cordoned off the area, where authorities clamped a curfew. The border has been sealed to prevent any rebel from crossing over to India, the officer said on condition of anonymity.

It was one of the bloodiest attacks in the rebels' 6-year-old campaign to replace Nepal's constitutional monarchy with a communist state. More than 3,000 people have been killed in the insurgency.

``People in the area are terrified with most of the people refusing to leave their homes. There are bodies everywhere. Though additional forces have reached the area, people are not feeling secure,'' said Suraj Khatri Chetri, a journalist in the area, contacted by telephone.

The rebels, who belong to a banned group calling itself the Nepal Communist Party (Maoist), usually don't issue statements after attacks and do not operate offices in the country.

Rights group Amnesty International has accused both the security forces and the insurgents of killing civilians and committing other atrocities.

The fiercest attack took place on the house of Interior Security Minister Khum Bahadur Khadka in Satbariya, which was being guarded by at least 120 personnel of the newly formed Armed Police Force. It was established last year to quell the insurgency.

Officials said the rebels hurled bombs at the minister's house and opened fire at guards, triggering a battle that lasted several hours. At least 35 policemen were killed, said Kadel. It was not immediately known if any guerrillas were killed.

Kadel said that in the nearby town of Lamahi, the rebels raided a police station, killing 13 policemen and injuring 15. The guerrillas also waylaid a bus on a highway and killed six civilians before setting the vehicle on fire, Kadel said.

The rebels also bombed two banks in Lamahi and the electricity supply house, cutting power and communication in the area.

State-run Nepal Television showed pictures of the dead policemen and the charred remains of the police station.

While retreating the rebels blocked roads leading to the area with logs making rescue efforts difficult.

Another group of rebels attacked Ghorahi, the headquarters of Dang district, and Tulsipur, but were repulsed by the military after a gunbattle. There were no casualties.

A state of emergency was imposed on Nov. 26 by King Gyanendra after the rebels withdrew from peace talks, and the army was mobilized to help the police fight the guerrillas.

Led by commander Prachanda -- whose real name is Pushpa Kamal Dahal -- the rebels began fighting in 1996 from the remote mountainous areas.

-------- philippines

Manila Court Upholds U.S. Training Exercise

WORLD In Brief
Friday, April 12, 2002
Associated Press
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34638-2002Apr11?language=printer

MANILA -- The Philippine Supreme Court ruled that a U.S. counterterrorism training exercise for Philippine soldiers was legal but reminded U.S. troops that they cannot engage in combat.

In a 10 to 3 decision, the court upheld the validity of the six-month exercise aimed at helping wipe out the Muslim extremist group Abu Sayyaf, saying it was covered by two pacts between the United States and the Philippines.

-------- spy agencies

Intelligence agencies put their heads together

04/12/2002
By Jonathan Weisman,
USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/attack/2002/04/12/usat-osama.htm

WASHINGTON - Six months into the U.S. war on Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terrorist network, the largest manhunt in history appears to have reached a dead end.

But out of public view, the nation's intelligence agencies have squelched their chronic turf battles, divided up responsibilities more effectively and become increasingly confident that they will catch their prey.

The capture of senior al-Qaeda lieutenant Abu Zubaydah last month has convinced intelligence officials and many of their critics that the CIA, FBI, Defense Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency are finally working as a team and closing in on bin Laden, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.

"They've gotten their act together," former CIA counterterrorism chief Vince Cannistraro says.

Intelligence experts say the early-morning raid on an al-Qaeda safe house that netted Zubaydah on March 28 demonstrated the way U.S. intelligence should work.

For six weeks, CIA agents had tracked a suspicious group of Arab men in Pakistan, including one who military intelligence analysts believed fit Zubaydah's description. Phone lines were tapped, e-mails monitored. The FBI confirmed that agents were finally onto something big. Pakistani police were brought in, and the war on terrorism nabbed its biggest fish yet.

Zubaydah was the 13th senior al-Qaeda official to be captured or killed since the war in Afghanistan began Oct. 7. Intelligence officials still cannot say where bin Laden is, or even whether he's alive. But one intelligence official said that where Zubaydah is, bin Laden might not be far behind. Phone numbers, computers and notes seized at the al-Qaeda safe house in Faisalabad, in eastern Pakistan, could provide clues. And the efficiency of the capture shows the manhunt is beginning to click.

Intelligence agents have turned their attention to eastern Afghan, where they suspect a group of al-Qaeda leaders might be hiding, an intelligence source says.

"I believe we will catch (bin Laden)" predicts Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, senior Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Although President Bush acts in public as if catching bin Laden isn't a top priority, Pentagon officials say he cares deeply.

Virtually every day, Bush receives an update in a manila folder labeled "Top Secret" in bold red letters. Inside is a guide with the names and status of the top 27 al-Qaeda leaders on the Pentagon's watch list. Eight are believed to have been killed, four are in U.S. detention, and the remaining 15 are at large. Different colors are used to distinguish those killed from those captured and those whose whereabouts remain unknown.

Not everyone is sanguine about the intelligence community's performance. One congressional intelligence expert says the government has thrown more money and people at its al-Qaeda operation, but the CIA has yet to launch a systematic campaign to recruit Arab-Americans to infiltrate Islamic terrorist organizations. And even as intelligence agencies compile an ever-expanding database of information on al-Qaeda, computer experts have not devised automated tools to weed through it.

Nevertheless, some of the intelligence community's toughest critics say the agencies have responded to Sept. 11 admirably. "More than anything, it's the attitudes that have changed," says Shelby, a frequent critic of U.S. intelligence agencies. "They've made remarkable progress."

The groundwork for greater cooperation was laid throughout the 1990s. In 1992, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) established a computer database, code-named Harmony, to allow police agencies and intelligence officials to access the same information about terrorist activities worldwide.

The CIA, in coordination with the FBI, set up a bin Laden task force in 1996 within its counterterrorism center. That was two years before the devastating attacks on the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya that first brought bin Laden to world notoriety.

After Sept. 11, those early efforts were pushed into high gear. The CIA's bin Laden task force has expanded from a couple dozen officers to nearly 100 and now includes a dozen FBI agents plus representatives from the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Defense and Treasury departments, and the Federal Aviation Administration, according to a U.S. official. Virtually the entire counterterrorism center has turned its attention to al-Qaeda, and its staffing has soared, from 800 to as many as 5,000. Hundreds of retired agents, translators and CIA contractors have been brought back into service.

A separate bin Laden unit working within the FBI's international terrorism division doubled in size to 15 full-time analysts after the September attacks. "They're on a war footing," says Michael Vickers, a former CIA official now with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Information obtained by U.S. special operations forces in Afghanistan have turned Harmony into an extensive database networked to the CIA, FBI, National Security Agency (NSA), Pentagon and military Central Command headquarters in Tampa. Virtually every document found in safe houses, caves and training camps is collected by Central Command, sent to the DIA, then scanned into the database.

Intelligence experts cross-reference names, telephone numbers, e-mail accounts, dates and addresses. They send leads to the NSA, which then taps phone lines and computers in search of al-Qaeda. Information gleaned from FBI interrogations in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Camp X-ray detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is also fed into Harmony

The leads can be simple: a phone number tracked to an address. Or they can be more complicated. For instance, if analysts obtain information on how many people travel with bin Laden, the kinds of vehicles they drive and the routes they prefer, the data could be sent to CIA officials operating unmanned Predator spy planes. The operators would then have a better idea what they are looking for.

The human side of the manhunt is similarly complex. Navies from around the world have formed a "picket line" of ships that patrol coastlines from the Horn of Africa to the Strait of Malacca, which divides Malaysia and Indonesia, an intelligence official says. At the same time, the CIA's directorate of operations, fortified with $1 billion in emergency cash, has dramatically bolstered its network of spies, Vickers says.

CIA contacts around the globe watch their neighborhoods, villages and coastlines and report the arrival of strangers who could even remotely be linked to al-Qaeda.

"They're not just sitting back waiting to hear news," says Cannistraro, the former CIA counterterrorism chief. "It's obviously a major operation."

However, as one intelligence official notes, it's a big world. About 200 to 300 bin Laden sightings pour into the CIA daily. Most place him in eastern Afghanistan or the lawless border region of western Pakistan. But in recent weeks, the alleged mastermind of Sept. 11 has been reported anywhere from Salt Lake City to the impoverished African nation of Chad.

Acknowledges an exasperated U.S. official: "It's like Elvis."

Contributing: Kevin Johnson

-------- un

War Crimes Court Created Over Fierce U.S. Objection

By Colum Lynch
Special to The Washington Post
Friday, April 12, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34610-2002Apr11.html

UNITED NATIONS, April 11 -- The world's first permanent war crimes tribunal was officially launched today despite fierce opposition from the United States, as the 1998 treaty establishing the International Criminal Court received more than the 60 government ratifications required for its creation.

"The long-held dream of a permanent international criminal court will now be realized," U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said in Rome, where the 1998 treaty was negotiated after the bloody ethnic conflicts in the Balkans and the genocide in Rwanda. "Impunity has been dealt a decisive blow."

The Bush administration reiterated its resistance to the treaty and said once again that it will not send it to the Senate for ratification. China and Russia also have not ratified the accord.

"It has a number of fundamental problems," State Department spokesman Phil Reeker said. "It purports to assert jurisdiction over nationals of states not party to the treaty, contrary to the most basic principles of customary international law governing treaties."

The administration fears that the court might carry out frivolous trials against U.S. soldiers engaged in overseas combat or peacekeeping missions. It plans to announce in the coming weeks steps it intends to take to ensure that the court's jurisdiction does not extend to U.S. citizens.

The United States boycotted a ceremony at U.N. headquarters at which delegates from 10 countries -- Bosnia, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Congo, Ireland, Jordan, Mongolia, Niger, Romania and Slovakia -- deposited instruments of ratification, bringing to 66 the number of countries that have approved it.

The court, which will be based in The Hague, will have the authority to prosecute crimes committed after July 1, when the treaty formally enters into force. It will have jurisdiction over people charged with war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide, if their governments are unwilling or unable to try them.

The two existing U.N. tribunals for Bosnia and Rwanda will continue their work prosecuting dozens of war crimes suspects, including former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic, independent of the new court.

The treaty establishing the international court was signed by 139 countries, including the United States, during the Clinton administration. But President Bill Clinton never sought ratification because of congressional opposition, and the Bush administration is considering nullifying the U.S. signature.

The United States' boycott of the treaty has put it at odds with some of its closest allies, including Britain, France, Canada and Germany. A broad coalition of human rights and legal organizations criticized the Bush administration for opposing the court.

"The International Criminal Court is potentially the most important human rights institution created in 50 years," said Richard Dicker, an expert on the court at Human Rights Watch. "It will be the court where Saddam Husseins, Pol Pots and Augusto Pinochets of the future are held to account."

European nations lauded the court's creation as the most significant strike against war criminals in a century. They appealed to the United States and others to ratify it.

"International established law should also apply to large nations. For this reason it is unacceptable that the United States, China and Russia are still standing apart," German Justice Minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin said.

French President Jacques Chirac said the new court will bolster the achievements of the U.N. war crimes tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. "Starting now, all those who might be inclined to engage in the madness of genocide or crimes against humanity will know that nothing will be able to prevent justice," he said.

Pierre-Richard Prosper, the U.S. ambassador at large for war crimes, said that the goal of an international tribunal is "noble" but that it would be better to help governments enhance their own judicial capacities to try war criminals on their own soil.

He cited a new U.N. war crimes court in Sierra Leone, which includes foreign and local prosecutors, as a model for pursuing war criminals in countries where the local court is incapable of doing the job alone.

Prosper said the Bush administration will have to review its status-of-forces agreement governing the deployment of U.S. forces in as many as 100 countries to ensure that they will not be surrendered to the court. But he did not rule out that Washington might one day decide to cooperate with the court.

"The level of U.S. cooperation with the ICC in the future is a matter of speculation," he said. "But what I can say is that our intention is to be divorced from the process and play no role in it. The ICC is not the end-all be-all of accountability for atrocities as they occur around the world."

--------

War Crimes Tribunal Becomes Reality, Without U.S. Role

New York Times
April 12, 2002
By BARBARA CROSSETTE

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/12/international/12COUR.html

UNITED NATIONS, April 11 - More than half a century after it was proposed in the ruins of World War II, the world's first permanent court for the prosecution of war criminals and dictators became a reality today as the United States stood on the sidelines in strong opposition.

The treaty that established the court, which is expected to take shape in The Hague over the next year, went into effect after the 60th nation had ratified it. The court closes a gap in international law as the first permanent tribunal dedicated to trying individuals, not nations or armies, responsible for the most horrific crimes, including genocide and crimes against humanity.

Until now, just ad hoc courts like the Nuremberg trials after World War II and the Balkans tribunal that is now sitting in judgment on Slobodan Milosevic, the former Yugoslav president, have done that work.

"The long-held dream of the International Criminal Court will now be realized," Secretary General Kofi Annan said at a news conference in Rome, where 120 countries first agreed in 1998 to set up the tribunal. "Impunity has been dealt a decisive blow."

But the Bush administration again demonstrated its readiness to go it alone when it deems necessary, boycotting the ceremony here that celebrated the birth of the court. That attitude has prompted concern in Europe and elsewhere over a new American unilateralism.

The establishment of the court has been broadly welcomed by most democratic nations, American lawyers' associations and human rights groups. But it has an implacable foe in the Bush administration, which argues that the court will open American officials and military personnel in operations abroad to unjustified, frivolous or politically motivated suits.

The court will assume jurisdiction over charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed after July 1 of this year. Washington fears that a country as powerful as the United States, with its unchallenged military might and troops around the world, would be uniquely vulnerable to prosecutions. In theory, any American, from high-ranking officials like the Secretaries of Defense or State to soldiers in the field, could be accused of a crime.

President Bush appears to be on the verge of not only renouncing the tribunal, but also removing the signature of the United States from the treaty.

Even so, no country is deemed to be outside the court's jurisdiction. American participation would strengthen the court considerably, and by not taking part the United States will lose influence over court proceedings.

The United States signed the treaty for the court in December 2000 in the last days of the Clinton administration. Bush administration officials say it will never be sent to the Senate for ratification.

Congress has passed a law to forbid Americans at all levels of government to cooperate with the new court, and the United States is trying - so far without success - to insist on exemptions for Americans from its jurisdiction.

Today, five members of Congress, led by Henry J. Hyde, chairman of the House International Relations Committee, sent a letter to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell requesting that he ask the Security Council to write into every future peacekeeping resolution a grant of absolute immunity from the court for Americans who take part in operations. That would start with a renewal of the international force for Bosnia in June.

The New York City Bar Association was one of many organizations that wrote to Mr. Bush this week urging a reconsideration of what is apparently a decision to renounce the court treaty. The action, the president of the lawyers' group, Evan A. Davis, said would "weaken U.S. international standing at the very time we need international cooperation for the war against terrorism."

The United States ambassador for war crimes, Pierre-Richard Prosper, said in a conference call from Washington with reporters that Mr. Bush had not decided to "unsign" the treaty. But all his comments on the relations, or lack of them, between the United States and the court point to that end. Symbolically, the American seat at the ceremony today was empty.

It was a ceremony, Mr. Prosper said, "that we felt there was no need for us to attend, and there was no role for us to play."

Mr. Prosper seemed to rule out allowing the treaty to remain in limbo, perhaps to be reconsidered by a future administration.

"Our position is that we continue to oppose the treaty and do not intend to become a party," he said. "It is important that our position is made clear and that we operate here in good faith and not create expectations in the international community that we will be a party to this process in the near term."

Asked whether the United States would cooperate in handing over war criminals or information for prosecutions, Mr. Prosper said, "We have no obligation to the court."

David J. Scheffer, who signed the treaty for the United States as the ambassador for war crimes in the Clinton administration, said in an interview today that backing out now was "a very ill-advised strategy."

"The only reason you would unsign the treaty is if your intention was to wage war against the court," Mr. Scheffer said. "If your intention is not to wage war against the court but rather to try to preserve American interests, defend American interests, protect American interests, then the best strategy would be to remain as a signatory."

Michael Posner, executive director of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, said in an interview that unsigning the treaty would set a terrible precedent. "No American president in 200 years has unsigned a treaty, as far as we can find," he said. "It would also send a signal to other governments around the world that treaties they signed are unsignable."

Most democratic nations and all European Union countries have ratified the treaty - except Greece, which is in the process of doing so - along with Canada, New Zealand and a number of African, eastern European and central Asian countries. Israel has signed it but not ratified. Egypt, Iran and Syria have signed. India and Pakistan have neither signed nor ratified.

Besides the United States, other powerful nations have held themselves aloof, as well. Russia has signed but not ratified. China has done neither.

European allies have been among those trying to convince the United States that many safeguards are built into the court that can prevent frivolous or politically inspired prosecutions. Most cases will be brought by a chief prosecutor or the Security Council. A pretrial review panel will be able to throw out charges. Moreover, the court will be required to allow national courts to handle cases in the first instance.

Mr. Prosper said today that those steps were not enough. "The point is that we do view the safeguards as being insufficient," he said.

Mr. Annan tried to calm American fears today. "The court will prosecute in situations where the country concerned is either unable or unwilling to prosecute," he said. "Countries with good judicial systems who apply the rule of law and prosecute criminals and do it promptly and fairly need not fear.

"I don't think this a court that is going to run amok."

-------- venezuela

President of Venezuela Resigns Under Pressure From Military

New York Times
April 12, 2002
By JUAN FORERO
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/12/international/12CND-VENE.html

CARACAS, Venezuela, April 12 - A transitional government made up of business executives and labor leaders prepared to take power today after Hugo Chávez was forced to resign as president in the wake of violent street protests in which at least 11 people were killed by the president's supporters.

Mr. Chávez, 47, a firebrand populist who had promised to remake Venezuelan society to benefit the poor, resigned to three military officers about 3 a.m. today, hours after a three-day general strike called by his opponents had degenerated into violence. Mr. Chávez, in military fatigues and the trademark red beret of his left-leaning movement, was driven off to the Fort Tiuna army base in Caracas, where he in custody.

Pedro Carmona, head of the transitional government and the president of Fedecámaras, the country's most powerful business group, said that "justice must be done" for the families of those who died Thursday afternoon when shots rained down on anti-government protesters marching toward the presidential palace. Venezuela's army commander, Efraín Vásquez Velasco, who broke ranks with Mr. Chávez's government on Thursday night, said Mr. Chávez's possible role in the killings would be investigated.

"President Hugo Chávez presented his resignation," Mr. Carmona said this morning, flanked by military officers who abandoned Mr. Chávez on Thursday night. Mr. Carmona added that a transitional government was being formed with "the consensus of civil society and also from the military, and which I have been asked to head."

Details about who would be in the government were not made clear by midday, though others who played important roles in the budding anti-Chávez opposition movement included Carlos Ortega, the president of the Venezuelan Workers Confederation, the largest union here, and Alfredo Peña, the mayor of Caracas. In addition, Guaicaipuro Lameda, a former general who was fired as president of the state oil company, became a leading spokesman for the opposition this week.

Mr. Carmona promised that the new government would adhere to "a pluralistic vision" and would be democratic and civil and "ensure the implementation of the law, the state of law."

Mr. Chávez's fast fall from power marked a remarkable turn of events for the former army paratrooper, who won office in 1998 promising to overturn what he called the country's corrupt institutions, like the National Assembly and two old-line political parties. Mr. Chávez's government rewrote the Venezuela's Constitution, took control of the National Assembly and embarked on a series of social programs.

Although his policies infuriated Venezuela's powerful sectors, including the small upper class and much of the middle class, he retained the support of a majority of Venezuela's 24 million people as recently as eight months ago.

But in November, opposition began to mount after Mr. Chávez's government passed 49 economic laws, among them legislation that tightened government control of the state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, and permitted the expropriation of farmland. Opponents said the government did not seek input before passing the legislation, which was seen as anti-business and damaging to the country's economy.

Mr. Chávez's refusal to negotiate changes in the laws with business representatives and labor leaders, who were angry with his efforts to take over unions, led to spiraling street protests from December on. Then, as company executives became increasingly dissatisfied with Mr. Chávez's management of Petróleos de Venezuela, particularly his naming of five allies to its board, thousands of workers engaged in slowdowns that crippled oil exports in recent days.

Last week, furious that Mr. Chávez refused to negotiate and continued to mock them as "traitors" and "subversives," the executives started to stage the slowdowns. Then, on Sunday, Mr. Carmona and Mr. Ortega decided to stage a general nationwide strike for Tuesday, the second since Dec. 10.

When Mr. Chávez and his ministers said on Tuesday that the strike had failed, the organizers extended it until Wednesday and then on that day, decided to extend again, this time indefinitely.

On Thursday, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans, waving flags, carrying placards and yelling for Mr. Chávez's resignation, took to the streets in an enormous march that stretched throughout the streets of the capital, which are normally clogged with traffic.

The bloodshed on the third day of the general strike brought a sudden and sharp escalation to Venezuela's turmoil, which had already contributed to wild swings in world oil prices this week. Venezuela, Latin America's only OPEC member, is the world's fourth-largest oil producer and supplies about 15 percent of oil imports to the United States.

In the heart of Caracas, young men who supported Mr. Chávez roamed the streets Thursday night carrying large sticks and bottles, which they threw at passing cars. It appeared that they were positioned to prevent outsiders from passing along the trash-strewn streets to Miraflores, the presidential palace.

Earlier, Mr. Chávez, in an improvised address that was televised nationally in the midst of pitched street battles between police and demonstrators, scoffed at the possibility that he could be ousted from power. But as he embarked on a long, rambling speech, popular opposition and disgust with his administration was swelling in the wake of the violence against the antigovernment protesters.

Mr. Chávez also outraged Venezuelans when he ordered five private television stations shut down, charging that they were inciting violence by broadcasting news about the protests. Tanks and troops were then seen moving throughout the outskirts of the city.

By late Thursday afternoon, confusion and panic reigned in the streets of Caracas.

The police threw tear gas canisters to disperse demonstrators and shots started to ring out. Venezuelan television showed plainclothes gunmen firing wildly, using semiautomatic handguns, as people scrambled in fear through streets shrouded by the police tear gas.

Gen. Carlos Martínez of the National Guard said at a news conference that his troops had witnessed the shootings. He said the gunmen who had fired on the protesters were from the Bolívarian Circles, pro-government neighborhood groups.

"They used violence on the other protesters," he said.

Mayor Peña of Caracas said the government had "unleashed their Dobermans," charging that the gunmen came from the pro-Chávez district of Libertador.

"They began to shoot like they were hunting, just firing away," Mr. Peña said in a televised interview on Thursday.

Many of the wounded, shot as they ran through the streets, were taken to the Jóse Maria Vargas Hospital in downtown Caracas, a trauma center that was filled with bloodied protesters and frantic doctors.

"We had a complete collapse," said Dr. Pablo Rausseo, the emergency room chief, late in the night as things calmed down. "We were not prepared for so many hurt people." He said, however, that the emergency room's regular team of 10 doctors was beefed up to 60 with the arrival of doctors from other hospitals.

Pedro Aristimuño, the secretary of health for metropolitan Caracas, said that 10 people who suffered mortal wounds in the fracas were brought into the Vargas hospital. "What we noticed was that the most serious wounds were in the cranium and cheek," he said in an interview. "They appeared to be shots from above."


-------- POLICE / PRISONERS

Court Martial Changes Issued

April 12, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bush-Military-Justice.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Military courts could sentence some criminals to life without parole and forbid witnesses from talking to reporters under changes to the manual for courts-martial issued by the White House Friday.

The changes also spell out for the first time rules for prosecuting military members for adultery. The rules say the adultery must either damage military order and discipline or hurt the military's reputation.

The new rules take effect May 15. As commander in chief, President Bush has the power to write regulations controlling military courts.

Bush's new rules allow military courts to sentence defendants to life in prison either with or without parole for serious crimes such as murder, rape and kidnapping. Previously, the courts could sentence those criminals to a life sentence with no determination of whether parole would be allowed.

The new rules also allow military judges to issue ``gag orders'' prohibiting witnesses or parties to a case from discussing the case outside the courtroom. Civilian courts sometimes issue such orders in high-profile cases to prevent public statements judges believe could improperly influence jurors.

Eric Seitz, a California attorney who has been involved with more than 1,000 court-martial cases since the 1960s, said the gag order could be unconstitutional, depending on how broadly it is applied.

``I suppose that in the military people can be ordered not to communicate to people outside the command structure,'' Seitz said. ``But outside of that, there may be a problem with a military judge ordering civilians not to talk.''

Adultery by a member of the military is a crime that can lead to a dishonorable discharge and up to one year in prison.

The new rules state that adultery ``is clearly unacceptable conduct'' but to be a crime ``must either be directly prejudicial to good order and discipline or service discrediting.''

That means the adultery must have a divisive effect on a military unit or be so well known that it dishonors the military, the new rules say.

In deciding whether to charge someone with criminal adultery, commanding officers should consider circumstances including the rank of the offenders, the misuse of government time or resources during the affair, whether the affair persisted despite orders to halt and the impact of the affair on the military unit.

Seitz said the adultery rules are overdue.

``The way in which adultery is pursued as a crime has been vastly unfair for years,'' Seitz said. ``High-ranking officials have affairs in full view of other officials and then the military decides to make an example of a private. If these rules create a more fair situation, I am for it.''

Earlier rules had said that adultery must damage military discipline or hurt the military's reputation to be a crime, but did not spell out how that was to be determined.

The U.S. military had several public cases of adultery during the late 1990s. In 1997, Lt. Kelly Flinn, the Air Force's first female B-52 pilot, resigned rather than face adultery charges for an affair with the husband of another Air Force member.

Flinn's case led to charges by critics that a double standard existed that shielded male officers from adultery charges. Since then, at least four generals and admirals have been punished for adultery and related offenses. They included retired Maj. Gen. David Hale, the highest-ranking Army officer to face a court-martial since 1952, and Sgt. Maj. of the Army Gene McKinney, then the Army's highest-ranking enlisted soldier.

On the Net:
Copy of changes: http://www.jag.navy.mil/html/reading--room.htm/
and click on Manual for Courts Martial (2000 edition)

--------

Study Urged for National ID System

April 12, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Identity-Cards.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- While a national identity card has been widely discussed following the terrorist attacks, a panel of the National Academy of Sciences says any such system must carefully balance security needs with privacy concerns.

A well-run national system would make it more difficult for a person to have multiple identities and would help in finding people such as potential terrorists, the committee concluded.

But serious questions must be addressed about how to protect privacy, who would use the system, whether participation would be mandatory, the type of information to be collected and how to deal with any failure or misuse of the system.

``The technical challenges, the expense and the strong potential for infringement on the civil liberties of ordinary citizens demand that any proposed identity system undergo strict public scrutiny and a thorough engineering review,'' said Stephen Kent, chairman of the committee that wrote the report: ``IDs -- Not That Easy.''

Kent is chief scientist for information security at BBN Technologies, a research firm based in Cambridge, Mass.

National identity cards are used in some other countries but there is no common system, the report noted.

The committee was organized by the National Research Council, an arm of the academy. The National Academy of Science is an independent organization chartered to provide advice the government on scientific matters.


-------- ENERGY AND OTHER

-------- energy

Enron Trading Gave Prices Artificial Lift, Panel Is Told

New York Times
April 12, 2002
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/12/business/12CALI.html

WASHINGTON, April 11 - A top California regulator told Congress today that the Enron Corporation engaged in sham transactions in late 2000 that drove up electricity prices and helped worsen the energy crisis that plagued the West for more than a year.

Testifying to a subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee, Loretta Lynch, president of the California Public Utilities Commission, said regulators had studied Enron's actions in the fourth quarter of 2000 and had determined that five subsidiaries traded large volumes of electricity contracts among themselves in an effort to push up prices.

Ms. Lynch said the effect of the trading was to set prices throughout the wholesale electricity market in California far above what was justified. "I believe these trades were sham transactions," Ms. Lynch said. The company, she said, "would trade among itself to drive the price up."

Enron said that it had not manipulated prices and that the problems in California were a result of a flawed deregulation system combined with other factors like a drought in the Northwest and a temporary decline in generating capacity.

"We have and we will continue to cooperate with the committee's investigation," a spokesman for Enron, Mark Palmer, said. "We have cooperated with numerous previous investigations, all of which found that the market structure was the cause of California's energy crisis, not Enron." The committee did not invite Enron to send a representative to the hearing.

Other witnesses from California, including S. David Freeman, the chairman of the California Power Authority; and Joseph Dunn, a state senator who is leading an inquiry into the power crisis, concurred with Ms. Lynch that Enron, with other energy companies, had manipulated prices.

"We must recognize that the so-called invisible hand of Adam Smith was Enron and their fellow gougers picking the pockets of Californians to the tune of billions of dollars," Mr. Freeman said. "Prices were skyrocketing in California in late 2000 and early 2001 as a direct result of Enron's influence and participation."

Today's hearing continued a battle between Enron and many of California's most prominent officeholders and appointees - most of them Democrats - over who is to blame for the spike in electricity rates.

The crisis, which eased last summer after the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission intervened, briefly hobbled the state's economy, threw its politics into turmoil and left California taxpayers and consumers with a multibillion-dollar hangover.

Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, said Enron "used us as a cash cow to keep that company afloat, to keep the stock price high so insiders could cash out."

But some Republicans suggested that Enron was being used as a whipping boy by Californians for their botched effort at deregulating their electricity market. Senator Peter G. Fitzgerald, Republican of Illinois, told the hearing that he was "skeptical" that Enron had anything to do with the problem, which also afflicted other Western states.

Some witnesses at today's hearing said it was difficult to know precisely what Enron's role had been in influencing prices because the data available about transactions in energy markets was hard to interpret.

But they said there was considerable evidence that Enron planned to drive prices up and profit in a variety of ways. Robert McCullough, an energy analyst from Portland, Ore., who has studied Enron's activities, told the panel that the company sold a site for a power plant in Oregon in 1999 in a deal that suggested the company knew electricity prices would rise sharply.

Mr. McCullough said the deal ended with the site being 50 percent owned by LJM2, an investment partnership managed by a senior Enron executive that is at the heart of the problems that pushed the company into bankruptcy protection last year. Internal Enron documents, he said, showed that LJM2 anticipated a 22 percent return on investment from the project even as Enron was telling the Oregon Public Utilities Commission that it expected 15 percent.

"LJM2 apparently was able to either operate in the same markets with vastly more expertise than Enron," Mr. McCullough said, "or LJM2's estimate showed foreknowledge of the events to come."

Ms. Lynch said an examination of electricity trading by Enron affiliates and subsidiaries in the fourth quarter of 2000 showed that about 30 percent of the transactions were among themselves. She said her analysis was based on data supplied by Enron to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. She did not address the possibility that the trades reflected market pressures driving prices upward.

The Enron-related companies - the New Power Company, Enron Energy Services, Enron Energy Marketing, Enron Power Marketing and Portland General Electric - traded nearly 12 million megawatt-hours of electricity in the period at prices ranging from 5 cents a megawatt-hour to $3,322 an hour, she said.

A megawatt-hour is enough to run 1,000 room air-conditioners for about an hour. Before deregulation, utilities typically bought and sold electricity at around $30 a megawatt-hour.

"Enron was selling the same megawatts back and forth to itself, causing the price to rise with each sale, all under the rules it had helped to create," Ms. Lynch said in her prepared testimony. "The selling back and forth also created the illusion of an active, volatile market."

Because Enron booked as revenue the value of each trade, the transactions allowed the company "to create false value," she said. And because Enron reported the trades on its online trading system, she said, they created an artificially high benchmark price for other companies buying and selling power. In addition to benefiting directly from the trades at higher prices, she said, Enron profited by creating the appearance that transmission lines would be overburdened by huge flows of electricity among various power sources.

-------- environment

Senator Criticizes White House Over Limits on Pollutants Treaty

April 12, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/12/international/12TREA.html

WASHINGTON, April 11 (AP) - The chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee took issue today with a White House proposal to enact a treaty phasing out a dozen highly toxic chemicals without offering a means to eliminate future pollutants.

The treaty contains a provision for dealing with future pollutants; the administration's legislation enabling Congress to enact the treaty is missing that provision. The legislator said that lack effectively limited the scope of the treaty.

"To send up this proposal without the ability to regulate new harmful substances is shortsighted and does not fulfill our commitment to this global treaty," said the committee chairman, Senator James M. Jeffords, a Vermont independent, who introduced a bill that would restore such an ability.

The treaty focuses on the 12 pollutants commonly known as the "dirty dozen" - PCB's, dioxins and furans, along with DDT and other pesticides - which although no longer in use in industrialized countries are still in use in other parts of the world.

The disputed provision would allow any additional chemicals to be banned only after a rigorous scientific review involving analysis by a science committee and approval by a majority of nations involved. In the administration's latest proposal, the agency and the State Department left that process out.

"It got so complicated to find language that was comprehensive enough and yet didn't tie our hands or would be something that could be accepted by the rest of the world community," said Christie Whitman, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, who signed the treaty for the United States last May. "We still embrace the idea that there are going to be future chemicals that are going to be added."

Almost a year after promising to ask the Senate to ratify the treaty, President Bush formally submitted his request today. But the administration has offered Congress no advice on how to meet the treaty's goal of adding pollutants to the list. At least one of the E.P.A.'s earlier drafts provided a mechanism for anticipating what chemicals might need to be phased out.

Production and use of 9 of the 12 chemicals in question would be banned as soon as the treaty took effect, in several years. About 25 countries would be allowed to continue to use DDT against malaria, pending development of safer solutions.

-------- health

China Raises H.I.V. Count in New Report

New York Times
April 12, 2002
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/12/international/asia/12AIDS.html

BEIJING, April 11 - China published new statistics today about the severity of its AIDS epidemic, estimating that 850,000 people had been infected with H.I.V. by the end of 2001, up 30 percent from government estimates released last summer.

The estimates, published by the New China News Agency and attributed to health officials, said that 200,000 people might already have progressed to AIDS.

The numbers were the highest yet put out by the Chinese government, which has been slowly coming to terms with an epidemic that centers on intravenous drug users as well as people who were infected through unsanitary practices while either selling or receiving blood.

But they still fall far short of estimates made by foreign experts working in China as well as some Chinese researchers.

According to United Nations figures late last year, an estimated 1.5 million Chinese have human immunodeficiency virus. United Nations officials have said the number could rise to 20 million if China does not take prompt and aggressive action.

Part of the reason for the uncertainty is that China has never undertaken the kind of comprehensive nationwide survey that would allow a more precise tally of cases.

While there are relatively good statistics for some provinces, like Yunnan, there is almost no public information about others, like Henan, where local officials have often blocked scientific work on what is regarded as a sensitive and embarrassing problem.

In today's report, the Health Ministry said that 68 percent of China's H.I.V. cases were caused by sharing needles among intravenous drug users and 7.2 percent by unprotected sex, while 9.7 percent of the cases were the result of blood collecting and transfusion through unclean methods.

But that breakdown is partly a function of the spotty nature of epidemiology here, since China has been far more open in confronting the epidemic among drug users than the one among poor farmers. Also, there has been little government effort to define the scope of H.I.V. in China's growing gay community, although researchers acknowledge that the disease has taken hold there.

-------- human rights

Gays in China Step Out, With One Foot in Closet

New York Times
April 12, 2002
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/12/international/asia/12CHIN.html

SHENZHEN, China - A pillar of Shenzhen's thriving gay community, Mr. Wu networks his way through the noise and smoke of the packed club in this high-powered business town, bestowing greetings, drinks and hugs on men who refer to themselves, with a touch of irony, as "comrades."

Gone are the days when gays in China's cities lived completely closeted lives, and the Galaxy Club - whose large glass doors open unapologetically onto the lobby of a government office building - is a giddy, liberated kind of place.

Young men in tight jeans swoon together singing karaoke. Androgynous types drink beer and throw dice. Men sporting baseball caps search for love or sex.

Mr. Wu, an entrepreneur in his 30's who considers himself an activist of sorts, talks comfortably above the disco beat about being gay.

But when the doors close at 2 or 3 a.m., he will cross the border to the other world also inhabited by the vast majority of China's gay men, that of husband and father, as he returns to the apartment he shares with his wife and school-age child.

"In China there is a very strong tradition that to be a man you must get married and have a child, so I did," explained Mr. Wu, who refused to give his full name. "We also respect and obey our parents' wishes, so I did it for them, too."

As gay clubs, newsletters and Web sites multiply in mainland China, gay men in a few places like Shenzhen are enjoying choices and a kind of freedom that was unthinkable only a few years ago. China effectively decriminalized homosexuality only in 1997. It came off the list of mental illnesses just last year.

But now that it is practically possible to live as a gay man in China, the vast majority still exist in a strange sort of limbo. The norm in the gay community is to get married, play it straight at work and shuttle regularly between two lives.

"The first question you ask when you meet a new friend isn't `Do your parents know?' because in China 99 percent don't. Instead it's `Are you married?' " said Chung To, founder of the Hong Kong-based Chi Heng Foundation, which deals with issues of sexual discrimination.

"Even people who are out and very active socially can't utter the word homosexual," he said. "There's a lot of denial."

For gay men, the increasingly open atmosphere has made it possible to air long-suppressed issues, evident in the chat room postings by gay men who are married or under pressure to find a bride.

More important, the emergence of this partly closeted, partly liberated, sexually active gay community at the same time that AIDS cases are rising quickly in China has created unique challenges.

Chinese doctors are just beginning to investigate and deal with AIDS in this poorly defined high-risk group, whose members are sometimes still unclear about their sexuality and frequently have sexual relations with men and women.

"AIDS education is very complicated among gays in China because the group of men who have sex with men overlaps considerably with the heterosexual community," said Mr. Chung To, whose foundation has taken up the cause on the mainland.

In part because so many of the men involved do not identify themselves as homosexuals, there are almost no statistics on infection rates among gays here, although small samples from Beijing and Shenzhen have suggested that rates may already be as high as 5 to 10 percent. Even in the far northeastern province of Jilin, which is not known to have many H.I.V. cases, a recent study found that 1.5 percent of gay men were already infected there.

For two years Mr. Chung To has labored tirelessly to raise awareness about H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, among mainland gays, using his own money to buy and distribute condoms and safe-sex messages at clubs, for example.

Xiao Wang, 19, is a male hustler in Shenzhen, a city where some government researchers estimate that up to 9 percent of gay men may carry H.I.V. and less than 30 percent of sex workers use condoms.

A thin, quiet young man in a psychedelic shirt, Mr. Wang believes he is gay, although he admits to some uncertainty. But he is certain of this: gay or straight, marriage is in his future.

"Marriage is just part of life," he says."After a few years I'll go to my hometown to find a bride, not marry someone from Shenzhen. Girls here just care about money and appearance. They can't offer emotional comfort."

The strange dual life that is now the norm among China's urban gays is an odd but effective compromise between the new social opportunities available in this rapidly changing country and a still deeply conservative society, in which keeping up appearances and continuing the family line is far more important than self-expression.

The concept of an openly gay son is anathema to most families. Dr. Ma Xiaonian, a well-known Beijing sex therapist, said he saw a steady stream of homosexuals who want to be "cured," even though he assures them tnat they are not ill.

"Officially, academics now say it's not a disease, but it's still a very long process to change how people think," Dr. Ma said. "So I'm afraid most do get married and they have a child, but these relationships are very hard to maintain."

The simplest solution for those who can afford it is to lead two lives - homosexual in the city, heterosexual in the hometown - since there is a long tradition of Chinese businessmen moving to big cities to work, leaving wives and children as well as parents behind. Because of China's system of residency permits, families are often not allowed to make the move anyway.

Shenzhen, a city of transients and traders established by the government in the late 1970's to foster foreign trade, is the perfect safe haven for an estimated 150,000 gay men who live here.

Ordinary Chinese need a permit even to enter this "special economic zone," and its morals are drawn less from the mainland than from nearby cosmopolitan Hong Kong. More important, almost everyone here works for private companies and there are no government work units tracking personal lives.

"A lot of gays come to Shenzhen because life is freer here, parents and families are far away and it's normal to rent or share and apartment," said Peter Zhou, who started a popular gay Web site here two years ago.

At clubs like Galaxy there is no sense of shame about being gay. Many men are not bothered by the compromise of marriage, which they regard as necessary for their survival.

While Mr. Wu, the businessman, says that while his relationship with his wife is not very "passionate," he is nonetheless a proud papa.

"How does it feel to be married?" Mr. Wu said. "I can't tell my wife. I can't tell my child. I can't tell my parents. Some people avoid it by fleeing overseas. But if you stay in China there's no choice, really."

But outside big cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing and Shenzhen, a double life is less feasible, and China's more than 250 gay Web sites serve as a sort of virtual therapist for men who have no other outlet.

"They tell us how painful their lives are," said Mr. Zhou. "They want to tell their wives and parents the truth, but they don't dare." He has solved the problem for himself by moving here and having little contact with parents, who "ask few questions."

Yi Yu, a 19-year-old from a small town in China's distant north, has been living in Beijing for more than a year, working as a waiter, a security guard and, more recently, a part-time hustler. He says 80 percent of his clients are married.

He now totes a white cellphone and wears sleek silk shirts with large cuff links. He has come to accept that he is gay, but recalls arriving in Beijing as "a country bumpkin," a high school dropout, unqualified for most jobs and sexually confused, having heard in school that men who have sex with men are "perverts."

"My ideal is to take the money I've earned here and go home to set up house and a store - with a partner," he said. "But of course that's not even really possible in Beijing right now, and forget it in the kind of place where I'm from."


-------- ACTIVISTS

Closed-Door Meeting With Ridge Riles Lawmaker

WASHINGTON IN BRIEF
Friday, April 12, 2002
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34614-2002Apr11.html

Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio) walked out of a closed-door briefing by Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge, saying it should have been held in public.

Other Democrats on the House Government Reform Committee complained about the format but stayed to hear Ridge, who said he covered a "fairly exhaustive list" of issues including airport security, the safety of seaports and plans for the continuity of government after a terrorist strike.

Kucinich said Ridge was dodging efforts to hold him accountable for homeland security strategy by refusing to formally testify in a public setting -- a claim other House and Senate Democrats have lodged. The White House has said Ridge cannot be compelled to testify because he is a presidential adviser with no operational authority.

----

Generals Revolt in Venezuela After 10 Protesters Are Killed

New York Times
April 12, 2002
By JUAN FORERO
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/12/international/americas/12VENE.html

CARACAS, Venezuela, Friday, April 12 - A group of high-ranking generals broke ranks Thursday night to demand the resignation of President Hugo Chávez after at least 10 people were killed and more than 100 wounded when hundreds of thousands of protesters marched on the presidential palace.

Among those who rebelled was the army commander, Gen. Efraín Vásquez Velasco. "Mr. President, I was loyal to the end, but today's deaths cannot be tolerated," he said in a news conference this evening.

Late Thursday night, a National Guard general, Alberto Camacho Kairuz, announced that Mr. Chávez's government was out of power and that the armed forces were now in control of the country, one of the top suppliers of oil to the United States.

"The government has abandoned its functions," he said. But early this morning it was unclear who was actually in charge.

Mr. Chávez, a mercurial left-leaning leader whose policies had antagonized much of Venezuelan society, had appeared on national television on Thursday, defiantly telling viewers he would remain in power.

Early this morning the 24-hour television news station, Globovision, reported that Mr. Chavez had reached out to military officials to negotiate the terms of his resignation.

Local news reports also said that a number of top government ministers had resigned, among them the defense minister, José Vicente Rangell, and the finance minister, Gen. Francisco Usón Ramírez. In the heart of Caracas, young men who support Mr. Chávez roamed the streets Thursday night carrying large sticks and bottles, which they threw at passing cars. It appeared that they were positioned to prevent outsiders from passing along the trash-strewn streets to Miraflores, the presidential palace.

Earlier, Mr. Chávez, in an improvised address that was televised nationally in the midst of pitched street battles between police and demonstrators, scoffed at the possibility that he could be ousted from power. But as he embarked on a long, rambling speech, popular opposition and disgust with his administration was swelling in the wake of the violence against the antigovernment protesters.

The bloodshed came on the third day of a general strike called by labor and business leaders against Mr. Chávez, a populist whose autocratic style had turned much of Venezuela against him in recent months.

It brought a sudden and sharp escalation to Venezuela's turmoil, which had already contributed to wild swings in world oil prices this week. Venezuela, Latin America's only OPEC member, is the world's fourth-largest oil producer and supplies about 15 percent of oil imports to the United States.

Mr. Chávez also outraged Venezuelans when he ordered five private television stations shut down, charging that they were inciting violence by broadcasting news about the protests. Tanks and troops were then seen moving throughout the outskirts of the city.

In his televised address on Thursday, the president played down the troubles and accused private television stations of urging Venezuelans to try to oust him. At least one of the five stations that he had ordered closed continued to broadcast images of the protests.

"They have put themselves outside the law to instigate violence, knowing there is an insurrectional plan, a crazy plan, a diabolic plan, an irrational plan," said Mr. Chávez, wearing a suit and tie and sitting at a desk with a portrait of the South American liberator, Simón Bolívar, behind him.

In his monologue, Mr. Chávez questioned the strength of the strike, saying, "What stoppage?" But then, alluding to the protesters in the streets, he said, "I am worried about the situation, of course. How could I not be?"

The president said he had ordered troops to surround the presidential palace, "to have a cushion" to protect people inside and pro-government protesters just outside.

By late Thursday afternoon, confusion and panic reigned in the streets of Caracas.

Police threw tear gas canisters to disperse demonstrators and shots started to ring out, some apparently from rooftops. Venezuelan television showed plainclothes gunmen firing wildly, using semiautomatic handguns, as people scrambled in fear through streets shrouded by the police tear gas.

Gen. Carlos Martínez of the National Guard said in a news conference that his troops had witnessed the shootings. He said the gunmen who had fired on the protesters were from the Bolívarian Circles, pro-government neighborhood groups.

"They used violence on the other protesters," he said.

The mayor of Caracas, Alfredo Peña, a strident opponent of the president, said the government had "unleashed their Dobermans," charging that the gunmen came from the pro-Chávez district of Libertador.

"They began to shoot like they were hunting, just firing away," Mr. Peña said in a televised interview.

Many of the wounded, shot as they ran through the streets, were taken to the Jóse Maria Vargas Hospital in downtown Caracas, a trauma center that was filled with bloodied protesters and frantic doctors.

"We had a complete collapse," said Dr. Pablo Rausseo, the emergency room chief, late in the night as things calmed down. "We were not prepared for so many hurt people." He said, however, that the emergency room's regular team of 10 doctors was beefed up to 60 with the arrival of doctors from other hospitals.

Pedro Aristimuño, the secretary of health for metropolitan Caracas, said that 10 people who suffered mortal wounds in the fracas were brought into the Vargas hospital. "What we noticed was that the most serious wounds were in the cranium and cheek," he said in an interview. "They appeared to be shots from above."

After the violence, a group of generals and other high-ranking officers held a news conference to call for Mr. Chávez to step down. "We cannot allow a tyrant to run the Republic of Venezuela," said Navy Vice Adm. Hector Rafael Ramírez.

The strike organizers calling the work stoppage were angered by Mr. Chávez's management changes at Petróleos de Venezuela, the state-owned oil behemoth that is the economic pillar of the country. The strike shuttered many of Venezuela's offices and factories and severely hobbled the oil company.

Mr. Chávez's defiant refusal to talk with the protesters, whom he called "traitors" and "subversives," further antagonized his opponents.

"Chávez get out!" Carlos Ortega, president of the million-member Venezuelan Workers Confederation, shouted in a street rally. "We do not want you! We reject you!"

Mr. Chávez seemed to give his opponents a peace offering at the end of his televised talk, announcing the creation of two commissions to deal with the conflict at Petróleos de Venezuela and to address other concerns about his government.

Pedro Carmona, leader of the powerful Fedecámaras business group, and Mr. Ortega, the labor confederation president, were meeting into the evening and had not responded to the president's announcement.

Observers, though, said that they did not believe that there could be a negotiated solution now.

In an unusual announcement, Gen. Lucas Rincón, the armed forces chief, went on national television Thursday afternoon and denied rumors that Mr. Chávez had been asked to resign by the military or was in the custody of the army.

"The situation in the country is normal," said General Rincón. "We call on the Venezuelan people to maintain calm."

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Louder Voices on Streets as Mideast Strife Grows

New York Times
April 12, 2002
By JACOB H. FRIES
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/12/nyregion/12ORGA.html

As casualties in the Mideast mount, so have the voices for each side, with almost daily rallies across New York City. About 400 demonstrators gathered yesterday outside the Israeli consulate in Midtown in support of Israel's military offensive in the West Bank. And today, thousands of demonstrators are expected to descend on Times Square in opposition to it.

In many smaller, less public ways, Jews in particular have become increasingly organized around the country. At some synagogues, rabbis have asked followers to call someone in Israel every day to let them know that Americans care. They have also started efforts to "adopt" families of victims of suicide bombings and have encouraged the buying of Israeli products on Web sites.

Support for the Palestinians has also bubbled up, with gatherings last weekend in Times Square and outside Brooklyn's Borough Hall, where protesters shouted, "Free, free Palestine."

Organizers of today's pro-Palestinian demonstration hope to draw as many as 50,000 participants to Times Square, for a religious service at 1 p.m. followed by speeches about life for Palestinian civilians. Mosques across the city and parts of New Jersey and Connecticut will be closed as worshipers participate in the rally.

The east side of Broadway will be blocked off from 34th to 42nd Street, organizers said. The rally is scheduled to end at 6 p.m.

"There should be a huge crowd - 60 buses have been rented in New Jersey alone," said Magdy Mahmoud, an organizer. "And together we are calling upon the president to end aid to Israel until it abides by U.N. resolutions and international law."

As for the Israelis, many expect that the strongest show of support so far will come on Monday in Washington, where organizers hope that more than 100,000 people will attend their rally at the Capitol. Dozens of synagogues and different groups across New York plan to send busloads of people.

The Ramaz School, a prominent yeshiva on the Upper East Side, has canceled most classes and chartered 32 buses.

"It's really important for Israel, the president and the country to see us there," said Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, the school principal. "It's also critically important for us to see ourselves there. I like to think that when a Jew hurts anywhere, every Jew should hurt everywhere."

Several pro-Palestinian groups have planned a large-scale rally and march outside the White House for April 20. College students across the country are coordinating the event with the help of the Internet. A meeting was held in Park Slope last night to sign up volunteers.

"We're trying to put a crimp in President Bush's all-war-all-the-time agenda," said Tony Murphy, a spokesman for Answer Coalition, a primary organizer of the demonstration in Washington. Mr. Murphy, a freelance editor in New York, said that the war has become the favorite cause of many college students. "There's been an outpouring on campuses for Palestinians," he said. "It's beginning to look like the 60's or the anti-apartheid movement."

Some demonstrators also intend to rally outside the Washington Hilton Hotel, where Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel is invited to a banquet on April 22, Mr. Murphy said.

For some Jews, organizing efforts that began in New York will ultimately lead to Israel. The American Physicians Fellowship, a Jewish group that maintains a registry of about 400 medical workers prepared to travel to the Middle East, has scheduled a drill next week to see how quickly doctors can mobilize, said I. Kelman Cohen, the group's president. Medical workers will be dispatched the moment the Israeli government says it need them. "We're running through our list of doctors and checking who can really drop everything if they're called," said Mr. Cohen, a surgeon in Richmond, Va. He said the group had not sent doctors to Israel since the Yom Kippur War in 1973. "Hopefully we won't be needed this time around," he said, "but you never know."

Other efforts are more individual. Steve Quester, 39, a Jewish schoolteacher in Brooklyn, returned Tuesday night from Bethlehem, where he spent his spring break in a Palestinian refugee camp. Yesterday, he said, several of his first-graders came into class with questions.

"Some of my kids said they had been told I went to stop a war," Mr. Quester said. "`Yeah,' I told them, `that's about right.' To them, it sounded like a good idea. I think it's in line with their first-grade notions of justice."

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Mass Protests Engulf Arab World

April 12, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-mideast-protests.html

AMMAN - Protests against Israel and the United States engulfed the Arab and Muslim worlds again on Friday, but in Jordan a rally was canceled in fears a huge police presence risked civilian lives.

In the Gaza Strip, Palestinians burned President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell in effigy during mass protests against Washington's support for the Jewish state as Israeli troops have killed at least 200 Palestinians in the West Bank during a two-week military onslaught.

``Colin Powell, go home,'' supporters of the Islamic militant group Hamas chanted in Jabaliya refugee camp, where about 30,000 people rallied.

As the angry crowds marched, Powell was in Israel on a mission to try to end 18 months of Israeli-Palestinian violence and persuade Israel to end its West Bank incursion.

``Washington will not solve our problems. America is a partner of the enemy,'' demonstrators cried through loudspeakers.

Amman seemed a virtual armed camp on Friday. Police were out in force, helicopters circled overhead and security forces shut major thoroughfares with armored personnel carriers.

``The (Jordanian) government has even placed its coroners on call,'' Mohammad al-Oran, head of Jordan's Professional Associations Union, told an opposition gathering.

``We have to ask ourselves, does the Palestinian cause need more people to die this way?''

Oran's audience expressed anger with the cancellation.

``You are in bed with the government. We succeeded when we demonstrated without your organization,'' Bassam, an activist, said in reference to a march on the Israeli embassy last week.

Thousands of Jordan's mostly Palestinian population have held protests since Israel attacked the West Bank on March 29.

CLASHES IN LEBANON

Demonstrations went ahead despite a big police presence in Lebanon, where clashes erupted with police as protesters marched on the U.S embassy to denounce Washington's backing for Israel.

Witnesses said at least seven people were injured when the demonstration turned violent. It was the second time in two weeks clashes have erupted as protesters attempted to approach the fortified embassy in a hilly Beirut suburb.

The witnesses said Palestinian and Lebanese marchers hurled rocks and bottles as police blocked the road to the embassy and that police fired dozens of teargas canisters to disperse the crowd and threw rocks back, causing the injuries.

Near the southern port city of Tyre, several thousand Palestinians marched through one of Lebanon's dozen Palestinian refugee camps.

``From Ramallah to Jenin, one nation that will not back down,'' chanted protesters, many carrying Palestinian flags. At least 10,000 people marched through the northern port city of Tripoli in a similar demonstration.

ACROSS THE GULF

Thousands of people took to the streets after Friday prayers across the Gulf region.

In Bahrain, more than 5,000 marched near the village of Duraz, west of the capital Manama, to protest against Israel's incursion and demand the closure of the U.S. mission in Bahrain -- home to the U.S. Fifth Fleet.

In Yemen, witnesses said thousands gathered in the main square of the capital Sanaa, chanting: ``No to Zionist-American Terrorism. Yes to a Palestinian State.''

In neighboring Oman, some 200 marchers in Muscat chanted ''God curse America'' and ``Israel get out from Arab land.''

Last week, angry Bahrainis tried to storm the heavily fortified U.S. embassy, hurled petrol bombs and set vehicles ablaze. A civilian died from injuries sustained in the rally.

On Wednesday, Bahrainis tried to march again on the U.S. mission, but police fired teargas and rubber bullets to disperse them. There were no fatalities.

There were no signs of heavy security on Friday and witnesses said clergymen appeared to be in control.

Rare demonstrations have also been staged in Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

Gulf Arab rulers and citizens pledged millions of dollars in cash, jewelry and even their organs in nationwide telethons in an outpouring of sympathy for Palestinians this week.

In the wider Muslim world, hundreds of slogan-shouting Malaysian Muslims gathered outside the U.S. embassy after Friday prayers in Kuala Lumpur.

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Indian Police Break Up Mainly Peaceful Hindu Rally

April 12, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-india-violence.html

KALYAN, India - Police wielding bamboo sticks on Friday dispersed thousands of Hindus protesting on the outskirts of the Indian financial capital of Bombay over a religious clash that killed three people.

More than 5,000 Hindu activists marched through the streets of Kalyan on Bombay's northern fringes, chanting, waving holy saffron-colored flags and occasionally stoning Muslim shops.

But the rally was largely peaceful and the marchers were dispersed after about an hour without serious incident.

The protesters were demanding police take tough action against Muslims they accuse of starting clashes on Tuesday night that left two Hindus and a Muslim dead and raised fears of new trouble just after India's worst communal bloodshed in a decade.

``Anyone can be attacked at any time,'' said Paresh Shah, a Hindu activist who joined the protest. ``The government should protect us.''

Organizers abandoned plans to march through Kalyan's Rohidaswada area, under curfew since Tuesday's clashes, after police vowed to stop them. They marched through nearby streets instead.

Protest organizers, which included the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its coalition ally, the Bombay-based Shiv Sena, had threatened to bring 10,000 people onto the streets of Kalyan.

They accused a local Muslim politician of leading Tuesday's attacks to avenge Muslims killed in neighboring Gujarat state and warned police they would take action ``Shive Sena style'' if he was not arrested.

The group has been accused of using violence in the past.

More than 750 people, mostly Muslims, died in reprisal attacks by Hindu gangs in Gujarat after a Muslim mob burned 59 Hindus to death in a train on February 27. Opposition parties and some non-government organizations put the toll closer to 2,000.

It was the worst Hindu-Muslim violence since 3,000 people died after Hindu hard-liners tore down a mosque in the northern town of Ayodhya in late 1992.

Bombay was one of the areas worst hit by the rioting that followed. More than 800 died in the city.

Police in the city were on high alert on Friday.

State authorities have launched an investigation into how Tuesday's trouble -- originally blamed by police on a personal feud -- started.

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War Tax Resistance: An Idea Whose Time Has Come . . . Again?

by Michelle Kinnucan
Friday, April 12, 2002
by CommonDreams.org
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0412-01.htm

If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. --Henry David Thoreau, "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience"

Let them march all they want, so long as they continue to pay their taxes. --Attributed to Alexander Haig, US Secretary of State (1981- 1989), commenting on demonstrations by anti-nuclear weapons protestors

The past seven months have been especially trying for Americans who long for justice and peace and find that US government policy often has little to do with either. First came the heinous carnage of September 11th. Then came war--more heinous carnage--in Afghanistan and rumors of war in the Philippines, Yemen, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Colombia and so on. Then, last December, the US withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty. More recently, the Bush administration suggested its intention to end a decade-long nuclear weapons testing moratorium, in part, to develop "mini-nukes" for possible use against non-nuclear enemies. Finally, the smoldering embers of hatred in the occupied Palestinian territories and Israel have burst into a (lopsided) conflagration of heart-wrenching death and destruction.

As we honor the lives of all victims of violence; as we contend with a "patriotic correctness" that sometimes seems pervasive; as we confront the political realities of American militarism and its hold on the government and the minds of our brothers and sisters; as we write, protest, and engage in other forms of activism, war tax resisters offer us another tool to work for peace, support justice, channel anger, and challenge hopelessness. They suggest: "If you work for peace, stop paying for war."

According to the War Resisters League (WRL - http://www.warresisters.org), $776 billion--46% of the total discretionary funding--in the proposed 2003 federal budget is allocated to military spending. The WRL points out, paraphrasing radical pacifist A.J. Muste, "in order to conduct a war or build a military, the government requires two chief resources: soldiers and money. People are drafted through the Selective Service System, and money is drafted through the Internal Revenue Service." Tax resistance in this view is the financial counterpart of conscientious objection to military conscription.

One method of war tax resistance is refusing to pay federal income taxes. Both the WRL and the National War Tax Resisters Coordinating Committee (NWTRCC - http://www.nwtrcc.org) can provide detailed information for persons contemplating this type of non-violent civil disobedience. The WRL publishes War Tax Resistance: A Guide To Withholding Your Support From The Military, which explains the rationale and long history of war tax resistance along with in-depth information concerning the Internal Revenue Service. In addition to full-blown income tax resistance, activists have developed other lower stakes strategies such as telephone tax resistance and the "1040 Club."

The federal telephone excise tax began with long distance calls under the Spanish War Act of 1898; it was applied to local calls shortly before the US entered World War II. The WRL estimates that in 1972, perhaps one-half million people resisted the US war in Southeast Asia by refusing to pay the federal telephone tax. In 1990, the tax was set permanently at 3%; the IRS administers the funds, which like the income tax revenues are allocated for general expenditures including military spending. According to the Congressional Research Service, from 1980 through 1999, the tax brought in over $57 billion to the US Treasury, including a record $5.2 billion in 1999.

The NWRTCC says telephone tax resistance is "a strong, positive way to protest increasingly militaristic U.S. policies and actions." Resisters deduct the itemized 3% federal excise tax from their telephone payment(s) and include an explanatory note (http://www.nacc.info/sample.htm) to the phone company with the payment(s). The WRL and NWRTCC both claim that it is unusual and generally illegal for a phone company to discontinue service for non-payment of the federal excise tax.

Earlier this year, Sonoma County Taxes for Peace a local, California affiliate of the NWTRCC launched its One Million Taxpayers for Peace the War campaign (http://www.monitor.net/%7E1mt/home.html). Their goal is to get one million taxpayers to join the "1040 Club" by subtracting $10.40 from any payment due to the IRS when filing their federal income taxes. Taxpayers who are owed a refund by the IRS enclose a note with their return requesting an additional $10.40 from the IRS. War tax resisters stress that they are different from run-of-the-mill tax evaders because they act for reasons of conscience and do not attempt to conceal their defiance of the law. In fact, advocates encourage resisters to write letters to the IRS, members of Congress, and local newspapers explaining their objections to paying their taxes. Additionally, resisters often redirect unpaid tax money to non-profit groups that provide services more consistent with their philosophy of non-violence or to escrow funds such as the Conscience and Military Tax Campaign Escrow Account (http://www.nacc.info) or the New York City People's Life Fund (http://www.nycplf.org/index.html).

This April 15th, NWTRCC members and friends will leaflet, parade, show films, and stage "Pentagon Porkbusters Penny Polls" in communities in every section of the country. For more information, you may call the NWTRCC at (800) 269-7464 or the WRL at (800) 975-9688.

Michelle Kinnucan is a freelance writer. Her work has previously been published in PS: Political Science and Politics, Commondreams.org, and The Record. She may be contacted by e-mail at: mjkinnuc@juno.com.


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