------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Japanese to sue to shut down some nuclear reactors
Al Qaeda Aide: Radiation Bomb in Works
Qaeda Leader Said to Report A-Bomb Plans
Russia, U.S. in Bid to Clinch Arms Pact for Summit
U.S., Russia Work on Arms Cuts
White House Cut 93% of Funds Sought to Guard Atomic Arms
OSHA Warns Labs Against Toxic Metal
House Panel Supports Nev. Nuke Site
Troopers Practice Plutonium Blockade
Top Five Untruths
Criticism of Bush increases in volume
Attack of the Pork Barrel Posse

MILITARY
Afghans Allege U.S. Is Ignoring War Errors
War Crimes Suspects May Surrender
USEC Inc. Board of Directors Declares Quarterly Dividend
Orbital Sciences Reports Profit
Colombia is safe haven for terror groups: US Congress
Four tonnes of opium seized in raid on Afghan market
European Union Pushes for Mideast Cease-Fire
U.S. Says Iraq Moved Missiles to No-Fly Zone
Pentagon: Iraq Crosses 'No - Fly' Zone
Iraq bolsters missiles
Palestinians Say Bethlehem Talks 'Constructive'
Two Sieges Fuel Tension as Arafat Meets U.S. Envoy
Palestinians say troops vandalized, looted West Bank
Accord Is Near on Giving Russia a Limited Role in NATO
Philippines On High Alert After Attacks
U.S. Marines attacked by civilians in Puerto Rico
U.S. Marines Injured in Brawl
Well, oil be ... it's our new pal, Russia
Trial Set for Satellite Spy Suspect
Lawyer Seeks Delay for Accused Spy
U.N. Rejects Israel's Camp Demand
Pentagon to Investigate Its Role in Venezuela

POLICE / PRISONERS
Atlanta Cops to Use Segway Scooters
Bin Laden said to be hiding in Pakistan

ENERGY AND OTHER
Long Island wind power seen for 5 mln homes - LIPA
Senate to Consider $14 Billion in Energy Tax Breaks
Senate Opponents Fail to Derail Ethanol Plan
Senate to Vote on Energy Bill
Strange Allies in Energy Policy Fight
Leatherback Sea Turtles Face Threat
US, EU at Odds on Global Warming Despite Meeting
OSHA Warns Labs Against Toxic Metal

ACTIVISTS
Robin Mills' Invest in Clean Energy proposal
Kucinich Is the One



-------- NUCLEAR

-------- japan

Japanese to sue to shut down some nuclear reactors

REUTERS JAPAN:
April 23, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15608/story.htm

TOKYO - More than 1,000 people are set to sue one of Japan's major utility firms, demanding it shut several accident-hit nuclear reactors they say pose a danger to local residents, one plaintiff said yesterday.

One of the four reactors at Hamaoka, some 150 km (95 miles) west of Tokyo, was the site of several accidents last year and in addition the reactors are in an earthquake-prone region that some scientists say could be hit by a major tremor within a few years.

A total of 1,012 plaintiffs will sue Chubu Electric Power Company, Japan's third-largest power firm in terms of electricity sales, on Thursday to demand that all the reactors be shut down, said group representative Jun Ohtsuki.

"There were two accidents last year, and we are greatly worried about what could happen if a major earthquake hit," he said. "We expect the number of plaintiffs to rise."

The Hamaoka plant's No. 1 reactor was shut down temporarily last November after two leaks were discovered, one of steam containing a small amount of radiation and another of water that also contained radiation.

Officials at Chubu Electric later said the steam leak may have been caused by a hydrogen explosion in a pipe.

The plant's No. 2 reactor, of similar design, was shut down shortly after the accidents as a precautionary measure.

The plaintiffs say the accidents are of concern but a far greater worry is what could happen if a major earthquake struck the Tokai region of central Japan.

Japanese scientists have long been predicting that a catastrophic earthquake could hit the area, a place where two tectonic plates meet.

"There are also concerns relating to the ageing of the plants," said the plaintiffs' statement.

Both the Hamaoka No. 1 and No. 2 plants were built in the 1970s.

Japan, reliant on nuclear energy for one-third of its power needs, has seen a number of accidents over the past decade that have undermined public support for its nuclear programme.

The worst took place in 1999 at a uranium processing plant in Tokaimura, north of Tokyo, in which two workers were killed.

An advanced thermal reactor was shut down after indications that iodine continued to leak into the cooling water, a problem detected last week, Japan Nuclear Cycle Development Institute (JNC) said yesterday.

Spokesmen at JNC said the state-run operator stopped the 165,000-kilowatt Fugen reactor in Fukui Prefecture, central Japan, on Sunday after a monitor measuring the concentration of radiation in steam showed a rise in reading.

No radiation had leaked into the outside environment, they said.

The latest incident comes after the government said in a White Paper released this month that Japan's nuclear safety record had improved for 2001.

-------- terrorism

Al Qaeda Aide: Radiation Bomb in Works

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 23, 2002; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A30912-2002Apr22?language=printer

The top al Qaeda lieutenant captured in Pakistan told U.S. interrogators Sunday that Osama bin Laden's terrorist network has worked on developing a radiation bomb, a senior administration official said yesterday.

Abu Zubaida, 31, who before his capture last month served since November as military field director for bin Laden's terrorist network, also told CIA and FBI interrogators over the weekend that al Qaeda personnel "know how to do it," the official said. Because the Palestinian had been serving as a contact point with terrorist network members in Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East, his information "is being taken seriously," the official said.

Such a radiation weapon would involve using radioactive material with a chemical explosive. Although the weapon would not create a nuclear explosion, it could spread radioactive materials over a wide area, causing panic rather than mass fatalities.

Zubaida, who was seriously wounded when captured, is being questioned at an undisclosed location, said to be inside Pakistan. Last Friday, financial institutions in the northeastern and mid-Atlantic states were put on alert by the FBI after Zubaida told interrogators that al Qaeda had been planning terrorist attacks against them.

One senior intelligence analyst described Zubaida yesterday as "hard core" and said it was "extremely important to realize that he may be trying to deceive and cause confusion."

But another senior administration official aware of Zubaida's statements, which were first reported last night by CBS News, cautioned, "We should not overreact, but also not discount it as disinformation."

----

NUCLEAR THREAT
Qaeda Leader Said to Report A-Bomb Plans

New York Times
April 23, 2002
By PHILIP SHENON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/23/national/23BOMB.html

WASHINGTON - A top leader of Al Qaeda now in custody has told American interrogators that the terrorist group is close to building a crude nuclear device and may try to smuggle one into the United States, officials said tonight.

The officials cautioned that they remained highly suspicious about information from the captured terrorist, Abu Zubaydah, who was arrested last month in Pakistan.

Last week, information from Mr. Zubaydah, a Palestinian in his early 30's, caused the F.B.I. to issue a nationwide alert to banks about a possible terrorist attack.

The American officials, confirming reports tonight on CBS News and NBC News, said Mr. Zubaydah had told interrogators that Al Qaeda had been aggressively seeking to build a so-called dirty bomb, in which radioactive material is wrapped around a traditional explosive device.

One official said Mr. Zubaydah, believed to be Osama bin Laden's operations chief, "is well positioned to know what Al Qaeda has been up to, and we have to take his information seriously."

The official noted that the government had long warned about the possibility that Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups might be able to fashion a crude nuclear device and use it against American targets here or abroad.

Another official said, "Dirty bombs aren't that hard to make, unfortunately."

Still, officials said, Mr. Zubaydah might well be lying to interrogators either in hopes of lenient treatment or in hopes of creating panic.

"This could just be bragging," an official said. "It's impossible for us to know the truth at this point."

Mr. Zubaydah was captured in a shootout with the Pakistani police and intelligence agents in Faisalabad, where he and associates had taken up residence after fleeing Afghanistan. He is considered the most important member of Al Qaeda taken into custody since Sept. 11.

For several years, Mr. Zubaydah worked as Mr. bin Laden's chief recruiter for terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, and he is widely believed to know the identities of Al Qaeda terrorists around the world, including members of so-called sleeper cells that may be poised for attacks.

His exact whereabouts have not been disclosed by the government, which cites security concerns. American officials insist that he is receiving high-quality medical treatment for gunshot wounds from his capture.

"We have very good reason to keep him alive," said one official.

Intelligence officials have reported for years that Al Qaeda has sought to buy nuclear materials, especially from the nations of the former Soviet Union, and to train its members into fashioning the material into crude bombs by wrapping it around traditional easy-to-obtain explosives.

Such a device would not necessarily kill large numbers of people, but intelligence officials say they believe that a dirty bomb would create extraordinary panic.

-------- treaties

Russia, U.S. in Bid to Clinch Arms Pact for Summit

April 23, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-arms-russia-usa.html

MOSCOW - Russian and U.S. negotiators embarked on Tuesday on what could be the last opportunity to narrow differences and clinch a deal to slash strategic nuclear arsenals ahead of a summit next month.

The delegations opened two days of talks certain to focus on Russian objections to U.S. proposals to store, rather than destroy, nuclear warheads to be removed from missiles and other delivery systems.

Both sides hope a deal can be completed before the May 23-26 summit in Moscow and St. Petersburg, designed to underpin the new relationship predicated on Russian President Vladimir Putin's support for the U.S.-led war on terrorism.

Russia's Foreign Ministry, in a statement issued as the talks got under way, said Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Secretary of State Colin Powell had spoken by telephone on Monday about progress in securing the accord.

Itar-Tass news agency quoted a top Russian expert as saying that discussions were ``entering a decisive phase.'' But it also quoted a military expert as saying that differences persisted on how to deal with warheads taken out of service.

``The new agreement on strategic weapons must foresee not the storage of delivery systems as proposed by the United States, but their physical destruction subject to strict controls by the other side,'' the expert was quoted as saying.

Destruction, the expert said, meant eliminating a threat to security as ``warheads could not be delivered to their target.''

RIA news agency quoted analyst Vladimir Dvorkin, head of the Centre for Problems of Strategic of Nuclear Forces, as saying that differences also focused on the exact count of warheads held by each side.

The delegations, led by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Georgy Mamedov and U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton, are holding their third set of talks this year.

Both Putin and President Bush are committed to reducing current strategic arsenals to between 1,500 and 2,200 warheads each from current levels of 6,000 to 7,000.

FORMAL PACT AT RUSSIAN INSISTENCE

At their last summit in November in Washington and Bush's Texas ranch, Bush initially pressed for an informal agreement on cutting warheads on missiles, bombers and submarines.

At Russian insistence, he has since agreed to a formal and legally binding pact, though officials on both sides say the document is likely to be a short and general one.

Russia has kept matters on an even keel by reducing to a minimum its objections to the U.S. decision last December to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty -- enabling Washington to proceed with building an anti-missile shield.

But talks have run up against U.S. calls to keep warheads in reserve so that they may be brought into service again to guard against the emergence of new security threats.

U.S. officials refer to Iran, Iraq or North Korea, described by Bush as an ``axis of evil'' in his State of the Union speech earlier this year, and cited in connection with the need to build an anti-missile shield.

Western analysts believe that the need to consolidate post-Cold War relations and rejuvenate disarmament, stalled since the early 1990s, will probably spur both sides to overcome their differences and sign the pact next month.

''The forthcoming summit...could become a turning point in building a new strategic relationship between the two nations, but its failure would deal a serious blow to Russia-America relations,'' The Carnegie Endowment think tank and Russia's Centre for Political Studies said in a statement issued last week.

----

U.S., Russia Work on Arms Cuts

April 23, 2002
By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV,
Associated Press Writer
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-US.html

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=&ncid=721&e=4&u=/ap/20020423/ap_on_re_eu/russia_us_74

MOSCOW (AP) -- U.S. and Russian negotiators worked Tuesday to prepare an agreement on nuclear arms cuts before next month's summit, but two Russian arms control experts spoke out against the deal, saying it would require bowing to American demands.

U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton and a group of U.S. negotiators met Monday and Tuesday with Russian counterparts led by Deputy Foreign Minister Georgy Mamedov -- the latest in a series of arms control consultations in recent months.

``The relationship between the United States and Russia has fundamentally changed. And I think that the summit will reflect that change in relationship regardless of what documents we have to sign,'' Bolton told Associated Press Television News on Tuesday.

``Nonetheless, we are working as hard as we can to show as much of that progress in the agreement form as we can,'' he said.

President Bush has promised to cut the U.S. arsenal to 1,700 to 2,200 strategic nuclear warheads, while Russian 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 legally binding agreement. However, talks have been thorny because of Moscow's objection to the Pentagon's decision to stockpile decommissioned nuclear weapons rather than destroy them.

Ret. Maj.-Gen. Vladimir Dvorkin, who helped prepare previous arms control treaties with the United States, warned Tuesday that a nuclear deal at mid-May's Putin-Bush summit could not be reached ``without Russia making major concessions.''

``It would be a bad agreement if President Putin just signs under U.S. nuclear policy,'' he told a news conference.

Dvorkin and some other top arms control analysts advised Putin against signing an agreement on nuclear cuts in May and said that Russia must try to negotiate a better deal.

``It's better not to sign any treaty than to sign a bad one,'' said Sergei Kortunov of Russia's Foreign Policy Association.

Kortunov predicted that overall U.S.-Russian relations, bolstered by Putin's support for the U.S.-led war on terror, would remain strong even if a nuclear treaty isn't signed in May.

Dvorkin said that U.S. administration ignored Russian complaints about stockpiling nuclear weapons because the Russian military plans to unilaterally cut its nuclear forces below the U.S. levels with or without nuclear arms agreement with Washington.

The plan, which Dvorkin called ``mad,'' would significantly reduce the number of Russia's land-based strategic missiles in a fund-saving effort, making it impossible for Russia to stockpile the same number of weapons as the United States.

A compromise will only be possible if Russia drops its current nuclear doctrine and ``prove its ability to stockpile its own nuclear weapons,'' Dvorkin said.

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

White House Cut 93% of Funds Sought to Guard Atomic Arms

New York Times
April 23, 2002
By MATTHEW L. WALD
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/23/politics/23NUKE.html

WASHINGTON - The White House cut 93 percent of a recent request by the secretary of energy for money to improve the security of nuclear weapons and waste, according to a letter from the secretary.

The secretary, Spencer Abraham, said in the March 14 letter to Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., the director of the Office of Management and Budget, that the request, for $379.7 million, was "a critical down payment to the safety and security of our nation and its people."

The money, for guarding nuclear weapons, weapons materials and radioactive waste under the Energy Department's supervision, was part of a $27.1 billion emergency spending bill before Congress, the second such measure to be considered since the Sept. 11 attacks.

"Failure to support these urgent security requirements is a risk that would be unwise," the letter said. The New York Times obtained a copy from someone who favors more spending on nuclear security.

But Mr. Daniel passed on to Congress only $26.4 million of the request. Congress has not acted on it.

To improve the security of weapons and weapon material in storage, the letter listed areas for which the department wanted $138.3 million. They included equipment to detect explosives in packages and vehicles entering Energy Department sites ($12 million); better perimeter barriers and fences ($13 million); and improvements in Energy Department computers, including "firewalls" and intrusion detection equipment and increasing the ability to communicate "critical cyber threat and incident information" ($30 million). The request also asked for $41 million to reduce the number of places where bomb-grade plutonium and uranium was stored. All were turned down.

Also turned down was $34.1 million for increasing security at Energy Department laboratories.

The Energy Department did get $368.7 million in the first emergency spending measure of $40 billion, which Congress approved soon after the Sept. 11 attacks. It could get more money for the items that the White House rejected, because Congress has historically been willing to spend more than the administration on nuclear security.

"If they say we need money to secure nuclear warheads, apolitically, you think we'd agree to do that," said a Congressional aide familiar with the letter.

In his letter, Mr. Abraham noted that the department designed, manufactured, assembled, stockpiled and refurbished weapons and took them apart when they were retired. (The Defense Department controls deployed weapons.)

"We are storing vast amounts of materials that remain highly volatile and subject to unthinkable consequences if placed in the wrong hands," he wrote. "These materials permeate the departmental complex."

The first emergency spending bill "helped respond to the most urgent near-term security needs," Mr. Abraham wrote. But, he added, "the department now is unable to meet the next round of critical security mission requirements."

Asked to comment on the letter, Jeanne Lopatto, a department spokeswoman, said, "We're not going to get into details of discussions we have with the administration."

She added that "our nuclear weapons complex is among the most secure facilities in the world, and we are constantly assessing and evaluating security at the weapons complex."

She said that the department might shift funds from other programs into security and that the administration could possibly request more money from Congress.

"Our discussions with the Office of Management and Budget are ongoing," Ms. Lopatto said.

Critics of the Energy Department have argued that it is not prepared for attacks by suicidal terrorists, a threat not obvious before Sept. 11.

For example, the critics say, terrorists might enter areas where uranium or plutonium from bombs is stored, and rather than try to flee with material, giving defenders a chance to intercept them, they could assemble a bomb on the spot and cause a nuclear explosion. They could also enter with explosives and blow up a tank of nuclear waste, critics say, releasing vast amounts of radioactive material to spread with the wind.

David J. Sirota, a spokesman for the Democratic minority on the House Appropriations Committee, said the $138.3 million requested to protect storage of nuclear weapons and materials and the $100.8 million for security at nuclear weapon cleanup sites were worth providing.

Mr. Sirota asked: "Should we give Enron executives the $250 million tax break President Bush proposed, or should we use that money to secure our country against a nuclear attack using our own nuclear materials?"

The committee's ranking Democrat, David R. Obey, of Wisconsin, sought more money for nuclear weapons security in November but was voted down on party lines in committee in November, and the House voted, 216 to 211, not to debate the idea.

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

OSHA Warns Labs Against Toxic Metal

By Leigh Strope
AP Labor Writer
Tuesday, April 23, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35971-2002Apr23?language=printer

WASHINGTON -- Government regulators warned dental labs Tuesday that technicians who work on crowns and bridges may be inhaling dust that contains hazardous levels of the toxic metal beryllium.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued the hazard bulletin after several dental lab technicians were diagnosed with chronic beryllium disease, a debilitating and often fatal lung disease.

"We are concerned that dental lab technicians are continuing to contract the disease," said OSHA Administrator John Henshaw.

The warning was aimed only at workers, not dental patients.

Dental offices should not be concerned unless beryllium-containing alloys are being cast, cut, ground, polished or finished there. Beryllium in solid form was not part of the alert.

Beryllium is a lightweight metal that also is used in aerospace components, semiconductor chips, jet engine blades, transistors, nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons. It often is mixed with other metals to form an alloy, which is used in dental labs to make bridges and crowns to improve their strength.

Scientists have learned that exposure to low levels of beryllium dust, fumes, metal, metal oxides, ceramics or salts even over a short period of time can result in chronic beryllium disease, lung cancer or skin disease, OSHA said.

Symptoms include shortness of breath, dry cough, fatigue, weight loss, loss of appetite, fever or night sweats.

A recent case involved a 53-year-old Florida woman who had worked as a dental lab technician for 13 years and was diagnosed with the disease in May 2000. Her daily work involved sandblasting and grinding beryllium dental alloy. She wore only a surgical-type paper mask and was exposed to a lot of dust, OSHA said.

Not all dental alloys used in crowns and bridges contain beryllium. OSHA urged labs to use non-beryllium alloys when possible. It also recommended that labs provide protective clothing and use ventilation and air filter systems.

The agency issued the bulletin to 1,700 labs and posted the information on its Web site. It also is working with the National Association of Dental Laboratories. The group's president, Richard Harrell, said beryllium use in dental alloys isn't widespread.

"Base metals have been out of favor in dentistry for some time," he said. More common are alloys containing gold, platinum and palladium, and also ceramics.

OSHA's legal limit of beryllium is 2 micrograms per cubic meter of air. That is equivalent to dust about the size of a pencil tip spread throughout an area about the size of the Statue of Liberty, OSHA said. But the agency is reviewing whether to tighten the standard.

On the Net:
OSHA: http://www.osha.gov

-------- nevada

House Panel Supports Nev. Nuke Site

April 23, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Yucca-Mountain.html
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2002/04/04242002/ap_47017.asp

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A House panel voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to override Nevada's objections to building a nuclear waste disposal site at Yucca Mountain in the state's desert.

The 24-2 vote was the first congressional action on President Bush's decision in February to approve the Yucca Mountain site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. It signaled that the House was ready to move swiftly to support the president's decision despite Nevada's strong opposition.

The proposal calls for the Yucca Mountain facility, which has yet to get regulatory approval, to accept 77,000 tons of waste over 24 years, beginning in 2010.

Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, chairman of the Energy and Commerce energy subcommittee, said it would be a mistake to ``not let the process go forward.'' A final decision on the disposal site will be made by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The full committee is expected to approve the pro-Yucca resolution later this week and House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, said Tuesday he expects a floor vote next week. The Senate has yet to take up the resolution.

Nevada lawmakers have acknowledged they have little chance to stop the proposed site in the Republican-controlled House and have focused their efforts on the Senate where the Democratic leadership opposes Bush's selection of Yucca Mountain.

The resolution to override Nevada's rejection of the site gained broad bipartisan support in Barton's subcommittee. Only two Democrats -- Reps. Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Bill Luther of Minnesota -- voted against it.

Rep. Ralph Hall, D-Texas, recalled the decision by Congress in 1987 to single out Nevada for the waste site.

``We took no pleasure in selecting a state (then) and it's not easy to vote against friends of ours (from Nevada). It's not easy to role over them,'' said Hall. But he said he is convinced the waste will be safer at a single site than scattered around the country and that ``the risks are very low.''

Only Markey, a longtime critic of the Yucca Mountain site, spoke extensively against the Bush decision, calling it ``reckless'' and ``based on politics and not science.'' He said he had no confidence in members of Congress making a decision on the safety of the site when ``a long list of technical issues'' still need to be resolved.

``A congressional expert is an oxymoron,'' said Markey. ``We picked Yucca Mountain (in 1987) and now we've decided to force the process. ... We assume the scientific questions will be answered.''

But other lawmakers -- both Republicans and Democrats -- said there was greater risk leaving the waste at reactor sites and -- as several noted -- to reject Yucca Mountain means Congress would have to begin all over again to find a new site.

``Moving forward is the best option,'' said Rep. Michael Doyle, D-Pa., who noted his state has nine nuclear power reactors and 3,000 tons of waste waiting to be shipped to a permanent government location.

-------- south carolina

Troopers Practice Plutonium Blockade

April 23, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Plutonium-Standoff.html

NEW ELLENTON, S.C. (AP) -- State troopers got a taste of what might be in store next month during a mock exercise in which they practiced blocking a shipment of plutonium from Colorado.

Gov. Jim Hodges, who is locked in a dispute with the Department of Energy over the shipments, ordered the practice drill Monday for about three dozen state troopers and transport police officers.

As part of the drill, patrol cars blocked a four-lane road near the Savannah River Site, a nuclear facility about 10 miles from the Georgia state line.

Officers declared the exercise a success after managing to convince the driver of an 18-wheel tractor-trailer -- in reality, a vehicle borrowed from the state Department of Correction -- to turn around.

Officials said they didn't know whether it would be that easy when trucks carrying plutonium and escorted by armed federal officers make the same attempted entrance. Energy officials have said shipments could begin by May 15.

``I think they'll turn around,'' Hodges said. But, he added, ``We'll take whatever steps are necessary to keep the plutonium out of here.''

The Energy Department plans to reprocess the plutonium into fuel to be used in commercial nuclear reactors. Hodges worries that the material might be stored in South Carolina permanently.

``The department is extremely disappointed with Governor Hodges roadblock exercise,'' according to a prepared statement faxed by the agency. ``Fortunately other South Carolina leaders are spending their time today working with the department toward finalizing our plutonium disposition program.''

A law professor said the state is likely to lose a standoff with the Energy Department.

The actions of the federal government almost always take priority unless a court gets involved, said Eldon Wedlock, a constitutional law professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law.

``The Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution establishes that the Constitution and the laws of the United States are the supreme law of the land,'' said Wedlock.

Hodges, a Democrat who is up for re-election this year, has threatened to lie down in the road if necessary to block the shipments unless the Energy Department signs an agreement for the treatment and removal of the radioactive materials.

The governor said state officials will have a good idea of when the plutonium will leave the Rocky Flats facility in Colorado and what route it will take.

That will make it a little easier to guess which one of the 69 roads will be used to enter South Carolina, Public Safety Department spokesman Boykin Rose said. He refused to say Monday whether Georgia officials are offering any assistance to keep the material out of the state.

-------- us nuc waste

Top Five Untruths from 4/18 House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee Hearing on Yucca Mountain

Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2002
From: "Noel Petrie" <NPETRIE@citizen.org>

Gold and Silver Medals Go to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham!

-Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham: The proposed repository would consolidate U.S. nuclear waste in one location.

Freshly irradiated nuclear fuel is thermally and radioactively too hot to handle and must be stored on site in a "cooling pool" for at least five years before it can be transported. This means that, even if a repository opens, there will be at least five years worth of nuclear waste (110-165 tons) stored on site at each operating reactor.

Further, the proposed Yucca Mountain repository could not contain all the waste that U.S. nuclear reactors will generate in their licensed lifetimes. Repository capacity is capped at 77,000 tons, with 10 percent designated for DOE defense waste, whereas the current fleet of commercial reactors alone is expected to generate at least 99,000 tons of waste by 2035. Nuclear industry proposals to construct new reactors would result in yet more waste in excess of the proposed repository's capacity.

-Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham: Yucca Mountain is out in the middle of nowhere.

No, Secretary Abraham, not only is this inaccurate, but it implies an unacceptable ethic that it's okay to "waste" public land.

-Secretary Abraham (when questioned on waste transport): The NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) will designate routes.

No, Secretary Abraham, that would be your job. The Department of Energy (DOE) is to suggest preferred routes in compliance with Department of Transportation regulations. The NRC's Yucca licensing rule has nothing to do with transport routes.

-Secretary Abraham: The decision on whether to establish a repository at Yucca Mountain should be left to the "neutral" and "objective" NRC.

The NRC licensing rule is very narrow. Under it, the agency will not consider the suitability of the site, or the safety and feasibility of transporting waste to it. In fact, regulatory rollbacks have weakened NRC Yucca Mountain licensing standards. The role of Congress should not be downplayed in protecting health and safety.

-Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, Subcommittee Chairman (calming fears about terrorism): A test at Aberdeen Proving Ground resulted in no radiation release when a TOW missile was shot at the cask.

But Rep. Barton, that's only because it was an empty cask! The TOW missile blew a hole through the cask wall, which would certainly have resulted in radiation release and possibly damage to any fuel rods inside.

Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.citizen.org.

-------- us politics

Criticism of Bush increases in volume

04/22/2002
By Judy Keen and Richard Benedetto,
USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/2002/04/23/bush-earth-day.htm

National unity shielded President Bush from criticism after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, but his immunity is fading.

Bush is under fire from some friends, foes and pundits for his handling of the Middle East, the administration's confusing response to upheaval in Venezuela and the demise in Congress of some of the president's domestic priorities, such as last week's Senate vote against oil drilling in an Alaskan wildlife refuge.

On Monday, Bush traveled to the Adirondack Mountains in Upstate New York to give a speech commemorating Earth Day. "We have a duty in our country to make sure our land is preserved, our air is clean, our water is pure, our parks are accessible and open and well preserved," Bush said

Democrats, including some who are considering challenging him in 2004, were ready:

"Why are they turning the clock back on the environment, when Americans want to move ahead?" former vice president Al Gore asked in a speech in Nashville.

Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman said Bush "succumbed" to lobbyists when he reversed a campaign pledge to regulate carbon dioxide emissions.

Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry told a chamber of commerce in Haverhill, Mass., that Bush "pretends you can drill your way to energy independence, the environment be damned."

On the same day, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle labeled Bush's Middle East policies ineffectual in a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Bush's "initiative to deepen U.S. involvement in the region is right for America, and it is right for Israel," Daschle said. "But engagement for the sake of engagement will not work."

Democrats launched their current assaults on Bush this month at a gathering in Florida. Conservative Republicans, who had complained quietly about Bush's decisions to sign campaign-finance legislation and to impose tariffs on steel imports, went public with their dismay over what they perceived as his criticism of Israel.

Charlie Black, a veteran GOP strategist who advises the White House, dismisses the onslaught as politics as usual. "The closer you get to the November elections, all Democrats have to say something bad about him," he says.

John Podesta, a chief of staff for President Clinton, says, "The American people certainly are expecting a vigorous debate about his policies and his priorities." Any Bush allies who thought criticism would be on hold until the war ended are "living in a dream world."

But criticism can also turn the critic into a target, as some Democrats learned before the war on terrorism. Last July, Daschle attacked Bush's foreign policy the day the president was leaving on an overseas trip. Daschle was accused by Republicans of violating an unwritten rule against criticism of a president while he travels abroad, even though Republicans had done the same to traveling Democratic presidents.

Bush advisers say they're not particularly worried. But Bush's decision to highlight Earth Day by promising to do more to protect the environment was a sign that he and his aides see potential vulnerability on domestic issues that are traditional Democratic strengths.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer dismissed Gore's criticism. "I think it has more to do with internal Democrat presidential posturing than it does with any serious assessment of the president's record," he said.

Asked what he thought of his 2000 presidential opponent's critiques, Bush said, "Haven't paid attention to them." Reporters then noted that Gore said Bush had no environmental record. "That's why I haven't paid attention to him," the president said.

Bush advisers are concerned about criticism from fellow Republicans, but they say Democrats' criticism could boomerang if Americans conclude that their gripes are unfounded.

Republican strategist Scott Reed says the White House doesn't have to worry about GOP criticism as long as it's coming from "the self-appointed, non-elected wing of the Republican Party" and not from lawmakers. Besides, polls show more than nine in 10 Republican voters approve of Bush's performance.

"The Democrats are rudderless, issueless and leaderless," Reed says. "This is nothing to be nervous about."

Keen reported from Washington, Benedetto from Wilmington, N.Y.
Contributing: Jill Lawrence

--------

Attack of the Pork Barrel Posse

Jonathan Reingold,
Alderney
April 23, 2002
From: "Frida Berrigan" <BerrigaF@newschool.edu>
Arms Trade Resource Center

On March 14 the House of Representatives passed the largest military budget increase in twenty years at $393.8 billion dollars.

Now, as the Senate Budget Committee mulls further add-ons to the Fiscal Year 2003 budget, taxpayers should take more than a cursory glance at the final, over-stuffed product, particularly the part that reflects not the military's needs, but congressional pork barrel posses from around the country.

Anyone who has been to Senator John McCain's website knows he has a special page called "pork barreling," in which he lists suspect bills and statements by other members. In a recent press release excoriating corporate welfare at its best, he lambastes Congress and the president for passing an outrageous lease deal for the Air Force for modified Boeing 767s to replace its fleet of aging KC-135 aerial tankers.

The lease plan -- passed in December, and now under debate in the Air Force -- would cost taxpayers a total of $30 billion over ten years. According to McCain, the Boeing lease plan is five times the cost of purchasing the planes. Worse still, McCain says, the tankers are not even listed in the Air Force's top 60 priorities, or even in its procurement plan for the next six years. But taxpayers have already spent over two billion modernizing the current tanker fleet in recent years. It is certainly a win-win for Boeing, since after the lease is up, taxpayers will also provide the cash to refit the planes for civilian use and deliver them back to Boeing.

You can thank Washington state Democratic Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell for that convenient corporate handout, as well as Alaska Republican Senator Ted Stevens, who is the ranking member of both the Senate Appropriations Committee and Defense Appropriations subcommittee. As Senator Murray says, "It is in our national interest ... to keep our only commercial aircraft manufacturer healthy in tough times."

Washington state's connection to the deal is clear, since they will be constructing the planes, but why Alaska? Watch dog group Public Citizen notes that Boeing gave Senator Stevens $3,000 in 2001, and during the 2000 election cycle, donated $10,000 to his candidate committee and $1,000 to his PAC.

Apparently this deal wasn't sweet enough. House Speaker Dennis Hastert felt the need to decorate the cake a bit more, and added the leasing of four new Boeing 737s for congressional VIPs to the bill. And it's no wonder the bill passed with support from both sides of the aisle. Boeing handed out $1.9 million to federal parties and candidates in the 1999-2000 election cycle and an additional $448,000 through June of 2001, divided almost equally between Republicans and Democrats, according to Public Citizen.

In another example of congress telling the military what it needs, the 2003 budget allocates $8.6 billion for five new ships, but the Navy says it can afford to put off construction for several years. Defense Week reported in February that when the Navy secretary testified that President Bush had requested enough ships for the coming year, Democratic and Republican senators and house members from states with naval shipyards apparently thought otherwise. Senators Ted Kennedy (D- MA), John Warner (R-VA) and Rep. Gene Taylor (D-MS) complained the Navy shipbuilding rate was too low. They further suggested digging into Bush's $10 billion war reserve fund to the build ships the Navy says it doesn't need.

Even Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld says enough already. Rumsfeld testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services on Feb. 5 that the military doesn't need 23 percent of its bases, yet Congress disagrees. Most recently, Congress has delayed the latest round of closings until 2005. Opponents of closings include Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS), Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense Daniel Inouye (D-HI), and Armed Services Committee member James M. Inhofe (R-OK). The Pentagon estimates it's missing out on $3 billion in savings every year it keeps obsolete bases open.

If any doubt remains as to the myriad of ways the Pentagon budget is not only overblown already, but will balloon even more, the advocacy group Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities notes that experts within the Pentagon and GAO agree that the Department of Defense fails to keep track of a quarter of its budget. Programs that have nothing to do with the war on terrorism make up 44 percent of the new budget. Nonetheless, after 9/11 any congressman who argues that "we don't have the resources to defend America," as Henry Stonecipher, vice-president of Boeing said, "won't be there after next November."

Regrettably, he has a point.

Jonathan Reingold is a research assistant for the Arms Trade Resource Center at the World Policy Institute and a military analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus.

Frida Berrigan Research Associate, World Policy Institute 66 Fifth Ave., 9th Floor New York, NY 10011 ph 212.229.5808 x112 fax 212.229.5579

The Arms Trade Resource Center was established in 1993 to engage in public education and policy advocacy aimed at promoting restraint in the international arms trade.

www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms


-------- MILITARY

-------- afghanistan

Afghans Allege U.S. Is Ignoring War Errors Civilian Victims Seek Recognition

By Peter Baker
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, April 23, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31044-2002Apr22.html

KABUL, Afghanistan -- A delegation of local leaders from Khost showed up at the U.S. Embassy here the other day seeking answers. What they got, they said, was the brushoff.

It has been four months since the U.S. military bombed a convoy heading from Khost to Kabul for the inauguration of the interim Afghan leader, Hamid Karzai. Even Karzai has called the attack, which killed innocent tribal elders, a mistake. But the Americans turned away the Khost representatives at the gate of the heavily fortified embassy without seeing them.

The seeming indifference has irritated Afghan civilian victims of the war who are now hoping for compensation, or at least recognition, from the United States as it continues to prosecute its battle against terrorism here. In recent weeks, hundreds of Afghans whose relatives were killed or whose homes were inadvertently destroyed by U.S. bombing have presented claims to the embassy, with no response.

"It's amazing," said Abdurrahman, a member of the Khost shura, or council, who traveled to Kabul to present the council's case to the embassy. "The Americans will accept wrong reports and bomb our people. But they don't allow us to come in and tell them the truth."

A senior U.S. official visiting Afghanistan said today that the Bush administration was sensitive to the issue and trying to help those who have been hurt.

"I can assure you that we try our darned best to avoid hitting innocent targets -- that's not what we're about," President Bush's special envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, said at a news conference at the embassy as victims waited outside the gate. "But mistakes do happen. When charges are made, we investigate. And then we do the right thing to respond to the needs of those who have suffered."

Asked what "the right thing" meant, he gave no specifics. In fact, according to private organizations that monitor the issue, the United States has rarely responded to civilian casualties in Afghanistan with assistance of any kind. The only known instance cited by the organizations came in the southern province of Uruzgan, where U.S. agents distributed $1,000 to each family of at least 12 people killed in a raid in December that targeted the wrong people.

"They're absolutely not doing the right thing because there are families sleeping without homes," said Marla Ruzicka, an activist with Global Exchange, a human rights organization in San Francisco that is lobbying on behalf of Afghan victims. "Nobody's gone to talk to them, nobody's gone to help. If they were doing the right thing, they'd help widows, they'd help the orphans that were created by this campaign."

The question of how to handle the cases of civilian victims of the Afghan war has drawn only modest attention in Washington. The Pentagon has been reluctant to acknowledge errors and the Bush administration has preferred to highlight its broader efforts to rebuild Afghanistan.

Global Exchange has tried to force the issue onto the U.S. agenda by enlisting help from relatives of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks. The group's leaders met with State Department officials today and will meet with key congressional leaders this week in an effort to lobby the House Appropriations Committee to earmark $20 million for a fund to help civilian victims of the war.

The issue has attracted limited support so far. Reps. Carrie P. Meek (D-Fla.) and John Cooksey (R-La.) are circulating a "Dear Colleague" letter calling for a compensation fund and have collected just 22 signatures so far, according to a spokesman for Meek.

Advocates of aid to civilian victims stress that such help does not undercut the war effort. "The United States is at war with terrorism, not with the people of Afghanistan," Meek and Cooksey wrote in their letter.

No reliable figures exist on the number of civilians who have died in the Afghan war, but specialists say precision weaponry limited the damage compared with that of most wars in the past.

-------- balkans

War Crimes Suspects May Surrender

April 23, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Yugoslavia-War-Crimes.html

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) -- Six Serbs indicted by the U.N. war crimes court said they were ready to surrender to the tribunal as a government deadline expired for 23 suspects to turn themselves in or face arrest, the Justice Ministry said Tuesday.

Among the six who agreed to surrender are three top suspects: former Yugoslav army commander Gen. Dragoljub Ojdanic, former deputy prime minister Nikola Sainovic and former Croatian Serb rebel leader Milan Martic.

The 17 other suspects listed by the tribunal based in The Hague, Netherlands, declined to surrender by a Monday deadline and now face possible arrest and extradition, the ministry said in a statement.

Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic -- the No. 1 war crimes suspect at large -- and his top general, Ratko Mladic, are among the 17, as is current Serbian President Milan Milutinovic.

Karadzic is healthy and busy writing books at an undisclosed location, including a book of poetry for children and his entire wartime correspondence, his friends and associates said Monday in Belgrade.

Miroslav Toholj, former information minister in the Bosnian Serb wartime government, presented one Karadzic book, ``Sitovacija'' (The Situation), which he described as a ``light, amusing stage play'' that ``ridicules global manipulators.''

Under a threat of U.S. economic sanctions, the federal parliament earlier this month passed a law regulating extraditions and other forms of cooperation with the U.N. court and granting privileges for those who surrender, including the possibility that they would stay free pending their trials.

Yugoslav Interior Minister Zoran Zivkovic said Tuesday that the guarantees will be given only after the suspects turn themselves in to The Hague tribunal.

Ojdanic, who commanded the army during the 1999 NATO airstrikes against Yugoslavia, and Sainovic, a security adviser to then-President Slobodan Milosevic, were charged by The Hague court along with Milosevic with war crimes in Kosovo during a Serb crackdown in the province. About 800,000 Kosovo Albanians were deported from their homes and thousands were killed.

Milosevic, who was extradited to The Hague last June in a handover that his allies called illegal, has been indicted on 66 counts of war crimes in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.

Martic was a leader of Serbs in Croatia, who rebelled when the republic seceded from Yugoslavia in 1991. As Croatian forces regained rebel-held territories, Martic allegedly ordered retaliatory missile fire against the Croatian capital, Zagreb, that killed several civilians in 1995.

The other three men who agreed to surrender are former army officers Mile Mrksic and Vladimir Kovacevic, and former Bosnian Serb prison guard Momcilo Gruban.

The Justice Ministry said did not specify a timeframe for the surrender. But Yugoslav Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic said some of the six could be heading to The Hague ``in the next few days.''

The general secretary of Milosevic's Socialist party, Zoran Andjelkovic, confirmed Tuesday that Sainovic, a ranking party official, will surrender to The Hague. He added that Sainovic is doing this under the ``government pressure.''

-------- business

USEC Inc. Board of Directors Declares Quarterly Dividend

Tuesday April 23
Press Release
BUSINESS WIRE
SOURCE: USEC Inc.
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/020423/232635_1.html

BETHESDA, Md. - The Board of Directors of USEC Inc. (NYSE:USU - news) today declared a quarterly dividend of 13.75 cents per share on USEC's common stock. The dividend is payable June 15, 2002, to shareholders of record on May 24, 2002.

USEC Inc., a global energy company, is the world's leading supplier of enriched uranium fuel for commercial nuclear power plants.

Contact:
USEC Inc. Steven Wingfield, 301/564-3354
USEC website: www.usec.com

----

Orbital Sciences Reports Profit

Amy Joyce
Washington Post Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33324-2002Apr23?language=printer

Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, a satellite and space system manufacturing company, said revenue and profit increased during its first quarter of 2002, compared to the same period last year.

The company reported a profit of $2.4 million, or 5 cents per share, compared with a net loss of $21.6 million, or 57 cents, for the first quarter 2001.

Revenue this quarter rose 27 percent to $120.7 million. Last year's first quarter revenue was $94.9 million.

During the first quarter, Orbital won a $900 million contract from Boeing to supply 70 missile defense-related vehicles through the end of the decade. The company received an additional $60 million in new orders during the quarter.

-------- colombia

Colombia is safe haven for terror groups: US Congress

Wednesday April 24, 2002
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020424/1/2oibc.html

The Irish Republican Army as well as terror masterminds from Iran, Cuba and possibly Spain have created a safe haven in rebel-controlled areas of Colombia threatening international security, according to a US congressional report.

The conclusion capped a nine-month-long investigation undertaken by the House International Relations Committee, which has been looking into international connections of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the main Marxist guerrilla group, which boasts about 17,000 fighters.

A preview containing the main findings of the probe was made available to reporters late Tuesday.

"Colombian authorities assert that not only has the IRA operated in the former safe haven on behalf of the FARC, but also the Iranians, Cubans, and possibly ETA (Basque terrorists), among others," congressional investigators concluded.

They argued that "the forces of global terrorism, illicit drugs and organized crime converge upon Colombia to produce new challenges to the international system."

Last August, suspected IRA members Martin McCauley, James Monaghan and Niall Connolly were arrested at Bogota International Airport and charged with training FARC rebels in the use of high-powered explosives.

Connolly was later identified as a representative in Cuba of Sinn Fein, the political arm of the IRA.

The three have denied the charges, and the IRA has denied that any of them are its members.

But according to Colombian authorities, the trio had spent five weeks inside the Switzerland-sized demilitarized zone in south-central Colombia, which was ceded by the government to the FARC in 1998 in hopes of facilitating reaching an accord with the group.

The peace process has since collapsed and the zone was reoccupied by government forces last February.

According to the British newspaper the Sunday Times, the IRA suspects had been secretly using the zone to test a "fireball mortar bomb" designed to blow apart fortified buildings.

"The arrests illustrate a new and dangerous escalation in the FARC's ability to carry out terrorist bombings as well as the reach of global terrorism into the Western Hemisphere," the congressional investigators pointed out.

Wednesday's committee hearing, at which the full report is expected to be unveiled, is seen here as a key public event designed to facilitate a White House-backed shift in US Colombia policy that would allow the Colombian military to use US anti-drug aid for anti-guerrilla operations.

Language spelling out the policy change is contained in a supplemental 27-billion dollar anti-terrorism budget request recently submitted by President George W. Bush to Congress.

But organizers of the highly-publicized event suffered a setback Tuesday, when Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams refused to attend it, citing both legal and political concerns.

"I am concerned that my attendance at the International Relations hearing may impact on due legal process in Colombia," Adams said in a letter Henry Hyde, chairman of the committee.

He added that "anti-peace process elements in Britain and Ireland have seized upon the hearings to damage the peace process itself."

The committee said it had also found that the FARC's international connections went far beyond the IRA.

"Colombia is a potential breeding ground for international terror equaled perhaps only by Afghanistan, and the IRA findings are the strongest among these global links because of the arrests of the three Irish nationals and the accompanying evidence," the investigators said.

"It is likely that in the former FARC safe haven these terrorist groups had been sharing techniques, honing their terrorism skills, using illicit drug proceeds in payment and collectively helping to challenge the rule of law in Colombia," the preview pointed out without offering specific evidence.

-------- drug war

Four tonnes of opium seized in raid on Afghan market

Tuesday April 23, 2002
Reuters
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-101544.html

ISLAMABAD - Hundreds of Afghans swooped on one of their country's biggest opium markets, seizing some four tonnes of the drug that is the raw material for heroin, the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) reported on Tuesday.

Fighters loyal to local authorities raided the Ghani Khel market in Shinwar district, 45 km (28 miles) southeast of Jalalabad in eastern Nangarhar province on Monday, confiscating the entire stocks of dealers, AIP quoted witnesses as saying.

It was a surprise operation and the fighters took over the market without any resistance, it said.

Ghani Khel is a source of opium to Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal areas along the nearby border and is also believed to be on drug supply routes to Central Asia.

"Though I cannot give you the exact quantity of the opium confiscated by the officials, they took away around 600 bags, each containing seven kg (15.4 lb) of the contraband drug," one witness was quoted as saying.

The seizure came a week after Afghanistan's deputy justice minister asked the world to give his war-ravaged country time to wipe out opium cultivation.

"This is not the work of one day or one month or one week," Mohammad Asharaf Rasooli told reporters at a United Nations news conference in Vienna. "Afghanistan was the centre of opium. So we need time for this."

Afghanistan was the world's biggest producer of illicit opium until Myanmar surpassed it last year. It is expected to produce a large amount of opium in 2002 -- 1,900 tonnes to 2,700 tonnes, according to the United Nations.

The country's interim government has destroyed hundreds of acres of poppy fields in recent months by giving compensation of $350 per acre to farmers, but large areas of cultivation remain.

-------- europe

European Union Pushes for Mideast Cease-Fire

April 23, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-EU-Mideast.html

VALENCIA, Spain (AP) -- European Union, Israeli and Arab officials ended two days of difficult talks Tuesday declaring there could be no ``military solution'' to the Mideast conflict.

EU foreign ministers, meanwhile, dispatched foreign policy and security chief Javier Solana on a new mission late Tuesday to meet Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in his besieged Ramallah headquarters.

The EU foreign ministers also called for the start of peace talks to reach ``within a well-defined timeline, a political solution'' to end the worst Middle East fighting in decades.

``The negotiations should lead to the creation of a democratic, viable and independent State of Palestine ... and the right of Israel to live within secure and recognized boundaries,'' the EU statement said.

Officials said Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres endorsed the statement unreservedly. He also encouraged EU officials with a statement about the need to create ``a flourishing Palestinian economy.''

``I hope he speaks for the whole Israeli government,'' EU External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten told reporters.

Nabil Shaath, the Palestinians' de facto foreign minister, repeated that Israel must withdraw from the West Bank, saying, ``Once we have that march to peace there will be no violence.''

Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Pique, whose country holds the EU presidency, said ``there was a real aspiration to reach peace because everyone is fed up'' with the violence.

Officials said Solana planned see Arafat after Israel gave him a guarantee of safe passage. Earlier this month, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon refused to meet Solana and Pique and kept them from seeing Arafat.

The EU meeting with Israel and its neighbors began badly.

Syria and Lebanon never showed up and all Arab delegates walked out when Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Michael Melchior, then standing in for Peres who was in the United States, took the microphone.

Arab delegates returned to the meeting Monday night and Tuesday, although a group photo session was canceled.

EU officials expressed relief that despite the fighting in recent weeks and the massive destruction by Israel of Palestinian property, they managed to keep Israeli and Arab delegates together.

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said that showed the Europeans have a role to play in the Middle East. ``The important message is that the Europeans can sit down with both sides'' in the conflict, he said.

On Tuesday, Pique and the other EU foreign ministers held separate meetings with Shaath and Peres.

Shaath, who left early, termed the meeting with the EU ``fruitful,'' but said now was ``not the time'' for him to meet with Peres.

Addressing the meeting Monday night, Solana called for a ``great leap forward'' in the peace process by setting a ``clear, firm and quick calendar'' for a cease-fire and the start of negotiations.

The meeting ended with calls for an end to Palestinian terrorism, an Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian towns in the West Bank, the dispatch of international observers to the region as well as pledges to fight terrorism, drug trafficking and illegal immigration and launch a cultural cooperation forum.

-------- iraq

U.S. Says Iraq Moved Missiles to No-Fly Zone

New York Times
April 23, 2002
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/23/international/middleeast/23MILI.html

WASHINGTON - The Iraqi military late last week moved surface-to-air missiles into southern and northern "no-flight zones" patrolled by American and British pilots, putting those pilots at significantly higher risk, senior Pentagon officials said today.

The movement of the missiles has been part of heightened activity by Iraqi air defenses inside the two zones, where Iraqi military aircraft are prohibited from flying.

But Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, played down the significance of the moves, saying that President Saddam Hussein of Iraq frequently moves missiles, radar and other anti-aircraft systems in and out of the no-flight zones. Indeed, a Pentagon official said the missiles may have already been moved out.

"The only reason I mentioned it today was just to highlight this issue of having Americans being shot at as they're patrolling the no-fly zone," General Myers said.

The incident comes at a time of increased tension between Iraq and the United States.

General Myers said American and British pilots have either been fired on or have been the targets of Iraqi radar systems at least four times in the past two weeks. On Friday, allied jets dropped precision-guided weapons on a radar installation in the northern zone, the first such attack since February. Pentagon officials said the radar appeared to be linked to Russian-made surface-to-air missiles, either SA-2's or SA-3's.

Allied aircraft also attacked a radar installation in the southern zone on April 15, the first attack in that region since January.

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said today that Canadian officials would be included at all levels of a Pentagon investigation into the accidental bombing last week of a Canadian unit in southern Afghanistan by an American F-16. Four Canadian soldiers were killed and eight others were wounded.

He said the investigation would be concluded in 30 to 60 days. The Canadian government is also conducting an investigation of the event.

The recent skirmishing in Iraq is the most intense since last July and August. Following the Sept. 11 attacks, Iraqi attempts to shoot down allied aircraft declined, possibly because Mr. Hussein wanted to avoid provoking the United States at a time when it might be more prepared to attack him, Pentagon officials said.

A major concern raised by American officials is that the Iraqi military has increased the effectiveness of its aging radar systems by linking them with fiber optic lines, possibly installed by Chinese companies.

--------

Pentagon: Iraq Crosses 'No - Fly' Zone

April 23, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-Iraq.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Air patrols flown almost daily over Iraq by American and British pilots are getting riskier, the nation's top military officer says.

Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Iraq has moved more surface-to-air missile batteries into the southern and northern ``no-fly'' zones enforced by allied pilots.

The additions are the largest in the past couple of years, Myers said Monday, although he also noted that Iraq has a history of moving such forces in and out of the zones.

Myers did not say how many missile batteries had been added. He said they were moved in the past several days.

The United States, France and Britain created the flight-interdiction zones after the 1991 Gulf War to prevent the Iraqi military from using aircraft against minority Kurds in the north and Shiite Muslims in the south. The zones are an irritant to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who says they violate Iraq's sovereignty. He has offered to reward to any defender who downs an American pilot.

President Bush has declared Saddam a menace and vowed to remove him as Iraq's leader, although the administration says it has not decided how that goal will be achieved.

Bush has said all options are available, including a military campaign to overthrow Saddam if the Iraqi leader continues to deny admission to U.N. weapons inspectors, whose job was to check if Baghdad has dismantled its means to make chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. The inspectors have been barred from Iraq since 1998.

Talks between Iraq and the United Nations on the return of the inspectors were due to begin in April, but Iraq has asked for a delay on grounds that talks would be dominated by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict if held now.

Myers provided few specifics about Saddam's latest moves to strengthen his defenses in the ``no-fly'' zones, but he said newly arrived missile batteries were involved in recent confrontations involving U.S. pilots.

He said allied pilots in northern Iraq have been threatened by Iraqi air defenses three times since April 1.

``In one case, on the 19th, our fighters launched two missiles at a surface-to-air missile system near Mosul,'' Myers said. ``And this particular system had threatened them during their flight.''

On April 15 an allied air patrol in southern Iraq responded with a guided bomb strike on a surface-to-air missile system radar, he said.

Last year Iraqi air defenders frequently challenged allied air patrols by targeting them with radars or firing anti-aircraft artillery guns or surface-to-air missiles. But there have been relatively few challenges this year. The U.S. attack on April 15 was the first in southern Iraq since Jan. 21.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, speaking at the news conference with Myers, said he knew of no ``notable difference'' recently in Saddam's behavior and the posture of his military.

``He tends to move things around and do things that are inconsistent with the U.N. resolutions, and his rhetoric has historically been provocative and favoring terrorists,'' Rumsfeld said.

Myers was asked to describe the additional threat posed by the extra surface-to-air missiles in Iraq.

``If they're moved inside the `no-fly' zones, obviously, that increases risks to the pilots that are patrolling in those zones,'' he said. ``And that's what's been happening. And beyond that, I don't want to get into the specifics of exactly where.'' He added that they were in both the northern and southern zones.

When Bush took office in January 2001, Saddam increased his challenges to allied air patrols. Bush responded on Feb. 16, 2001, by ordering a coordinated series of strikes on air defense radars and other targets in and around Baghdad. Officials said later the attacks were in part a response to suspicions that Iraq had upgraded its air defense network using Chinese-supplied fiber-optic cables.

Asked Monday whether the Chinese were still helping Iraq, Rumsfeld replied, ``I don't know that they've stopped.''

--------

Iraq bolsters missiles

April 23, 2002
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020423-23126173.htm

Baghdad has moved new surface-to-air missiles into two no-fly zones in Iraq in an indication Saddam Hussein may be planning to confront Washington during continuing turmoil in the Middle East.

Iraq periodically fires upon, or "paints" with radar, allied aircraft enforcing no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq. Last week, allied jets fired on air-defense sites in both the south and north.

But this is the first time in two years Baghdad has significantly reinforced its arsenal of mobile SAMs used to harass patrolling fighters.

"It was just reported to me today that some of these movements of surface-to-air missile systems into regions where we enforce the no-fly zones under the U.N. resolutions are greater than they have been in a couple of years," Gen. Richard Myers, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, told reporters at the Pentagon.

The buildup comes as Washington and Iraq are in a war of words. President Bush has labeled Iraq part of an "axis of evil" and promised it will not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons.

Saddam has urged Arab states to cut off U.S. oil supplies and sponsor more terrorist attacks against Israel. Saddam has also offered a reward in the form of thousands of dollars to families whose sons or daughters carry out suicide bombings on Israelis.

The Washington Times reported earlier this month that Iraq was taking defensive steps that indicate it expects Mr. Bush to order an attack, including moving mobile air-defense radars to the western part of the country, facing Jordan, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Earlier reports said some military forces were dispersing outside their main garrisons in what may be an attempt to protect troops and weapons from precision air strikes.

Also, the Iraqi military has begun building scores of concrete revetments to protect soldiers, equipment and aircraft. The construction began shortly after the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Iraq proved unable to protect its jet fighters during the 1991 Gulf war. The allies simply dropped bombs that could penetrate the concrete hiding places. Iraq responded by flying the jets to Iran, where most remain.

U.S. officials say Iraq's rebuilt air force is ineffective and would be destroyed in a war's opening days.

Gen. Myers analyzed the SAM movements this way: "This is one of the things that we have seen over time, that in the no-fly zones there will be surface-to-air missiles moved in, moved around and moved out. It's just a little more activity in the last couple of days than we have seen in the last couple of years."

The United States and Britain have conducted a small war against Iraq during the past 10 years in enforcing no-fly zones that keep Saddam in a box and limit his ability to attack rebels in the north and south. Iraq typically fires unguided missiles at the jets; if guided by radar, the signal would give allied aircraft the radars' exact location.

Nonetheless, the United States and Britain are often able to find the offending system and take it out with a laser-guided bomb.

Iraq has not downed any coalition aircraft enforcing the exclusion zones.

Early in Mr. Bush's presidency, the United States launched a major strike against the air-defense command stations and radars south of Baghdad that are used to coordinate attacks on Western planes. Days later, the United States disclosed that the sites are integrated through high-tech fiber-optic links installed by communist Chinese technicians.

The Iraqis "have a very good fiber-optics system. I'll just leave it at that," Gen. Myers said yesterday.

Asked if China was still aiding Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld answered, "I don't know that they stopped."

-------- israel / palestine

Palestinians Say Bethlehem Talks 'Constructive'

April 23, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast-church.html

BETHLEHEM, West Bank -- The first direct talks between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators on a standoff at Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity ended Tuesday, and Palestinian negotiators said they had made progress.

``We are close to an agreement, we hope,'' Palestinian legislator Salah Taamari told reporters after the talks. ``The talks were constructive,'' Bethlehem mayor Hanna Nasser said. ''We heard many offers. They will be materialized at 6 o'clock,'' he added without elaborating.

``The Palestinians outlined their position, as did we. It is too early to assess what was achieved. The talks will resume in the near future,'' Israeli army spokesman Olivier Rafkowicz said.

Dozens of Palestinian gunmen took refuge in the church, built on the spot where Christians believe Jesus was born, when Israeli troops reoccupied the Palestinian-ruled city on April 2 as part of a West Bank offensive unleashed after suicide bombings that killed scores of Israelis.

--------

Two Sieges Fuel Tension as Arafat Meets U.S. Envoy

New York Times
April 23, 2002
By JAMES BENNET
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/23/international/middleeast/23MIDE.html

JERUSALEM - Israeli-Palestinian relations settled into a tense stalemate today, as an American envoy met with Yasir Arafat without resolving twin sieges in Ramallah and Bethlehem that are threatening to stir new violence a day after Israel ended its military sweep through the West Bank.

As they maintained their blockade of Palestinian cities, Israeli forces returned today to conducting lethal, pinpoint strikes, killing at least seven Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and losing one soldier.

Palestinian ministers expressed fears that Israeli forces would storm Mr. Arafat's compound in Ramallah, where the meeting with the American envoy took place today, in pursuit of wanted men, a step Israel has not ruled out.

Negotiations were also stalled in Bethlehem, where Israeli forces are besieging about 250 people, some of them said to be wanted men, in the Church of the Nativity.

Shooting broke out tonight around the church. The Israeli Army said that Palestinian gunmen had fired from the church and that Israeli soldiers had returned fire.

Palestinian officials said that no progress was made today during a 90-minute meeting between Mr. Arafat and William Burns, the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs.

Israeli troops pulled out of the center of Ramallah on Sunday, and today Palestinian gunmen shot three men accused of collaborating with Israel. One man was killed and two others were said to have been wounded.

A television camera captured hundreds of people milling in the city center around a thin man cringing on the ground in a puddle of blood and begging God to help him. A hand then covered the camera's lens.

Palestinian officials said that their security forces have been devastated by Israeli attacks.

At his wrecked security compound, which Israel attacked in what it called a search for terrorists, Jibril Rajoub, the head of Palestinian preventive security forces in the West Bank, said that security cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians was now impossible.

"I think that the Israelis buried everything," said Mr. Rajoub, whose popularity has declined in part because he was seen by Palestinians as too cooperative with the United States and Israel. "A sea of blood and hatred has been created between us and the Israelis. I don't think that security coordination or bilateral relations with the Israelis is on our agenda right now."

He said that plans negotiated by the Americans over the last year to return the parties to negotiations were dead.

"It's over," said Mr. Rajoub, who at least until recently kept in his office a large photograph of George Tenet, the C.I.A. director and the broker of one of the American truce plans.

After visiting Mr. Arafat, Mr. Burns surveyed the damage done during Israel's occupation of Ramallah to the headquarters of the Ministry of Education.

He called the damage "very troubling" and said, "It's going to be critically important to rebuild the civilian infrastructure."

Amnesty International said in London today that its preliminary review of Israel's attack this month on the West Bank city of Jenin indicated that "serious breaches of international human rights and humanitarian law were committed, including war crimes."

It said that its delegates who had toured the area found "credible evidence" of such violations, including the use of civilians as human shields and the denial of relief assistance and medical care.

The Israeli Army denies committing any atrocities during what it describes as fierce fighting in the Jenin refugee camp.

More than 40 Palestinian bodies have been identified there, but others are believed to be buried beneath homes bulldozed by the army. Twenty-three Israeli soldiers died in the fighting. Israel has reluctantly agreed to a United Nations fact-finding mission to determine what happened in Jenin.

Israeli forces continued to operate in Palestinian-controlled territory today.

An elite unit on a mission between two villages near the city of Nablus got into a firefight with Palestinian gunmen. One Israeli soldier and two Palestinians were killed. The Israeli Army identified both Palestinians as members of the Islamic group Hamas and accused them of taking part in attacks on Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank.

Late tonight in the West Bank city of Hebron, two Israeli helicopters fired three missiles at a car, the Palestinian News Agency reported. Two men were reported killed, one of them a leader of the militant group, Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades.

The Bush administration has been pushing for a negotiated solution to the impasses in Ramallah and Bethlehem. Israel has promised not to storm the Church of the Nativity, where food is said to be running low amid a stench of decay from two bodies.

The Israeli government has offered the men it seeks inside the 1,400-year-old basilica a choice of trial in Israel or exile. No one has accepted the offer, and a panel appointed by Mr. Arafat to negotiate the matter is not speaking with the Israelis.

"The Israelis have closed all the doors," said Yasir Abed Rabbo, the minister of information. "They have said they have only two alternatives, to surrender or be expelled."

People inside the church have denied that people are being held there against their will. But Reuters News Service reported a conversation inside the church that it said was overheard on a mobile phone. In the conversation, an unidentified Palestinian official pleaded with an unidentified gunman not to shoot from the church, and apparently to let some people leave.

"We are not going to surrender," the gunman was quoted as saying. "You have to tell the people to stand with us."

The official replied, "You have got to have a conscience."

In Ramallah, Israel is demanding the surrender of at least three men it accuses of taking part in the killing last October of its tourism minister, as well as that of another man implicated in an attempt to smuggle tons of munitions to the Palestinians. The Israeli government says the men are hiding in Mr. Arafat's offices.

Palestinian officials have said they would permit international observers to monitor the trials and any resulting imprisonment of the men, but they have refused to turn them over. By agreement with Israel, neither side is obliged to extradite any suspect already held in one of its prisons. Israel says the Palestinian Authority will not properly punish the men.

With the West Bank operation having subsided, Israel turned its attention today to domestic matters, including how to pay for the costly military venture in a budget already under great strain. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon submitted to hours of questioning here by investigators looking into possible campaign finance violations during his races for leadership of his party and prime minister.

On Sunday, 13 peace activists tried to jump the barbed wire and dash through the Israeli lines to Mr. Arafat's office. While seven were restrained or turned back, six made it, including two Americans from New York.

Rebecca Murray, 31, of New York said in a telephone interview today that the soldiers had fired at their feet and over their heads, but that she had kept going and reached the offices, where she and the others were greeted by Mr. Arafat, who delivered a short speech.

She said that 200 to 300 people were in the compound, where water and electricity have been erratic, and that it was "pretty smelly." Food was being rationed, she said. "People in here have great morale," she said.

She estimated that there were 30 to 40 non-Palestinians inside. Their presence would greatly complicate any possible Israeli attempt to storm the compound.

In the Gaza Strip early this morning, Israeli soldiers killed two men, identified by Palestinians as policemen, near the Bureij refugee camp. They also shot dead a man the army said was trying to infiltrate an Israeli settlement.

--------

Palestinians say troops vandalized, looted West Bank

April 23, 2002
By Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020423-76370332.htm

RAMALLAH, West Bank - Palestinians returning to homes and offices in the West Bank after Israel's pullout yesterday accused Israeli soldiers of looting and vandalism.

They said computers and television cameras had been taken and that money was stolen from safes. Reporters saw graffiti scrawled in English and Hebrew, much like the graffiti scrawled by soldiers in other military campaigns.

Israeli officials had no official response to the charges, which have mounted with the lifting of curfews in the past few days. An Israeli Defense Forces spokesman said: "We didn't come to steal, we didn't come to kill. We came to defend ourselves."

After their pullout from most of the West Bank, Israeli troops continued their siege of Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, which Palestinian gunmen seized two weeks ago and barricaded themselves inside, and at Yasser Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah. An American envoy visited the Palestinian leader there yesterday.

An adviser to Mr. Arafat told Reuters news agency that 90 minutes of talks with Assistant Secretary of State William Burns had not been productive. Mr. Arafat is said to have demanded a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from the West Bank before he would discuss a cease-fire.

Ramallah is the site of Al Quds University, where staff of the Center for New Media returned to their offices and television studio on Sunday for the first time since learning the building had been used by Israeli forces as barracks and for sniper positions.

During a tour of the premises yesterday, the staff showed a reporter three empty tripods that they said had held television cameras, an empty classroom where they said 12 computers had stood, a ransacked library and offices, and graffiti saying, "No Palestine. Ever."

Wassim Abdullah, the technical director for educational television at the university, described the damage as evidence of "pure hatred."

"This was not a soldier stuffing his pockets," said Mr. Abdullah, who produces the Palestinian version of "Sesame Street." "This was organized, it was allowed."

Similar stories were told in Palestinian neighborhoods throughout the West Bank as Palestinians took stock of their circumstances after weeks of occupation and curfew. Salah Soubani, director of information for the Palestinian Education Ministry, told the Associated Press yesterday that Israeli troops had blown up a safe in the ministry offices and removed $8,000.

"Our ministries were nearly completely destroyed," said Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo. "This was not done as a mistake in one or two places. This was done in every single ministry."

IDF spokesman Capt. Ron Edelheitz said the military would have no official response to the charges for the time being. "We hope the media will keep the same line that someone is not guilty until proven guilty," he said.

Asked specifically about the trashing of the Al Quds media center, another IDF spokesman said angrily that the Israelis "are being blamed for many things" and noted it was impossible to show a "missing camera."

"Maybe the Palestinians themselves stole it."

The charges of vandalism and theft add another dimension to the bruising complaints of human rights violations in the Jenin refugee camp, where many of the suicide bombers were recruited for missions to kill Israeli civilians.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan yesterday announced that former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari would lead a U.N. fact-finding mission to Jenin. The group - including former U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata of Japan and Cornelio Sommaruga, the Swiss former head of the International Committee of the Red Cross - is to arrive in the camp over the weekend. "I hope I have put together a team that everyone would accept as competent and as the best we could put together," Mr. Annan said yesterday in New York.

In London, Amnesty International said it had compiled evidence that "indicates that serious breaches of international human rights and humanitarian law were committed, including war crimes," according to Javier Zuniga, director of regional strategy for the London-based group.

Israel has rejected criticism of its operations in Jenin and elsewhere, saying that in fighting its war on Palestinian terrorism, including combat with Palestinian gunmen in the Jenin camp, it has tried to avoid civilian casualties. Twenty-three Israeli soldiers were killed in the battle of the Jenin camp, which was extensively booby-trapped by the Palestinians.

The Israeli government has agreed to cooperate with the inquiry, saying it has nothing to hide. But Prime Minister Ariel Sharon last weekend sharply criticized U.N. Middle East envoy Terje Roed Larsen as having a "pro-Palestinian bias," and considered severing contact with him after the diplomat said he found Israel's actions in Jenin "morally repugnant." Mr. Larsen has been accused of having participated in a cover-up of an investigation of the murder of three Israeli soldiers abducted by Palestinian gunmen in a car with U.N. markings.

Maj. David Zangen, a pediatrician and the chief medical officer for Jenin, told reporters on Sunday that the Israeli army searched but never blocked ambulances. He said the Jenin hospital was never out of reach for residents of the refugee camps.

The death count in Jenin has been impossible to determine, with estimates varying from a few dozen to several hundred. The U.N. agency that cares for Palestinian refugees estimated this weekend that as many as 5,000 in the camp are now homeless. Earlier accusations that the Israelis conducted a "massacre" have been largely discounted.

-------- nato

Accord Is Near on Giving Russia a Limited Role in NATO

New York Times
April 23, 2002
By MICHAEL WINES
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/23/international/europe/23RUSS.html

MOSCOW - Five months after they began talking about it, Russia and NATO are on the lip of an agreement to give the Kremlin a real, if limited, say in the policies of its old Atlantic enemy. Russian leaders are openly delighted.

By some accounts, however, the accord gives Russia more of a foot in the NATO door than the broader influence on alliance policy that some Western officials held out last fall.

Both Western and Russian officials have recently begun publicly to sketch the outlines of a new Russia-NATO Council in which Russia would act virtually as an equal to NATO's 19 member nations. The 20 members would debate, draft and vote on policies and projects ranging from antiterrorism initiatives to missile defense.

NATO's spokesman in Brussels, Yves Brodeur, said today that negotiators were down to the fine print of an agreement, which is to be offered for near-certain approval at a NATO ministerial meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland.

The accord would be signed on May 28 at a Russia-NATO summit meeting near Rome, which President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and a host of Western leaders are expected to attend.

Mr. Putin began lobbying Western leaders for more recognition of Russia's global role shortly after he became president more than two years ago. Only two months after taking office, he agreed with NATO's secretary general, Lord Robertson, to begin thawing an estrangement that had begun a year earlier, when NATO jets carried out an air war against Yugoslavia, Russia's ally.

Over the weekend, the Kremlin cast the coming agreement as a welcome and long-sought signal that the West has come to recognize the strategic significance of a partnership with Russia.

On Sunday, the Russian foreign minister, Igor S. Ivanov, said on state television that the proposed council "is of fundamental importance - a qualitative change in the relations between Russia and NATO."

"If the mechanism starts working - and we want it to start working - it may become an important element in creating a future European security architecture in the broader sense," he said. "We are at a very crucial and responsible stage."

While Western officials and experts did not dispute that, they said in interviews today that Russia's initial role in NATO decision-making was likely to be sharply limited. If, as Mr. Ivanov said, "the mechanism starts working," the accord could become the foundation for a genuine partnership of old enemies on a profound range of issues.

In short, Russia will gain more influence in NATO when alliance nations come to trust Russia fully, which they as yet do not. Russia's history as a pro-Western democracy, they said, is too brief and too fragile to bear that weight now.

A senior Bush administration official said the new agreement fell far short of what the Russians had sought: real influence on a range of NATO deliberations outside the alliance's core mission, which is to provide for the collective defense of its members.

"That was never realistic," he said, in part because NATO members like Poland and Hungary, with a recent history of Soviet domination, vigorously opposed it. Instead, the accord starts with a limited agenda, "in the hope that over time, you build from these small steps into something broader."

"There is indeed real substance here," he said.

In both public and private statements, Western and Russian officials say the new council will constitute a meeting of 20 equals - 19 NATO members and Russia, making decisions by consensus, any one of them able to table a proposal by signaling its disapproval.

"The premise is that this is an area where we want common ground, and where we can do things together," Mr. Brodeur, the NATO spokesman, said in an interview today. "Within this forum, all participants at 20 will be equal. We don't get there with precooked positions. We decide collectively how we go about it."

But as Mr. Brodeur freely acknowledged, that equality would be limited. For one thing, NATO would be free to end discussion and take an issue to its governing body, the North Atlantic Council, if the sides are at loggerheads.

Russia would in fact have the same option to withdraw an issue, though the conditions under which an issue would be "retrievable," as it is called, are still being thrashed out.

For another, the scope of issues to be considered by the new council is strictly limited, at least at first.

Iceland's president, Olafur Ragnar, speaking here today after a meeting with Mr. Putin, placed five broad areas on the council's table: terrorism, arms proliferation, management of regional crises and peacekeeping, ballistic missile defense, and search-and-rescue efforts. A Western official added a sixth: joint management of airspace, which has long been on the Russian-NATO agenda.

Mr. Brodeur said that all the issues on Iceland's list were under discussion but that none had been agreed on. The final list is expected to contain no more than seven topics.

The new council would supplant an old East-West coordinating body, the Joint Permanent Council, which many people both inside and outside NATO have deemed a failure. That council was intended to give Moscow a consulting role in NATO policies. But in fact, many say, it became largely a conduit to keep Russia apprised of decisions NATO had long ago made and had no intention of changing.

The most obvious example is, to Russians, also the most galling: the Kremlin did not learn of NATO's decision in 1999 for the air war against Yugoslavia until the jet of the Russian foreign minister at the time, Yevgeny M. Primakov, was over the Atlantic, bound for a meeting in Washington.

That plunged Russian-NATO relations into a freeze that began to thaw only when Mr. Putin took office, and melted entirely only after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States led the Kremlin to cast its strategic lot with the West.

"Is this everything the Russians wanted? Not fully," the Bush administration official said. "But the Russians have realized that the best way to deal with this is to get on the inside and try to work the system - to push the process along instead of complaining that they're not getting the whole loaf."

-------- philippines

Philippines On High Alert After Attacks

Associated Press
Tuesday, April 23, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31489-2002Apr22?language=printer

ZAMBOANGA, Philippines -- Vowing to "fight terrorism to the end," President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo today sought to soothe her edgy nation a day after bombings killed 14 people. She put security forces on high alert and offered a $100,000 reward for information on the bombers.

Meanwhile, nearly 6,000 U.S. and Philippine troops began three weeks of joint exercises on the Philippine island of Luzon in an effort to bolster the fight against terrorism.

As worry spread that the bombing attacks might continue, security was stepped up in Manila, the capital. Bombers struck the southern city of General Santos on Sunday, leaving 69 people injured in addition to the 14 dead.

A caller to a radio station who had warned of the bombings claimed responsibility in the name of the Abu Sayyaf, an al Qaeda-linked group being targeted by a U.S.-backed military offensive.

-------- puerto rico

U.S. Marines attacked by civilians in Puerto Rico

04/23/2002
Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002/04/23/marines-puertorico.htm

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - A mob armed with bats and pipes attacked 10 U.S. Marines, leaving one with a cranial fracture and others with injuries from broken bones to minor scrapes, the Navy said Tuesday.

All 10 were released from the hospital Tuesday after a brawl that erupted Monday night in the colonial section of San Juan, capital of this U.S. Caribbean territory, said Lt. Corey Barker, a Navy spokesman.

The Marines - more than 60 wearing civilian clothes at the time - had just finished work as a security detachment for contested military exercises on the outlying island of Vieques.

Two Marines were arguing between themselves outside at about 11 p.m. when a mob started beating them, Barker said.

Eight other Marines came to their friends' defense, and the brawl developed into a large street fight involving more than two dozen people, the Navy and police said.

The attackers fled when police were called. There were no arrests.

Police and the Navy said the fight occurred outside the Hard Rock Cafe, but manager Arnoldo Pegan said it happened about five blocks away.

"The Marines stopped by for dinner and like always, they were well-behaved," he said, adding he saw no argument.

The Marines, stationed in Tidewater, Va., are expected to return to their duties on the mainland this week. They had arrived at the cafe in white civilian buses.

Anti-military sentiment in this U.S. territory flared after an off-target bomb killed a civilian guard in 1999 on Vieques.

Protesters regularly break into the bombing range to delay exercises. The Navy says that during the latest round of maneuvers, which ended last week, protesters threw rocks and other objects at military personnel. The protesters say their demonstrations are peaceful.

--------

U.S. Marines Injured in Brawl

April 23, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Puerto-Rico-Marines-Attacked.html

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) -- Bouncers kicked a group of U.S. Marines out of a strip club in San Juan, sparking a brawl that left 10 of the servicemen with injuries ranging from broken bones to cuts and scrapes, police said Tuesday.

The fight broke out Monday night after several members of a group of more than 50 Marines dressed in civilian clothes ventured into the club after eating dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe, said Wanda Rivera, commander of state police in San Juan.

The U.S. military told a different story earlier, saying the Marines were attacked by a mob armed with bats and pipes outside the Hard Rock Cafe in San Juan's quaint colonial section.

But Rivera said the brawl erupted in front of the strip club, in a seedy neighborhood of erotic dance clubs and gambling shacks about a mile away, after bouncers threw the Marines out. She said several passers-by joined in on the side of the bouncers.

``First reports are often wrong,'' said Lt. Corey Barker, a U.S. Navy spokesman in Puerto Rico who had given the earlier account. He said bouncers threw the first punch.

Ten Marines received medical attention, but all had been released from the hospital were released by Tuesday. It wasn't clear if anyone was hurt on the other sides. Police said they had no reports of injuries.

The Marines, members of the Second Fleet Anti-Terrorist Security Team, stationed at a naval base in Yorktown, Va., had just finished work as a security detachment for military exercises on the outlying Puerto Rican island of Vieques.

Many Puerto Ricans oppose the use of the island for exercises.

It was unclear why the men were thrown out of the strip club, but television footage showed many Marines who appeared drunk, including one throwing up in the street.

Hard Rock Cafe manager Arnoldo Pegan said he had no problems with the Marines.

``The Marines stopped by for dinner and, like always, they were well behaved,'' he said, adding that he saw no altercation.

The Marines are expected to return to their duties on the mainland United States this week. They arrived at the cafe in white civilian buses.

Anger at the military flared in this Spanish-speaking U.S. territory in the Caribbean Sea flared after an off-target bomb fired during military exercises killed a Puerto Rican civilian guard on Vieques in 1999.

Protesters regularly break into the bombing range to delay the exercises. The Navy says that during the latest round of maneuvers, which ended last week, protesters threw rocks and other objects at military personnel. The protesters say their demonstrations are peaceful.

-------- russia

Well, oil be ... it's our new pal, Russia

Tuesday, April 23, 2002
By BILL VIRGIN
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/virgin/67597_virgin23.shtml

So we have finally soured on our friends of convenience, the Saudis. This is hardly surprising. After all, if you expect us to keep your country from being annexed by Saddam as the 19th or 20th province of Iraq but you treat our troops like your subjects, all the while secretly encouraging attacks on us and our allies, even we Americans eventually catch on.

But this is all right, because we believe we have found a new best friend -- the Russians.

An affiliation with the Russians has several attractions. It provides an answer and an alternative to the reason we've put up with the Saudis this long -- oil. Having Russia as a major supplier would allow us to tell the Saudis to literally and figuratively go pound sand. And being business and political partners with Russia puts on our side a nation that, while smaller than in the Soviet Union era, is still a significant force ("we just know we've got those nukes around here somewhere").

Yet, the idea that Russia will be counted on in the future to be a major oil supplier to the West must raise some eyebrows among those who have read generally about the diceyness about doing business with and in Russia -- and resuscitate some memories among those in this region who once saw Russia as a major natural resource supplier to the United States.

Back in the hottest days of the old growth-spotted owl furor, the Pacific Northwest forest products industry was looking around for new baskets of softwood lumber to replace what was now off-limits. What they spotted was the Russian Far East. With thousands of acres of wood, on relatively accessible terrain, near the coast, close to major markets such as Japan, in a country that was rapidly opening and increasingly eager to do business, the Russian Far East seemed a promising answer.

It didn't turn out that way. Whether it was that no one was in control, or everyone thought they were in control, or corruption among those who claimed to be in control, or infrastructure (ports, roads, rail lines) that proved to be more expensive than the resource was worth, many American companies lost interest and the region never fulfilled the early optimism.

Not that people didn't know that going in. Here's a quote from an expert speaking at one seminar on the prospects for Russian forestry, from a story I wrote in the early 1990s: "There's all kinds of problems and all kinds of opportunities. I don't know which outweighs the other."

And it's not as though people don't know it today. A recent Bloomberg News story quoted U.S. officials as saying Russia won't make its goal of joining the World Trade Organization by 2003 because of shortcomings in protecting property rights or promoting the rule of law.

Robert Harris knows of the risks. The engineering services company he founded, Seattle-based Harris Group Inc., does business in Russia, in the forest and paper sectors in fact, and has 100 employees there.

But his company's Russian office is in St. Petersburg. Harris said his company does little business in the Russian Far East, that being too far from Moscow for the central government to have effective control. The result, he says, is a business climate "like the Wild West 100 years ago."

Doing business elsewhere in Russia still has plenty of challenges, adds David Andresen, president of Marketing Data Research, a Lakewood import-export firm. "All the corruption is still there, but I don't want to give the impression the whole country is corrupt," he says. "The intricacies of the bureaucracy are astounding." Handling credit, and getting it paid back, can also be difficult, he adds.

"The mentality of business (in Russia) is different -- not better or worse, but different," Andresen says.

So the tales of doing business in Russia (and just about everyone who has comes away with stories, if nothing else) would not suggest a lot of reason for optimism for a long-term reliance on Russia either as an oil producer or exporter (major pipelines to get oil out of the now independent states would likely run through Russia).

But there's one significant difference in the oil picture, says Elisa Miller, president of Seattle's Russian Far East Advisory Group, which does consulting, litigation and dispute resolution work. With the development of the Far East timber sector, she says, Russia had the trees but needed the technology, markets and capital of the West.

That's not the case with oil, she says. "Russia has been a successful oil producer and exporter for decades and decades," Miller says. On projects like the exporting of natural gas to Germany, Russia also has long experience negotiating for markets and new technology.

"They are not beginners at this."

Indeed, no less a personage than Daniel Yergin, who wrote the authoritative oil history "The Prize," said in a recent interview in Seattle that one of the big stories in the industry in the decade since the book's publication has been the re-emergence of Russia's petroleum sector and its growing significance to the West.

Andresen says Russian business is best suited for very big companies or small niche players like his. They don't come much bigger than oil companies. The fact the Russians can negotiate with the West on oil as equals rather than as supplicants has both pluses and minuses; tilting it to the plus side is that this closer relationship is something both administrations really, really want. From Reagan and Gorbachev to Clinton and Yeltsin and now to Bush and Putin, the long-term goal has been to make Russia not just an ally and business partner of the West but a part of the West.

Whether both sides will want this relationship once they've got it is another matter. Our "friendship" with the Saudis forced us to overlook some uncomfortable realities about that regime in the interest of keeping the oil flowing. Being closer buddies with the Russians could bring the pressure to look the other way should that country decide to continue sitting heavily on Chechnya or some similar region.

For the time being, we'll want it. We want the oil, and we want the Russians to be our political and economic pals. Most of all, we want some new friends.

P-I reporter Bill Virgin can be reached at 206-448-8319 or billvirgin@seattlepi.com. His column appears Tuesdays and Thursdays.

-------- spy agencies

Trial Set for Satellite Spy Suspect
Lawyers Say Date Leaves Little Time to Plan Capital Defense

By Tom Jackman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 23, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31241-2002Apr22?language=printer

A federal judge yesterday set a June 3 trial date for a Bowie man accused of trying to sell secret satellite surveillance reports to Iraq, Libya and China, a decision that defense attorneys say leaves scant time to organize their case.

The judge's scheduling of a court date comes three days after prosecutors announced that they would seek the death penalty. Defense attorneys said it would be impossible to prepare for a capital case in six weeks, and prosecutors also said they had anticipated more time.

Brian P. Regan, 39, was arrested in August at Dulles International Airport as he prepared to board a flight to Zurich. Authorities allege that he had offered U.S. intelligence reports to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi in exchange for $13 million.

On Friday, the Justice Department announced that it would seek the death penalty for Regan -- the first time the government has pursued execution against an accused spy since espionage was reinstated as a capital offense in 1994. Lawyers on both sides agreed that Regan's trial, originally scheduled for May 20, would have to be postponed, especially since the prosecutor in Regan's case, Randy I. Bellows, also is handling the case of John Walker Lindh, the American captured with Taliban fighters.

Bellows yesterday told U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee that he and defense attorneys Nina J. Ginsberg and Jonathan Shapiro had agreed on a Nov. 12 trial date. But Lee said no.

"It is impossible for us to prepare a death case in 13 days more than what we originally had," Ginsberg said. She said the defense would file a motion asking Lee to reconsider the date, and if the judge refused, they would ask the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to hear their argument.

"We'll be filing affidavits and declarations from people who do these [capital] cases more frequently than we do, who say it is not possible to adequately prepare," Ginsberg said. "Some have said that ethically, they would not take the case."

Adding a possible death penalty phase to a criminal trial complicates the pretrial preparation, because lawyers on both sides must be ready to argue for, or against, execution. For defense attorneys, that means finding and preparing friends, family, mental health experts, prison officials -- anyone who can testify that the defendant deserves to live.

Shapiro noted that a federal defense lawyer database shows that in 81 federal death penalty cases since the mid-1990s, the average time between notice that the death penalty was sought and trial was 14 1/2 months. Bellows declined to comment after the hearing.

Regan spent 20 years in the Air Force and retired in August 2000 as a master sergeant. He then began working for TRW Inc. as a contractor for the same National Reconnaissance Organization, which operates the nation's orbiting spy satellites. Investigators allege that Regan began surfing through a classified U.S. intelligence network while he still was in the Air Force and had top-secret security clearance, and resumed looking for information about China, Iran, Iraq and Libya when he regained clearance at TRW.

When he was arrested, aboard a mobile lounge at Dulles on Aug. 23, he was allegedly carrying the coordinates of two foreign countries' missile sites and the addresses of Iraqi and Chinese embassies in Europe, his indictment states.

A federal grand jury in Alexandria indicted Regan in February on three counts of attempted espionage and one count of gathering defense information. The indictment alleges that Regan wrote encrypted letters to Hussein and Gaddafi, representing himself as a Middle East-North Africa analyst for the CIA and saying that $13 million "is a small price to pay" for top-secret satellite photos, intelligence reports and data on satellite orbits.

----

Lawyer Seeks Delay for Accused Spy

April 23, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Spy-Case.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Lawyers for a retired Air Force master sergeant accused of plotting to spy for Iraq, China and Libya asked a judge Tuesday to reconsider an unexpectedly quick trial date in the death-penalty case.

The lawyers said preparing for a June 3 trial of Brian Patrick Regan, 39, was ``an impossible task that has no parallel in death penalty litigation.'' They said U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee, who set the trial date Monday, had put them in an impossible situation.

Lee's decision surprised even prosecutors, who were hoping for a trial as early as November.

``There are no circumstances under which counsel can be prepared for the penalty phase of this trial by June 3 ... and meet constitutional standards for effective assistance of counsel,'' the lawyers wrote in court papers filed Tuesday.

U.S. Attorney Paul McNulty said Tuesday that prosecutors will neither support nor oppose the request by Regan's lawyers to delay the trial.

Regan worked for the Air Force and briefly for TRW Inc., a defense contractor, at the National Reconnaissance Office. He is charged with three counts of attempted espionage and one count of gathering national security information.

Prosecutors said Regan intended to offer Iraqi President Saddam Hussein secret details about American satellites that could help Iraq hide its anti-aircraft missiles in exchange for $13 million in Swiss currency. He also is accused of plotting to sell similar information to China and Libya.

Regan's lead defense lawyer, Nina J. Ginsberg, indicated earlier that she may ask a federal appeals court to intervene unless Lee reconsiders the trial date.

``I've never heard of anything like it,'' said Ms. Ginsberg. Her research found at least 14 months on average between the government's decision to seek the death penalty and a defendant's trial. The judge set Regan's trial roughly six weeks after prosecutors announced their intention last week to seek the death penalty.

Regan's lawyers argued that no U.S. citizen has been executed in an espionage case since Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in the 1950s, and that no American has faced the death penalty in a case where a victim did not die.

Ms. Ginsberg told the judge at Monday's hearing that defense experts needed at least five months to review documents and other evidence.

The FBI arrested Regan on Aug. 23 as he was boarding a flight to Zurich, Switzerland, via Frankfurt, Germany. Authorities said he carried codes referring to satellite images of a missile launcher in the northern no-fly zone over Iraq and of another launcher in China. The codes and addresses of the Chinese and Iraqi embassies in Switzerland and Austria were in his wallet and also hidden under the sole of his right shoe.

The government said last week that the criminal charges against Regan, who worked at the super-secret National Reconnaissance Office, qualified for the death penalty because he created a ``grave risk of death'' to U.S. military pilots patrolling the no-fly zone over Iraq.

``We dispute that,'' Ms. Ginsberg said. ``We don't think it's accurate.''

Ms. Ginsberg noted that Russia executed at least three people spying for the United States after they were identified by Robert Hanssen of the FBI, who pleaded guilty in a deal that spared his life. Prosecutors have not suggested that anyone died as a result of any alleged disclosures by Regan.

``No one died as a result this,'' Ms. Ginsberg said.

-------- un

U.N. Rejects Israel's Camp Demand

April 23, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-UN-Israel-Palestinians.html

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Tuesday refused Israel's demand to delay and change a U.N. fact-finding mission to the war-ravaged Jenin refugee camp, directing its members to arrive in the Mideast by Saturday.

The U.N. Security Council held an emergency meeting after Israel sought a delay, saying it wanted more military and counter-terrorism experts added to the team and also wanted the group to investigate what it says are Palestinian terrorist activities in the camp.

At the end of a nearly two-hour session, the council issued a statement saying it expects ``fast implementation'' of a resolution welcoming the fact-finding mission -- and Israel's ``full cooperation'' with the secretary-general and the team.

While the council was holding consultations, Israel's U.N. Ambassador Yehuda Lancry met Annan in his 38th floor office at U.N. headquarters to ask for changes in the team's composition and its scope of action, which Israel wants limited only to Jenin itself.

An Israeli official in Jerusalem charged that the team was chosen by Annan without consulting Israel, as had been agreed, and the members were political, not from a military background as Israel had requested.

A Western diplomat said Israel wants to negotiate terms for the team's activities in Palestinian areas, and wants one member removed, Cornelio Sommaruga, former president of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

But Annan would not discuss his choice of team members, though he did not rule out adding additional experts if necessary, a statement from the U.N. spokesman said.

Finnish Prime Minister Martti Ahtisaari, the team leader, was scheduled to fly to Geneva on Tuesday night and hook up with other members there on Wednesday. He was expecting to be in the Middle East by the end of the week.

Arab nations have accused Israel of massacring Palestinian civilians in the camp, but Israel says the deaths and destruction resulted from gunbattles between its soldiers and Palestinian gunmen. The fighting in Jenin was the fiercest of Israel's 3-week-old military offensive.

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres gave a green light to the fact-finding mission on Friday saying the country had ``nothing to hide.'' The Security Council unanimously endorsed the mission.

But Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government objected to Annan's appointments announced on Monday. He named Ahtisaari, Sommaruga and Sadako Ogata, the former U.N. high commissioner for refugees.

Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer on Monday night demanded that retired U.S. Maj. Gen. William Nash, who was appointed as military adviser, be made a full member of the team because of the complex security issues involved. He also asked that the U.N. team limit its mission only to Jenin.

Officially, it will remain a three-member team. But Ahtisaari stressed other participants such as advisers and security personnel would bring its size to about 20.

Ahtisaari told reporters on Tuesday that all members of the mission would work as a team, and Nash would play a ``crucial'' role, but as the military adviser. Neither Annan nor Ahtisaari ruled out the possibility of going outside Jenin.

Nasser Al-Kidwa, the Palestinian U.N. observer, called the Israeli decision ``blatant blackmail which will definitely undermine the integrity of the fact-finding process.''

``We thought that the Israeli side did not have anything to hide, but obviously they do,'' he said.

Al-Kidwa said he initially asked for the council meeting after explosions in the Ramallah compound where Arafat is besieged by Israeli troops and tanks, which he called ``a very dangerous development.''

The Security Council has demanded an immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces from Palestinian cities in the West Bank, including Ramallah, and a cease-fire.

The Israeli army said it set off controlled explosions Tuesday to blow up grenades found in Arafat's compound. But Tawfik Tirawi, head of Palestinian intelligence in the West Bank, accused Israel of wanting to destroy a wall between the prison inside the compound and Arafat's office so they could easily enter.

Problems with the International Committee of the Red Cross -- which Sommaruga headed from 1987 until 1999 -- have been continual since Israel was first rejected for membership in the organization in 1949. The ICRC recognizes only the Cross and the Muslim Crescent as official emblems and will not sanction the Jewish Star of David as a symbol for relief workers.

-------- us

Pentagon to Investigate Its Role in Venezuela

New York Times
April 23, 2002
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/23/international/americas/23PENT.html

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon has ordered a review of its actions during the 48-hour ouster of President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela earlier this month to ensure that American military officials did not encourage a coup, a senior Defense Department official said today.

The official stressed that the Pentagon has no evidence, nor even a suspicion, of American involvement in the brief removal of Mr. Chávez by a coalition of Venezuelan business leaders and dissident military officers. But he added that a review has been ordered to ensure no American officers were encouraging or supporting a coup on their own.

"We are conducting our own review, just to make sure there were no freelancers here," said the official, who asked not to be identified.

The Bush administration has vigorously denied any suggestion that it gave a green light, tacit or otherwise, to the forces that tried to seize power from Mr. Chávez. But in remarks to the press, at least one of the anti-Chávez leaders, Rear Adm. Carlos Molina, said he believed that he was acting with American support.

Pentagon officials have largely kept a low profile in recent days, as their counterparts at the State Department and the White House fielded criticism that they were too quick to accept Mr. Chávez's ouster and embrace his self-styled and short-lived successor, Pedro Carmona Estanga, a businessman.

The Pentagon confirmed last week that Rogelio Pardo-Maurer, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Western Hemisphere affairs, met with the chief of Venezuela's military high command, Gen. Lucas Romero Rincón, on Dec. 18. General Rincón announced Mr. Chávez's resignation in the early hours of April 12 after apparently refusing to fire on anti-Chávez protestors the day before. The general retained his post after Mr. Chávez reassumed power.

In the meeting, Mr. Pardo-Maurer, who spoke in Spanish, exclaimed, "Nada de golpes," insisting that "no coups" would be acceptable to the United States, according to an official who was present. Mr. Pardo-Maurer insisted that "the only thing that will suffice is the strictest adherence to constitutionality," the official said.

General Rincón, who was accompanied by a large entourage, also met with Gen. Peter Pace, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the official said.

Another Venezuelan officer who was involved in the takeover, Col. Pedro Soto, had sought a meeting with Bush administration officials just days before Mr. Chávez's ouster. Earlier that week, the Air Force colonel had asked for an appointment with, among others, the American ambassador to the Organization of American States, Roger Noriega.

"Our view was that it was entirely inappropriate" to meet with Colonel Soto, who had publicly demanded Mr. Chávez's resignation in February, an American diplomat said.

The State Department spokesman, Richard A. Boucher, today denied a press report that American military personnel were on the scene at Fort Tiuna in Caracas, where Mr. Chávez was briefly held. Although the American military attaché has an office at the Tiuna base, the only United States officers in the area drove by for a look but never left their car, Mr. Boucher said.


-------- POLICE / PRISONERS

Atlanta Cops to Use Segway Scooters

April 23, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Atlanta-Scooters.html

ATLANTA (AP) -- Purse-snatchers beware: Atlanta police are riding shiny new $9,000 scooters -- and it will take at least a brisk jog to get away from them.

The city's finest unveiled a battalion of Segway Human Transporter vehicles Tuesday. The battery-powered, two-wheeled scooters can top out at 15 mph.

Inventor Dean Kamen introduced the gyroscope-stablized scooters last fall after keeping them secret for months under the code names IT and Ginger.

Police in Atlanta -- a traffic-snarled city that never met a motor vehicle it didn't like -- are borrowing six of the scooters from Kamen's company for a two-month test run.

The department wants to know whether scooter patrols will be more effective than foot or bicycle patrols, and also hopes to use the machines to boost police visibility.

A few officers showed off their new two-wheeled toys in a demonstration for the TV cameras.

``It's much easier to ride this than walk,'' Officer Jennings Kilgore said.

The scooter detects tiny shifts in body weight, rolling forward or backward depending on which way its user leans. Its gyroscopes make it difficult to fall from or to topple.

The police will use them in patrols at Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport and in the downtown business district. The debt-ridden department has not committed itself to buying any of the machines.

``Don't even ask me about the money,'' Maj. John Woodard said.

Atlanta is the first city to give the scooters a broad tryout, according to Segway officials. Georgia Power Co. and the city planning commission bought two each, and tourism officers who walk around downtown will share six.

How the scooters will hold up on the unforgiving streets of Atlanta, where tooth-jarring potholes sometimes go unfilled for months, remains to be seen. Police were put through an obstacle course as part of their Segway training.

``It just went right through everything,'' Kilgore said. ``It'll go about as fast as the normal person can run. It's a pretty good clip.''

The police say they think the Segways would help them catch all but the fastest criminals. A special turbo key can send the Segway zooming off at 15 mph -- the normal top speed is 12 -- while the fastest humans can top 20 mph, though only for a short distance.

If anything, Woodard said, the Segway scooters are more agile and stable than bikes, if considerably slower in hot pursuit.

``I don't think anything is perfect in those situations,'' he said. ``We won't know till we get involved in some real pursuits.''

On the Net:
Segway: http://www.segway.com
Atlanta police: http://www.atlantapd.org

-------- terrorism

Bin Laden said to be hiding in Pakistan

April 23, 2002
By Arnaud de Borchgrave
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020423-29458588.htm

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - Osama bin Laden has been hidden by many sympathizers in this dusty slum city, a gigantic labyrinth of 3.5 million people, since early December.

A major tribal leader - the same chieftain whose scouts in December said they knew "within 1 square kilometer" the whereabouts of the world's most wanted terrorist in the Tora Bora mountain range - says that bin Laden crossed over into Pakistan on Dec. 9 as the Pakistani army began deploying a brigade of 4,500 troops along a 30-mile stretch of mountainous border.

Peshawar is the cloak-and-dagger world of plots and counterplots, of arms and narcotics smuggling - what Casablanca was to skullduggery in the early days of World War II.

Organized crime in this city is, for the most part, in Afghan hands. The Khyber Pass and Afghan border are 30 minutes away by car. Taliban leaders have kept houses here and in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province, since they started their conquest of Afghanistan in 1994. They received their religious training in madrassas (Koranic schools) in the region surrounding Peshawar.

The failure of U.S.-led forces to nab bin Laden, despite a $25 million reward for information leading to his capture, has sparked numerous reports of his whereabouts.

One said he escaped to the mountains of Uzbekistan.

Another said he and his family hid in shipping containers on a vessel leaving Pakistan for an undisclosed location.

In the account of this tribal leader, who has been a reliable source on several occasions, bin Laden escaped from Tora Bora with about 50 of his fighters through the Tirah Valley, long reputed to be the most inaccessible part of Pakistan's Northwest Frontier province, populated by fiercely independent tribesmen traditionally hostile to the Pakistan government.

Bin Laden is thought to be safe in Peshawar, as he is still a hero to the man in the street, said the tribal leader, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.

Locating an individual concealed in this city, where pedestrians jostle shoulder-to-shoulder in narrow dirt streets lined with squalid stalls that sell everything from Ecstasy pills to computer chips, is no easy task.

If, as some reports indicate, bin Laden has had plastic surgery to alter his appearance, that would make the task of finding him in Peshawar even more difficult.

Pakistani officers say 100,000 men would have been needed to "hermetically seal" the frontier, as the government announced it had done, and block a bin Laden escape route from the Khyber Pass to Parachinar, a border town in the Kurram tribal agency.

Pakistan deployed up to 12,500 men but then gradually decreased their numbers as the Tora Bora battle subsided and the crisis with India threatened to explode into a military confrontation.

American reporters were warned in early December by this same tribal leader to stay out of the Tirah Valley, "as you are certain to be kidnapped for ransom."

A Pakistani battalion negotiated its way into Tirah two days after bin Laden and his cohort had made it safely out of the valley. There they split into smaller groups.

Pakistani roadblocks were not set up until Dec. 17, after word got out that al Qaeda fighters were escaping from Tora Bora into Pakistan by the hundreds. Eventually about 1,000 "Afghan Arabs" and Pakistani jihadis, or holy warriors, fled Afghanistan. Pakistani army patrols and police arrested between 400 and 600 of them.

Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, insisted last week that the United States never told him that bin Laden was in Pakistan after fleeing from Afghanistan.

The tribal leader said he was "reasonably confident" that bin Laden enjoyed the protection of "certain rogue elements of Pakistan's intelligence world that have taken exception to Musharraf's alliance with America."

It was Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency that nurtured the Taliban movement as it began to grow in Pakistan in the early 1990s, and that sustained it after it became the government of Afghanistan in 1996. The ISI also maintained links to bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist organization.

Taliban and al Qaeda fighters now in Pakistan are said to have been instructed to re-enter Afghanistan "to kill Americans and other foreign troops."

Leaflets recently began appearing in Kandahar, Afghanistan, praising Palestinian suicide bombers and saying, "We need to display similar courage today." Villagers are urged to collect information on all foreigners operating in their areas, and are warned that anyone assisting Americans will be killed "like mad dogs."

The day after ex-King Mohammed Zahir Shah returned to Kabul, Afghanistan, from his Italian exile last week, former Afghan President Burhannudin Rabbani warned that efforts to sideline the Taliban's mujahideen could only lead "to another crisis."

Diplomatic sources say that more than 60 al Qaeda operatives were arrested two weeks ago in Faisalabad, Pakistan, along with Abu Zubayda, the organization's third-highest-ranking member.

Pakistani federal police agents, accompanied by FBI agents from the United States, were said to be acting on an overheard telephone conversation between Zubayda and bin Laden.

Towns and villages in Pakistan's tribal belt still display bin Laden posters and pro-al Qaeda and Taliban slogans, daubed on rocks and adobe dwellings.

U.S. forces want permission to pursue al Qaeda forces in this area, but Gen. Musharraf has made it clear he cannot approve such action without jeopardizing an April 30 referendum on his request for five more years as president. It would also provide ammunition to his opponents in October's national elections.

•Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The Washington Times, as well as an editor at large of United Press International. His account also appears on the UPI wire.


-------- ENERGY AND OTHER

-------- alternative energy

Long Island wind power seen for 5 mln homes - LIPA

REUTERS USA:
April 23, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15606/story.htm

NEW YORK - Wind power generated off the coast of Long Island, New York could one day provide more than 5 million homes with electricity to help meet the region's ever growing demand for energy, the Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) said yesterday.

"Offshore wind generation for Long Island holds promise for the future," said LIPA Chairman Richard Kessel.

A LIPA study showed a maximum of 5,200 MW of electricity, enough to power more than 5 million homes, could be produced by wind generators placed in a 314 square-mile band three to six nautical miles off Long Island's south shore and Montauk Point.

"We're going to move forward with a more detailed evaluation of its potential so that we can develop some specific recommendations for the placement of wind generators off Long Island's south shore," Kessel said.

By restricting the placement of offshore wind turbines to a smaller, 135 square-mile band about three nautical miles from shore, with water depths of 50 feet or less, about 2,250 MW of wind-generated power could be produced, the study found.

LIPA said it will meet with interested developers on Today, June 25. It would, however, take a developer about three to five years to build any offshore wind turbines because of the needed local, state and federal approvals.

Using a standard offshore wind turbine: the rotor hub would be 252 feet above the surface of the water; rotor blades would be 164 feet long; and the tip of the rotor blades would reach a height of 426 feet above the water, about the height of a 40 story building.

The study found that a 100 MW offshore project would cost about $150 million to $180 million, with interconnection costs ranging from $40 to $70 million.

The study, "Long Island's Offshore Wind Energy Development Potential: A Preliminary Assessment," was co-funded by LIPA and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA).

LIPA is a state-owned utility that provides electric service to about 1.1 million customers in Nassau and Suffolk counties and the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens.

NYSERDA is a state organization that supports research to develop technologies that save energy and reduce emissions.

"New York is now the home to two of the largest wind farms in the Eastern United States ... Developing additional wind power is a key component of the State's overall energy strategy ... to reduce our dependence on energy produced by burning fossil fuels," said NYSERDA President William Flynn.

----

Senate to Consider $14 Billion in Energy Tax Breaks

Tue Apr 23
By Julie Vorman
Reuters
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020423/pl_nm/energy_congress_dc_37

WASHINGTON - The Democratic-led U.S. Senate, struggling to complete work on a broad energy bill this week, agreed on Tuesday to consider a $14 billion package of tax breaks to boost renewable fuels, cut the energy used by appliances and find ways to make coal cleaner to use.

The proposed tax language is half the size of the House's $33 billion package which has benefits targeted mostly for oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear companies.

The Senate has worked on an energy bill for six weeks. It was expected to debate the tax breaks as well as a provision that would require a big jump in U.S. ethanol use before the bill is wrapped up at the end of the week.

The taxation portion of the energy bill was nearly derailed when Republicans threatened to add a "rider" or an amendment seeking the permanent repeal of the federal estate tax, an issue unrelated to energy. Senate leaders, however, worked out a compromise to withdraw the estate tax provision by promising a separate debate on that issue by June 28.

The temporary estate tax repeal was part of the $1.35 trillion, 10-year tax cut signed into law last year by President Bush (news - web sites).

TAX BREAKS FOR RENEWABLES

Sen. Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, said the proposed $14 billion of energy tax benefits was evenly divided between production and conservation.

For example, renewable fuels such as wind, biomass and solar would receive a total of $2.3 billion in tax credits while more energy efficient appliances and buildings would get $2.2 billion in benefits. Alternative fuels for vehicles would get $1.8 billion in tax incentives. The Senate plan would reward energy companies with $1.9 billion in incentives for so-called "clean coal technology" and $4.4 billion in credits for shale oil, natural gas and coal bed methane. Another $1.3 billion would be earmarked for restructuring the U.S. electric utility industry and decommissioning aging nuclear plants.

"It's for the good of the country that these provisions be brought up and included (in the energy bill)." Baucus said.

ETHANOL DEBATE COMING

Senate leaders were also seeking agreement to limit the number of final amendments to the energy bill so it could be wrapped up this week.

"It is time that we bring this to conclusion," said Mississippi's Trent Lott, the Republican leader of the Senate. The chamber should vote on the entire bill by Thursday or Friday, Lott said.

An issue expected to provoke heated debate is Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's proposal to triple by 2012 the use of ethanol, a gasoline additive made mostly from corn.

The plan is popular among farm state lawmakers, who say it makes a cleaner-burning fuel as well as providing a market for growing stockpiles of U.S. corn.

But Democrats Dianne Feinstein of California and Charles Schumer of New York contend such a mandate would mean gasoline shortages in their states, driving prices sharply higher for consumers. Both states now use large amounts of a gasoline additive known as MTBE to make a cleaner-burning fuel.

MTBE is being phased out by most U.S. states because it contaminates groundwater.

The Senate has already rejected two other controversial proposals, which were part of the energy bill debate. One would have opened the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, and another would have required U.S. automakers to double the fuel efficiency of sport utility vehicles and cars.

The Republican-controlled House last autumn passed a much different version of an energy bill. If the Senate approves a bill, negotiators from both chambers will face a difficult job blending together both versions into a final piece of legislation.

----

Senate Opponents Fail to Derail Ethanol Plan

April 23, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-energy-congress.html

WASHINGTON - California and New York senators failed in a last-ditch effort on Tuesday to kill a proposal that would triple the amount of U.S. ethanol used in cleaner-burning gasoline, complaining the plan was a sweetheart deal for agribusinesses and would boost fuel prices.

The ethanol proposal, authored by Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and endorsed by other farm state lawmakers, is part of a broad energy bill scheduled to be finished this week.

After six weeks of debate on a U.S. energy policy to encourage more production and conservation, the Democratic-led Senate approved a procedural motion to wrap up work by the end of this week.

Ethanol, which is made from corn, has long enjoyed generous tax breaks to encourage its growth.

It is an alternative to the gasoline additive MTBE, which was banned by some states due to groundwater contamination.

Daschle's provision would set a renewable fuels standard requiring use of 2.3 billion gallons of ethanol by 2004 and 5 billion gallons by 2012. Last year, the United States consumed about 1.7 billion gallons of ethanol, mostly in the Midwest.

Democrats Dianne Feinstein of California and Charles Schumer of New York fought the plan, saying it would trigger gasoline shortages and higher prices because of the difficulty in shipping enough to refiners on the West and East coasts.

Their effort to kill the measure failed when more than two-thirds of the Senate voted to set aside the amendment. Daschle's ethanol provision is supported by farm groups, the oil industry, green groups and the White House.

ETHANOL BENEFITS DISPUTED

Farm state supporters of the measure said ethanol could help reduce U.S. dependence on petroleum imports at the same time it offers a new market to family farmers.

``The only domestic (energy) alternative where we can guarantee a supply is ethanol,'' Daschle said. ``The very best thing we can do for consumers is to pass this bill.''

States like California and New York that are concerned about potential gasoline supply disruptions can apply for a waiver from the new ethanol standard, Daschle said.

Feinstein said ethanol's environmental benefits were unclear. While ethanol reduces carbon monoxide air pollution, some scientists believe its nitrogen oxide emissions may produce more smog during hot, summer months.

``How is it good energy policy to triple something that has mixed environmental benefits at best?'' Feinstein said. ``It takes more energy to make ethanol than it saves.''

The proposed ethanol standard is designed to boost profits for Archer Daniels Midland Co and a handful of other companies that operate ethanol plants, with only meager benefits for family farmers, she said.

Ethanol subsidies amount to a ``hidden tax'' that will cost California drivers an extra 10 cents a gallon, Feinstein said.

$14 BLN TAX PACKAGE

The Senate separately agreed on Tuesday to consider a $14 billion package of energy tax breaks.

The proposed tax language is less than half the size of the House's $33 billion package which has benefits targeted mostly for oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear companies.

The taxation portion of the energy bill was nearly derailed when Republicans threatened to add an amendment seeking the permanent repeal of the federal estate tax, an issue unrelated to energy. Senate leaders, however, worked out a compromise to withdraw the estate tax provision by promising a separate debate on that issue by June 28.

The temporary estate tax repeal was part of the $1.35 trillion, 10-year tax cut signed into law last year.

Montana Democrat Max Baucus said the $14 billion package was evenly divided between production and conservation.

For example, renewable fuels such as wind, biomass and solar would receive a total of $2.3 billion in tax credits while more energy efficient appliances and buildings would get $2.2 billion in benefits. Alternative fuels for vehicles would get $1.8 billion in tax incentives.

The Senate plan would reward energy firms with $1.9 billion in incentives for ``clean coal'' technology and $4.4 billion in credits for shale oil, natural gas and coalbed methane.

The Senate has already rejected two other controversial proposals, which were part of the energy bill debate. One would have opened the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, and another would have required U.S. automakers to double the fuel efficiency of sport utility vehicles and cars.

The Republican-controlled House last autumn passed a much different version of an energy bill. If the Senate approves a bill, negotiators from both chambers will face a difficult job blending together the versions into final legislation.

-------- energy

Senate to Vote on Energy Bill

April 23, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Energy-Bill.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Senate cleared the way Tuesday for a vote this week on a broad energy bill that includes more than $14 billion in tax breaks for both conservation and energy production.

The legislation had been before the Senate for close to six weeks, and Majority Leader Tom Daschle said it needed to be wrapped up. After several hours of negotiations with Republicans, he announced agreement to move ahead with a final vote, probably Thursday.

``It's time to bring this to a conclusion,'' agreed the Republican leader, Trent Lott of Mississippi.

The Senate voted 86-13 to end debate Thursday on the 580-page bill. While a handful of amendments -- some controversial -- remained to be considered, the bill is expected to be approved. Afterward, it would have to be merged with energy legislation already approved by the House.

Senators from California and New York waged a last-ditch attempt Tuesday to remove from the Senate bill a provision that would require a tripling of ethanol use in gasoline. Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein of California and Charles Schumer of New York argued the ethanol mandate will produce gasoline shortages and price increases of 7 cents to 9 cents a gallon.

``California will be required to use ethanol it doesn't need'' to clean the air, complained Feinstein.

Daschle, D-S.D., whose state would benefit substantially from the ethanol provision, called the price impact claims and concerns over supply disruptions ``dead wrong ... a myth.'' He cited Energy Department estimates that the ethanol would add no more than a penny a gallon on to the cost of fuel.

The Senate voted 68-31 to kill an amendment that would have stripped the ethanol mandate from the bill.

The energy bill had been on the verge of unraveling earlier in the day over an attempt to include a permanent repeal of inheritance taxes as part of the legislation. But Daschle defused the issue by agreeing to take up the matter this summer in other legislation.

Senators then agreed unanimously to add the $14 billion energy tax provision, which includes tax breaks for insulating homes and buying fuel-efficient hybrid electric-gas vehicles and benefits to help a wide range of energy producers.

At the same time, Sens. Thomas Carper, D-Del., and Arlen Specter, R-Pa., sought to revive consideration of a new auto fuel economy measure. They asked senators to join in support of a proposal that would require motor vehicles to reduce oil use by 1 million barrels a day by 2015.

Both Carper and Specter earlier joined other senators in defeating an attempt to require automakers to meet a fleet average of 35 miles per gallon by 2013, about a 50 percent increase. Opponents to the tougher standards claimed it would have forced auto producers to close plants, lay off workers and stop building larger vehicles including popular SUVs.

Carper said while his proposed amendment would require no change in the federal auto fuel economy standard, it would direct the Transportation Department to issue regulations aimed at reducing the amount of fuel used in motor vehicles by 1 million barrels a day, or about 10 percent, by 2015.

The $14 billion energy tax package, almost evenly divided between benefits for energy producers and those advocating conservation and alternative fuels, is less than half the tax breaks already approved by the House, which focused more heavily on benefits to producers.

Among major tax breaks in the Senate bill are:

--$4.4 billion for oil and gas producers.

--$3.2 billion for electric utilities that develop clean coal technologies and for nuclear power plants.

--$4 billion to encourage energy conservation and efficiency and use of alternative fuels in vehicles.

--$2.3 billion to encourage development of renewable fuels including wind, solar, geothermal and biomass sources.

Motorists would receive $1,000 tax credit for buying hybrid gas-electric cars and homeowners $2,000 to install solar panels for heating water or other purposes. A $250 to $300 tax credit would be established to help homeowners install fuel-saving insulation, windows and doors, more efficient air conditioners or heat pumps.

----

Strange Allies in Energy Policy Fight

Tue Apr 23, 2002
By JUDITH KOHLER,
Associated Press Writer
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020423/ap_on_re_us/unlikely_allies_1

DENVER (AP) - Ranchers used to accuse Jim Baca of waging war on the West when he ran the Bureau of Land Management (news - web sites). These days, ranchers like Linn Blancett see him as a potential ally.

The Bush administration's new energy plan has helped trigger this unlikely alliance between environmentalists and ranchers who both oppose increased mineral production.

"I have never before seen such an assault on public lands and the quality of life in the western United States," said Baca, who resigned after a year as land management director in the first Clinton administration.

Baca joined Blancett at a recent government-sponsored conference in Denver to update the public on plans to implement Bush's national energy policy.

The irony of their joint appearance was not lost on either of them.

"I'll be lucky if I don't get shot by my cowboy friends when I get home," joked Blancett.

As land management chief, Baca infuriated ranchers when he proposed higher fees and conditions for grazing livestock on public lands. But farmers and ranchers from Montana to southern New Mexico have joined with environmentalists on the very issues that have long separated them: use of public lands, water and property rights.

"We're realizing that on some issues we're not nearly as far apart as we thought we were," Blancett said. About 3,000 wells drilled by companies plumbing for natural gas dot the 48,000 acres he ranches in northwestern New Mexico.

Many issues between the two camps overlap. Landowners complain of water waste, land damage and potential harm to their livelihoods. Environmentalists worry about pollution, effects on wildlife and loss of pristine lands.

Much of the energy development in the West is on public land. The Bureau of Land Management oversees 262 million acres, primarily in 12 Western states, and 700 million acres of minerals. The federal government leases the rights to extract its minerals.

That leads to clashes between energy producers and ranchers who lease public land for livestock grazing, or landowners who don't own the mineral rights and don't want oil and gas rigs on the property.

The thrust of the Bush plan is to give petroleum and coal companies easier access to public lands, to speed up the review process for proposed refinery and power plant expansions and to renew the nation's long-term commitment to nuclear power.

Such steps and a commitment to a mix of fuels, according to the Bush administration, are necessary to provide Americans with abundant energy and stable prices over the long term.

The plan has inadvertently triggered a warming between former adversaries. Dale Ackels, who farms near Sheridan, Wyo., helped lobby Congress last fall on the federal energy bill as part of a coalition that included regional conservation, consumer and livestock groups.

Companies leasing the minerals under Ackels' land want to drill, and he fears the fallout. "It boils down to a fundamental equity issue," Ackels said. "Do I own my own land or don't I? And if I don't, how does that happen in America?"

Daniel Kemmis, director of the Center for the American West at the University of Montana, said the collaboration between traditional adversaries has grown in the past decade out of frustration with the federal government's management of public lands, which make up half or more of some Western states.

"I believe they are forging a new way of dealing with public lands and natural resource issues and that it will go on no matter what policies come out of Washington, D.C.," Kemmis said. "Because no matter what policies come out of Washington, D.C., they will come out in a way that frustrates many Westerners."

On the Net:
BLM: http://www.blm.gov/nhp/index.htm

-------- environment

Leatherback Sea Turtles Face Threat

April 23, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Leatherback-Turtles.html

PACIFIC GROVE, Calif. (AP) -- Leatherback sea turtles have outlived dinosaurs, but they may not survive humans, scientists warned Tuesday.

The ancient giants, once plentiful in the Pacific Ocean, have plummeted in numbers over the last 13 years from the hundreds of thousands to an estimated 40,000 worldwide.

On Tuesday, scientists, marine researchers and environmental activists gathered to brainstorm a strategy to stop the trend.

``We need to find some solutions, because we have very few years left,'' said Todd Steiner, director of the Sea Turtle Restoration Project, which is sponsoring the weeklong Leatherback International Survival Conference.

Commercial fishing and development of coastal property where the turtles lay eggs are the largest threats to their population, said marine researcher Sylvia Earle.

Because they spend most of their time in water, it's difficult to get an accurate count of the turtles, which eat jellyfish and can grow up to 9 feet long and 2,000 pounds.

But in recent years, the number of turtles showing up to the largest-known nesting beaches -- mostly in Mexico, Costa Rica and Malaysia -- has dramatically declined.

Once, more than 1,300 female leatherbacks nested at a beach along the central Pacific coast of Mexico, but now less than 70 have been spotted making the yearly trip. In Malaysia, the number of turtles this year has dropped to only four, and Costa Rica has seen similar declines.

One solution is to buy the nesting beaches to prevent the development of hotels and resorts. But the true problem lies far from the coastal shores, where many older turtles are caught in fishing lines.

The commercial swordfish industry is one of the most serious threats to the turtles and the most difficult problem to solve, Steiner said. Most swordfish are caught in international waters where it is difficult to enforce regulations or restrictions.

On the Net:
http://www.seaturtles.org
http://www.leatherback.org

--------

US, EU at Odds on Global Warming Despite Meeting

By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-environment-climate-usa.html

WASHINGTON - U.S. and European Union officials on Tuesday resolved none of their fundamental differences over how to respond to global warming, basically agreeing to disagree, a State Department official said following a three-hour meeting.

``We agreed we have two different approaches,'' said the U.S. official, who asked not to be identified.

The two sides did agree, however, to try to create working groups by June that would discuss ``areas of common interest,'' including climate modeling and renewable fuels.

The United States is the world's largest emitter of so-called greenhouse gases, mostly from utilities and factories.

Last year, the Bush administration announced the United States would not participate in the Kyoto Treaty, an international attempt to limit greenhouse gas emissions by industrial countries.

At the time, President Bush said the Kyoto Treaty's goal of reducing U.S. emissions by about 5.2 percent of 1990 levels during 2008-2012 would be too costly to the American economy.

The move irked the EU and other countries who embraced the Kyoto pact.

In its place, Bush earlier this year unveiled a ``Clear Skies'' initiative calling for mandatory 70 percent cuts in emissions of three major pollutants by 2018 using a cap-and-trade system.

The plan, however, would not require reductions in carbon emissions from power plants and factories linked to global warming, which scientists warn could lead to massive flooding and rising ocean levels.

JOINT RESEARCH PLANNED

Holding their first bilateral meeting on the subject Tuesday, U.S. officials met with Margot Wallstrom, European commissioner for environment, as well as representatives from Spain and Denmark.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman, Undersecretary of State Paula Dobriansky, and Council on Environmental Quality Chairman Jim Connaughton were among the U.S. officials at the meeting.

The United States already has held similar bilateral meetings with Japan, Italy, Australia and Canada.

The State Department official said the EU team ``welcomed'' U.S. moves to reduce greenhouse gases but noted the Clear Skies plan ``still would lead over the next 10 years to an absolute increase in emissions.''

``We responded that an absolute reduction in emissions was economically unrealistic for us,'' the U.S. official added. Instead, he said, the Bush administration was taking the ``first step by slowing growth'' of emissions.

In a statement Monday, Wallstrom said, ``It is important that we work together with the U.S., even if we disagree on some specific issues, such as climate change. There is scope for cooperation on many issues and we can make a decisive impact to ensure a successful outcome at the Johannesburg Summit if we join forces.''

U.S. and EU officials also said they would hold a meeting later this year to identify specific areas for joint research, such as carbon sequestration. Other areas of cooperation may include analyzing market-based incentives for companies to reduce emissions and ways to accurately measure emissions, the officials said.

A global summit in Johannesburg is planned for August with 60,000 delegates and 100 heads of state to discuss climate change issues.

-------- health

OSHA Warns Labs Against Toxic Metal

April 23, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/health/AP-Dental-Alert-Beryllium.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Government regulators warned dental labs Tuesday that technicians who work on crowns and bridges may be inhaling dust that contains hazardous levels of the toxic metal beryllium.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued the hazard bulletin after several dental lab technicians were diagnosed with chronic beryllium disease, a debilitating and often fatal lung disease.

``We are concerned that dental lab technicians are continuing to contract the disease,'' said OSHA Administrator John Henshaw.

The warning was aimed only at workers, not dental patients.

Dental offices should not be concerned unless beryllium-containing alloys are being cast, cut, ground, polished or finished there. Beryllium in solid form was not part of the alert.

Beryllium is a lightweight metal that also is used in aerospace components, semiconductor chips, jet engine blades, transistors, nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons. It often is mixed with other metals to form an alloy, which is used in dental labs to make bridges and crowns to improve their strength.

Scientists have learned that exposure to low levels of beryllium dust, fumes, metal, metal oxides, ceramics or salts even over a short period of time can result in chronic beryllium disease, lung cancer or skin disease, OSHA said.

Symptoms include shortness of breath, dry cough, fatigue, weight loss, loss of appetite, fever or night sweats.

A recent case involved a 53-year-old Florida woman who had worked as a dental lab technician for 13 years and was diagnosed with the disease in May 2000. Her daily work involved sandblasting and grinding beryllium dental alloy. She wore only a surgical-type paper mask and was exposed to a lot of dust, OSHA said.

Not all dental alloys used in crowns and bridges contain beryllium. OSHA urged labs to use non-beryllium alloys when possible. It also recommended that labs provide protective clothing and use ventilation and air filter systems.

The agency issued the bulletin to 1,700 labs and posted the information on its Web site. It also is working with the National Association of Dental Laboratories. The group's president, Richard Harrell, said beryllium use in dental alloys isn't widespread.

``Base metals have been out of favor in dentistry for some time,'' he said. More common are alloys containing gold, platinum and palladium, and also ceramics.

OSHA's legal limit of beryllium is 2 micrograms per cubic meter of air. That is equivalent to dust about the size of a pencil tip spread throughout an area about the size of the Statue of Liberty, OSHA said. But the agency is reviewing whether to tighten the standard.

On the Net:
OSHA: http://www.osha.gov


-------- ACTIVISTS

Robin Mills' Invest in Clean Energy proposal

Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2002
From: Traci Confer <tconfer@envirolink.org>

Over a million utility stockholders have an opportunity to vote for solar and wind energy investments. What they see in their proxy statement is the Invest in Clean Energy (ICE) Proposal, which reads:

"Be it resolved: that the shareholders recommend that [the company] should invest sufficient resources to build new electrical generation from solar and wind power sources to replace approximately one percent (1%) of system capacity yearly for the next twenty years with the goal of having the company producing twenty percent (20%) of generation capacity from clean renewable sources in 20 years."

The ICE Proposal is on the ballot at four of America's largest utility companies: Exelon Corporation of Pennsylvania and Illinois, Duke Energy in the Carolinas, Dominion Resources of Virginia and Southern Company of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida.

The filers of the stockholder proposals, Robert Mills, Bart Naylor and Peter Wylie, support increased investments in solar and wind energy for these reasons:

1. Environmental Concerns: Air pollution, global warming, acid rain and nuclear waste disposal. Wind and solar produce no air pollutants or wastes while producing energy.

2. Security issues: Renewable energy helps to improve our national security because the facilities are not centralized. While a fossil power plant or nuclear reactor offers a site-specific target, wind farms and solar panels on the roofs of buildings throughout our country reduce the risk.

3. The economy: Solar and wind energy use free fuel; therefore, the price would be stable and predictable. Building and maintaining solar and wind energy facilities would create good jobs. Investors are attracted to solar and wind because they don't require costly fuel input.

At the Exelon meeting in Philadelphia on April 23, the secretary reported that the proposal received support from 6.4% of the shares. That is more than twice the support needed to qualify the proposal to be on the agenda next year. 6.4% represents over $2 billion worth of stock.

[More information at http://prop1.org/ice/icelv.htm.]

----

Kucinich Is the One

by STUDS TERKEL
Issue of The Nation
4/23/02
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020506&s=terkel

When I finished reading John Nichols's exhilarating communiqué from California ("Kucinich Rocks the Boat," March 25), the bells began to ring. In his speech to the Southern California Americans for Democratic Action, criticizing Bush's conduct of the war on terrorism, Dennis Kucinich set the crowd on its ear--one standing ovation after another. Sure, they were all liberals, but what counted was the response on the Internet. The Cleveland Congressman's e-mail box was stuffed to overflowing with 20,000-plus enthusiastic letters. Among them was the call: Kucinich for President. That's when--bingo!--I remembered my first encounter with him. It was twenty-four years ago.

At the arrival gate of the Chicago-to-Cleveland flight, a skinny kid who appeared no more than 19 or 20 reached out for my torn duffel bag. I thought he was one of those Horatio Alger heroes, whose opening line is usually "Smash your baggage, mister?" This one said, "Did you have a good flight, Studs?" I'll be damned, he was the person I had come to visit, Dennis Kucinich, the Boy Mayor of Cleveland.

He was 32 then, though he could pass as anybody's office boy. As he carried my bag through the corridors of the airport, passers-by called out, "Hello, Mr. Mayor." I was slightly discombobulated, turning around several times to make sure whom they were addressing. The following are passages from our conversation in 1978.

At his one-family bungalow, his wife makes coffee. A player piano is about the only piece of furniture that might distinguish the house from any other simply furnished home in this working-class neighborhood. "Some of my neighbors are within ten years of retirement." A photograph of Thomas Jefferson, in the shadows, hangs on the wall.

When I was young, I never dreamed of living in a house like this. We were always renters. A number of times we moved; it was because we were kicked out. It wasn't for failure to pay rent. It was because our family was big. I remember sometimes, in order to get a place, one of the kids had to be hid in the closet. We always lived above some railroad tracks.

I'm the oldest of seven. There were a lot of tough times. My father came from a family of thirteen children, my mother from a family of a dozen. Our story is an ethnic Gone With the Wind. (Laughs)

I spent all my time as a youngster coming to understand the experience of the ghetto. It was growing up tough and growing up absurd. I spent a lot of time out on the streets. That's where I got my education. I made friends with all kinds of people, black and white.

My dad's been a truck driver ever since he got out of the service as a Marine. He's gung-ho. His dream was to have all his boys in the Marines. My brother Frank served four years, two and a half in Vietnam. My brother Gary served five years, most of it in Hawaii. My father never questioned authority. His authority was the guy who ran the trucking company.

I've always been taught to respect authority, although I was more independent than the other kids my age. I was constantly getting into squabbles with teachers. I was the first person in my family, on both sides, who ever graduated from college. I love literature. My mother taught me to read when I was 3.

In the late sixties, I didn't go right from high school to college. I worked for two and a half years. When I was 17, I moved on my own and rented an apartment above the steel mills. In the same neighborhood where The Deer Hunter was filmed. The frame house I lived in overlooked the steel mills.

When I was in grade school, I would scrub floors and help with janitorial duties to pay my tuition. When I got into high school, I worked as a caddy at the country club, from 1959 to '64. I was carrying two bags. They called it workin' doubles. Going forty-five holes a day, six days a week.

I believe in the work ethic. There's a tremendous dignity in work, and it doesn't matter what it is. What some consider menial, I found to be just a chance to make a living. I always tried to do the best I could at that time. Work hard, get ahead, that was my American dream.

We lived next door to black people. It was integrated. There's a lot of poor and working ethnics who have to struggle their way into the system, who can identify with black people's striving. I'm trying to show both that the color of the enemy is green. (Laughs) This is a city run by the Mayflower-type aristocracy. It's as if the people here don't even exist. Until recently. We seized the decision-making power through the ballot box. If the black movement did one thing, it created ethnic pride.

I'd ask myself why it is that with so many people trying to improve society, not that much changes. As I looked around, I saw many of the kids I grew up with trapped, not able to get as far as they would have liked. I started to wonder, What the heck is this? No matter how hard they work, they can't get ahead. Seeing all these people working their heads off, you find out the system is rigged.

When I first started, I didn't question the institutions. I never really put it together. I think it was the Vietnam War. I'd see that some people were profiting, while tens of thousands of Americans were dying. Friends of mine went over there, and they died. Kids I rode the bus with to school. I started to think: This is a dirty business. I'd better start to find out more about it.

I began to get into city politics. In 1967, I ran for the City Council. I was 21. I went from door to door, and I found out about people. Every campaign I've ever run has been door to door. I spent months just talking to people. They don't ask for much, but they don't get anything. They can have a problem with a streetlight that's out, with a street that's caved in, with a fire hydrant that's leaking, with flooded basements, with snow that isn't plowed.

I've visited tens of thousands of homes over the past years. That's how I got my real education. Door to door.

I was elected councilman in '69. I had just turned 23. My ward was made up of Polish, Ukrainians, Russians, Greeks, Slovaks, Appalachians, Puerto Ricans, blacks. It was a good cross section not only of Cleveland but of America. They worked in the mills around here. Some had lived in the neighborhood sixty years. Same homes. The churches are still here. They say masses in Polish and Slovak and Russian. They helped keep the neighborhood alive. I loved it.

People were wondering how the heck I got elected to the Council. No one believed the old councilman could ever be beaten, he was so entrenched. At first, people wondered if the banks sent me there. Or the utilities. Or some big real estate interests. All the traditional contributors who buy their candidates. I was elected on a shoestring. I financed nearly my whole campaign out of my pocket, my savings, which weren't much. I put together a coalition of people who were disaffected and ignored.

The first thing, some of the older guys came up to me and said: "You got it made now, kid. All you have to do is take your seat and shut up. If you just listen to what we tell you, you're gonna be a big man in this town someday."

When I started stepping on toes, I didn't know I was stepping on toes. I was just representing the people who sent me to the City Council. I didn't know I was offending somebody else. I found out very quickly there were a number of special-interest groups who made city hall their private warren. There are thirty-two councilmen. Thirty-one to one was usually the score.

When I got elected mayor, just as I came to the Council, I was expected to represent the system. When I started to challenge it, the titans of Cleveland's business community began to get surly and used their clout in the media to disparage the administration. I came to understand that big business has a feudal view of the city, and that city hall was within their fiefdom.

When I was elected mayor on November 8, 1977, it was discovered that the previous administration had misspent tens of millions of dollars of bond funds. They could not be accounted for. The city was trying to negotiate the renewal of $14 million worth of notes held in local banks. One bank talked: the Cleveland Trust Company.

I had a meeting on the day of default at 8 o'clock in the morning, with the Council president, the chairman of the board of Cleveland Trust and a local businessman, a friend of mine. The conversation turned immediately to MUNY Light. The chairman of the board of Cleveland Trust made it very clear that if I sold MUNY Light to the Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company, he would extend credit and save the city from default. CEI's largest shareholder is Cleveland Trust. Four members of Cleveland Trust's board are directors of CEI. If I didn't agree, I could not expect any help from his bank.

MUNY Light has 46,000 customers in Cleveland. MUNY Light and CEI compete in most neighborhoods, street by street, house by house. MUNY Light's rates in the recent decades have been from 20 to 60 percent cheaper than CEI's, but MUNY Light's competitive advantage has depreciated over the years because of CEI's interference in MUNY's management.

From the moment Mr. Weir [Brock Weir, chairman of the board of CEI] told me his price, I decided that a fiscal default was better than a moral default. If I had cooperated with them and sold MUNY Light to the private utility, everyone's electric rates would've automatically gone up. It would have set the stage for never-ending increases, much the same way that Fort Wayne, Indiana, is faced with that problem after relinquishing its rights to a municipal electric system.

I was hoping I was doing the right thing in holding my ground. I had to tell 'em no. I felt they were trying to sell the city down the river. They were trying to blackmail me. If I went along with the deal, they made it clear, things would be easy. Mr. Weir said he'd put together $50 million of new credit for the city. The financial problems would be solved. My term as mayor would be comfortable and the stage set for future cooperation between myself and the business community.

The media picked up the tempo. Why the heck don't you get rid of MUNY Light? I was asked on a live TV show. I replied that MUNY Light was a false issue. It wasn't losing money. Its troubles could be traced to CEI's interference. I was in office a little over a year and had inherited a mess. The city had a plan to avoid default, to which five of the six banks agreed: an income-tax increase, as well as tighter control of the management of the city's money. That's one of the reasons I got elected. I knew I was risking my whole political career. But you gotta stand for something.

The referendum was to be on February 27. Both issues were on the ballot: the income-tax increase and the sale of MUNY Light. We organized volunteers. People went door to door, in the freezing rain and the bitter cold, subzero temperatures and big snow. We laid out the hard facts. We were facing the attempt of corporations to run the city. We gave the people a choice between a duly elected government and an un-duly elected shadow government.

We were outspent two and a half to one, but we created circumstances where people came to understand that every person can make a difference. We won both issues by about two to one. It was the first time in Cleveland's history that we succeeded in uniting whites and blacks, poor and middle class, on economic issues. Usually, they've been manipulated against each other. Not this time.

My concept of the American dream? It's not the America of IBM, ITT and Exxon. It's the America of Paine and Jefferson and Samuel Adams. There are increasingly two Americas: the America of multinationals dictating decisions in Washington, and the America of neighborhoods and rural areas, who feel left out. I see, in the future, a cataclysm: popular forces converging on an economic elite, which feels no commitments to the needs of the people. That clash is already shaping up.

The American Revolution never really ended. It's a continuing process. I think we're approaching the revolution of hope. We have the country that makes it possible for people, if they've lost control of the government, to regain it in a peaceful way. Through the ballot box. Before I got into politics, I didn't know whether what I was doing even mattered. Now I know. One person can make a difference. I think it's something every person can learn. The main thing is, you can't be afraid.

In November 1979, with just about all of Cleveland's newspapers and television and radio stations--as well as industry--united against him, Kucinich was defeated for re-election. Fifteen years later, he began his political comeback, elected to the Ohio Senate. His key issue: expanding Cleveland's municipal electrical system, which provided low-cost power to almost half the residents of Cleveland. In 1988, the Cleveland City Council honored him for "having the courage and foresight to refuse to sell the city's municipal electric system." It was the same political body that in years past outvoted him thirty-one to one.

Today, in his second term as a US Congressman from Ohio, he is chairman of the Progressive Caucus, and its spark plug. His website reads like a press release: "He combines a powerful political activism with a spiritual sense of the interconnectedness of all living things. His holistic worldview carries with it a passionate commitment to public service, peace, human rights, workers' rights and the environment. His advocacy of a Department of Peace seeks not only to make nonviolence an organizing principle in our society, but to make war archaic." This sounds naïve and loonily idealistic, except for one thing: He is a remarkably practical and astute politician. His Ohio track record tells you that.

It was his voice in the State Senate that caused Ohio to scrap the planned siting of a nuclear waste dump in the state. He gets things done in no small way because of his understanding of his opponents' humanness as well as his wrongness. There is an ultraconservative congressman from a nearby state whom Kucinich describes as a "good, honest man." I spoke to that Congressman and discovered that he admires Dennis very much. You get the idea? I think this guy can reach anyone and change seemingly unchangeable minds. (Personal note: Dennis, there's one thing I'd like to change your mind on--your stand on a woman's right to choose. I know, because of your background, you are of two minds on the subject. I have faith in your honesty and in your belief in the dignity of the person that you will make the right choice: pro.)

It's more than a hunch that tells me Kucinich Is the One (if I may borrow a Nixonian slogan). I am a believer in egalitarianism, and I feel it's high time an Ohioan had another shot at the presidency. We've had only three since the eminently forgettable Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876.

In 1896, Ohio gave us William McKinley, with a little help from his boss, Mark Hanna. In 1908, it gave us William Howard Taft, fondly remembered as the heaviest occupant in the history of the White House. And in 1920, we were gifted with the genial, handsome, presidential-looking Warren Gamaliel Harding. Even though I was only 8 at the time, I remember it with some sense of pride because his nomination happened in my hometown, Chicago. In a smoke-filled room at the Blackstone Hotel, the Boys, blowing wondrous smoke rings from H. Upmanns, with a touch of bourbon or two to lift all spirits, boozily announced that Harding's the one. Sure, he was as little known, say, as Dennis Kucinich, but with the leading candidates, Gen. Leonard Wood and Governor Frank Lowden in a damn deadlock, they said, What the hell, here's a good-lookin' guy. And we gotta get home.

Now, in the year 2002, Ohio has given us another, of a somewhat different stripe. I doubt whether he'll ever make People magazine's list of the most beautiful people, but the blue-collar Kucinich is the only one who can win back the blue-collar Reagan Democrats, among the other disenchanted, and the disfranchised. He talks the language they understand and, at 55, with a remarkable eloquence.

Imagine him in a televised, coast-to-coast debate with Dubya. Blood wouldn't flow, but it would be a knockout in the first round, and we'd have an honest-to-God working-class President for the first time in our history. It's a crazy thought, of course, but it's quite possible, considering the roller-coaster nature of our times.

Since plagiarism is à la mode these days, let me steal the closing passage from the Rev. William Sloane Coffin's invocation at a Yale commencement during the Vietnam War: "Oh God, take our minds and think through them, take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire." I'll add a brief benediction: Kucinich is the man to light the fire. Amen.

Postscript. Obviously, I haven't touched on ways and means. Obviously, the big dough will not be there. But this could be the catapult for the hundreds of grassroots groups on a thousand and one issues to coalesce behind one banner. Jim Hightower has touched on that often. And Michael Moore's book Stupid White Men is a bestseller. And there's a whole new generation of kids, not just the students, but bewildered, lost blue-collar kids. And, strangely enough, it can be done the old-fashioned way, shoe leather and bell-ringing, as well as e-mails. It could be that exciting. Nicholas von Hoffman once observed that when people get active, they get the feeling they count. Kucinich is like Poe's purloined letter--right there on the table as we helplessly play Inspector Clouseau goofily searching elsewhere.



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