------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Exelon Quitting New Nuclear-Plant Project
Duratek awarded water-processing contract
Dutch govt buys nuclear waste storage operation
India's communal cauldron sparks political crisis
Nuclear nightmare
Nuclear Deal to Include Disarmament
Off to the arms race
Ad Aims to Sway Senators Over Yucca
Foes of Nuclear Waste Project Air First TV Ad
Analyst: Utility Needs To Stay Open
Dispute Over Plutonium Shipment to S.C. Intensifies
Missiles a minor threat to Yucca waste
U.S. Denies Wrongdoing in Venezuela

MILITARY
U.S. and Britain Begin New Combat Mission in Afghanistan
More Afghan Attacks on Americans
Whiskey, weapons go-go in Pyongyang
Bio-defense requires smallpox vaccine
Colombia Wants U.S. Help Vs. Rebels
Colombian Aid Limits Reviewed
Justices Tackle Implications of a Rule on Drug Sentences
The Bush Administration's 'Drugs = Terrorism' Fraud
High Court Considers Drug Searches
Afghan poppy growers settle in for long struggle
Secret UK report says Gujarat death toll 'much greater'
Israel Pursues Military Actions as Powell Prepares to Leave
Sharon vows to withdraw his forces
Palestinians to Be Held in Desert
Children's Corpses Legacy of West Bank City Fight
Lives Reduced to Rubble
Japanese legislation expands military role
Security for Israel via NATO?
Navy Drone Washes Up in Puerto Rico
Abuses in Chechnya Alleged
British Spies to Get Unionized
Accidental Blast Kills 4 American Soldiers in Afghanistan
Pentagon Changing Command Structure
Pentagon Eyes Cuts in Some Weapons to Pay for Others
Defense Secretary Wants Cuts in Weapons Systems
Machines Are Filling In for Troops
Bush Officials Met With Venezuelans Who Ousted Leader

POLICE / PRISONERS
eds Reviewing Fake Drug Plants
Few Death Sentences or None Under Overhaul
Al - Qaida Backers Claim Yemen Blast

ENERGY AND OTHER
Solar Power Could Come From the Moon
Morally misguided scientific paralysis

ACTIVISTS
DC Peace Events
Colombia Mobilization to Washington DC
Protest Organizers Announce Schedule
Protesters Target U.S. Embassy
30 protesters arrested in OAK RIDGE, Tenn.
Early Folk Music Tapes to Be Preserved



-------- NUCLEAR

Exelon Quitting New Nuclear-Plant Project

April 16, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/16/business/16EXEL.html

WASHINGTON - The Exelon Corporation, the nation's biggest owner of nuclear power plants, is dropping out of an international consortium that is developing a smaller, cheaper kind of nuclear plant, an Energy Department official said today.

The utility, which is based in Chicago, will halt its financing of the so-called pebble bed modular reactor, now in the design stage, said Norton Haberman, the department official.

The pebble bed modular reactor produces about one-tenth of the electricity of a typical nuclear plant, which produces about 1,000 megawatts. Supporters of the new technology say it would be faster, cheaper and safer to build because it uses helium as the plant's coolant instead of pressurized water.

Exelon executives were meeting with other project investors in South Africa and were expected to make an announcement on Tuesday, an Exelon vice president, Elizabeth Moler, said. She refused to comment further on the status of the project.

Exelon holds a 12.5 percent stake in the project. Other participants include South Africa's state-owned electric utility, the Industrial Development Corporation, with 25 percent, and British Nuclear Fuels Ltd., with 22.5 percent. The consortium had planned to build a $300 million demonstration model in South Africa beginning next year.

-------- business

Duratek awarded water-processing contract from Chicago utility firm Exelon

Tuesday, April 16, 2002
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A56996-2002Apr15?language=printer

Duratek, a Columbia radioactive-waste disposal firm, was awarded a water-processing contract from Chicago utility firm Exelon for work at the Byron nuclear power plant in northern Illinois. Under the contract, Duratek will install and operate an advanced liquid-waste processing system at Byron. The system, which will be installed at Byron in August, is designed to remove ionic impurities from liquid radioactive waste at nuclear power plants. Financial terms of the contract were not disclosed.

-------- europe

Dutch govt buys nuclear waste storage operation

REUTERS NETHERLANDS:
April 16, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15495/story.htm

AMSTERDAM - The Dutch government said yesterday it had agreed to take over the domestic organization for radioactive waste storage COVRA from the owners of nuclear power plants in the Netherlands and a Dutch energy research center.

The current stakeholders will pay the Dutch government an amount to cover costs for the storage of their radioactive waste, the government said in a statement.

EPZ, owner of a nuclear plant at southwestern town of Borssele, will pay the Dutch state 45 million euros ($39.65 million), and the owner of a closed plant near the center-Dutch town Dodewaard will pay 11 million euros, the government said.

It disclosed no details on the amount payed by energy research center ECN.

COVRA monitors the storage of radioactive waste in the Netherlands, the government said.

-------- india / pakistan

India's communal cauldron sparks political crisis

Tue Apr 16, 2002
By Myra MacDonald
Reuters
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020416/wl_india_nm/india_69246_1

NEW DELHI - When India's embattled Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) went into state elections earlier this year, it tried to play on fears of the enemy without -- Pakistan -- and failed.

Now hardline Hindus in the BJP, which dominates the ruling coalition government, are widely perceived as trying to play on fears of an enemy within -- among the minority Muslim population -- to try to revive its flagging electoral fortunes.

It is a potent combination which at the very least has made India's complex social and political fabric even more unpredictable than ever; at the very worst laid the groundwork for a new outburst of still simmering communal violence.

The country had already been shaken by Hindu-Muslim violence in Gujarat, in which more than 800, mostly Muslims, died. Then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee appeared to blame it all on Muslims by highlighting the risks of militant Islam.

"Muslims, wherever they are, don't want to live peacefully. They want to spread terror in the name of religion," he said last Friday at a public meeting in Goa. "Leaders around the world I have met are worried about this.

"There are two faces to Islam, one...teaches tolerance and truth, and the other is militancy, jihad in the name of Islam, they want the whole world to be in the Islamic fold. This is the face we are seeing nowadays everywhere," he said.

The comments, though softened later, drew howls of outrage from the English-language press, the opposition Congress party and even from his own secular coalition government allies.

Mostly Hindu India, but with a 12 percent Muslim population, has long prided itself on its secularism -- in marked contrast to Islamic Pakistan -- and Vajpayee's comments were seen as gambling with this secular tradition in order to win Hindu votes.

"He maligned the entire Muslims of the world in his speech," said Khushwant Singh, a Sikh and veteran campaigner for religious tolerance. "It gives encouragement to lumpen elements elsewhere."

But as a sign of how far opinions have been polarised, Vajpayee's speech -- along with a decision to hold early state elections in Gujarat to consolidate the Hindu vote -- was welcomed by the party faithful, and by the widely read Hindi-language press.

"Vajpayee's assertion that Islamic militancy is the main danger facing the world today is absolutely right," the mass circulation Hindi daily Dainik Jagran said. "It's not right to conceal the dangers posed by Islamic fundamentalism."

ROLL BACK TO SEPTEMBER 11

To understand the depths of India's current crisis, you have to roll back to the September 11 attacks, which led to the U.S. campaign against the Al Qaeda network in Afghanistan.

Despite Washington's insistence its war is on terrorism, not Islam, many Indians privately cite the U.S. campaign to justify the BJP's current hardline stance against Islamic militancy.

Then on December 13, Islamic militants who New Delhi said had links with Pakistan attacked the parliament -- triggering a massive military build-up between the two nuclear rivals.

To this day, a million men are massed along the border, and analysts see little chance of any climbdown soon, with Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf gearing up for a referendum on his rule later this month, and Vajpayee facing domestic upheaval.

It is in that explosive context that India's domestic crisis is now playing out.

The BJP -- which had put aside its hallmark Hindu revivalism to win support from secular coalition allies when it took office in 1999 -- first tried to use the Pakistan threat to swing voters behind it in a string of state elections in February.

In Uttar Pradesh, the BJP's traditional heartland, BJP Chief Minister Rajnath Singh even had pictures of soldiers and tanks emblazoned on his campaign truck to make the point.

Playing on fears of Pakistan failed. The BJP was defeated in Uttar Pradesh and in three other states, leaving it in control of only three states in the country, including Gujarat.

GODHRA

Then came an attack by a Muslim mob on a train in Godhra in western India on February 27 in which 59 Hindus died, triggering revenge killings in which at least 750, mostly Muslims, died.

Last Friday, Vajpayee fell into line with hardliners in his party by blaming Muslims in Godhra for starting the violence.

The enemy without had become the enemy within, and party hardliners say they are willing to use this to win votes.

"Forget about whether holding elections in Gujarat is right or wrong, the fact is we will sweep the elections. No Muslim will have the guts to come out and vote," said a BJP leader. "If I were the prime minister, I would go for (national) elections, after the Gujarat verdict. This is the time to strike."

In any other country, the current situation would be a recipe for a swing even further to the far right. Or for a backlash against the BJP which toppled the coalition government altogether.

But that is to reckon without the complexities of Indian coalition politics, where a combination of powerful regional politicians and a fractured electorate limit extreme swings.

Vajpayee's biggest coalition ally, for example, the regional Telugu Desam Party (TDP), has tried to insist that the BJP fire Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi over the communal violence.

But TDP leader Chandrababu Naidu is seen as wary of pulling out of the national BJP-led government since in his own state of Andhra Pradesh the TDP's main enemy is the opposition Congress.

And even if he and other allies were to quit, the BJP can still count on other regional leaders waiting in the wings.

Among them is film star turned politician Jayalalitha who has just returned as Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu.

Then there is Mayawati, of the lower caste Bahujan Samaj Party, seeking BJP backing to become Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh in return for her support for the national government.

"The government is not likely to fall any time soon," says commentator Inder Malhotra. "Jayalalitha is absolutely eager to jump on the bandwagon. Mayawati is trying to clinch a deal."

"It is not very likely there will be a very early election," said analyst Pran Chopra. "He (Vajpayee) would much rather have to his credit the management of the coalition to its full term."

-------- terrorism

Nuclear nightmare

EDITORIAL
April 16, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20020416-562503.htm

In just the latest indication of the horrors that Osama bin Laden has in store for us, two Afghan nuclear physicists have revealed that al Qaeda attempted to recruit them to build a nuclear bomb. Julian West of The Washington Times reported Thursday that the scientists risked their lives by hiding enough radioactive materials to build dozens of "dirty" nuclear bombs in the ruins of a Kabul mental hospital and the basement of a university's nuclear physics department. Last week, they directed a team of specially trained British soldiers equipped with state-of-the-art detection equipment to the hidden materials. The British soldiers were astonished by what they found.

"We've been finding stuff that's far more potent and dangerous than even 'dirty bombs,' " said Capt. James Cameron, head of the British team. Capt. Cameron works for the British Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Regiment, which also monitors Saddam Hussein's weapons programs from Kuwait. In the cancer treatment room of the hospital, they found a broken radiotherapy machine containing enough cobalt 60 to kill a man instantly. In the basement of Kabul University, they found containers of solid and liquid radioactive material and chemical warfare agents. Had the scientists not put their lives on the line by defying the Afghan government by tearing up their research documents and stashing the materials where al Qaeda and the Taliban couldn't find them, the consequences could have been horrible.

One of the hero-scientists was Mohammed Korbani, a nuclear physics professor. He said that after the Taliban seized power in Kabul, he was approached by a mysterious organization known as the Chand Groupi or Multi Group, located in a part of the city where many Arab al Qaeda fighters lived and bin Laden operated terrorist safe houses. The organization was linked to a charity run by a renegade Pakistani nuclear scientist named Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmoud, a man described by the CIA as "bin Laden's nuclear secretary." Mr. Mahmoud is currently under house arrest in Pakistan. Weapons found in Mr. Mahmoud's home showed that he was involved in experiments to float an anthrax-laden helium balloon over the United States and that he was attempting to build a nuclear bomb.

Mr. Korbani said that members of Mr. Mahmoud's organization "offered me a lot of money, and said they wanted me to find 100 other nuclear scientists and technicians and come to Karachi [Pakistan]," adding that "they kept calling me, but I never returned" the calls. Capt. Cameron told The Washington Times that there was little doubt that the Taliban and al Qaeda were also seeking to make chemical weapons. Were it not for the heroic behavior of Mr. Korbani and his colleague, Mohammed Jan Naziri, al Qaeda might have been able to build several "dirty" nuclear bombs. All civilized people owe Messrs. Nazari and Korbani a tremendous debt of gratitude.

-------- treaties

Nuclear Deal to Include Disarmament

April 16, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-US-Nuclear.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- A nuclear arms deal on the agenda of next month's U.S.-Russian summit for the first time will include ways to verify the dismantling of the warheads themselves, arms control analysts said Tuesday.

Earlier arms control agreements contained controls to verify the dismantling of nuclear submarines, missiles and bombers, but not warheads, said Rose Gottemoeller, an arms control expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

``Historically, the strategic arms reduction agreements hadn't touched on warheads because they were considered to be too sensitive and difficult to monitor,'' Gottemoeller, who served on the National Security Council staff under former President Clinton, told a news conference.

``In this new agreement there will apparently be some measures to monitor warheads cooperatively,'' Gottemoeller said. ``This is a very welcome innovation in the strategic arms control process and the first in many years.''

President Bush has promised to cut the U.S. arsenal to 1,700 to 2,200 strategic nuclear warheads, while President Vladimir Putin has said Russia could go even lower, to 1,500 warheads from the current 6,000 that each country is currently allowed under the 1991 START I treaty.

Bush initially favored an informal deal, but later acceded to Putin's push to formalize the cuts in a written, legally binding agreement.

``It's much better for the predictability of our nuclear relationship if we proceed together under a legally binding agreement,'' Gottemoeller said.

While U.S. and Russian officials say that nuclear arms will top the agenda of Bush's visit to Russia, talks have been difficult because of Moscow's objection to the Pentagon's decision to stockpile decommissioned nuclear weapons rather than destroy them.

Russia's opposition began to melt last month, when Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov abruptly announced on a trip to Washington that Russia wouldn't mind if the United States put some of the decommissioned weapons in storage.

Despite Ivanov's optimism that a deal could be reached by the summit, Russian negotiators still oppose the U.S. plan to store the decommissioned weapons, said Alexander Pikayev, a nuclear analyst with Carnegie's Moscow office.

Pikayev predicted that Russia would end up accepting the U.S. reduction plan because ``a bad deal is better than a good fight,'' but would demand in return to be freed of constraints under previous arms control agreements.

START I banned Russia from modifying its existing land-based nuclear missiles, the cheapest way to maintain nuclear parity with the United States, and Moscow wants to dump the restrictions, Pikayev said.

Russia will also push for inspections to be less intrusive than those provided under START I, which allowed U.S. inspectors wide access to Russian military facilities.

--------

Off to the arms race

Tuesday, April 16, 2002
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/04/16/ED92089.DTL

THE UNITED STATES is quietly preparing to withdraw from the 1972 Anti- Ballistic Treaty that prohibits the development of missile defense systems. By the fall of 2004, Pentagon officials expect to open the first missile shield site in Alaska.

Critics of the Star Wars program are rightly disturbed by our nation's unilateral withdrawal from a treaty that successfully slowed the Cold War arms race between the Soviet Union and the United States and prevented both superpowers from militarizing outer space.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, however, has long championed an offensive space-based military, which defensive missile defense technology will make feasible.

By abrogating the ABM treaty, the United States risks igniting a space- based arms race, as well as damaging its international credibility. Protests from Russia, China and the European Union have been largely ignored. On April 5, an international conference on disarmament, held in Beijing, called upon the international community to act immediately to prevent weapons from being used in outer space. Officials and experts from 20 countries criticized the United States for violating a 1967 treaty that prohibits the militarization of outer space and for withdrawing from the ABM treaty.

So far, our country has spent an estimated $60 billion on developing anti- missile technology. Yet last March, the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, confirmed allegations that poorly-designed scientific analyses accounted for some of the technological successes claimed by Pentagon officials.

This year, the Pentagon will spend an additional $8 billion on Star Wars. Yet, as the world has sadly learned, neither a missile shield nor space-based weapons can protect civilians from a suicide bomber or a plane turned into a weapon of mass destruction.

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

-------- nevada

Ad Aims to Sway Senators Over Yucca

April 16, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Yucca-Mountain.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Opponents of a nuclear waste dump in the Nevada desert are taking their fight to the airwaves -- in Vermont.

An ad, which began airing Tuesday and will run for a couple of weeks, asks viewers to call Vermont's senators, who will vote on the Yucca Mountain project this summer.

Organizers chose Vermont as the first state to air the commercial because it has a strong environmental movement that often works closely with the state's political leaders. And one of Vermont's senators, independent James Jeffords, chairs the Senate's environment committee.

In choosing Vermont, however, opponents also underscored the difficulty of their task. Jeffords, Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy and Democratic Gov. Howard Dean all support the Nevada dump.

A prime reason for their backing lies in the cooling pools at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant in Vernon, Vt., where spent nuclear fuel has accumulated for 30 years.

``The alternative to Yucca Mountain would be to store spent nuclear fuel in `dry casks' on the banks of the Connecticut River, which I believe poses serious and unacceptable environmental and safety risks,'' Jeffords said in a statement. Dry casks are giant concrete and steel containers; most spent nuclear fuel is kept in water to cool it.

Leahy spokesman David Carle said the senator still favors Yucca Mountain but wants the Bush administration to answer questions raised about transporting the waste around the country.

A major thrust of the opposition is that shipping the waste from the nation's nuclear plants through more than four dozen states to Nevada runs a risk of accidents, with the potential for radioactive releases.

The shipments by truck, train and, possibly, barge also could be targets for terrorists, opponents say.

``If we license Yucca Mountain, every day can be Sept. 11 because that is the kind of threat we're exposing our nation, our communities, our families to,'' said Carl Pope, president of the Sierra Club, at an anti-Yucca Mountain rally Tuesday at the foot of the Capitol.

The radio commercial stresses the potential for accidents and contends approval of Yucca Mountain would lead to ``dozens of new nuclear power plants.''

``That's the goal of the nuclear power industry,'' the announcer says in the 30-second ad, paid for by environmental groups. Opponents are considering more ads but will not say where they will run.

Environmental activists and members of Congress who oppose Yucca Mountain are recommending the same type of onsite storage that Jeffords criticized.

The Senate vote this summer is expected to be the last legislative chance to kill plans for the repository for 77,000 tons of radioactive waste beneath a volcanic ridge 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn, under unusual rules written by Congress, rejected President Bush's recommendation of the site this month. Congress will cast the deciding vote.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who spoke at the Capitol rally, acknowledged to reporters that opponents lack the votes to kill the project. He said, however, that several senators remain undecided.

The House is expected to ratify Bush's recommendation. A vote is likely in late April or early May, Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, said Tuesday at a news conference organized by Yucca Mountain supporters.

``We're now coming at least to the beginning of the end,'' Barton said, referring to the 20 years and $7 billion the federal government has spent studying the issue.

On the Net:
Yucca Mountain Project: http://www.ymp.gov
Pro-Yucca Mountain site: http://www.nei.org
Anti-Yucca Mountain site: http://www.nirs.org

--------

Foes of Nuclear Waste Project Air First TV Ad

April 16, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-energy-congress-yucca.html

WASHINGTON - Foes of President Bush's plans to put a permanent nuclear waste depository in Nevada warned in their first television advertisement on Tuesday the project could be prone to accidents and a target for terrorists.

The spot, designed to drum up public opposition to the project, was announced at a rally on the steps of the U.S. Capitol shortly after proponents held a news conference to say they were confident they would win needed U.S. congressional approval for the proposed facility.

``After decades of confirming scientific research and billions of dollars spent, it's time for the federal government to fulfill its obligation to safely store the nation's used nuclear fuel,'' said Rep. Joe Barton, a Texas Republican who supports the nuclear depository and serves as chairman of a House of Representatives energy subcommittee.

The House and Senate must decide within a few months whether to sustain or overturn Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn's veto of plans by the Bush administration to bury thousands of tons of nuclear waste from across the nation at Nevada's Yucca Mountain, making it the nation's permanent nuclear waste depository.

Foes concede they will be unable to prevent an override by the Republican-led House, but they contend could win in the Democratic-led Senate in an uphill battle. Both chambers must vote to override to put the project back on track.

Guinn has also challenged the project in court, arguing that despite government assurances to the contrary, the depository would be unsafe. Opponents also say the shipment of radioactive waste through 44 states to the facility also would pose risks.

``This is not just a problem for Nevada, it is a problem for the country,'' Senate Democratic Whip Harry Reid of Nevada told the rally, sponsored by hundreds of state and local public interest groups.

Reid announced the first of what he said would be a number of nationwide TV ads against the project. The ad campaign will begin airing on Tuesday in Vermont.

The 30-second spot shows trucks laden with nuclear waste and declares the proposed facility would mean such traffic ''right through the towns we live in.''

``Nuclear accidents are inevitable, and terrorists attacks will become harder than ever to prevent,'' the announcer says. ''Only the Senate can stop this now. Call your senators today.''

Guinn has said his state plans to spend around $10 million in its campaign against the project, scheduled to open in about 2010.

Proponents, who include members of the nuclear industry as well as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation's biggest business group, plan to dig deep into their pockets to win approval.

Both sides have hired a small army of lobbyists to make their respective cases on Capitol Hill.

-------- new hampshire

Analyst: Utility Needs To Stay Open

April 16, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-FPL-Nuclear-Plant.html

SEABROOK, N.H. (AP) -- A Florida utility that has agreed to buy New Hampshire's only nuclear power plant faces a competitive market and will need to keep the plant running year-round to make money, an analyst said Tuesday.

``As long as it's running 85 to 90 percent of the year, you're going to be pretty successful. It's when problems arise that cause you to be down for an extended period of time that you run into trouble,'' said Andre Meade, an energy analyst with Commerzbank in New York.

FPL Group Inc.'s plan to buy an 88 percent share of Seabrook for $837 million was announced Monday. It could take until the end of the year for state and federal regulators to approve the deal.

Meade said Seabrook is one of the last nuclear plants in the country to go on line. Because it is a newer plant and has been run fairly well, it has generated a lot of interest in the industry, he said.

``New England is fundamentally an attractive market because there isn't a lot of coal-fire capacity there, which means you have gas-fired facilities running around the clock and therefore higher prices,'' Meade said.

The challenge for FPL, Meade said, is making headway in a region that has a lot of power plants.

FPL executives said Tuesday they have no immediate plans to change the management of Seabrook and that the 806 Seabrook employees will keep their jobs at similar wages for at least one year.

The deal is expected to close by the end of the year.

``It very much fits with our overall strategy,'' said Lew Hay, chairman and chief executive of FPL Group. ``We want to have a sizable presence in the market.''

Customers of three New Hampshire utilities would get rate cuts under the deal, though not right away. They are Public Service Company of New Hampshire, New Hampshire Electric Cooperative and Granite State Electric Co.

The 1,161-megawatt plant near the Atlantic Ocean began operating in 1990.

FPL Group is the parent company of Florida Power & Light, Florida's largest electric utility. It serves 3.9 million households in 34 Florida counties. It owns power plants in 15 states.

The Seabrook shares being sold are those owned by Connecticut-based Northeast Utilities, Public Service's parent company; United Illuminating Co. of New Haven, Conn.; British-based National Grid Group; Boston-based NSTAR; BayCorp Holdings of Eliot, Maine; and the New Hampshire Electric Cooperative in Plymouth. (Granite State Electric is part of National Grid.)

Massachusetts Municipal Wholesale Electric Co., Taunton (Mass.) Municipal Lighting Plant, and the Hudson (Mass.) Light and Power Department are keeping their shares, FPL said.

Seabrook was a major political issue in New Hampshire from the 1970s through its completion -- billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule. The mounting debts pushed Manchester-based Public Service, which owned 36 percent of the project, into bankruptcy in 1988.

The company emerged from bankruptcy as a subsidiary of Northeast Utilities.

Public Service no longer owns any of Seabrook, but spokesman Martin Murray said it is obligated to buy Seabrook power and its customers still pay construction costs for Seabrook, called ``stranded costs,'' in their monthly bills. He said customers should see rates drop about 7 percent in 2004.

Shares of FPL Group closed up 47 cents to $60.98 each on Tuesday on the New York Stock Exchange.

On the Net:
http://www.seabrookstation.com
http://www.fplgroup.com
http://www.nationalgrid.com
http://www.nu.com

-------- south carolina

Dispute Over Plutonium Shipment to S.C. Intensifies

April 16, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Plutonium-Standoff.html

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Gov. Jim Hodges isn't backing down from the federal government just because the Energy Department says it's ready to begin shipments of plutonium to South Carolina next month.

Hodges had said previously that he's ready to send state troopers to intercept the truckloads or even lie in the road himself to stop them. His spokesman renewed those calls on Monday upon learning that U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham wants to start the shipments around May 15.

``The governor made it very clear that the 30-day notice would escalate the situation,'' spokesman Jay Reiff said. ``Troopers blocking shipments is an option. Legal avenues will be aggressively pursued. You use every feasible tool.''

Abraham said in a letter to Hodges that it was ``essential'' to begin the shipments to meet a schedule for closing the Rocky Flats weapons facility in Colorado by 2006.

The Bush administration wants to transport excess plutonium from weapons facilities around the country to the department's Savannah River complex near Aiken, where it will be made into mixed oxide fuel to run commercial nuclear reactors.

Hodges has vowed to intercept any shipments unless he gets firm agreement -- subject to federal court enforcement -- that the plutonium will not remain in South Carolina permanently.

By giving the 30-day notice required by Congress, Abraham issued a clear signal to Hodges that the Bush administration intends to pursue the shipments, over the governor's objections if necessary, Energy Department officials said.

A spokesman for the department would not discuss how the federal government would react to troopers at the state's borders or lawsuits.

It's not in the government's best interest to talk about ``armed confrontation,'' spokesman Joe Davis said. ``We think we can get these issues resolved.''

In a separate letter to key members of Congress, Abraham said his intention is to begin shipments of 76 trailer loads of plutonium from Rocky Flats shortly after May 15, continuing through June, 2003.

Reps. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and John Spratt, D-S.C., were working on legislation that could break the impasse, Graham spokesman Kevin Bishop said. A bill under consideration could require that plutonium not be left in the state permanently.

Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., called the department's decision ``great news'' and said he would work with South Carolina's congressional delegation to ease the state's concerns.

The standoff over the shipments escalated last week when Abraham rejected a demand from Hodges that a federal judge oversee the enforcement of any agreement on the plutonium shipments.

Abraham outlined what he called a string of concessions to ease the governor's concerns. Among them is a formal commitment to take the plutonium back if the conversion plant falls behind schedule or runs into funding trouble.

But Hodges told Abraham he wants more assurances in a formal consent agreement that would allow a federal judge to oversee the process.

Abraham rejected the courts' involvement, saying it would amount to ``an attempt to conduct ... national security and foreign policy affairs through the judicial process'' and ``goes beyond what we can do.''

-------- us nuc waste

Missiles a minor threat to Yucca waste

By Scott R. Burnell
UPI Science News
April 16, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/14042002-081426-5935r.htm

WASHINGTON, April 16 (UPI) -- (Editor's note: This is the second article in a four-part series from United Press International examining some of the scientific issues related to using Nevada's Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste repository site. Congress has started a 90-legislative-business-day period where it must vote to override the state's objections to continue the project. The House Energy and Commerce Committee is to hold a hearing on the project on April 18.)

Those opposed to the proposed nuclear waste site at Yucca Mountain often refer to horrific scenarios involving anti-tank missiles being fired at transport casks filled with waste, but the science of the matter is less dramatic.

Although the current debate in Congress involves whether the site itself is suitable for a long-term storage facility, opponents also are focusing on the risks of transporting waste from more than 100 sites around the country.

Both rail and road shipments are possible, though no railroad to Yucca exists. Failure to build one would mean more than 100,000 casks of spent nuclear power plant fuel and other waste would have to travel by truck, said Robert Halstead, an adviser to the state of Nevada, which is fighting the Yucca proposal.

"If rail access is achieved, the combined number of rail and truck shipments could be reduced to 36,400," Halstead said. "That works out to roughly between 1,000 and 2,900 shipments per year over 38 years."

Halstead and Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., are among those who have publicized a video taken during a test of a shipping cask. The warhead of a TOW antitank missile placed against the sidewall of the cask is detonated, putting a hole through the diameter of the container.

Thousands of TOW missiles exist around the world, Halstead said. The radioactivity released by such an attack in an urban area could kill several people immediately, and eventually could cause at least 3,000 deaths from cancer, he said.

Antitank missiles and their effects present a possibly serious situation, but on a much smaller scale than envisioned by Yucca opponents.

A shipping cask consists of an outer jacket of steel a few inches thick, several feet of lead shielding and spent fuel assemblies at the center. The assemblies are tubes of zirconium cladding surrounding ceramic uranium fuel pellets, said Edwin Lyman, scientific director and upcoming president of the Nuclear Control Institute, a group advocating stronger security at nuclear power plants and more effective handling of weapons-grade nuclear materials.

When the protection requirements for transport casks were written, intentional attack was not considered, Lyman told United Press International. Sandia National Laboratories later determined such an attack might cause casualties.

"On that basis the Nuclear Regulatory Commission imposed a restriction that basically banned casks from going through urban areas," Lyman said. "That was based on a postulated release without technical backup."

Further investigation involved tests similar to that shown in the video.

Antitank warheads also are called shape charges, where high explosive surrounds a hollow cone of copper, glass, or another dense material, said Charles Cutshaw, a former U.S. Army officer who specialized in antitank weapons and now is an editor with Jane's Infantry Weapons. When the charge hits an object, the extremely rapid detonation of the explosive forces the cone into a thin jet of molten material, whose velocity and density forces its way through armor plate.

"It does not actually 'burn through' the armor," Cutshaw told UPI. "As it goes through, it loses weight off the jet, but if it does penetrate, you find a slug of the metal behind the armor."

NRC tests showed only the material directly in the path of the jet would be shattered, and half of the zirconium tubes would be ruptured, Lyman said. There also are inert gases present in the fuel assemblies, but there is nothing in the cask to cause a secondary explosion after the warhead detonates, he said.

The tests concluded casualties from such an event would be limited to a few latent cancer cases, prompting the NRC to replace the urban transport ban with a requirement for armed escort in such areas, Lyman said. But those tests failed to take into account radioactive gases, such as krypton-85, which are generated by the fuel pellets after use in a reactor, Lyman said.

"If (the cladding) is punctured, that gas will be vented," Lyman said. "There are also some isotopes that become gaseous at moderate temperature. Cesium-137 is probably the worst actor, because it becomes volatile at a temperature of about 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit and it's a long-lived isotope."

Lyman recalculated the consequences based on the additional materials and determined Sandia's first estimates of several hundred possible latent cancer cases are probable.

All of this assumes use of an advanced, actively guided antitank missile, which is not the most likely situation, Cutshaw said.

"You don't always look at the worst-case threat, but what constitutes a reasonable threat," Cutshaw said. "First of all, getting a TOW and maneuvering it into position is going to be really problematic."

The missile is several feet long and together with its launcher weighs more than 200 pounds. The system is mounted on a vehicle or carried by a team of several people -- not something a terrorist could toss in a backpack and lug around, Cutshaw said.

The system is not "fire and forget," either. It requires an operator to keep the guidance scope centered on a moving target for the entire flight of the missile, possibly in the face of return fire from armed escort. This is something reliably achieved only with regular training unavailable outside military installations.

A more probable attack, Cutshaw said, would involve human-portable antitank weapons such as rocket-propelled grenades or the LAW and AT4 systems in the U.S. inventory. While these weapons are more easily obtained, they have smaller warheads, less range and are far less accurate, Cutshaw said.

"I'm not sure a LAW or an AT4 would completely penetrate a cask. I'm not even sure it would even get through one side," Cutshaw told UPI.

Another factor to consider is how the warhead would hit a cask, since the molten jet travels in a straight line. Scenarios such as those Lyman and the NRC investigated assume the warhead hits the sidewall within a few degrees of perpendicular in order for the jet to pass through the center of the cask. Less-than-perfect shots, even with a TOW, would only affect the lead shielding or fail to penetrate the entire cask.

Lyman and others have suggested terrorists could cause much greater damage with demolition charges. This scenario, however, would require attackers to gain full physical control of a cask, Lyman said.

-------- us politics

U.S. Denies Wrongdoing in Venezuela

April 16, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Venezuela.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration brushed aside suggestions Tuesday that it quietly encouraged the removal of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who was deposed from power last week only to be reinstated after a brief period.

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said that in meetings with Venezuelan leaders over several months, U.S. officials have delivered a consistent message.

``The political situation in Venezuela is one for the Venezuelans to resolve peacefully, democratically and constitutionally,'' he said. ``We explicitly told opposition leaders the United States would not support a coup.''

Fleischer was bombarded with questions about a New York Times account that senior Bush administration officials met with members of the coalition that helped depose Chavez and agreed with them that Chavez should be removed.

The Times said one senior official suggested that the Venezuelans use constitutional means to achieve that goal, such as a referendum. It was not clear whether the official quoted by the Times was reflecting official policy or speaking for himself.

Fleischer's responses during a sometimes testy news briefing did not address whether the administration favored a referendum as a means of ending Chavez's rule.

Attempts to obtain clarification from the White House were not immediately successful.

The initial State Department response last Friday to Chavez's ouster suggested that the mercurial leader got what he deserved. It said that Chavez provoked his own demise by ordering his supporters to fire on anti-Chavez demonstrators, killing more than 10 and wounding hundreds.

Fleischer noted that once the situation in Venezuela was clarified with Chavez's reinstatement, the United States joined with its colleagues in the Organization of American States and condemned Friday's ``alteration of constitutional order.''

Meanwhile, the State Department said Tuesday it was authorizing the voluntary departure from Venezuela of U.S. Embassy personnel in nonemergency positions and family members of U.S. government personnel.

It reaffirmed an earlier warning to Americans against travel to Venezuela due to the unstable security situation.

The department's initial welcome of Chavez's premature departure just three years into his term seemed at odds with the position of successive administrations that constitutional procedures must be strictly upheld in the hemisphere.

This policy has gained momentum over the past decade. Officials have frequently expressed pride that the hemisphere is all democratic -- with the exception of Cuba.

Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., the Foreign Relations Committee's top Republican, suggested that threats to Venezuelan democracy and to its constitution began long before the events of last weekend.

``I personally urge Mr. Chavez to make good use of this second chance to raise a little more strongly the principles of democracy than he has in the past,'' Helms said.

Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., noted that in contrast to the United States, the vast majority of hemispheric governments lived up to their responsibilities and denounced the unconstitutional efforts to take power from a government which had been freely elected.

``I am extremely disappointed that rather than leading the effort to reaffirm the region's commitment to the democratic principles outlined in the OAS Charter, only belatedly did the United States join with other OAS members to respond to the Venezuelan crisis,'' Dodd said.

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., said: ``I think it's clear that Mr. Chavez is not exactly pro-American, and we've got to accept the ramifications of that. But I don't think we throw out democratic principles, regardless of circumstance.''

Javier Corrales, a Venezuela expert at Amherst College, said the administration would have been much better off last Friday if its statement began by stressing that any interruption in democratic procedures is always regrettable.

Corrales expressed strong doubt that the administration was in any way involved in the coup and noted that it never endorsed the unconstitutional successor government that held power briefly before Chavez's reinstatement.


-------- MILITARY

-------- afghanistan

U.S. and Britain Begin New Combat Mission in Afghanistan

New York Times
April 16, 2002
By TERENCE NEILAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/16/international/16CND-PENT.html

A new operation to search out and destroy Al Qaeda and Taliban forces is under way in eastern Afghanistan involving a sizable contingent of British Royal Marines, Pentagon officials said today.

"This is not the first time the British have been with us," Brig. Gen. John W. Rosa Jr. of the Air Force said at a Washington briefing today. "They've been with us since day one. They've had their special forces with us.

"But this is the 41st Commando, Royal Marines, and they're just now becoming operationally - fully operationally capable, and we just wanted to acknowledge their efforts."

The British, numbering about 1,700, are part of a coalition force also involving American and Afghan troops, but a large percentage of the Royal Marines are engaged in support roles, so not all will be engaged in combat, General Rosa said.

The general, deputy director of current operations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declined to say how many troops were in the coalition force.

General Rosa said he did not believe there had been any contact with Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters since the operation began on late Monday. It is being carried out in Paktia Province, near the Pakistani border, in the area of Gardez and Khost, he said.

He declined to say if he believed that there might be an Al Qaeda command structure in the area, saying instead: "You really don't want to tell people what you're seeing. You don't want to tell people how you see the enemy reacting and what they're doing."

In Afghanistan, a United States military spokesman, Maj. Bryan Hilferty said the operation was the first large-scale combat operation for the allies since a 12-day assault last month in the Shah-i-Kot mountains.

The identities of four American troops killed on Monday near Kandahar as they worked on defusing 107-millimeter rockets were announced at today's briefing by the Pentagon spokeswoman, Victoria Clarke.

They were Staff Sgt. Brian T. Craig, 27, of Texas; Staff Sgt. Justin J. Galewski, 28, of Kansas; Sgt. Jamie O. Maugans, 27, of Kansas, and Sgt. First Class Daniel A. Romero, 30, of Colorado. Their hometowns were not provided.

Staff Sergeants Craig and Galewski and Sergeant Maugans were members of the 710th Explosive Ordnance Detachment based at San Diego. Sergeant Romero was with the 19th Special Forces Group in Pueblo, Colo.

General Rosa said an investigation was continuing into the explosion that caused their deaths.

-------

More Afghan Attacks on Americans

By Christopher Torchia
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, April 16, 2002; 1:10 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A57362-2002Apr16?language=printer

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- At least four U.S. soldiers were killed Monday and a fifth was injured when rockets they were trying to destroy accidentally blew up. The casualty toll could rise because some soldiers were missing after the noontime explosion, U.S. officials said.

The accident, coming at a time of increased combat activity as the winter snows melt in the rugged Afghan mountains, highlights the dangers troops face even when not under hostile fire, Pentagon officials said.

The blast occurred at a demolition range next to the compound that once housed former Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, according to local government spokesman Yusuf Pashtun. Several U.S. special forces troops live in the compound.

An Afghan guard, who gave his name only as Ramatullah, said U.S. troops had been collecting confiscated weapons and ammunition and storing them at the compound for disposal. He said he heard a series of six explosions about noon Monday.

"We certainly want to express our sorrow and grief to the families of those that have been killed and injured," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told a Pentagon briefing. "And we salute the brave men and women in uniform who do, in fact, put their lives on the line every day to defend their country."

Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the accident shows "our servicemen and women remain at risk."

The U.S. military has not released the names of the soldiers who were killed, but one was identified by his family as 27-year-old Jamie Maugans of Derby, Kan., an ordnance disposal specialist based in San Diego. His grandmother, Shirley Maugans, of Wichita, said the family found out about his death Monday afternoon.

"He was a gentle man, from the time he was born," she said. "He was a gentle man, very, very sweet and kind, and he was tall. He was a big gentle man."

At Bagram air base north of Kabul, the Afghan capital, U.S. military spokesman Maj. Bryan Hilferty said about 10 soldiers were disposing of the rockets when the accident happened. He said the injured soldier was flown to the U.S. military base just south of Kandahar, where American authorities said his injuries were not life-threatening.

On March 28, a Navy SEAL, Chief Petty Officer Matthew J. Bourgeois, 35, of Tallahassee, Fla., was killed when he stepped on a land mine during a training mission near Kandahar. Another serviceman was wounded.

The enemy fired two rocket-propelled grenades at a U.S.-controlled airfield in the southeastern city of Khost, near the Pakistan border, on Sunday night, officials at Bagram said. Two other rocket-propelled grenades exploded in the same area the night before.

Also Saturday, U.S. and Afghan troops came under fire during a night patrol, Hilferty said. The troops called in support from an AC-130 airborne gunship, which killed five of the attackers, he said.

There were no U.S. or coalition fatalities in the weekend attacks, but Afghan authorities said three Afghans were wounded in the incident Saturday near the Khost airstrip.

Rumsfeld said military planners had expected more activity with the end of winter, making it easier for Taliban and al-Qaida fighters to move out of mountain hide-outs.

Despite security uncertainties, authorities pressed ahead with plans to return the country's deposed former king, Mohammad Zaher Shah, to Afghanistan this week. Zaher Shah has lived in Rome since he was ousted by his cousin in 1973.

A C-130 military aircraft outfitted to respond to missile attacks will carry the 87-year-old ousted monarch back to his homeland, Italian officials said.

Interim Afghan leader Hamid Karzai leaves for Rome on Tuesday to accompany Zaher Shah home, either Wednesday or Thursday, officials said. The former king is expected to convene a grand council, or loya jirga, in June to choose a new Afghan government.

In advance of his arrival, security forces blocked off three streets Monday in the capital to rehearse measures to protect Zaher Shah. Four armored personnel carriers belonging to the international peacekeeping force were stationed near the refurbished house where the former king will live.

In other developments:

-The head of the U.N. refugee agency said he will rely on Ismael Khan, a key power broker in western Afghanistan, to provide security for thousands of refugees streaming home from Iran.

"I think a person like Ismael Khan, like the other governors elsewhere, are key in providing security," said Ruud Lubbers, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

More than 231,000 Afghans have returned from Iran, Pakistan and other neighboring nations in the past six weeks, according to the United Nations. Iran and Pakistan have been home to about 3.5 million Afghan refugees.

-Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based Arab satellite network, broadcast parts of another Osama bin Laden videotape. It was unclear when the tape was made. It showed bin Laden, his top deputy and another man. The deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, was claimed on the tape that the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States a "great victory."

The tape included a segment of a man, identified on the video as a Sept. 11 hijacker, speaking to the camera in a style similar to videotapes made by Palestinian suicide bombers before attacks.

Rumsfeld said he had been told the tape "very likely was using a patchwork of clips from previous periods along with some dialogue of more recent periods."

-------- arms sales

Whiskey, weapons go-go in Pyongyang

April 16, 2002
By Damien McElroy
LONDON DAILY TELEGRAPH
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020416-5521495.htm

PYONGYANG, North Korea - If President Bush's "axis of evil" has a watering hole for its arms dealers, it is the circular bar on the 44th floor of the Koryo Hotel in Pyong-yang, the most isolated - and perhaps the most mysterious- of the "axis capitals."

As dusk - and the latest electric-power cut - shrouds the North Korean capital in socialist gloom, the bar bustles to life, its black-and-yellow, floral-pattern capsule chairs filling up with Iraqis, Somalis, Libyans and other patrons from Middle Eastern and African nations.

This nameless institution, renowned as the meeting place of choice for arms traders in the Far East, buzzes with intrigue, if not necessarily romance, every night.

Wandering past a low-slung plastic-topped table opposite the bar moves a man named Udai, who claims to be from Baghdad. A reporter asks if he's in Pyongyang to purchase arms, missile parts, components - anything that would break the arms embargo against his country.

"Maybe, maybe not," he says with a smile. "I come to Korea often but I cannot say why. It's a secret." He quickly returns to a whispered conversation with his Korean companions.

Arms sales are a sensitive subject in Pyongyang. Foreign diplomats in the North Korean capital estimate that each year Pyongyang sells at least $500 million worth of weapons parts, mostly components for short-range missiles and guidance systems, to pariah regimes, often in the Middle East.

As bar patrons down tumblers of Johnny Walker and the local firewater, the discussions around the tables seem somewhat more furtive than Condoleezza Rice, the U.S. national security adviser, recently proclaimed. "Let's just say that the North Koreans have been known to go around with glossy brochures about their ballistic missiles," Miss Rice said. "They are stocking a lot of the world right now."

The country's contribution to international weapons proliferation earned it a place, alongside Iran and Iraq, in the "axis of evil" denounced by Mr. Bush in his State of the Union address in January.

Pyongyang's lucrative arms exports are the result of its tinkering with Scud missiles supplied by the Soviet Union almost two decades ago. Its spare parts and re-engineered launching systems are sent across the Third World on cargo ships that have been chartered for legitimate trade.

Firms that charter ships in Southeast Asia say that North Korea frequently commissions vessels to take a commodity such as sugar from the Far East to Europe, but the boats go missing for days while making unscheduled stops in places such as Libya.

"Every flight into Pyongyang from Beijing carries businessmen from the Middle East and Africa," says a diplomat who is a frequent visitor to the country. "Not all of them are arms dealers, but apart from weapons exports the country doesn't really have much to interest people from that region."

-------- biological weapons

Bio-defense requires smallpox vaccine

April 16, 2002
By Joseph Curl
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020416-413667.htm

British Prime Minister Tony Blair ordered 16 million doses of smallpox vaccine after Vice President Richard B. Cheney visited last month and warned about the threat of an attack by Iraq.

In a short stopover March 12 on his way to the Middle East, Mr. Cheney met with Mr. Blair for several hours at the prime minister's 10 Downing Street office. The vice president detailed reports from intelligence sources that said the United States and Britain would be the prime targets of a biological terrorism attack.

Just two days after the pair met, health ministers from Britain, Japan, Mexico, France, Germany and the United States met in London to trade intelligence on vaccine stocks and methods of responding to a bioterrorism attack, the London Daily Telegraph reported yesterday.

Three weeks later, the British government placed a $46 million order for 16 million smallpox vaccines with a British company, PowderJect of Oxford.

A senior administration official, who yesterday confirmed the Telegraph report, said the warning was not based on new information.

Instead, the official said, the vice president was merely passing on intelligence that Britain would be among the top targets.

U.S. security reports say Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein would use all weapons - including chemical and biological arms - if attacked. Earlier this month, President Bush and Mr. Blair discussed options for handling Iraq, which has become increasingly belligerent.

While both leaders, who met for a weekend at Mr. Bush's Texas ranch, say there are no imminent plans to attack Iraq, each has said Saddam is a threat that cannot be ignored.

"This guy, Saddam Hussein, is a leader who gasses his own people, goes after people in his own neighborhood with weapons of - chemical weapons," the president said.

Mr. Blair was equally adamant. "The president is right to draw attention to the threat of weapons of mass destruction. That threat is real. That the threat exists and we have to deal with it, that seems to me a matter of plain common sense."

The last naturally occurring case of smallpox in the world was in 1977, but Iraq is believed to have developed stocks of the smallpox virus during the 1980s, using smallpox from an outbreak in the mid-1970s.

The only known remaining stocks of virus are in two laboratories, one at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and the other in Russia.

Bioterrorism experts fear that some of the Russian stockpile may have fallen into the hands of rogue scientists in nations like Russia, Iraq and North Korea.

Talk of weapons loaded with smallpox, a highly contagious disease fatal to about one in three persons, dissipated in the aftermath of anthrax attacks across the United States. Since then, however, Iraq was caught attempting to ship arms to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Intelligence sources think that if attacked, Saddam would unleash attackers armed with smallpox in the United States and Britain.

Smallpox causes pustules over the entire body, kills about 30 percent of its victims and disfigures survivors. Furthermore, because its sufferers often take 10 days to show symptoms, the disease can spread quickly over large areas, including other countries.

The United States has made dramatic steps to increase its stockpile of 15 million doses of smallpox vaccine. The government has ordered another 209 million doses from Acambis, a British pharmaceutical company. About 150 million of those doses were not due until 2004, but all will be delivered by the end of the year.

-------- colombia

Colombia Wants U.S. Help Vs. Rebels

April 16, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Colombia-US-Courting-Aid.html

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- His peace dreams in shambles and guerrillas setting off bombs in Colombian cities, President Andres Pastrana flew to Washington on Tuesday seeking approval to use U.S. counterdrug aid in his country's war against leftist rebels.

By casting Colombia as a Latin American beachhead in the global war on terror, Pastrana should find broad sympathy during the three-day visit. But he will also encounter skepticism from lawmakers and human rights activists who fear the United States is sliding into a Vietnam-style entanglement in the Andes.

The Bush administration -- in a major departure for U.S. policy -- has already asked lawmakers to eliminate firewalls preventing the use of helicopters and other counterdrug aid to fight guerrillas.

Bush is also asking Congress for $133 million to help Colombia stop guerrilla attacks on an oil pipeline, reduce kidnappings and rebuild bombed police stations -- plus $439 million in longer-term aid.

U.S. Special Forces would continue training Colombian troops, but there are no plans to involve U.S. troops in combat or increase their number in the country, officials say.

Under the Clinton administration, Congress insisted that military aid be targeted against drugs, not rebels. But with the insurgents immersed in the drug trade, that distinction has become ``politically unrealistic and militarily futile,'' Assistant Secretary of State Peter Rodman told a congressional hearing in Washington last week.

Pastrana, whose four-year term ends in August, is scheduled to visit President Bush at the White House on Thursday. He also has meetings planned with congressional leaders, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Trade Representative Robert Zoellick.

In addition to military support, Colombia wants low U.S. tariffs extended on its exports. It argues that boosting the legal economy will weaken booming exports of cocaine and heroin.

Concerns remain about the human rights record of the Colombian military -- criticized in recent reports by the U.S. State Department and the United Nations.

Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Edward M. Kennedy, D-Ma., wrote to Secretary of State Colin Powell last month to demand progress, including the firing of three Colombian generals for allegedly collaborating with a brutal right-wing paramilitary group.

Some lawmakers and U.S. officials also question Colombia's own commitment to the war. The 38-year conflict kills thousands each year and cripples foreign investment, but Colombia spends just 3.5 percent of its gross domestic product on the military -- less than many countries at peace -- while loopholes shield upper class draftees from combat.

Evidence is also mounting that $1.7 billion in U.S. aid since 2000 has not slowed the flow of drugs to the United States or weakened insurgents said by U.S. officials to be making $300 million a year off the drug trade.

Still, the image of Colombia's democracy under attack from terrorists could sway the debate.

``Like the United States in the fight against al-Qaeda, we are fighting a multinational terrorist network,'' Pastrana wrote in an editorial Monday in The Washington Post.

Colombian armed forces chief Fernando Tapias said Monday the nation's main rebel group has learned to build better bombs from the Irish Republican Army. Three alleged IRA members captured last year are awaiting trial in Bogota.

Rebel violence has escalated since the February collapse of peace talks with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. Bombings blamed on the rebels have rocked major cities in recent weeks, including against Pastrana's likely successor, Alvaro Uribe, on Sunday.

Uribe, a hard-liner pledging to crack down on terror, has a big lead in polls ahead of the May 26 presidential election. Pastrana is constitutionally barred from re-election.

The violence continuing, authorities on Tuesday said rebels attacked three towns in southern Narino state the day before. The guerrillas destroyed homes with crude mortars, killed a policeman, injured three civilians and had apparently kidnapped 10 more officers, state police said.

--------

Colombian Aid Limits Reviewed
Pastrana, Bush Ask a Skeptical Congress to Lift Restrictions

By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 16, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A56662-2002Apr15?language=printer

Another difficult and controversial foreign policy issue is about to crowd onto President Bush's already overflowing plate, as Congress takes up his plan for a major expansion of U.S. involvement in Colombia's guerrilla war.

Hearings scheduled to stretch into next month began last week on the proposal to stop restricting U.S. military aid to Colombia's fight against cocaine and heroin production and export.

The restrictions were designed to keep the United States from becoming directly involved in South America's oldest guerrilla conflict. But the Bush administration maintains that left- and right-wing insurgents fighting the Colombian government and each other are both drug traffickers and terrorists whose activities threaten not only Colombia but the stability and security of Latin America and the United States.

Colombian President Andres Pastrana arrives in Washington today for a four-day visit to help lobby for the plan, which would also waive a number of human rights provisions and other restrictions Congress has attached to Colombia aid.

With little to show for nearly $2 billion already spent fighting Colombia's drug war since 2000, however, Bush and Pastrana face an uphill task. Skeptical legislators have indicated they want a better explanation of past failures and a far more detailed description of the new policy than has been provided.

"You're asking for an unprecedented level of decision-making power over policy in Colombia -- with no specifics," Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.) told Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman at a House appropriations subcommittee hearing last week. "I don't feel I know any more about what U.S. policy in Colombia is than I did before."

Language authorizing the policy change is contained in one sentence, deep inside the voluminous White House request for $27 billion in emergency anti-terrorism aid sent to Congress last month. Superseding all existing restrictions, it says that all previously approved and future aid "shall be available to support a unified campaign against narcotics trafficking, terrorist activities, and other threats to [Colombia's] national security."

The administration has said it will not send U.S. combat troops to Colombia, nor extend the U.S. military mission beyond training and supplying military equipment. But there would be no restrictions on Colombia's use of U.S. equipment and U.S.-trained troops.

The new request explicitly retains Congress's 400-person cap on the number of U.S. military personnel in Colombia, and observance of a worldwide requirement for human rights vetting of any foreign troops trained by U.S. forces.

Grossman explained that the "new authority would allow us to address the problem of terrorism in Colombia as vigorously as we currently address narcotics, and help the government of Colombia address the heightened terrorist risk that resulted" from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The change, he said, would also help Colombia deal with the collapse of peace talks last month between Pastrana and the largest rebel group, the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

The State Department lists both FARC and the United Self-Defense Forces, a paramilitary group of equal size and viciousness, as "foreign terrorist organizations," along with a smaller leftist guerrilla group. All are financed principally by the illegal drug business that supplies nearly all of the cocaine that enters the United States, and much of the heroin. The three groups regularly attack civilians in addition to their battles with the Colombian army and each other.

FARC, in particular, has escalated attacks against Colombia's national infrastructure since February, when Pastrana ended three years of sputtering peace talks following a spate of kidnappings of public officials.

The proposed change in ground rules for Colombian aid marks the first time since Sept. 11 that the administration has suggested that domestic insurgents in another country pose a terrorist threat even if they have not directly targeted the United States and have no known connection to any group that has.

With virtually no progress in the drug fight, some in Congress have suggested the administration is creating a terrorist danger in Colombia to justify throwing good money after bad, and in the process risking a Vietnam-type quagmire.

Worse than a "slippery slope . . . I think we're approaching a cliff," Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) told Assistant Secretary of State Otto J. Reich at a House International Relations subcommittee hearing last week.

Administration officials say that the infusion of drug money into FARC and AUC has led to their rapid growth and inserted a new element into the long history of Colombian insurgency. The drug and terror wars are now so intertwined, they argue, that neither can be won without U.S. involvement in both.

Beyond the firewall restricting the use of U.S.-trained troops and U.S-provided equipment to counter-narcotics missions, more specific limits on Colombia assistance would also be waived under the new policy.

Congress has refused to release any military-related funds in a $300 million Colombia aid package it appropriated for 2002 until the administration can certify that the Colombian army has ended collusion with the AUC, suspended and prosecuted senior officers credibly alleged to have been involved in human rights violations and moved to arrest AUC leaders. The leftist FARC and the right wing AUC are officially equal enemies, but both the Colombian and U.S. governments display far more interest in combating the former than the latter.

Money to continue a U.S.-paid aerial fumigation program has been withheld pending proof that the herbicide being sprayed on drug crops is nontoxic and safely used. Neither the military certification nor the herbicide information has been provided.

In February, the Senate prohibited spending any of the new 2002 money for any purpose, until the administration provides a more detailed outline of its strategy.

According to senior Colombian and U.S. officials, the cutoff is beginning to pinch. "We're scraping bits and pieces" left in accounts from earlier years to keep the military and spraying programs going, an administration official said. But "we're at a precipice in terms of where there begins to be an impact."

While arguing there has been modest progress in all areas of U.S. effort in Colombia, the administration agrees it has been insufficient. Army collusion with AUC, which the State Department's human rights reporting holds responsible for civilian massacres and brutality as well as drug trafficking, has continued, while there have been few advances in the war that both are fighting against FARC.

Members of Congress also have asked why the administration proposes spending more money to defend Colombia, including more than $500 million requested for 2003, when Colombia itself is spending less.

Although Pastrana increased defense spending in 1998, his first year in office, it has declined as a percentage of gross domestic product every year since then. Colombia now spends slightly less than 2 percent of its GDP on the army, and 3.3 percent for all security forces combined.

"I'm not at all satisfied with the commitments" Colombia has made, Rep. Sonny Callahan (R-Ala.) told administration officials. "We're talking about a lot of money going into a very small area that can show me zero progress."

-------- drug war

SUPREME COURT ROUNDUP
Justices Tackle Implications of a Rule on Drug Sentences

New York Times
April 16, 2002
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/16/national/16SCOT.html

WASHINGTON, April 15 - It was time for the Supreme Court today to begin confronting the practical implications of the sharp new direction it took two years ago in criminal sentencing.

In an appeal from the federal government, the justices heard an argument about what should happen now to drug defendants whose extra-long sentences were impermissibly based on a judge's rather than a jury's conclusion about the amount of drugs involved in their crimes.

A federal appeals court ruled last year that such sentences were subject to automatic reversal under the Supreme Court's decision in Apprendi v. New Jersey. That decision, issued in June 2000, held that any factors that increase a sentence above the ordinary maximum must be charged in the indictment and proved to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt.

Until the Apprendi decision, federal drug indictments did not ordinarily specify a quantity of drugs, leaving that finding to be made by the judge at sentencing. Federal drug laws impose a series of escalating sentences, depending on drug quantity.

The government quickly changed its practice after the Apprendi ruling and now includes drug quantity in the indictment. But it has maintained that enhanced drug sentences should generally be regarded as valid if they were handed down before the ruling and the defendants did not object at the time.

At stake in the case argued today, United States v. Cotton, No. 01-687, is a relatively small number of cases, perhaps fewer than 100, in which major drug defendants whose cases were still open on appeal at the time of the Apprendi ruling had received more than the ordinary 20-year maximum sentence that applies to those found guilty of trafficking in "any detectable quantity" of narcotics.

The Cotton case involves seven defendants, leaders and participants in a major drug ring in Baltimore, five of whom received life sentences on the judge's finding that each was responsible for more than 1.5 kilograms of cocaine base. The other two received 30 years. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., ruled that all must be resentenced to no more than 20 years.

Although the immediate impact of the Supreme Court's ruling may not be great, the implications of a decision that adopts the appeals court's reasoning could be broader.

For example, it could affect sentences imposed under the Federal Death Penalty Act, under which the "aggravating circumstances" that make a defendant eligible for the death penalty are not charged in the indictment. Two weeks ago, in a case called Allen v. United States, No. 01-7310, the government asked the Supreme Court to defer action on a federal death row inmate's appeal until a decision in the Cotton case.

The Cotton case also raises interesting questions about the role of the grand jury. Timothy J. Sullivan, representing the defendants, maintained that errors in an indictment could never be overlooked without jeopardizing the grand jury's role in protecting the rule of law.

"The integrity of the courts would be impaired if the decision is that you can be indicted for one offense and convicted of another," Mr. Sullivan told the justices.

Michael R. Dreeben, a deputy solicitor general arguing for the government, said that to the contrary, when evidence of guilt is so overwhelming that "any rational grand jury" would have produced a proper indictment if asked, an error in the indictment should be regarded as "harmless."

The Cotton case is one of three Apprendi sequels that the court is considering this spring. Next week, in Ring v. Arizona, No. 01-488, the court will consider whether the death penalty laws in nine states, affecting some 800 defendants, are constitutionally flawed in providing for the judge rather than the jury to issue a death sentence.

--------

The Bush Administration's 'Drugs = Terrorism' Fraud

by James Bovard,
April 2002
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0204f.asp

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy spent more than $3 million for two TV ads during Sunday's Super Bowl. One ad asked viewers: "Where do terrorists get their money?" The answer: "If you buy drugs, some of it might come from you." Drug users are portrayed as terrorist financiers - practically the moral equivalent of the hijackers who destroyed the World Trade Center towers.

President Bush hit the same theme when he recently signed the Drug-Free Communities Act: "If you quit drugs, you join the fight against terror in America."

Unfortunately, U.S. drug laws have done far more to empower terrorists than Bush & Co. would like to admit. Drug laws are far more effective at putting profit into narcotics than law enforcement is at taking the profit out.

Afghanistan produces about 70 percent of the world's opium. Revenue from opium production helped finance both the Taliban government and the al-Qaeda terrorist network. Narcotics have also provided huge windfalls to the leftist guerillas in Colombia. The White House claims that more than a dozen terrorist groups are funded by illicit drugs.

Government prohibitions make drug trafficking far more risky and far more profitable than it would otherwise be. The only reason that opium is more profitable for terrorists than beer is that the United States and other governments prohibit opium while tolerating beer.

Because narcotics are illicit, they tend to attract violent, ruthless people and organizations to carry out their production and marketing. Groups that specialize in violence - such as terrorists - take to drug trafficking like a duck to water.

Drug Enforcement Agency chief Asa Hutchinson told Congress in October, "The DEA will continue to aggressively identify and build cases against drug-trafficking organizations contributing to global terrorism. In doing so, we will limit the ability of drug traffickers to use their destructive goods as a commodity to fund malicious assaults on humanity and the rule of law."

But how will the DEA change the laws of agricultural economics that encourage farmers to grow crops disapproved by the U.S. government? Afghan farmers can easily earn ten times more from growing opium than from growing wheat or other crops. The effort to persuade Third World farmers to abandon illicit crops will be about as successful as trying to persuade stockbrokers and law-firm partners to abandon their high-paid jobs, move to Mexico, and scratch out a livelihood assembling toilet brushes for sale at Wal-Mart.

If the Bush administration is really serious about defunding terrorist groups, it should summon the courage to look at drug laws themselves. The falling price of cocaine and heroin in recent decades is proof of the failure of drug warriors to close the borders. Federal officials have admitted that the government fails to interdict up to 90 percent of the drugs being smuggled into the United States. This failure rate is absolutely intolerable when illicit drugs finance terrorism.

The futility of government drug bans was made stark by one White House anti-drug ad that purported to show the different costs that go into a drug smuggler's operation. One item that flashed briefly on the screen was thousands of dollars for bribes. The ad did not mention who was being bribed - whether it was the U.S. Coast Guard, or the Customs Service, or perhaps foreign government officials. It is ironic for the drug czar's office to complain that drug users help finance bribes to government officials - but to say nothing about the G-men who take bribes.

American policymakers make a careful distinction between the financing of terrorist activity by selling illicit drugs and the U.S. government's financing of terrorist-like activity to suppress drug cultivation. While Bush went ballistic over "terrorists" mailing anthrax to government offices, the United States is conducting a chemical warfare campaign in Colombia, fumigating much of the countryside with deadly herbicides to suppress coca production. Unfortunately, the U.S. campaign has devastated the crops of many law-abiding farmers and left children gasping and ill.

The U.S. government spent more than three times as much on the drug war as it did in fighting terrorism before 9/11. While drugs can leave a person in the gutter, they do not destroy 110-story buildings. While drugs can blur people's vision, they do not turn airliners into suicidal missiles. While drugs can perforate a person's sense of responsibility, they do not leave large holes in the side of the Pentagon.

How many more Americans must die in order to perpetuate the fiction that the U.S. government can completely control every farmer in the world? This is the phantasm at the heart of the U.S. war on drugs and on U.S. efforts to intervene anywhere in the world to suppress any product that offends or frightens American politicians.

Are politicians more interested in controlling people or in protecting them? Unless President Bush can guarantee that none of the profits from illicit drugs will seep back into terrorist organizations, he should do the honorable thing and end the war on drugs.

James Bovard is policy advisor at The Future of Freedom Foundation in Fairfax, Virginia, and author of Feeling Your Pain: The Explosion & Abuse of Government Power in the Clinton-Gore Years (St. Martin's Press, 2000).

--------

High Court Considers Drug Searches

April 16, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Scotus-Bus-Search.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court on Tuesday debated bus passengers' rights in a case testing the limits of officers' authority to seek out possible drug dealers or terrorists on public transportation.

Most justices seemed unswayed by arguments that passengers, confined to small spaces, might feel coerced when officers board and ask permission to search their belongings.

Larry D. Thompson, deputy attorney general, said that officers should not be saddled with court-imposed rules for conducting sweeps.

``Buses in today's environment are vulnerable, vulnerable to specific public safety concerns,'' he told the court.

The case of two men arrested with drugs on a Greyhound bus in Florida came to the court as private airline travelers deal with baggage searches and more intrusive personal checks for weapons.

Public transportation riders may incorrectly believe they have to agree to searches, Justice Stephen Breyer said.

Justices have a chance to tell police who want to look for drugs or evidence of other crimes that they must first inform passengers of their legal rights.

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist warned that such a ruling would create ``another layer of litigation.'' Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said arguments that ``the government has some obligation to teach everybody about their rights -- that's a sweeping proposition and not required by the Constitution.''

Gwendolyn Spivey, an assistant federal public defender representing the bus passengers, said the court should recognize that typically bus riders are poorer and have less knowledge of their rights. ``They don't know who their congressman is,'' she said.

The millions of people who use public transportation should be free of unreasonable searches, she said.

The two men caught ferrying drugs say they didn't feel free to get up and leave when police stood over them in the aisle of a Greyhound bus and started asking questions. One officer was positioned at the front of the bus.

Officers asked to pat down the men's baggy clothing. The men agreed, and officers felt hard objects on the men's legs that turned out to be packets of cocaine. They were convicted of drug charges.

Christopher Drayton and Clifton Brown won a lower court ruling that the 1999 drug sweep aboard a bus in downtown Tallahassee, Fla., violated their constitutional protection against unreasonable searches.

Thompson said the officers did not point weapons or use threatening language while checking passengers on the bus, which was headed to Detroit from Fort Lauderdale.

The officers' behavior, Thompson said, was appropriate under the 1991 Supreme Court standard that bus passenger searches are allowed if a ``reasonable person would feel free to decline the officers' requests or otherwise terminate the encounter.''

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed, ruling that the cocaine should not have been used as evidence against the men. The Bush administration appealed to the Supreme Court.

Since Sept. 11, justices have sided with law enforcement in two other Fourth Amendment search and seizure cases and seem poised to give the government another win in this one. The other cases involved a traffic stop and the search of a home.

``You would certainly think in a post-9-11 context, the justices are going to be more conscious of and sensitive to the needs of law enforcement to have as much investigative power as is constitutionally proper,'' said Donald J. Hall, a law professor at Vanderbilt University.

The case is United States v. Drayton, 01-631.

On the Net:
Supreme Court: http://www.supremecourtus.gov/
11th Circuit Court of Appeals case: http://www.law.emory.edu/11circuit/oct2000/99-13814.man.html

--------

Afghan poppy growers settle in for long struggle

April 16, 2002
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020416-68644248.htm

Drug policy chief John Walters yesterday said it could take as long as three years for the United States and its allies to ensure that Afghanistan does not return to the opium business as a key source of revenue.

Mr. Walters called efforts to restore Afghanistan's schools, health and economic institutions, and its police and security infrastructure a battle between allied forces and that nation's illicit poppy growers, who seek to return to business as usual.

"For the first time in history, we have an opportunity to influence the worldwide opium problem, working with our allies to do as much as we can to eradicate and disrupt the opium trade," he told editors and reporters at The Washington Times.

"It will require staying power, perhaps as long as two to three years, but banning opium production has got to be a priority," he said. "We cannot allow Afghanistan to again become a haven for illicit money, a haven for terrorists."

Mr. Walters, who heads the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, also said Hamid Karzai, the leader of Afghanistan's interim government, has made "outstanding" progress in curtailing opium production in that country - "even at substantial risk to himself and his government."

He said Mr. Karzai and other Afghan leaders have been threatened, and some involved in the eradication efforts have been killed.

The former Taliban regime, which was aligned closely with terrorist Osama bin Laden, collected millions of dollars a year in profits from illicit opium sales - with some of the cash going to terrorists who hid and trained in Afghanistan.

After the Taliban took control in 1996, Afghanistan accounted for more than 70 percent of the global supply of poppies, the source crop for opium and heroin. Between 80 percent and 90 percent of the heroin sold in Europe was processed from opium produced and stockpiled in Afghanistan.

Drug Enforcement Administration officials have estimated that profits from opium sales netted the Taliban $40 million annually, with some estimates ranging far higher.

Mr. Walters said Afghan police and security officials have to be trained on how to eradicate and disrupt that country's opium production and that the job would fall mainly on military authorities and others from the United States, Great Britain and Germany.

He said major buyers of Afghan opium and heroin were in Britain and Germany, and that those countries had to be willing to "pay the price" to eliminate the drug's production and shipment to Europe.

Mr. Walters noted that the British already had begun eradication efforts, eliminating 1,000 acres just last week, and that Germany had begun to train Afghan police and security officials in anti-drug measures.

He said those efforts already have seen some results, adding that the purity of heroin arriving in Britain from Afghanistan is down.

"When the purity of the product drops, the market is under stress," he said. "It's like the Old West; when the supply is off, they start watering down the whiskey."

Mr. Walters noted that the first big test of the effectiveness of the effort to reduce opium production will come in October, when farmers there begin the planting season.

The crop generally is harvested for raw opium gum, from which heroin is made, between March and May.

"We will be in a better position next fall to figure out where we are," he said.

"We need to make a substantial effort to ensure that we are successful, but not pay the lion's share," he said. "It's time Europe stepped up to the plate."

The Bush administration's anti-drug strategy is focused on reducing supplies from foreign countries, undermining domestic demand and providing effective drug treatment to addicts.

The president has vowed to cut illegal drug use in America by 10 percent within the next two years and by 25 percent within five years.

President Bush called for $19.2 billion to fight illegal drugs, a 2 percent increase over current spending.

-------- india

Secret UK report says Gujarat death toll 'much greater'

By Peter Popham in Delhi
16 April 2002
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia_china/story.jsp?story=285447

The pogroms that erupted in the state of Gujarat six weeks ago continue to haunt India.

Yesterday three more people died in violent clashes in the city of Ahmedabad and a curfew was clamped on affected areas. The Hindustan Times, a national newspaper, claimed that a secret internal report prepared by British diplomats here for the Foreign Office put the death toll in the state at about 2,000 - nearly 1,200 more than the official figure - and stated that the violence was not spontaneous but planned.

A spokesman for the British high commission in Delhi said: "We will neither confirm nor deny what was in the report because we do not comment on leaks." But the report conforms to what non-government organisations have been claiming about the true scale of the carnage, in which the overwhelming majority of the victims were Muslims.

Both houses of India's parliament were forced to adjourn in uproar yesterday as opposition MPs attacked the government for failing to control the violence. "Today Gujarat is burning, tomorrow the country will burn," said Satyavrat Chaturvedi of the Congress party.

The opposition is angry because the chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, who belongs to the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which controls the ruling coalition, has not only avoided the sack for allegedly conniving in the pogroms but is being encouraged by the BJP to stand in new elections. The party appears to believe that, in a violently polarised election, the party will gain the votes of the great majority of Hindus and secure a massive new mandate in the western state.

The opposition, in common with many disinterested observers, believes that the violence in Gujarat, which followed the massacre of 59 Hindu activists on a train in the town of Godhra on 28 February, was not a spontaneous eruption of Hindu emotion but meticulously planned by militant neo-fascist groups - the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council) and Bajrang Dal. They also believe that Mr Modi allowed it to happen. The state police, it is claimed, either did nothing or deliberately instigated violence and fired on the Muslim victims.

Atal Behari Vajpayee, the Prime Minister, has been under enormous pressure both from the Opposition and coalition partners to punish Mr Modi for turning a blind eye to the worst communal violence in India in 10 years. But radical voices within the BJP, calling on the leadership to keep faith with the Hindu chauvinism that is the party's core ideology, now appear to have prevailed. After weeks of prevaricating, Mr Vajpayee has now made clear that Mr Modi's sacking is out of the question.

At a BJP conference in Goa on Friday he even jumped on to the Muslim-bashing bandwagon. He said in a speech: "Wherever there are Muslims, they do not want to live with others [of different faiths]. Instead of living peacefully, they want to preach and propagate their religion by creating terror in the minds of others."

This broadside delighted his audience of activists but it is an approach that puts the survival of the ruling coalition, which has two more years to run if it can sustain its majority, in doubt. For years Mr Vajpayee has specialised in putting a moderate, secular face on his party. His sudden return to ideological basics has helped to unite the opposition in hostility to the BJP, and has come close to bouncing his party's most important coalition partner, the Telugu Desam Party from Andhra Pradesh, into the opposition camp, too. If the opposition can force a vote on Gujarat in parliament, the government might not have enough votes to win it.

Indian politics has taken an ugly turn. After several electoral setbacks in recent months, the BJP has returned to the communal politics that once made it a parliamentary leper.

The long-term result is anybody's guess. If it succeeds in galvanising Hindu votes across India, more pogroms like those of Gujarat may be on the way. But if the party continues to lose ground, the murderous thugs who support it may prove even more unruly.

-------- israel / palestine

Israel Pursues Military Actions as Powell Prepares to Leave

New York Times
April 16, 2002
By SERGE SCHMEMANN and TODD S. PURDUM
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/16/international/16CND-POWE.html

JERUSALEM, April 16 - As Secretary of State Colin L. Powell prepared today to end his peace mission to the region, the Israeli military pursued its operation in the West Bank. Israel was on high alert for suicide bombers, and the secretary himself took pains to play down expectations for any last-minute surprise.

``I think we are making progress and I look forward to furthering that progress over the next 24 hours,'' Secretary Powell said today. But he added that whatever was achieved, it would fall short of the formal cease-fire envisioned in past American proposals. ``The specific term cease-fire has not quite the same significance as what actually happens,'' he said.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon made clear that the Israeli dragnet through West Bank cities and towns is not over. He reiterated today that the Israeli Army intended to pull out of Jenin and Nablus by week's end, but he said the army would maintain a tight military ring around these and other cities. These positions enable Israeli forces to go in at will to nab suspects, as Israeli forces did in Tulkarem and two villages today.

``I know the United States has problems on its mind, but we will carry out our operation,'' Mr. Sharon told Israel Radio in an Independence Day interview. ``Even after we pull out of the cities, we will surround the cities in order to monitor the area to see whether the terror resumes its actions.''

Secretary Powell has a second meeting with the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat scheduled for Wednesday. But it already appears that the most the secretary may be able to secure from his shuttle diplomacy is a vague commitment to a cessation of hostilities, an eventual Israeli withdrawal at an unspecified date and a possible international peace conference.

The other thing the secretary has clearly achieved is to plunge the Bush administration into the midst of the quest for a Middle East peace, the very role it long sought to avoid. Whether this involvement will prove fruitful, or merely frustrating, remains to be seen.

Danny Ayalon, a foreign policy adviser to Mr. Sharon, said at a news briefing this evening that Mr. Sharon and Secretary Powell had ``a very good and friendly meeting'' today and ``discussed the ways to move ahead.''

Mr. Ayalon also pronounced Israel's operation on the West Bank a success that ``proved that terror can be fought militarily, if you will.'' He said there had been two suicide attacks since the operation began, compared with ``two a day'' before it.

But Saeb Erekat, a leading Palestinian negotiator, said in an interview: ``If Mr. Powell leaves the area without having Sharon withdraw, that's a bad sign. I don't think there's anything saying that Sharon is withdrawing. Sharon is maintaining and keeping up the occupation. Destroying the peace process is his end game.''

Certainly, Israel gave few signals of a readiness to compromise today. The head of military intelligence, Maj. Gen. Aharon Zeevi, said, ``We've not afraid to go into the cities to get the terrorists. If we have to go in again, we'll go in again.'' General Zeevi said that of the 4,250 Palestinians rounded up in the 19-day offensive, 400 were wanted Palestinians, including 15 top militants.

Mr. Sharon also made clear that the army would remain in Bethlehem until the 250 gunmen holed up in the Church of the Nativity surrendered, and in Ramallah until two wanted men in Mr. Arafat's Palestinian Authority compound had been arrested.

Mr. Sharon's statements, coming 11 days after President Bush demanded that he withdraw from West Bank cities ``without delay,'' and five days after Secretary Powell arrived in anticipation of an Israeli withdrawal, indicated that the Israeli prime minister was serious when he told the Americans that he would not set limits on Israel's military operations.

At the same time, the chance that terrorist attacks had been halted by the operation seemed slight, at least to the vast majority of Israeli citizens who stayed inside on the eve of Independence Day, usually a night of parties and fairs. The one event in Jerusalem that was not canceled, a rock concert, drew a loose sprinkling of celebrants, and the rest of the city was eerily empty, except for police and soldiers who set up innumerable roadblocks.

Security officials had issued warnings that suicide bombings had been planned specifically for this evening, and in the minds of many Israelis, the danger was increased after Israel on Monday arrested Marwan Barghouti, the a popular Palestinian leader who took charge of the Tanzim militia during the current uprising. Mr. Barghouti, whom Israelis accuse of authorizing several recent bombing attacks, is being held in a Jerusalem jail.

Mr. Sharon declared today that Mr. Barghouti would be put on trial for ``horrendous acts of murder of hundreds of Israelis.''

Members of Mr. Barghouti's organization, which includes the Al Aksa Brigades, which carried out the majority of suicide bombings since January, appear certain to try to avenge his arrest. Many Israelis suspect that his followers will seek to kidnap Israelis and then try to swap them for Mr. Barghouti.

Secretary Powell met one-on-one for more than an hour with Mr. Sharon this afternoon, and he is to meet Mr. Arafat in Ramallah on Wednesday morning. He will then fly to Cairo for quick consultations with President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, and probably Jordanian and Saudi officials, before heading back to Washington.

``We'll have a statement from him tomorrow, hopefully followed soon after by statements from Israelis and Palestinians,'' one senior administration official said, referring to Mr. Powell.

A regional peace conference was first proposed by Mr. Sharon on Sunday, but the idea remained vague. The idea he initially floated was for Israel to meet with a number of moderate Arab countries, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Morocco, as well as with the Palestinians, but without Mr. Arafat. In a television interview this evening, Mr. Sharon said the conference could take place in June, perhaps in the United States.

Secretary Powell suggested that the meeting could be held at the ministerial level, so that Mr. Arafat's presence would not be required. ``The conference in and of itself isn't the solution, but it's a way to get the parties together and talking,'' he said.

But the idea was greeted with skepticism by the Palestinians, who viewed it largely as a way to placate Americans and to win time. Egypt's foreign minister, Ahmed Maher, who originally welcomed Mr. Sharon's proposal, said today that the conference was intended only to avoid a real peace negotiation, and that he also opposed it because it excluded the European Union, Russia and the United Nations.

Adding to questions about whether Secretary Powell had made any headway were tough statements by Mr. Sharon reiterating that Israel would continue to pressure the Palestinians until Mr. Arafat did more than make a statement to end violence. Mr. Arafat insisted that Israel must withdraw from occupied areas before he would agree to a cease-fire.

Even as Secretary Powell has sought repeatedly on this trip to start parallel security and political discussions, Mr. Ayalon, the adviser to Mr. Sharon, repeated Israel's longstanding position that a cease-fire is the key to any progress. ``There's no way you can negotiate politically under terror and fire,'' he said.

This stance appeared to explain why Secretary Powell tried today to avoid using the term ``cease-fire,'' and to focus instead on a joint statement condemning terrorist attacks against Israelis and Palestinians and calling for political negotiations toward the creation of a Palestinian state and continued action against terrorism.

In effect, Secretary Powell's hopes seemed limited to returning the parties to roughly where they were before the Passover bombing in Netanya and the ensuing Israeli raids on West Bank towns and villages.

Early today, Israeli tanks and troops re-entered Tulkarem for several hours and arrested four members of Hamas, the militant Islamic movement. Raids into two other towns yielded eight more arrests, the Israelis said.

The army also sent tanks and armored personnel carries into three Palestinian suburbs of east Jerusalem early today and declared a tight curfew. An Israeli military official said there had been information that a terrorist attack was being planned from these areas.

The army also confirmed that it was reopening the Ketziot detention camp in the Negev Desert to hold some of the Palestinians rounded up in the West Bank. Thousands of Palestinians were kept at Ketziot in the first Palestinian uprising from 1987 to 1993, suffering severe heat and bitter cold.

--------

Sharon vows to withdraw his forces

April 16, 2002
By Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020416-41069860.htm

JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon pledged yesterday that his troops would withdraw from Jenin and all other West Bank cities and towns except Ramallah and Bethlehem "in less than one week."

Israeli soldiers also entered two small towns near Bethlehem yesterday, defying Washington's demands that they withdraw from the West Bank immediately. Israeli armor rumbled back into Tulkarm early today a week after pulling out of the West Bank city, in what Israeli military sources called a limited operation to arrest Palestinian gunmen.

"This is not a reoccupation," one military source told Reuters news agency. "It is a limited operation to search for terrorists."

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has been shuttling between the Israelis and Palestinians since Friday, but he hasn't made much progress toward a cessation of hostilities or a political solution to the conflict. He went to Lebanon yesterday and later returned to Jerusalem.

He is to meet with Mr. Sharon again today and may meet with Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat tomorrow.

The stench of death greeted independent observers allowed into the Jenin refugee camp yesterday, where they found more than a dozen decaying bodies but could not find evidence of Palestinian charges of a massacre.

That claim, if verified, may require months of investigation, but Jenin, the site of ferocious fighting between Palestinians and Israelis last week, is a humanitarian disaster zone.

"There is no water, the civilians are in urgent need of basic sustenance, and most of the families have lost contact with their loved ones," said Jessica Barry of the International Red Cross.

She and other Red Cross workers entered the camp with deliveries of medicine yesterday. There was no way to know how many died in the camp, she said.

"It is impossible to make an estimate because we were only in a small part of the camp," Miss Barry told the Agence France-Presse news service.

Accompanied by officials of the Red Cross, the Israeli army, which had sealed off Jenin during the fighting, collected bodies of dead Palestinians, as ordered Sunday by the Israeli High Court.

The mayor of Jenin, Walid Abu Mueiss, told AFP by phone that he had accompanied the Red Cross, where they came across 15 bodies.

The Red Cross declined to confirm that figure, suggesting the question of the toll had gained too many political overtones for the organization to become publicly involved. The Palestinians have said "hundreds" were killed; Israeli sources put the figure at 35 to 40.

The Israeli army continued to block reporters and photographers from the camp.

Aid workers, as well as reporters, were prevented from entering Bethlehem's Manger Square, where soldiers held a tense shootout with Palestinians sheltering inside the Church of the Nativity.

Two armed Palestinian policemen - one shot and severely wounded, the other apparently suffering from the noise of the persistent explosion of Israeli percussion grenades and sirens - were taken into custody.

The standoff at the Church of the Nativity, a holy shrine to Christians, many of whom believe it is the site of the birth of Christ, has become a liability for the Israelis.They have sealed inside an estimated 200 Palestinians, many of them armed, as well as civilians and clerics.

Some governments in Europe and the Middle East and certain religious organizations have condemned the firing on religious sites. The Israeli government says it is exercising restraint in the face of fire from the Palestinians inside the church.

Soldiers also have encircled and occupied Mr. Arafat's compound in Ramallah, and they are waiting to apprehend several key associates who are accused of masterminding terrorist activities.

Yesterday they arrested Marwan Barghouti, a key political associate and the leader of the militant group Fatah, charging him with coordinating attacks, including suicide bombings, by the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. Israeli television reported the capture of two more wanted Palestinians late yesterday.

Mr. Sharon yesterday spoke of his desire for peace but noted that Mr. Arafat is not a "partner" in the effort. He said that Mr. Powell should not have met with him on Sunday.

In Geneva yesterday, the U.N. Human Rights Commission adopted a resolution sponsored by Islamic states that condemned what it called Israel's "mass killings" and endorsed what it called the Palestinians' "legitimate right to resist." Seven nations on the 53-member panel abstained. France and Austria voted for the resolution.

Israeli Ambassador Yaakov Levy dismissed the document as "window dressing" and said it does not condemn the suicide bombings, but in fact gives Palestinians "a license to continue this policy of terrorism. That's why it is so wrong."

Meanwhile, the head of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees accused the Israeli government of violating the Geneva Convention during its "war on the camps" and said troops had willfully destroyed U.N. medical supplies. "I cannot say we never had access, but I can say we have not had anywhere near the access that one would have expected if the Geneva Convention would have been observed," U.N. Relief and Works Agency chief Peter Hansen told Reuters in London.

The Israeli government, concerned by the harsh anti-Israeli tone of much of the reporting from the region, loosened its media blackout on Nablus and other towns yesterday where the aftermath of the invasion was evident. In Nablus' Old City, narrow alleys were lined with scorch marks and carpeted in broken glass. Trash fires - lit to control pestilence - sent an acrid smoke into homes through busted windows. Apartment houses were reduced to rubble fields. Some residents said the occupants were buried inside.

As many as 1,800 people have died since the latest uprising began in September 2000, with Palestinians accounting for the majority of casualties. Most of the Israeli dead died at the hands of suicide bombers, who targeted civilians.

--------

Palestinians to Be Held in Desert

April 16, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinian-Prisoners.html

KETZIOT, Israel (AP) -- Israel has reopened a sprawling desert detention camp made infamous during the first intefadah to hold some of the thousands of Palestinians it has rounded up during its current West Bank sweep.

Associated Press reporters saw bustling signs of activity at the Ketziot camp in the southern Negev Desert: Spotlights beamed down and soldiers stood in guard towers; civilian and military trucks entered and left, and bright new Israeli flags hung limply in the baking desert air.

An Israeli military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed Tuesday that Israel reopened the camp this week.

Ketziot held thousands of Palestinians during the first Palestinian uprising, from 1987-93. Prisoners were held 26 to a tent, exposed to searing heat in the summer and bone-chilling cold in the winter. The camp was closed in 1996.

The army declined to comment on the reopening. The Palestinian security chief in the West bank, Jibril Rajoub, said reopening the prison would only increase Palestinians' desire for freedom from Israel's control. ``The Israelis will discover that they are wrong in their belief that opening this prison ... will break the determination and the unity of the Palestinian people,'' he said.

In the current offensive, in its 19th day Tuesday, Israel has detained 4,258 Palestinians including suspected leaders of the Palestinian uprising, the army said.

The army said 387 of the thousands detained this month were previously known terror suspects. Suspicions against others emerged during interrogation and altogether about 1,200 men would be kept in custody, Israeli security sources said. The army has started releasing the others, said the Israel military official who confirmed the camp's reopening, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The first 310 Palestinians were transferred to Ketziot from a prison in northern Israel this week, said Lior Yavne, a spokesman for the Israeli human rights group B'tselem, citing army officials.

The latest top Palestinian to be detained was Marwan Barghouti, the top-ranking grass-roots activist in Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement. Barghouti was taken from his hide-out in the town of Ramallah on Monday.

Israel accuses Barghouti of commanding the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade militia, which is linked to Fatah and has carried out scores of shooting and bombing attacks on Israelis.

Barghouti has never acknowledged he was the militia's leader, though he has said he considered Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip legitimate targets for attack. At the same time, Barghouti advocated the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, not instead of it.

Barghouti was being interrogated Tuesday at a Jerusalem police compound.

Other high-profile detainees included Nasser Awais, a regional leader of the Al Aqsa militia; Thabet Mardawi, an Islamic Jihad leader in the Jenin refugee camp; and Bilal Barghouti of the Islamic militant Hamas group.

Bilal Barghouti, a member of the same extended clan as Marwan Barghouti, is accused by Israel of involvement in two deadly suicide bombings, a June attack on a Tel Aviv disco and a blast outside a Jerusalem pizza restaurant in August.

Security sources said leading suspects were sent to a prison in central Israel, while most other detainees were being held at the army's Ofer camp near Ramallah and several hundred had been transferred to Ketziot.

An Israeli human rights official said she expected most of those would be given open-ended prison time without trial, a policy known as `'administrative detention'' that has raised protests by human rights groups in the past.

``Some have already been served administrative detention orders,'' said Hannah Friedman, director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel. ``Most of the rest will probably receive them too.''

A Red Cross spokesman said the organization had asked to visit the prison camps but was still waiting for its requests to be expedited.

Ketziot is known to Palestinians as ``Ansar III'' after the grim Ansar prison run by Israel during its military occupation of south Lebanon. An Israeli prison in the Gaza Strip was known as ``Ansar II.''

The desert camp was first used to detain Palestinians shortly after the December 1987 outbreak of the previous uprising. During the first five years of that conflict Israel jailed about 14,000 Palestinians without trial, most of them held at Ketziot, according to B'tselem.

--------

Children's Corpses Legacy of West Bank City Fight

April 16, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-mideast-palestinians-family.html

NABLUS, West Bank - The dusty corpses of the al-Shabi children are frozen in time, testimony to their last moments of life in the battle-scarred ancient quarter of this Palestinian city in the West Bank.

Seven-year old Azam's arms cover his head as if he was trying to shield himself from the rubble of his home as it came crashing down, killing him and seven other members of his family more than a week ago during an Israeli military offensive.

His four-year-old sister Anis has her little fists clenched to her stomach. She is curled up, still dressed in her green sport shirt and pants.

``They were all together in a bombed building in the old city,'' said Anan Qadri, the head of the emergency medical committee in Nablus. ``The Israelis destroyed their house in a missile attack and then destroyed it with bulldozers.''

The eight members of the al-Shabi family were among 71 Palestinians killed in Nablus during the Israeli sweep since April 3, according to Nablus's Rafidia Hospital records obtained by Reuters.

Nablus was viewed as a stronghold of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, linked to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, which has claimed responsibility for some of the recent suicide attacks inside Israeli.

Israeli armored personnel carriers and tanks churned up the hilly streets of the West Bank's largest Palestinian city on Tuesday, enforcing a reoccupation in a campaign Israel says is aimed at uprooting terrorism.

Qadri had no breakdown for the number of gunmen and civilians killed in Nablus. ``We are still working on this but many of them are civilians,'' she said.

The military curfew imposed on the more than 100,000 residents of Nablus has grisly implications in a city where tradition calls for mass public burials and three-day condolence visits.

``We have to prepare the tombs, and the families have to come but we are under curfew,'' said Qadri. ``The Israeli liaison officer said we will allow you to only bury them one by one, so we refused.''

This means that the bodies of the Shabi family and 25 other Palestinians are kept in a refrigerated dairy truck in a parking lot behind the hospital because the mortuary is overflowing with even more corpses.

``Good health and strength!'' the advertisement on the side of the truck says above a collage of colored milk cartons in vivid colors. A generator hums softly next to the vehicle, keeping its contents cold.

TEMPORARY GRAVES

The Israeli army said it had no figures for Palestinian fatalities in Nablus, and added it was checking the policy on burials.

The dead are being lowered into shallow temporary graves, covered in palm leaves in the Islamic tradition. Three corpses have been buried in the hospital garden.

And in the old quarter of Nablus, stone steps lead up a narrow alley toward a wooden door between houses with arched windows their residents say are centuries old. The door swings open onto a lilac-scented garden.

Under the shade of lush almond and peach trees, two indentations in the ground mark the spot where 13 Palestinians have been buried in a temporary mass grave.

Palm fronds fan across the soil. Two military-style olive green overcoats are splayed in the dirt, riddled with what look like shrapnel perforations.

``We buried them here,'' said Nafez Eissa, whose home opens up onto the garden. ``We will dig them up when the Israeli army withdraws and give them a decent burial in the cemetery.''

And in the Askar refugee camp near Nablus, the Abu Aisha family buried their 11-year old son Qusay near their home. He was shot dead with two bullets in his chest during the Israeli army incursion into the camp on Tuesday.

NABLUS'S BATTLE-SCARRED CASBAH

Inside the Old City, known locally as the Casbah, or bazaar, hundreds of fighters mingled with Palestinian police and security forces of Arafat's Palestinian Authority in preparation before the Israeli incursion.

Graffiti on the walls urging more militant attacks is scrawled next to signs which urge residents not to park in driveways.

Blood stains spatter the rubble in front of scorched groceries and shops. The facades of houses are busted through with gaping holes residents say were made by helicopter rocket attacks. Bomb-blasted buildings have been reduced to mounds of yellow stone and dust.

The door of the 300-year old Al-Beik mosque in the old quarter is spattered with blood from the dead and injured who were brought into the prayer room, which was transformed into a temporary operating theater and first aid station.

Blood-caked surgical instruments soak in dirty water, and plastic sheeting covers the floors under the mosque's sparkling chandeliers.

Israeli tanks had sealed off the narrow alleyways into the old quarter during days of fierce fighting.

``After the incursion we turned the mosque into a hospital,'' said Doctor Tawfik Ghazal. ``We could not evacuate injured Palestinians from the old city. We tried to save lives in the street under gunfire.

``I saw four patients due before my eyes because we had no blood for infusions and no proper facilities. We worked under very difficult conditions.''

--------
[Did Israelis used depleted uranium rounds in their US-supplied Apache helicopters? et]

Lives Reduced to Rubble
Jenin Camp Is a Scene of Devastation But Yields No Evidence of a Massacre

By Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, April 16, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A56619-2002Apr15?language=printer

JENIN REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank -- The heart of this battered Palestinian shantytown of 13,000 inhabitants has been erased from the face of the earth, its maze of apartment houses and twisting streets bulldozed by the Israeli military into a vast crater of broken concrete.

The crater -- about the size of two square city blocks -- lies at the end of a dusty river of destruction that looks as if it swept through in a fierce flood, taking with it sad souvenirs from the homes and lives it obliterated: a hand-knit blue sweater, a lace window curtain, cooking pots, a car sliced in half.

The rubble has obscured many facts, but some are indisputable. Some of the most brutal urban battles, heaviest air barrages and most devastating ground tactics in more than two weeks of Israeli assaults against Palestinian towns and communities across the West Bank have been waged here.

Others are less clear. Interviews with residents inside the camp and international aid workers who were allowed here for the first time today indicated that no evidence has surfaced to support allegations by Palestinian groups and aid organizations of large-scale massacres or executions by Israeli troops.

Thus far, about 40 bodies have been recovered, according to the Israeli military and aid groups.

"Everybody was thinking mass graves in the way we think of Kosovo," said Guy Siri, deputy director of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. "I don't think we have seen that."

Residents related numerous accounts of individual killings of noncombatants. Nasser Abu Hatab, a mentally disabled man, was shot once in the head and nine times in the chest by soldiers when he failed to follow orders to leave his house minutes before it was bulldozed, they said. Hafaf Dusoky, 54, apparently did not answer a jittery soldier's knock quickly enough and was shot dead through the door.

Residents also said that Israeli war tactics became especially harsh after 13 soldiers were killed April 9 in an elaborate ambush set by Palestinian fighters in the camp. One resident said he counted 71 helicopter missile attacks within a 30-minute period the night after the ambush, nearly as many as had been fired previously in an entire night. Residents also said the military stepped up the pace of the bulldozings and stopped giving them advance warnings to leave their homes.

Ali Damaj said he peeked through his kitchen window as a bulldozer leveled his entire neighborhood -- first one house, then two, then six. Suddenly, he said, he was watching the wall of his neighbor's house push his refrigerator across the room.

"I felt the house shaking back and forth," said Damaj, whose house was left partially standing. "I was in a state of shock. My hair was standing on end."

Abdul Hassan Bahaldin, 26, said he heard the first tanks roll into the camp from all four sides of town at around midnight on April 3. "It sounded terrible, it was very frightening, the kids started screaming, we panicked," he said.

All 21 members of his family who lived in a house on the edge of the camp scampered into what they considered the safest room, the basement. They had already stockpiled supplies. A few hours later they heard footsteps on the floor above them and soldiers burst into the basement demanding to know, "Where are the men? Where are the men?"

Bahaldin said he knew the soldiers meant fighters for the militant groups that operated in the camp. Israeli officials have called the Jenin refugee camp a nest that housed both suicide bombers and architects of suicide attacks.

The soldiers wore night-vision goggles, communicated with soldiers outside on wireless phones and seemed "frightened" and eager to move on to their next command post, according to Bahaldin, who said they used his three-story home as "a bridge to the camp."

The next day at about noon, Bahaldin's sister-in-law decided to dash up the open-air stairwell to retrieve baby formula she had forgotten upstairs. Israeli snipers fired at her from a nearby rooftop, he said.

For four days, the military pummeled the camp with rockets, missiles and artillery shells fired from U.S.-provided AH-64 Apache helicopters and tanks. Houses throughout the camp were sprayed with bullets and gouged with gaping holes. Not a single glass window appeared to have survived the onslaught.

Damaj, a member of Palestinian leader Yassar Arafat's Fatah organization and head of the camp's emergency response committee, communicated with a cell phone today by hot-wiring his electrical cord to hand-held batteries. He said the bulldozers arrived four days into the campaign, just after 10 a.m. on a Saturday, and demolished everything in their paths.

Within 10 minutes, Damaj said, the machines had flattened six homes belonging to his neighbors. As soon as the bulldozers moved to the next street, soldiers swarmed into the newly plowed road.

"They were shooting everything ahead of them, everything they saw, everything that moved," Damaj said.

Before the attacks of the past two weeks, the Jenin refugee camp was a jumble of square concrete houses and apartments stacked atop one another on a hillside. Residents traversed the community through a network of tiny alleyways and a series of steps connecting various levels of the town. Today, the walk from Damaj's neighborhood to what was once the center of town was a panorama of the kind of devastation usually associated with earthquakes or landslides.

Bulldozers flattened dozens of cinder-block houses and ripped off the walls of others, exposing their interiors like the open side of a dollhouse: a bedroom with sleeping mats laid neatly across the floors, a kitchen sink with tin plates stacked on the cabinet, a bathroom wall of gleaming white tile, all wide open to the elements.

The bulldozers seemed to have nicked the pillars of other houses, tilting the buildings on their sides as though a petulant giant had pushed them. The heavy machinery took giant hunks out of the concrete corners of other houses.

Rockets and missiles turned other buildings into a spaghetti of twisted metal and broken chunks of concrete.

Rooftop water tanks and satellite dishes were pocked with bullet holes. Cars that had been cut in half or smashed flat by tanks lined the streets. Some alleyways were apparently the scenes of such intense shooting that they appeared to be carpeted in bullet casings.

The fine, spiderweb-like lines of wire-guided TOW missiles draped across passageways and trees where they slumped after leading missiles to their targets.

The camp initially appeared deserted. Scrawny cats yowled. The cracks of gunfire, booms of tank rounds and roar of patrolling tanks could be heard throughout the day. But deep inside the maze of the camp, largely out of sight of the patrols, residents were beginning to venture out.

Thousands remained in their homes, hiding in basements or other interior rooms, according to residents.

Ibrahim bu Hassan, 53, a farmer with silver hair, emerged from his basement for the first time in 10 days on Friday. The first thing he checked was his satellite dish: "It was full of holes," he said. "They didn't want me to watch the news."

Residents picked their way through the camp, peeking around corners and out gates and doorways before dashing across alleys or streets. They posted lookouts behind the curtains of third-floor rooms and hissed warnings of arriving tank patrols to those on the streets.

A few bolder residents walked tentatively to the center of town, gawking in horror and awe at what was once the heart of the camp, apartments and houses that sheltered an estimated 200 families. Residents said that the heart of the impoverished camp was home to many of the fighters for militant Islamic groups that put up resistance to the Israeli attack.

Aiseh Saleh's kitchen window overlooks the destruction. The 39-year-old teacher said her house was spared because the Israeli soldiers took it over as a command post. She said they taped an aerial photograph to the wall, with the houses of wanted men outlined with a blue marker. On the day the 13 soldiers were killed, their comrades in her house wept. The soldiers left behind several bandoliers of bullets that her sons draped around their necks.

-------- japan

Japanese legislation expands military role

World Scene
April 17, 2002
Combined dispatches and staff reports
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020417-45572457.htm

TOKYO - Japan's Cabinet endorsed rules yesterday that would expand the nation's military role and give the government new powers in case of foreign attack. Opponents say the move runs afoul of Japan's post World War II pacifist constitution.

The measures are designed to give greater latitude to the prime minister and the Self-Defense Forces in time of military emergency. Cabinet endorsement brings the measures a major step closer to ratification.

-------- nato

Security for Israel via NATO?

April 16, 2002
Washington Times
Morton Kaplan
http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/20020416-5341214.htm

President Bush is being praised for taking a more positive role with respect to the Israeli-Palestinian war by sending Secretary of State Colin Powell into the region. In fact, he is walking into a quagmire because all proposed solutions are so dangerous to the existence of Israel that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon dare not accept them. The eventual result will be the expulsion of the Palestinians, the collapse or radicalization of major Arab states, and the end of any viable Middle Eastern policy.

The much-praised Saudi plan was never feasible, Even if sincere, conditions would be attached that make it unworkable. The Saudis, in addition to other Arab states, have been proved to finance terrorism, and official appointees of the Saudi regime published the blood libel that Jews kill, in this case, Muslims to use their blood in religious ceremonies. Moreover, the Arab regimes are unpopular and cannot bind their successors.

No future Israeli government will ever again trust Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. He speaks one message in English and a contradictory message in Arabic. It is proven that he has sponsored many of the terror attacks. Even his secular schools demonize all Jews in a manner reminiscent of the virulent publications of Julius Streicher in the Nazi era. Some madrassas advocate killing Jews, as did a mullah appointed by Mr. Arafat. Indoctrinating hatred, especially among the very young, is not a program of a leader who wants peace.

The risks I repeatedly asked Israeli leaders to accept in the 1970s and '80s to provide the Palestinians with a dignified homeland have been raised unacceptably high by Mr. Arafat's deliberate policies. Even were it true that he really wants peace, what Israeli leader could now believe that, or that he could control the radicals even if he were sincere?

If a peace treaty is signed, what will Israel do if terrorists after a few years cross the borders in a new intifada? Even if the Palestinian state agrees not to invite foreign armies, what will Israel do if Arab divisions enter in slow motion in a clandestine manner? Or if missiles are smuggled in? Israel, which will be less than 15 miles wide at the center, will be deterred by international pressure from defensive measures until it is too late. Mr. Sharon is no fool on this issue, however arrogant and insensitive he is in other respects. He is not ready to commit Israel to suicide.

Is there an alternative that might satisfy Mr. Sharon and that might persuade him to accept a viable Palestinian state in which most of the settlements are gone? Simply putting American or U.N. peacekeepers in place will not work. The Palestinians are no fools either. After a period of quiet, there would be years of assassinations of the peacekeepers that would discourage such forces from remaining in the absence of an overt attack against Israel.

It would be wrong and self-defeating to coerce Israel unless we have a plan that makes sense. Making Israel a member of NATO as an integral part of the settlement, after which an attack on it would be an attack on all, might provide the assurance needed. If this were accompanied by an agreement that Israel had the right to take reprisals if terrorist attacks resumed and the Palestinian state showed less than due diligence in attempting to control it and to punish the perpetrators, Mr. Sharon might see a solution and be willing to face the wrath of Israeli extremists as he once did in the Sinai.

In the absence of a viable strategy of destroying Israel and in the presence of a developing economy that would be threatened by continued intifada, the Palestinians eventually might come to recognize the permanence of Israel. The Palestinian state could be promised future membership in NATO if it instituted democratic government and the rule of law, forbade education designed to produce hatred, and outlawed organizations such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad while severely punishing clandestine groups for attempted or actual terrorism.

Morton A. Kaplan is distinguished service professor of political science emeritus at the University of Chicago and is editor and publisher of The World & I, a monthly magazine published by The Washington Times Corp. Mr. Kaplan with co-author Cherif Bassiouni published an extensive peace plan in 1974, which advocated a Palestinian state and negotiations with the Palestine Liberation Organization. In 1980, he helped persuade Shimon Peres to meet with a specific PLO representative whom he respected and trusted.

-------- puerto rico

Navy Drone Washes Up in Puerto Rico

The Associated Press
Sunday, April 14, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48651-2002Apr14?language=printer

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- An inert 13-foot U.S. Navy missile washed up on a northern beach of Puerto Rico on Sunday, not far from where children swam and played.

Most likely the drone was used in military maneuvers in the area "and got lost in the ocean," Navy spokeswoman Lt. Cmdr Katherine Goode said. "It happens sometimes."

A local man found the inert cruise missile, painted orange and gray and marked "target," in shallow water at Jarealito beach, near the town of Arecibo, on Sunday morning, police spokesman Rodrigo Perez said.

The man alerted police, and two other men dragged the missile onto the sand, police said. Children played and people swam near the drone until the Navy arrived at about 2 p.m. and cleared a 50-foot perimeter around it.

"I'm not against the Navy, but they should take better precautions," said resident Ricardo Lopez, who was at the beach with his 7-year-old daughter, Paulette.

Goode said the drone was unlikely to be from exercises that began two weeks ago around the Navy's contested bombing range on the outlying island of Vieques, off Puerto Rico's east coast.

Twenty-three protesters have been arrested for trespassing on Navy land during the current round of war games, in ongoing efforts to force the Navy to abandon its range on the island inhabited by 9,100 people.

There were no exercises Sunday, the Navy said.

-------- russia / chechnya

Abuses in Chechnya Alleged

Sharon LaFraniere
WORLD In Brief
Tuesday, April 16, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A56973-2002Apr15?language=printer

MOSCOW -- Eighty-seven people disappeared over a period of 16 months in Chechnya while in the hands of Russian forces, a figure that shows human rights abuses continue unabated in the southern Russian region, according to a report by Human Rights Watch.

At least 25 of those people have been found dead, some of whom were apparently executed after being tortured, according to the New York-based group, which documented incidents between September 2000 and January.

The group found little improvement in Russia's response to human rights abuses in Chechnya, despite widespread condemnation of the conduct of Russian troops and security forces who have been stationed in the rebellious territory since October 1999.

-------- spy agencies

British Spies to Get Unionized

April 16, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Britain-Spy-Union.html

LONDON (AP) -- Britain's spies are to get trade union protection, but it will be strictly undercover.

The staff association for Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), also known as MI6, is to join up with the First Division Association, the union for senior government managers, the association said Tuesday.

The arrangement will extend trade union support to staff of SIS, which handles Britain's overseas intelligence operations.

The SIS had no comment.

When people join SIS they agree not to join a union, in order to keep secret the details of their identity. The new arrangement is an affiliation that will extend union expertise to SIS staff, without union membership.

``Like other public servants, SIS staff face issues such as training, appraisal, pay, pensions and promotion,'' First Division Association general secretary Jonathan Baume said.

The union will help the SIS staff association deal with individual grievances and enhance its ``overall effectiveness,'' he said.

The identities and activities of SIS staff will be strictly confidential, Baume said. Numbers of secret service staff are never given.

-------- us

CASUALTIES
Accidental Blast Kills 4 American Soldiers in Afghanistan

New York Times
April 16, 2002
By THOM SHANKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/16/international/middleeast/16MILI.html

WASHINGTON, April 15 - At least four American soldiers were killed and one was wounded in the Afghan desert outside Kandahar today in an accidental explosion while the troops were disposing of rockets seized during the war, officials said.

A bomb-disposal unit had been destroying captured weapons. "And for whatever reason, one of them went off," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon briefing.

The announcement of the casualties came as military officials said two F-16 warplanes dropped laser-guided bombs on an air defense unit in Iraq that fired on the American jets. It was the first strike against an Iraqi antiaircraft system in the southern no flight zone since Jan. 21, officials said.

As the administration considers expanding the war on global terror - perhaps to include Iraq - Mr. Rumsfeld forcefully repeated his doubts today about whether any international arms inspection team sent to Iraq could be effective.

To be reliable, a weapons inspection program would have to be "enormously intrusive," he said, and he expressed skepticism that a system could be negotiated that was acceptable both to Iraq and to those states concerned about Saddam Hussein's search for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons.

In the sky over southern Iraq early today, two American F-16's were targets of "hostile Iraqi fire" and "used precision-guided weapons to strike an air defense site," a Central Command statement said.

Since December 1998, Iraq has fired antiaircraft artillery and surface-to-air missiles at American and allied aircraft nearly 1,100 times, and Iraqi aircraft have violated the no-flight zone more than 160 times, the statement said.

Enforcement of the no-flight zone is not directly related to the question of whether Mr. Hussein will agree to allow inspectors to search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq - except to those hoping to gather evidence of the Iraqi leader's flouting of international agreements.

Mr. Rumsfeld said previous United Nations weapons inspectors scored their successes based on tips from Iraqi defectors, whose information was presumably now years out of date. Since Iraq has not had the international inspectors since 1998, Mr. Hussein has also had a period of time to take further steps to hide his efforts, Mr. Rumsfeld added.

"I just can't quite picture how intrusive something would have to be that it could offset the ease with which they had previously been able to deny and deceive," Mr. Rumsfeld said. Today, he said, "one would think they would be vastly more skillful, having had all this time without inspectors there."

While debate continues over evidence of Iraq's links to Al Qaeda, Bush administration officials have warned of a nightmare scenario in which a stateless terrorist group, like Al Qaeda, would strike a bargain with a government hostile to the United States and arms itself with biological, chemical or nuclear weapons for a terrorist attack.

President Bush has listed Iraq, Iran and North Korea as members of an "axis of evil" capable of such an alliance with terrorists.

Some administration officials who favor military moves against Iraq fear that negotiations with the Iraqi leader over a new weapons-inspection program - and the time required to get any such program up and running and into Iraq - could delay or even derail an American-led offensive to oust Mr. Hussein.

Mr. Rumsfeld said "everyone knows" that Mr. Hussein was trying to "develop nuclear capability and continue to enhance his other weapons of mass destruction, meaning biological and chemical weapons."

The accident in Afghanistan followed several days in which American and allied Afghan units came under attack from suspected remnants of Taliban and Al Qaeda forces.

Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said American Special Forces and Afghan soldiers were on a mission to search a suspected training complex in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday when their convoy came under fire.

An AC-130 gunship was summoned, and it located and fired on the adversary's positions, General Myers said. American and Afghan soldiers found several weapons storage sites containing mines, rockets, explosives and antiaircraft artillery pieces, he said.

Two other incidents were reported over the weekend, General Myers said, when what appeared to be rocket-propelled grenades were fired near Khost on Saturday and Sunday. No injuries to Americans or their Afghan allies were reported.

Officials also said six United States Marine Corps F/A-18 warplanes were expected to arrive at an air base in Kyrgyzstan today, joining six French Mirages already based there. These jets give the United States its closest land-based strike capability of the war in Afghanistan.

--------

Pentagon Changing Command Structure

April 16, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Military-Commands.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon is making the biggest changes in decades to its master plan for assigning war-fighting responsibilities at home and around the world, officials said Tuesday.

The redesign, expected to be announced Wednesday by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, is meant to reflect a stronger emphasis on defense of the United States in light of the Sept. 11 attacks.

It also is supposed to streamline a command structure that is complex and, in many respects, rooted in a Cold War-era approach to fighting standing armies, air forces and navies in predictable parts of the world. As the suicide hijackings of Sept. 11 showed, the nation faces unconventional threats from unpredictable sources, and former adversaries like Russia are now partners in the war on terrorism.

One new command, to be called Northern Command, will be responsible for defense of U.S. territory, including the waters off the East and West coasts, according to officials who discussed some details of the plan on condition of anonymity. President Bush is expected to nominate Air Force Gen. Ralph Eberhart as the first commander of Northern Command.

Under the existing arrangement for defense of U.S. territory, which has been in place since World War II, responsibility is shared by numerous commands. The North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, for example, is in charge of air defense of the United States and Canada. That will not change. Joint Forces Command in October 1999 was assigned a special role in assisting federal civilian agencies in responding to any nuclear, chemical or biological attack on the United States. Space Command in 1999 was given the mission of defending against computer network attacks.

In the new plan, Northern Command will have overall responsibility within the military for homeland defense. On the civilian side, it will coordinate with the White House's Office of Homeland Defense.

A commander in chief, or CINC (pronounced ``sink''), of a major command takes presidential orders from the secretary of defense through the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The 1986 law that created this system also required that the command structure be reviewed at least every two years. The last time changes were made was in 1999 under then-Defense Secretary William Cohen.

Without revealing any details of the new command structure, Rumsfeld said Monday that Gen. Richard Myers, who as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was a key architect of the plan, told him it represented the most significant change in command structure he has seen in his 37-year military career.

``It will be a plan which will restructure and streamline a number of aspects of the military command which we believe will better fit it for the challenges of the 21st century,'' Rumsfeld said.

Among other changes:

--Joint Forces Command, based at Norfolk, Va., will no longer be responsible for defense of the Atlantic. That will fall in part to Northern Command, which also will be responsible for the waters off the West Coast. Joint Forces Command will focus on keeping U.S.-based forces ready for combat.

--The commander of European Command, Air Force Gen. Joseph Ralston, will become responsible for managing military-to-military relations with Russia. That currently is the job of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. European Command will remain in charge of all U.S. forces in Europe, as well as parts of Africa and the Middle East. Ralston is expected to step down this fall, and Bush is expected to nominate Marine Corps Gen. James Jones as his successor.

The other major war-fighting commands are Hawaii-based Pacific Command, Miami-based Southern Command, which is responsible for U.S. military operations in the southern hemisphere, and Central Command, which is based at Tampa, Fla., and is responsible for the Persian Gulf area, the Horn of Africa and Central Asia.

Two other major commands without specific geographic responsibilities are Transportation Command and Special Operations Command.

--------

Pentagon Eyes Cuts in Some Weapons to Pay for Others

April 16, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-budget-defense.html

WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the heads of the U.S. military services have kicked off serious budget negotiations for fiscal 2004, eying cuts in some big weapons systems to get in place more cutting-edge technologies like pilotless aircraft.

Defense officials said Rumsfeld met on Monday with Army Secretary Thomas White, Navy Secretary Gordon England and Air Force Secretary James Roche -- all of whom came to the military after corporate careers -- to discuss the 2004 budget.

Rumsfeld and his team want to shift the Pentagon's spending priorities as part of their drive to modernize a military still characterized by many Cold War-era weapons systems. They aim to emphasize newer technology-driven weapons like unpiloted air and sea vehicles and space surveillance systems.

But even as they try to run the vast U.S. military more like a business, they face tough opposition from military contractors, senior military officers and members of Congress over any attempt to cancel major weapons programs like the Air Force's next-generation F-22 fighter jet or the Army's Comanche helicopter and Crusader artillery system.

Pentagon spokeswoman Susan Hansen said it was premature to discuss the 2004 budgeting process in any detail, since it was still in the early stages.

Defense analysts say the wrangling over the 2004 budget will probably lead to cutbacks -- but probably not outright cancellations -- of some big programs, including a Navy proposal to buy fewer Joint Strike Fighters, or F-35 jets.

A FASTER, SLEEKER WAR MACHINE

Some controversial programs that won a reprieve due to the huge 2003 budget increase could face closer scrutiny now, said analyst Chris Hellman of the Center for Defense Information.

But he said lawmakers remained highly reluctant to kill weapons systems built in their home districts.

President Bush has proposed a 2003 defense budget of $379 billion, a $48 billion increase and the largest in 21 years. Overall, Bush would boost defense spending by $120 billion to $451 billion by 2007, paralleling the buildup in the early 1980s under President Ronald Reagan.

Although much of the additional spending is already earmarked for improving military living conditions and pay, Rumsfeld has put a greater emphasis on building up precision weapons, unmanned planes and new tactical fighter aircraft.

In planning for the 2004 budget, which will be unveiled in February 2003, Rumsfeld and his senior staff are trying to shift their spending focus to make the military faster, sleeker and better equipped to fight wars in the 21st century.

Their decisions are influenced by the successful use in Afghanistan of unpiloted aircraft like the missile-firing Predator, built by General Atomics of San Diego, and Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Global Hawk surveillance plane.

At the same time, the Bush administration has pressed ahead with a multibillion-dollar program to develop a missile shield and expand development of space-based weapons systems.

LEGACY SYSTEMS COULD FACE CUTS

The Navy's England and the Army's White have repeatedly said that certain so-called legacy systems, the older weapons already in use, may be trimmed back or cut entirely as resources go to newer, more sophisticated programs.

In an interview last month, England said up to 200 Navy programs could face cuts or cancellation in coming years, as part of the shift to more modern systems.

White told reporters at a media briefing on Friday that some legacy programs could face cuts to free up funding for newer programs better suited for fighting modern wars.

``You have to pay for the things that you need the most,'' said Army spokeswoman Nancy Ray. ``It's a research and development fact of life that not everything makes it.''

But top defense officials are quick to caution that transforming the military doesn't mean abandoning all tried-and-true weapons systems or war-fighting strategies.

For instance, Rumsfeld tells the story of U.S. soldiers astride horses in Afghanistan who helped direct bombing raids by using laptop computers and modern satellite communications.

Navy spokesman Lt. Bill Speaks said the Navy had no current plans to drop any major programs, but gave no details about the budget discussions for 2004 and beyond.

The Pentagon is due to sign off by early May on several programs facing cost overruns, as well as on cutbacks proposed by the Navy and the Marine Corps in the Joint Strike Fighter program, defense officials said.

One industry official said he had heard nothing about any pending cuts to the F-22 fighter, built by Lockheed Martin Corp., noting the Air Force has even discussed expanding the current planned purchases of 339 jets at a cost of $60 billion.

Analyst Hellman said the Government Accounting Office, the watchdog agency of the U.S. Congress, has repeatedly urged the Pentagon to slow its purchase of the F-22, which has not yet gone into full-scale production.

``I don't think there's any chance that the F-22 will be canceled. It might be cut, but not canceled,'' Hellman said.

--------

Defense Secretary Wants Cuts in Weapons Systems to Pay for New Technologies

By THOM SHANKER and JAMES DAO
April 16, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/16/national/16BUDG.html

WASHINGTON, April 15 - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld convened a meeting with the three service secretaries today to tell them they needed to cut major weapons systems to finance new "transformational technologies," including space surveillance systems and unpiloted weapons, officials said.

Big-ticket programs potentially on the block, beginning with the 2004 budget, include the Air Force's next-generation F-22 tactical jet and two Army weapons, the Comanche helicopter and the Crusader artillery system, officials said.

Pentagon officials said no decisions were made at the afternoon meeting. But Mr. Rumsfeld's desire to begin debating billions of dollars in weapons cuts so far before the 2004 budget was clear acknowledgment that the Pentagon cannot pay for all of the programs now on the books and proposed for financing in the 2003 budget.

"The talk today was all about the hard decisions to come," one senior official said.

Another senior official added, "This is all a work in progress." But the official said Mr. Rumsfeld made it clear that certain expensive weapons systems now set for purchase would "take some hard hits." Confident of support in Congress and among the American people to pay for a growing fight against global terror, President Bush proposed a $379 billion Pentagon budget for 2003 in which he avoided making some tough choices about some previously controversial weapons. But the eventual costs of every weapons program in the 2003 spending plan could create unsustainably large military budgets in the future, and today's meeting opened the debate about what may be cut.

"The secretary wanted to lay it out first to his `corporate board,´ " one official said of Mr. Rumsfeld´s meeting with Army Secretary Thomas E. White, Navy Secretary Gordon R. England and Air Force Secretary James G. Roche.

Military contractors, senior military officers in charge of the weapons programs and members of Congress in whose districts the weapons would be built or stationed are expected to put up fierce resistance in the months before writing the 2004 budget and appropriating the funds.

Military officials and budget experts said Mr. Rumsfeld was trying to forestall what is widely known as the "coming budget train wreck," where older weapons designed to fight the Soviet Union grow in cost, forcing cuts on newer technologies that have less political support.

For example, the F-22, a stealthy fighter jet capable of supersonic speeds for long periods, was created to overcome advanced Soviet fighter jets in air-to-air combat.

But Mr. Rumsfeld and many of his top advisers see unpiloted aircraft as the future of air warfare, thanks in part to the strong showing of the Predator and Global Hawk surveillance drones over Afghanistan. Mr. Rumsfeld has proposed spending more than $1 billion to accelerate improvements to and purchases of both those planes as well as development of an armed drone.

Many administration officials are asking why the Pentagon should continue to buy 339 F-22's at a total cost of more than $60 billion if it expects unpiloted aircraft to take a more important role and while the Air Force is scheduled to get a new and expensive Joint Strike Fighter.

Similarly, advocates of transformation are pushing an Army program known as the Future Combat System that will use sophisticated communications systems to link manned and unmanned vehicles in the air and on the ground. Yet at the same time, the Army plans to spend more than $11 billion to build 480 Crusaders, self-propelled 155-millimeter howitzers able to fire farther and faster than existing artillery.

While the Army contends Crusader will be essential in any major conflicts against Iraq or North Korea, some advocates of transformation close to Mr. Rumsfeld say it is too heavy to transport quickly and can be replaced with aircraft using precision-guided bombs.

"The question I keep hearing is, `If you are going to fund Future Combat System, why spend money on Crusader?´ " a senior administration official said. "What the Pentagon is realizing is that even in a $380 billion budget, choices have to be made."

Industry officials argue that the Pentagon needs to buy weapons like the F-22 because existing equipment is rapidly wearing out, making it expensive to maintain. Waiting for new technologies to become available will cost the Pentagon more money in spare parts and maintenance, they contend.

Military and civilian officials said that other cuts under consideration would trim the fleet of proposed V-22 Osprey, the Marine Corps tilt-rotor troop carrier, and reduce the number of interim brigade combat teams for the Army as it makes a transition from heavy tank forces to a combat system yet to be designed.

The programs that the administration wants to increase spending on include not only the unpiloted weapons and surveillance systems, but also a proposed network of communications satellites that use laser beams to transfer data.

Administration officials said that Mr. Rumsfeld had hoped to make large cuts to older weapons systems in the 2003 budget, but that his early efforts to build support for such cuts collapsed in the face of intense opposition among senior military officers and members of Congress.

Though the war on terrorism has strengthened Mr. Rumsfeld's standing in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill, efforts to cut or cancel major weapons programs will encounter strong opposition in both places. Military analysts said it might be essential for President Bush, who has repeatedly called for replacing cold-war weapons with "skip-a-generation" systems, to support Mr. Rumsfeld's effort if it is to succeed.

--------

Machines Are Filling In for Troops

New York Times
April 16, 2002
By JAMES DAO and ANDREW C. REVKIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/16/science/16REMO.html?pagewanted=all&position=bottom

WASHINGTON - From Homer to Hemingway, Sun Tzu to Churchill, humans have been fascinated by the violence and plotting, the heroism and sacrifice, the epic theater of what Dryden called "the trade of kings" - war.

But the Pentagon, energized by successes in Afghanistan, is moving ever closer to draining the human drama from the battlefield and replacing it with a ballet of machines.

Rapid advances in technology have brought an array of sensors, vehicles and weapons that can be operated by remote control or are totally autonomous. Within a decade, those machines will be able to perform many of the most dangerous, strenuous or boring tasks now assigned to people, military planners say, paving the way for a fundamental change in warfare.

Already, autonomous sentinels on the ground, in the air and in orbit are probing the battlefield with heat detectors, radar, cameras, microphones and other devices. Some can reveal decoys and pierce camouflage, darkness and bad weather.

In years to come, once targets are found, chances are good that they will be destroyed by weapons from pilotless vehicles that can distinguish friends from foes without consulting humans.

The rapid shift away from people - what the Pentagon calls manned units - to automation has several goals.

Many new devices will be much smaller and lighter, making them cheaper, more fuel efficient and easier to move, advocates contend. And because of their unlimited attention spans, machines should do better at tedious, time-consuming tasks that human warriors loathe, like standing guard or monitoring mountain passes.

But most important, many officials say, remote technology can shield and aid the the flesh-and-blood soldier.

"We seem as a society, thank God, very averse to taking casualties," said Dr. Gervasio Prado, the president of SenTech, a Massachusetts company refining book-size robotic sentinels that can be sprinkled on battlefields to listen for enemy vehicles.

"We'll continue putting as much effort as possible into keeping the humans in a safe location and do this dirty job remotely," he said.

In the short run, soldiers, pilots and sailors will still be essential components of any battle, military planners say. This will be particularly true in urban settings, where buildings, tunnels and people create confusing obstacles that no machine will be able to skirt for years to come.

But over time, experts largely agree, remote-sensing and piloting technologies will produce the biggest change in warfare in generations.

By 2020 or earlier, if the Pentagon and its many supporters in Congress and the White House have their way, pilotless planes and driverless buggies will direct remote-controlled bombers toward targets; pilotless helicopters will coordinate driverless convoys, and unmanned submarines will clear mines and launch cruise missiles.

"The promise is enormous," said Dr. M. Franklin Rose, an electrical engineer who is leading a study of driverless ground vehicles being done for the Army by the Board on Army Science and Technology of the National Academy of Sciences. "Robotics can do three things for the future army: keep soldiers out of harm's way, do the laborious and boring tasks and keep going long after a soldier is exhausted. And they have no fear, at least in current embodiments."

Some simple devices, like infrared and night-vision scopes, are available to enemies as well. But no country or terrorist group will have the ability any time soon to deploy these systems so widely and deeply in its forces, many military analysts say.

It is a dream long in the making that has been stunningly accelerated by the war in Afghanistan. There, several pilotless surveillance aircraft turned in unexpectedly strong performances, including the Air Force's Predator and its missile-toting cousin from the Central Intelligence Agency. They piped streaming video of Taliban and Qaeda movements to command posts in Saudi Arabia and the Pentagon, where commanders could then call almost immediate air strikes.

As a result, the Pentagon has requested $1.1 billion, an increase of nearly $150 million, in the 2003 budget to accelerate development of the Predator, Global Hawk and other pilotless planes.

"Why send a marine into harm's way when you can send an $8,000 vehicle instead?" said Brig. Gen. Douglas V. O'Dell, commander of the Fourth Marine Expeditionary Brigade, referring to the Marines' new pilotless aircraft, the Dragon Fly.

Today's advances in military technology are the result of an effort to extending forces' ability to see over the foxhole rim, the next ridge or across a national border and to speed the application of deadly force.

In Vietnam, troops dropped battery-powered listening devices, designed to track submarines, into the forest along the Ho Chi Minh Trail and broadcast the sounds of activity below to crews in planes circling above. The Pentagon also used remotely piloted surveillance drones, including ones armed with Maverick missiles, in Vietnam. But crude technology and limited range discouraged further development.

But the 1990's saw leaps in computer and sensor technology that reignited interest in remote controlled weapons. In Bosnia, the military tried an Army drone called the Hunter; in Kosovo, it first deployed the Predator. By the time American warplanes began attacking Afghanistan, the Air Force had learned out how link the Predator's cameras to video screens on AC-130 gunships, aircraft carriers in the Arabian Sea and the Combined Air Operation Command Center in Saudi Arabia.

A few years ago, listening devices, called unattended ground sensors, weighed 30 pounds and were lugged into enemy territory by troops. Now they weigh three pounds. One model is designed to be dropped from aircraft. The sturdy sensors detect vibrations and sounds. Using a computerized library of the distinctive noises produced by a host of enemy engines, tank treads and the like, they recognize passers-by.

The next step will be to integrate data from the unattended sensors with information flowing from high-flying drones or satellites, said Dr. Prado, whose company builds the listening devices.

By using different sensors to scour the same landscape and comparing the information, it will be easier to unmask decoys or camouflaged weapons, officials say. As recently as the Kosovo bombing campaign, decoys regularly fooled American bombers.

Leading the Pentagon's remote-control warfare effort is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which operates out of Northern Virginia. The agency is working with Boeing to developed the X-45 unmanned combat air vehicle. The 30-foot-long windowless planes look like flying "W's" and will carry up to 12 250-pound bombs. In their initial deployments, as early as 2007, they will be used to attack radar and antiaircraft installations.

The Pentagon estimates that pilotless aircraft will cost less than half as much as piloted fighter jets like the F-15 or F-18, largely because they lack humans.

At first, the aircraft will be programmed to ask human controllers for permission to bomb targets. By 2010, the Pentagon envisions that the X-45 will independently attack targets in designated "kill boxes." Then, "If the aircraft sees a target that matches its memory, it hits it and tells the humans about it later," said Col. Michael Leahy of the Air Force, the program director.

The research agency and the Army are also working on the Future Combat System, a network of pilotless and piloted aircraft, transport vehicles and artillery pieces linked by high-speed communications.

The goal is to make the Army lighter and more nimble. Pilotless vehicles are expected to play a central role. Small hovering drones would peek over ridgetops, while unoccupied helicopters would watch troop movements. Closest to deployment is an all-terrain vehicle programmed to follow a soldier, hauling weapons and other gear.

The Pentagon already has the Hornet, essentially a land mine with a 100-yard reach. When it hears an approaching vehicle, it launches a device into the air that uses a heat sensor to direct a potent projectile down at the target.

Miniaturization is a keystone. Another goal is a "microair vehicle" less than nine inches long that can be carried in a backpack and, when launched, will send images from tiny heat sensors and cameras.

There are many technological and strategic hurdles. First, drones like the Predator require humans to do almost all their thinking. Having unoccupied vehicles accomplish the sophisticated maneuvers envisioned by Pentagon planners will require much greater autonomy, and more powerful artificial intelligence.

"Flying a Global Hawk from California to Australia, impressive as that is, is not as hard as driving an unmanned ground vehicle from here to the Capitol," said Dr. E. Allen Adler, director of the tactical technology office at the advanced projects agency, whose office is about five miles from Capitol Hill.

Second, the armed services have not begun adjusting their strategies to incorporate robotic vehicles. That will take years of study and training, experts and commanders say.

"The real challenge is to mix man and machines," said Colonel Leahy, program director for the pilotless fighter. "It will be a loose ballet at first. But eventually, the systems will be linked to each other, sharing information and deciding among them who has the best shot."

Third, Afghanistan did little to educate the Pentagon on how a more capable military rival might adjust to unmanned systems. The Taliban never learned how to shoot down a Predator, but Saddam Hussein's troops may have bagged at least two last year over southern Iraq. A sophisticated foe might disarm, destroy or confuse pilotless aircraft, rendering them useless or even turning them against American forces.

Finally, debate persists over just how much the military should rely on machines. Most military experts still say the human brain remains the most effective weapon.

"The onboard logic of unmanned combat aerial vehicles will not begin to approach the computational capacity of human brains, making them highly vulnerable to attacks by manned aircraft," Loren B. Thompson, chief operating officer for the Lexington Institute, which studies military issues, testified before the Senate last week.

In the end, said Dr. Rose, the electrical engineer assessing ground vehicles, the biggest challenge will be to design the technology so that to the fighter it becomes an invisible, almost subconscious, extension of the eyes, ears or trigger finger. That will take another generation, he said.

"Already, so many of these young soldiers grew up on video games and computers," he said. "They grew up trusting machines."

Eventually, he said, the new weapons and sensors will slide into the ethos of war just like the autopilot, which was once disparaged by aviators as "Iron Mike" but is now a standard part of airplane cockpits.

"But it'll still be 20 or 25 years up the road before we get to the point where you regard `Iron Mike' as a member of your squad as opposed to a nuisance," Dr. Rose said.

-------- venezuela

Bush Officials Met With Venezuelans Who Ousted Leader

New York Times
April 16, 2002
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/16/international/americas/16DIPL.html

WASHINGTON, April 15 - Senior members of the Bush administration met several times in recent months with leaders of a coalition that ousted the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, for two days last weekend, and agreed with them that he should be removed from office, administration officials said today.

But administration officials gave conflicting accounts of what the United States told those opponents of Mr. Chávez about acceptable ways of ousting him.

One senior official involved in the discussions insisted that the Venezuelans use constitutional means, like a referendum, to effect an overthrow.

"They came here to complain," the official said, referring to the anti-Chávez group. "Our message was very clear: there are constitutional processes. We did not even wink at anyone."

But a Defense Department official who is involved in the development of policy toward Venezuela said the administration's message was less categorical.

"We were not discouraging people," the official said. "We were sending informal, subtle signals that we don't like this guy. We didn't say, `No, don't you dare,' and we weren't advocates saying, `Here's some arms; we'll help you overthrow this guy.' We were not doing that."

The disclosures come as rights advocates, Latin American diplomats and others accuse the administration of having turned a blind eye to coup plotting activities, or even encouraged the people who temporarily removed Mr. Chávez. Such actions would place the United States at odds with its fellow members of the Organization of American States, whose charter condemns the overthrow of democratically elected governments.

In the immediate aftermath of the ouster, the White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, suggested that the administration was pleased that Mr. Chávez was gone. "The government suppressed what was a peaceful demonstration of the people," Mr. Fleischer said, which "led very quickly to a combustible situation in which Chávez resigned."

That statement contrasted with a clear stand by other nations in the hemisphere, which all condemned the removal of a democratically elected leader.

Mr. Chávez has made himself very unpopular with the Bush administration with his pro-Cuban stance and mouthing of revolutionary slogans - and, most recently, by threatening the independence of Venezuela's state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, the third-largest foreign supplier of American oil.

Whether or not the administration knew about the pending action against Mr. Chávez, critics note that it was slow to condemn the overthrow and that it still refuses to acknowledge that a coup even took place.

One result, according to the critics, is that in its zeal to rid itself of Mr. Chávez, the administration has damaged its credibility as a chief defender of democratically elected governments. And even though they deny having encouraged Mr. Chávez's ouster, administration officials did not hide their dismay at his restora tion.

Asked whether the administration now recognizes Mr. Chávez as Venezuela's legitimate president, one administration official replied, "He was democratically elected," then added, "Legitimacy is something that is conferred not just by a majority of the voters, however."

A senior administration official said today that the anti-Chávez group had not asked for American backing and that none had been offered. Still, one American diplomat said, Mr. Chávez was so distressed by his opponents' lobbying in Washington that he sent officials from his government to plead his case there.

Mr. Chávez returned to power on Sunday, after two days. The Bush administration swiftly laid the blame for the episode on him, pointing out that troops loyal to him had fired on unarmed civilians and wounded more than 100 demonstrators.

Mr. Fleischer, the White House spokesman, stuck to that approach today, saying Mr. Chávez should heed the message of his opponents and reach out to "all the democratic forces in Venezuela."

"The people of Venezuela have sent a clear message to President Chávez that they want both democracy and reform," he said. "The Chávez administration has an opportunity to respond to this message by correcting its course and governing in a fully democratic manner."

On Sunday, President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, expressed hopes that Mr. Chávez would deal with his opponents in a less "highhanded fashion."

But to some critics, it was the Bush administration that had displayed arrogance in initially bucking the tide of international condemnation of the action against Mr. Chavez, who was democratically elected in 1998.

Arturo Valenzuela, the Latin America national security aide in the Clinton administration, accused the Bush administration of running roughshod over more than a decade of treaties and agreements for the collective defense of democracy. Since 1990, the United States has repeatedly invoked those agreements at the Organization of American States to help restore democratic rule in such countries as Haiti, Guatemala and Peru.

Mr. Valenzuela, who now heads the Latin American studies department at Georgetown University here, warned that the nations in the region might view the administration's tepid support of Venezuelan democracy as a green light to return to 1960's and 1970's, when power was transferred from coup to coup.

"I think it's a very negative development for the principle of constitutional government in Latin America," Mr. Valenzuela said. "I think it's going to come back and haunt all of us."

Administration officials insist that they are firmly behind efforts at the Organization of American States to determine what happened in Venezuela and restore democratic rule. The secretary general of the O.A.S., César Gaviria, left today for Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, and the organization is scheduled to meet in Washington on Thursday.

Still, critics say, there were several signs that the administration was too quick to rally around the businessman Pedro Carmona Estanga as Mr. Chávez's successor.

One Democratic foreign policy aide complained that the administration, in phone calls to Congress on Friday, reported that Mr. Chávez had resigned, even though officials now concede that they had no evidence of that.

And on Saturday, the administration supported an O.A.S. resolution condemning "the alteration of constitutional order in Venezuela" only after learning that Mr. Chávez had regained control, Latin American diplomats said.

One official said political hard-liners in the administration might have "gone overboard" in proclaiming Mr. Chávez's ouster before the dust settled.

The official said there were competing impulses within the administration, signaling a disagreement on the extent of trouble posed by Mr. Chávez, who has thumbed his nose at American officials by maintaining ties with Cuba, Libya and Iraq.


-------- POLICE / PRISONERS

Feds Reviewing Fake Drug Plants

April 16, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Fake-Drugs.html

DALLAS (AP) -- The FBI is investigating reports that paid police informants purchased white pool hall chalk to plant on innocent people before drug arrests.

Inquiries into the series of drug busts by Dallas police have resulted in the dismissal of more than 60 felony drug charges and suspension of two undercover detectives.

FBI agents confiscated chalk cones from the home of a jailed informant and collected receipts for large quantities of the substance from a supply house based on the statements of informant Reyes Roberto Rodriguez, federal Assistant Public Defender Karl Rupp said.

Gypsum, the substance identified in about two dozen cases that were later dismissed, is an ingredient of billiards chalk.

Rupp told The Dallas Morning News in Tuesday's editions that Rodriguez ``has inside information on every aspect of the fake-drugs arrests, and that information is likely to resolve the majority of the questions that the FBI and the media have had concerning what happened in the arrests.''

He identified Rodriguez as one of several informants who acted as a subcontractor to the Police Department's primary informant, Enrique Alonso. Rodriguez is being held on federal immigration charges.

Rupp said ``the million-dollar question'' that remains unanswered is whether police were involved in a scheme. Dallas police have said the officers believed the informants were credible.

Senior Cpl. Mark Delapaz and Officer Eddie Herrera, the two officers involved in many of the questionable arrests, remain on administrative leave with pay while the investigation continues.

-------- death penalty

Few Death Sentences or None Under Overhaul Proposed by Illinois Panel

New York Times
April 16, 2002
By JODI WILGOREN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/16/national/16DEAT.html

CHICAGO, April 15 - The release of a landmark study of capital punishment in Illinois reignited debate today on one of the country's most contentious topics, with people on both sides saying the breadth of the proposed changes would severely reduce the number of death sentences, if not eliminate them.

Opponents of the death penalty embraced the study's 85 recommendations, made by a bipartisan commission, as evidence that abolishing capital punishment is more practical than trying to ensure it is administered fairly. Prosecutors, meanwhile, denounced the commission for skirting the question of whether the 160 people now on death row in Illinois should be executed and said the laundry list of changes would leave heinous killers unpunished.

Gov. George Ryan, who appointed the 14 members of the commission after declaring a halt to executions two years ago, accepted the report this afternoon, flipped through its 207 pages and said he would spend weeks or months reviewing it before determining the fate of the condemned.

"I'm not going to act in haste, I'm going to deliberate," Mr. Ryan said at a news conference where advocates held signs saying "Abolish the Death Penalty" behind a phalanx of television cameras. "I'll do what I think is right, and what we have to do based on this commission's work."

The report lands at a challenging time, politically. The Illinois Legislature's spring session ends in a month and is expected to be dominated by negotiations to cover the budget shortfall. Mr. Ryan, the commission's champion, is a lame duck who opted against running for re-election and has been tarred by a political corruption scandal. In an election year, lawmakers are loath to approve expensive proposals, like those in the report, particularly if they can be perceived as soft on crime.

Regardless of when or whether the specific recommendations are adopted, experts said the report would reframe discussion. Already, Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, announced that his subcommittee on the Constitution would convene a hearing this spring to consider the findings.

Illinois has been a focal point of the capital punishment debate, in part because 13 death row prisoners have been exonerated since the state re-established capital punishment in 1997, and this report is the most thorough, independent analysis of the system to date. Nine other states have similar commissions; two have already released their reports.

"I think we're in the phase where we're making a policy determination, not so much a moral determination, but a practicality determination," said Richard C. Deiter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington. "This says it's going to be very difficult to have the death penalty that Americans want, which is one that doesn't risk innocent lives and is implemented fairly."

While the commission stopped short of calling for the abolition of the death penalty, the report acknowledged that a majority of members believed it should be stopped. In presenting the report, commission members said that without a complete overhaul, the capital punishment system could not be trusted.

"Repair or repeal," declared Thomas P. Sullivan, a former federal prosecutor in private practice, who was a co-chairman of the commission with former Senator Paul Simon and Frank McGarr, a former federal judge. "Fix the capital punishment system or abolish it," Mr. Sullivan said. "There is no other principled recourse."

Prosecutors said the proposals to videotape interrogations of suspects and establish a state panel to review decisions on whether to seek the death penalty undercut local authority and would be impractical. They were outraged at the proposed elimination of several categories of capital crimes, especially murder committed in the course of a felony. They scoffed at the need for an independent forensic laboratory.

"What this report does," said Kevin P. Lyons, the state's attorney in Peoria, "is brick by brick, stone by stone, rock by rock, place added burdens on the shoulders of every prosecutor so as to eventually say, `Oh, the heck with it.' "

Mr. Lyons added, "It clearly upsets the balance between protecting the rights of the accused and protecting the rights of the rest of us."

Joshua K. Marquis, a prosecutor from Astoria, Ore., who is on the board of the National District Attorneys Association, objected to the proposed prohibition on sentencing someone to death based solely on the testimony of a single eyewitness, a jail-house informer or an accomplice. He also said videotaping was impractical, noting that in his last capital case, one suspect made incriminating statements as he was being rescued from a fiery boat.

Death penalty opponents celebrated the commission's report but, in many cases, read it as a call for a permanent moratorium.

"The commission's recognition that no system can be devised to ensure that an innocent person would not be executed is strong support for replacement of the death penalty," the Illinois Coalition Against the Death Penalty said in a news release.

Amnesty International called on Mr. Ryan to extend the moratorium until all 85 recommendations are implemented and said the report "provides a profound rationale for abolishing the death penalty altogether."

Mr. Ryan acknowledged the tough political climate and huge budgetary hurdles the proposals faced but promised he would not be deterred from pursuing the commission's recommendations, if he accepted them.

"We're talking about life and death here," he said, "we're not talking about whether you win or lose an election."

-------- terrorism

Al - Qaida Backers Claim Yemen Blast

April 16, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Yemen-Explosion.html

SAN`A, Yemen (AP) -- An explosion damaged several buildings in downtown San'a on Tuesday, including one that witnesses said houses a Yemeni intelligence office. A group saying it backs the al-Qaida terror network claimed responsibility.

No injuries were reported in the blast that occurred in front of adjacent building entrances of the General Civil Aviation Authority and a branch office of the Yemeni intelligence service.

Security officials told the official news agency, Saba, that an explosive device detonated at 6:25 a.m. in front of the aviation authority, damaging its windows and front gate and a neighboring house. The agency quoted an official who spoke on condition of anonymity, and who did not mention the intelligence office.

The explosion also broke windows on two buses, the official said. The agency reported no casualties.

The group, which did not identify itself further, previously claimed responsibility for an explosion Friday that targeted a Yemeni municipal employee's house. That bomb caused no injuries or serious damage.

In a statement Tuesday, the group renewed its threat to carry out bombings during upcoming weeks if some 173 people being held in Yemen were not released. The statement said those being held committed no crimes but were al-Qaida members. The claim could not be independently confirmed.

Yemen's government admitted there may be al-Qaida suspects in the country, but has been unable to arrest two key suspects. Yemen also said the terror network has no military training camps or any other organized presence in the country.

Yemen, the poorest country of the Arabian Peninsula, has committed itself to joining the U.S. war on terrorism in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. Security in Yemen has been a top concern of the United States since the attack on the USS Cole in October 2000 that killed 17 American sailors in Aden harbor.


-------- ENERGY AND OTHER

-------- alternative energy

Solar Power Could Come From the Moon

April 16, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/apr2002/2002L-04-16-09.html

HOUSTON, Texas, A physicist in Houston says solar cells installed on the moon could provide the Earth with all the energy it needs.

In the April/May issue of "The Industrial Physicist," Dr. David Criswell suggests that solar cells on moon could replace all fossil fuels. Criswell proposes a Lunar Solar Power (LSP) System, using arrays of solar cells on the lunar surface to beam energy back to Earth.

Criswell estimates that the 10 billion people living on Earth in 2050 will require 20 Terrawatts (TW) of power. The moon receives 13,000 TW of power from the sun. In his article, Criswell suggests that harnessing just one percent of the solar power and directing it toward Earth could replace fossil fuel power plants on Earth.

"The lunar operations are primarily industrial engineering," said Criswell. He and Dr. Robert Waldron first described LSP in 1984 at a National Aeronautics and Space Administration symposium on Lunar Bases and Space Activities in the 21st Century.

"Adequate knowledge of the moon and practical technologies have been available since the late 1970's to collect this power and beam it to Earth," Criswell argued. "The system can be built on the moon from lunar materials and operated on the moon and on Earth using existing technologies," reducing the expenses associated with transporting materials to the moon.

Criswell added that LSP would be even cheaper if parts of the production machinery are designed to be made of lunar materials.

The LSP system would consist of 20-40 lunar power bases, situated on the eastern and western edges of the moon, as seen from Earth. Each power base would have a series of solar cells to collect energy from the sun, which is sent over buried electric wires to microwave generators that convert the solar electricity to microwaves.

The generators would send the energy to screens that reflect the microwave beams toward Earth, where they would be received by arrays of special antennas placed about the globe.

"Each antenna converts the microwave power to electricity that is fed into the local power grid," Criswell explained.

"LSP is probably the only option for powering a prosperous world within the 21st century," Criswell concluded. "However, it does require a return to the moon."

The system depends on some human occupation of the moon to build and run the lunar bases, but Criswell also sees this as an opportunity.

"Once we are back and operating at large scale then going down the various learning curves will make traveling to the moon and working there 'routine'," Criswell said.

-------- genetics

Morally misguided scientific paralysis

April 16, 2002
Washington Times
Bruce Fein
http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/20020416-5242944.htm

Prohibit the spawning of cloned human embryos either for reproduction or pioneering medical research.

Prohibit the importation of medical knowledge extracted from cloned human embryos to treat the afflicted or the dying.

Last week, President George Bush preached the moral urgency of those twin prohibitions. Congress is also poised to enact the White House sermon.

But the well-intentioned legislative exercise seems morally misbegotten.

President Bush reasons that cloned human embryos are lives; that morality shuns killing one human to aid another, at least absent consent; and, that no matter how benign cloned human embryo research, (seeking relief from pain and suffering for the living and those yet to be born), noble ends do not justify depraved means. Q.E.D.

The syllogism, however, seem too glib by half. Suppose a child, a middle-aged married female, and an elderly man are adrift on a raft. All will starve before reaching shore unless one is cannibalized. Their lives have been equally irreproachable. Doesn't morality dictate killing the man in his sunset hours to save the infant and spouse with exciting long years ahead instead of letting all three perish? Doesn't the life-giving end justify the homicidal means, analogous to the right to kill in self-defense or defense of another?

The case for cloned human embryo research seems even stronger. The embryo, like the elderly man, is morally faultless. It is mentally disabled from consenting to research to benefit others. In such circumstances, as with the permanently comatose and brain-damaged surviving on artificial respiration and feeding, surrogate consent to terminate life is permitted if consistent with the probable will of the patient.

Now imagine yourself a cloned human embryo. You would never have come into being without a medical research objective. Wouldn't you consent to terminating your inchoate life to alleviate the grimmest of human afflictions and bereavements? Wouldn't that follow the golden rule, "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you?" Indeed, that morality informed a recent British High Court decision to separate infant Siamese twins, enabling one to live despite accelerating the impending death of the other.

Mr. Bush's denunciation of importing cloned human embryo research to treat patients also seems wayward. Even assuming such medical advances would be morally suspect, its use to alleviate pain and suffering should not raise moral scruples. The Hippocratic oath places the best interests of the patient at its apex. A physician who forgoes a life-giving treatment because of a tainted knowledge source would thus seem guilty of malpractice.

Suppose the loathsome human experimentations of Nazi death Dr. Joseph Mengele or Japan's notorious counterpart, Unit 731, yielded knowledge that would better protect our military personnel from danger. Should we withhold the protection because of its satanic fatherhood?

To argue that cloned human embryo research does not guarantee success that stem cell research on adults is equally promising is unpersuasive.

Scores of Nobel Prize laureates deny the proposition. Moreover, research would be unnecessary if what was to be discovered was known in advance. The history of medical progress, like the history of science generally, is a history of trial and error.

Some discern the potential for a commercialization of women's wombs if cloned embryo research were permitted. But that mischief could be countered by prohibiting material rewards in creating embryos, like the criminal proscription on the sale of human organs for transplantation.

Cloning to reproduce is less morally compelling than cloning for research. Coveting a child who resembles a cherished deceased is not ignoble, but neither is it clutching, like relief from acute pain and suffering. An absolute ban, however, is not therefore justified. Liberty is the rule, not the exception, in a free society. Government should be saddled with showing a serious likelihood of a nontrivial evil before overriding the reproductive choices of mature adults.

Some speculate that human cloning would be the locomotive for a master race, or would occasion gruesome deformities. These worries are legitimate, but miles short of substantiation or the probability needed to justify preventive measures. New knowledge, to be sure, is power; it can be hijacked for nefarious ends. But does that mean we should end all frontier research? We developed the atomic bomb during World War II and the hydrogen bomb during the Cold War to save millions from death or subjugation. The known potential for misuse or theft of nuclear weapons or even of an uncontrolled chain reaction that could destroy the planet did not daunt.

Experience since the birth of the nuclear age shows a decisive net gain in human lives and welfare. Further, human evils are as likely to spin from the old as from the novel. The horrifying 1994 Rwandan genocide featuring 800,000 corpses was perpetrated at record speed with rudimentary weapons not far removed from the Stone Age, not with Adolf Hitler's gas chambers. Ditto for Pol Pot's Cambodian genocide. That moral certitudes are beyond human certainty does not dictate paralysis. We must act guided by intuition and exacting moral reasoning. On that score, a blanket renunciation of human embryo cloning for reproduction or medical progress seems wanting.

Bruce Fein is general counsel for the Center for Law and Accountability, a public interest law group headquartered in Virginia.


-------- ACTIVISTS

April 17-22
DC Peace Events

Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002
From: Carol Moore <carol@carolmoore.net>

Some of the events going on, FYI If you wish further information on any of this, please call or visit the main web sites for each organizing group to get more details.

For big schedule of Colombia Mobilization April 19-22, call (202) 234-3440 or http://www.colombiamobilization.org

Activist Alert - DC Events

April 11, 2002
Washington Peace Center

.....Promises, film showing and Peace Cafe

Date: Wednesay, April 17
Time: 7:00 pm
Place: Visions Cinema, Florida Ave. and 18th St., NW
(Dupont Circle Metro, Red line)

A free screening of the film PROMISES at Visions Cinema and Bistro.
Contact: www.visionsdc.com followed by a Peace Cafe.

Nonviolence Discussion Group Meeting

Date: Thursday, April 18th
Time: 6:45 pm - 8:45 pm
Place: Takoma Park Public Library, 5th & Cedar Streets,
(Takoma Park Metro, Red line)

Continuing discussion of the 6 stages of a Gandhian campaign.

Topic: "Stage 2: Public Education/Leadership Development, part 1"
Suggested Readings:
Barbara Fultz Martinez and Roberta Weiner,
"Guide to Public Relations,"
In Lee Staples' Roots to Power: A Manual for Grassroots Organizing and Gene Sharp,
"The Politics of Nonviolent Action:
The Dynamics of Nonviolent Action," pp.473-475.

The meeting is open to all, including new people.
Contact: : nonviolencedc@yahoo.com.
To receive related announcements: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nonviolencedc.

Globalization, US Militarism, and the Struggle for Justice in Palestine

Date: Friday, April 19th
Time: 12:00 - 6:00 pm
Place: American University's Ward Building, Massachusetts Ave. & Ward Circle, NW Conference on current situation, the Palestinian struggle and the need to build solidarity in the US.

April 20 Mobilization March to Stop the War

Date: Saturday April 20
Time: 10:30a am
Place: Sylvan Theatre (SW side of Washington Monument, 14th & Independence Sts., NW (Federal Triangle Metro, Orange/Blue line)

Gather for Stop the War Rally (11:30 am). A dynamic mix of speakers and performers including Amber Amundson, Julia Beatty, Medea Benjamin, Phil Berrigan, Florio Cumpiano, Ron Daniels, Division X, Altaf Hussein, Kathy Kelly, Martin Luther King III, Hussein Ibish, Michael Ratner, David Rovics, Rev. Al Sharpton, Erica Smiley, and Brenda Stokely. March to the Capitol (1:00 pm) and join group below.\

[Note: War tax resisters and libertarians and others will have table here, and probably at end of march too. Get literature and antiwar/peace buttons there.]

National March on Washington, A.N.S.W.E.R.
Date: Saturday, April 20 Time: 11:00 a.m.

Place: White House, 16th St. & Constitution Ave., NW (on the Ellipse) Assemble for march and rally at the Justice Department (9th St. & Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Navy/Archives Metro, Yellow line). Lots of hardcore noninterventionist speakers. Will later march to join A20 Stop the War rally at the Capitol (3rd St. & Independence Ave., SW).

Washington, DC - The Last Colony, A-20 March Contingent

Date: Saturday, April 20
Time: 10:00 am
Place: Washington Monument, NW Corner, 14th & Constitution, NW

Gather under a DC banner to join local groups making DC and our issues visible, as well as our opposition to the war. Groups include Black Voices for Peace, DC Asians for Peace and Justice, DC Statehood/Green Party, Stand Up for Democracy, Washington Peace Center and more. We will step off with the march at 1:00 coming north from Sylvan Theater at 14th & Independence, NW.
Contact: Washington Peace Center (202)234-2000 or www.washingtonpeacecenter.org.

Palestinian Solidarity Feeder March

Date: Saturday, Apr. 20
Time: 11:OO am
Place: AIPAC Conference at the Washington Hilton, Connecticut and T Sts., NW Gather and march to the Mobilization for Global Justice rally at the IMF/World Bank at 1:00 pm, continue to Freedom Plaza with MGJ to join the "Stop the War" mobilization march.

Colombia Solidarity Concert

Date: Saturday, April 20
Time: 7:30 pm and 9:00 pm (two shows)
Place: First Congregational Church, 925 G. St. NW (Metro Center or Gallery Place Metro. Yellow line)

Celebrate Colombia and our solidarity work to change U.S. policy. Performers include Colorado Sisters (Indigenous Zapatista theater duo), R.A.I. Nation (political rap), Pat Humphries and Sandy Opatow, Charlie King and Karen Brandow, Colleen Kattau and Jolie Rickman, David Rovics, Solstice, and Gina Young. A fabulous line-up of singers and song-writers that will keep your energy flowing and your spirits flying. Donation. Contact: SOA Watch (202) 234-3440 or www.colombiamobilization.org or Colleen at ckattau@ithaca.edu

Organizers Meeting for Iraq

Date: Saturday, April 20
Time: 6:00 - 8:00 pm Methodist Building Conference Room,100 Maryland Ave. NE (Union Station Metro, Red line)

Join EPIC and other local organizers concerned about US boycott and future plans for Iraq.
Contact Mike Zmolek at( 301) 891-0605 or EPIC intern Sara Willi at (202) 543-6176.

DC Asians for Peace & Justice Meeting

Date: Saturday, April 20th
Time: 7:30 pm
Place: St. Stephen's Church, 16th & Newton Sts., NW

A Gandhian Approach to the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict

Date: Sunday, April 21st
Time: 9:30 -10:45 am
Place: All Souls Church, 16th & Harvard Streets, NW (Columbia Heights Metro, Green line). A discussion.
Contact: nonviolencedc@yahoo.com

Militant Nonviolence: The Gandhian Approach

Date: Sunday, April 21st
Time: 1:30 - 2:45 pm
Place: Bunn Intercultural Center, Georgetown University, 36th & P Sts., NW A workshop that will familiarize participants with how to organize a satyagraha campaign, the Gandhian approach to conflict. Part of Capital Area Association for Peace Studies (CAAPS), 20002 Conference.

Sunday April 21st Columbia Mobilization Rally at Sylvan Theater...go to http://www.colombiamobilization.org

Counter AIPAC Press Conference

Date: Monday, April 22nd
Time: 4:00 pm
Place: Washington Hilton, Connecticut Ave. & T St., NW (Dupont Circle Metro, Red line)

Creative Actions around AIPAC Conference will begin at 4:30pm (AIPAC is American Israel Political Action Committee, 2nd strongest lobby in the nation that pretty much dictates US policy in MidEast)

Counter AIPAC Rally

Date: Monday, April 22nd
Time: 6:30 pm
Place: Washington Hilton, Connecticut Ave. & T St., NW (Dupont Circle Metro, Red line) Gathering around Washington Hilton for rally/picketing

(May get rowdy since black bloc is coming so be careful and remember your peacekeeping techniques.)

----

Colombia Mobilization to Washington DC ­ April 19 ­ 22, 2002

Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002
To: paulwolf@icdc.com

Interesting that Pastrana will be in Washington for this. - Paul
(see schedule at the bottom of this email)

STOP THE US INTERVENTION IN COLOMBIA! -
SHUT DOWN THE SCHOOL OF THE AMERICAS!

The School of the Americas (SOA), in 2001 renamed the "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation," is a military training school for Latin American soldiers, located at Fort Benning, GA.

Over its 56 years, the SOA has trained over 60,000 Latin American soldiers in counterinsurgency techniques, sniper training, commando and psychological warfare, military intelligence and interrogation tactics. These graduates have consistently used their skills to wage war against their own people. Among those targeted by SOA graduates are educators, union organizers, religious workers, student leaders, and others who work for the rights of the poor. Hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans have been tortured, raped, assassinated, "disappeared," massacred, and forced to flee their homes by those trained at the School of Assassins.

Colombia, with over 10,000 troops trained at the SOA, is the school's largest customer. Not surprisingly, Colombia currently has the worst human rights record in all of Latin America, averaging one massacre per day. 2,000,000 people have been killed or displaced by civilian-targeted warfare carried out by graduates of the SOA.

Unprecedented US military aid to Colombia is greatly exacerbating a brutal civil war that has been raging in Colombia for decades. Sold to the U.S. public as part of the "war on drugs", the aid is actually being used in the same old counterinsurgency warfare SOA graduates have waged across Latin America.

Human rights reports clearly document the collaboration between the Colombian military and the right-wing paramilitary forces responsible for an increasing share of the atrocities committed against civilians. As usual, SOA graduates head the lists of perpetrators. Among many others, SOA-trained Gen. Mario Montoya Uribe, identified by Colombian newspapers as "the military official responsible for Plan Colombia" has documented ties to paramilitary atrocities dating back to the 1970's.

Earlier this month, the Bush administration announced that it is seeking Congressional approval of a $98 million request that would pay for helicopters, communications equipment and training for Colombian troops to guard the Caño Limón pipeline, which transports crude oil pumped by Occidental Petroleum of Los Angeles from the country's eastern oil fields to a Caribbean port. State department officials declared Colombia also as one of the next battlefields in their "war on terrorism". These steps go beyond the rhetoric of the "war on drugs" and mark a new escalation in the US fueling of the terror in Colombia.

It is time to take action and put an end to US support of the state- terrorism in Colombia and throughout Latin America.

CLOSE THE SOA! STOP ECONOMIC AND MILITARY US INTERVENTION IN COLOMBIA!

Working in coalition with over 60 solidarity, labor, student, environmental and human rights groups, SOA Watch calls for a National Mobilization to close the SOA and end U.S. support of the war in Colombia.

Mobilize your community to come to Washington, DC this spring. Contact SOA Watch for an organizing packet.

Schedule:

Friday, April 19 Vigil and Lobbying to Shut Down the SOA at the US Capitol (Upper Senate Park)

Saturday, April 20 - Demonstration by the National Youth and Student Peace Coalition (http://www.soaw.org/Articles/current%2520info/new/A20.html), - Colombia Teach In, Skills and Nonviolent Direct Action Training, Concert

Sunday, April 21 - Colombia Mobilization Festival of Hope and Resistance with speakers from North and Latin America, Music, Puppets and Street Theatre - Coordinating Meeting for Monday Action

Monday, April 22 Solidarity March and Nonviolent Direct Action

For more information contact: SOA Watch ~ PO Box 4566 ~ Washington DC 20017 ~ phone: (202) 234 3440 email: info@soaw.org ~ www.soaw.org

--------

Protest Organizers Announce Schedule

April 16, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Capital-Protests.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Groups protesting a wide range of issues this weekend ran into a bit a trouble even as they were announcing plans for six days of events expected to coincide with international finance meetings in Washington.

Protest organizers called a news conference Tuesday at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, a sprawling monument between the Potomac River and the Tidal Basin. National Park Service rangers watched as organizers prepared the briefing and television cameras set up.

But just as participants started speaking, park rangers approached them to say they had to move the event off memorial grounds to a nearby location.

Organizers grumbled at what they called late notice. But park ranger Sonya L. Berger said they had been warned about an hour earlier that news conferences are forbidden inside the memorial grounds.

Dozens of groups hope to draw attention to a variety of causes over the next week with nearly 50 nonviolent marches, rallies, teach-ins, concerts and other events scheduled between Wednesday and Monday.

The diverse causes include the anti-globalization movement, which has produced clashes with police during several demonstrations since 1999; and opposition to the Bush administration's military war against terrorism, Israeli troop activities in Palestinian cities and towns and U.S. aid to Colombia.

The protests coincide with the spring meeting of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, but only a couple of hundred protesters are expected to demonstrate against those institutions.

Organizers predicted 30,000 to 40,000 people will participate in the other mobilizations, with the main event a rally Saturday on the National Mall.

-------

Protesters Target U.S. Embassy

Reuters
WORLD In Brief
Tuesday, April 16, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A56973-2002Apr15?language=printer

ISABELA, Philippines -- Police beat back protesters at the U.S. Embassy in Manila while the region's top American military commander visited the remote southern island where his troops are helping Philippine soldiers fight Muslim guerrillas.

At least four people were injured in the scuffle at the embassy, which erupted as left-wing activists held an impromptu rally protesting the U.S military presence in the Philippines, witnesses said.

In the southern Philippines, Adm. Dennis C. Blair, head of the U.S. Pacific Command, and U.S. Ambassador Francis J. Ricciardone Jr. flew over Basilan island by helicopter.

Basilan is a stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf guerrillas, whom Washington has linked to Osama bin Laden.

-------

30 protesters arrested in OAK RIDGE, Tenn.

NATION IN BRIEF
Tuesday, April 16, 2002
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A57022-2002Apr15?language=printer

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. -- About 30 protesters were arrested for trespassing or obstructing a highway during a demonstration against nuclear weapons production in Oak Ridge. Department of Energy security officers arrested four people on federal trespassing charges Sunday after they crossed a barrier in front of the Y-12 plant. They each face up to a year in jail and $100,000 in fines. Nearly 30 others were arrested by local police on charges of obstructing a public highway and disobeying police.

----

Early Folk Music Tapes to Be Preserved

By William L. Holmes
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, April 16, 2002; 1:49 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A60329-2002Apr16?language=printer

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- For 25 years, a cramped apartment in New York City served as one of the first recording studios for dozens of struggling artists, some of whom would go on to be the biggest names in folk music.

Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger and Janis Ian were among those who made the trip from the Greenwich Village coffeehouses to an Upper West Side housing project for jam sessions worthy of a country front porch.

Agnes "Sis" Cunningham and her husband, Gordon Friesen, a pair of former Communists who became a sort of counterculture mom and pop, recorded reel after reel of guitar-rich ballads and protest songs about nuclear war, racism and Vietnam.

Cunningham - an accordion and guitar player who performed in the 1940s with Woody Guthrie - would then transcribe the lyrics and melodies for "Broadside," a mimeographed magazine the couple began printing in their apartment in 1962. They sold them for 35 cents.

The recordings and magazine chronicled a moment and a movement.

In 1997, nine years after the couple stopped their informal recording sessions and a year after Friesen's death, Cunningham gave up their collection of 236 3-inch reels to the Southern Folklife Collection at the University of North Carolina in hopes they would be preserved and also made available to the public.

Now, the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, the same group that sponsors the Grammys, has stepped in to help with a $22,649 grant, or about $96 a reel.

Dylan's folk anthem "Blowin' in the Wind" was published for the first time in "Broadside." Seeger recorded his nuclear war parody "Mack the Bomb" in that New York living room. Ian, then known as Janis Fink, sang an early, stripped-down version of her popular "Society's Child."

"These were some of the best topical songs of the day," Seeger, now 82, said from his home in Beacon, N.Y. "The big companies at that time were not interested."

The collection includes 1,000 to 1,500 songs, as well as interviews with several artists, including Phil Ochs, an influential singer who committed suicide in 1976.

"It's a tremendous collection. It's a snapshot of an era," said Jeff Place, archivist for the Smithsonian Institute Folkways archive, one of the nation's largest collections of folk music.

The Broadside recordings are just a small part of the university's archive of nearly 90,000 sound recordings, more than 3,000 video recordings and 18 million feet of film.

But the small acquisition has gotten attention. The Smithsonian borrowed about a dozen of the tapes for its album "The Best of Broadside 1962-1988: Anthems of the American Underground from the Pages of Broadside Magazine." The album was nominated for two Grammys in 2001 - for liner notes and historical album.

It's the historical aspect that makes the recordings attractive to Steve Weiss, head of the UNC folklife collection. He says folk music's Southern roots stretch back at least 150 years.

Like their Southern forerunners, many of the 1960s songs weren't written down, one reason that Cunningham - now 93 - and Friesen felt they should document the life of the folk movement.

The grant from the recording academy will pay for conversion of the tapes to more durable compact discs and preservation-quality master tapes.

Michael Greene, head of the academy, said his group didn't want to risk losing the 40-year-old acetate tapes that he called "living history."

"Let's face it, many times, the most candid comments, the most revealing situations that people put themselves in are in those demos," Greene said from his office in Santa Monica, Calif.

Jeff Carroll, a sound engineer, handles much of the hands-on work from a sound studio in Wilson Library on the UNC campus. He plays each tape front to back, listening for glitches and splices. His equipment allows him to remove the pops and crackles and adjust the changing speeds that mar the tapes. Then he burns the songs onto CDs. He also tries to match up the songs on each tape to lists on the boxes, which are often incomplete, inaccurate or confusing.

"It's really a treasure hunt," Carroll said. "We have discovered quite a few gems doing that."

On the Net:
UNC Southern Folklife Collection: http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/sfc1/


------- OneList (submissions from subscribers)

------- Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!