NKorea Reactor Plan to Be Sped Up

By Paul Shin Associated Press Writer Wednesday, August 25, 1999; 4:59 a.m. EDT
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990825/V000017-082599-idx.html
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-NKorea-Nuclear.html

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- Work on two nuclear reactors in North Korea under a 1994 accord will be accelerated to allay the North's complaints the project is behind schedule, a South Korean official said today.

Chang Sun-sup, chief South Korean delegate to an American-led international consortium building the reactors, said major construction would likely begin before the end of the year.

Ground was broken in 1997 for two light-water reactors, each with a rated capacity of 2,000 megawatts, but work was slowed due to tensions on the Korean Peninsula and a funding delay, Chang said.

``Since South Korea and Japan have finished all needed legal action on the funding, including parliamentary approval, the project can now be accelerated,'' he said.

The $4.6 billion non-weapons reactor project is a reward for a North Korean promise to freeze and eventually dismantle its suspected nuclear weapons program under the 1994 agreement with the United States.

South Korea will take up 70 percent, or $3.2 billion of the total cost, while Japan will assume $1 billion. The United States is required to supply 500,000 tons of fuel oil a year until the first reactor is built by 2003.

Chang's comments came after North Korea threatened to withdraw from the 1994 agreement, arguing that the United States has failed to live up to its end of the accord.

In a commentary carried Tuesday by the country's foreign news outlet KCNA, the North's ruling party newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, said North Korea has suffered a ``huge loss'' by freezing its nuclear activities.

``We have no intention to suffer any more. The relevant institutions in (North Korea), including the military, are calling for urgent measures against the indefinite delay'' in the reactor project, it said.

The United States rejected the North Korean claim.

``Let me make clear the United States is meeting all of its obligations under the agreed framework,'' State Department deputy spokesman James Foley said.

Chang indicated that the reactors cannot be built by 2003 as specified in the accord. He said 2003 is a ``target year, not the fixed year by which we definitely promised to build them.''

Chang held North Korea partly responsible for the delay. He noted that the project was put on hold for several months in 1996 because a North Korean submarine infiltrated into South Korean waters.

The Korean Peninsula was divided into the communist North and the capitalist South in 1945. They are technically still at war, with no peace treaty signed at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.

North Korea's relations with South Korea, Japan and the United States have also been hurt since the reclusive regime test-fired a missile in August 1998 that flew over Japan and landed in the Pacific.

Analysts fear North Korea is preparing to test a more advanced long-range ballistic missile capable of reaching Hawaii and Alaska.

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Say No to North Korea

August 24, 1999 Los Angeles Times Editorial
http://www.latimes.com/excite/990824/t000075461.html

The word from North Korea is that it is ready to negotiate with "hostile nations"--meaning the United States, Japan and South Korea--about calling off its test of a new long-range missile, a prospect that has heightened tensions in northeast Asia. The unspoken condition in Pyongyang's offer is that it expects to be suitably rewarded. Once again, North Korea seeks to leverage a strategic threat to extort further concessions from those it views as its primary enemies. That ploy has paid off handsomely in the past. This time it should be unequivocally rejected.

The test of the 3,700-mile Taepodong II missile would be significant evidence of North Korea's covert progress in missile development. But far more important is how it has been exploiting its achievements. North Korea has helped Iran and Iraq improve their missile arsenals, and is working with Pakistan on its launch vehicles. Pakistan denies that it is swapping its nuclear know-how for North Korean missile technology. But Pakistan also denied it was developing nuclear weapons almost to the day it tested one.

Last May the United States offered North Korea a package of economic and political concessions, including a major expansion of diplomatic and commercial ties, if it would abandon its nuclear and missile programs. The response has been no response, a silence that--as the north's latest gambit shows--evidences Pyongyang's belief that it can squeeze still more out of Washington and its allies. That confidence is rooted in experience.

Since 1995 the United States has contributed more than $500 million in food and energy aid to North Korea. Japan and South Korea, which are funding the construction of two light water nuclear reactors in the north, have committed billions more. In return for this largesse, North Korea has shut down its rickety old Soviet-supplied reactors and stopped extracting plutonium from their fuel rods. Beyond that it has done nothing to ease tensions in northeast Asia. In fact, its test-firing of a missile over northern Japan a year ago sent Tokyo rushing to expand its military ties with Washington.

Underlying the costly effort to buy North Korea's good will is the fear that to do less might push Pyongyang's unpredictable rulers into acting irrationally. But a policy based on that concern simply encourages unending brinksmanship and blackmail. Washington and its allies have been generous to Pyonyang. It's time to insist on something in return.

---

U.S. Congressman To Warn N.Korea Against Missile

Updated 7:19 AM ET August 25, 1999
http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/990825/07/news-korea-usa

TOKYO (Reuters) - U.S. Congressman Tony Hall said Wednesday he would tell North Korean officials when he visits the Stalinist state this week not to fire a long-range missile.

Tony Hall, a Democrat from Ohio, is due to make an unofficial four-day visit to famine-hit North Korea from Thursday.

In what will be his fifth visit to the reclusive communist state, he is expected to meet North Korean officials including Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gye-Gwan.

"If they fire a missile over Japan, we are going to respond too. That's one of the messages, the strong messages, I intend to give to North Korea," Hall told a news conference in Tokyo.

Firing a missile now would be the worst possible timing and the worst possible thing Pyongyang could do, he added.

North Korea stunned the region last August when it fired a three-stage rocket, part of which passed over northern Japan. Pyongyang said it was only launching a satellite.

The United States, Japan and South Korea are worried that North Korea may be preparing to launch a Taepodong-2 missile, believed capable of reaching parts of the United States.

Hall said a new U.S. policy on North Korea, being prepared by former Defense Secretary William Perry, would provide the basis for improved ties between Pyongyang and Washington.

"The Perry initiative has a lot of hope. I don't know if North Korea will accept it, but it offers a lot of help, especially the lifting of trade sanctions of the United States," he said.

The United States imposed sanctions on North Korea following the 1950-53 Korean War.

It is not clear when the Perry report will be unveiled.

On a landmark visit to North Korea in May, Perry offered Pyongyang "a major expansion in ties" if it abandoned its nuclear and missile programs.

Hall, who last visited famine-hit North Korea last November, urged Japan and other countries to give "humanitarian" food aid to stave off famine in the Stalinist state.

He said up to three million people appeared to have died of hunger and malnutrition in North Korea, which has been hit hard by four years of floods, droughts and other natural disasters, adding that the international community must separate humanitarian issues from political issues.

"We should not use food as a weapon. Humanitarian aid should be given in an unconditional way," he said.

But Akitaka Saiki, press secretary to Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi, said Japan was reluctant to resume humanitarian aid unless North Korea sent a "constructive" signal that it was interested in improving its relationship with Japan.

"So far no such signal has come from the North Korean capital, to our regret," he told a regular news conference.

Hall also raised questions about North Korea's apparent move to set aside a large part of its budget for military buildups while millions of its citizens were starving.

"The biggest mystery is why they spend so much money on the military, not give it to their people, especially the innocent," he said. "Government leaders and military leaders, they eat." He said he planned to meet South Korean officials including President Kim Dae-jung in Seoul after returning from his trip to North Korea.

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Latest news regarding Akkuyu

Date: 8/22/99 7:56:25 PM Eastern Daylight Time
From: krygnsmp@yesic.com (karygiannis), karygiannis@yahoo.com

Although articles like the one bellow keep circulating I still ask you to get active and make sure that the nuclear plant in Akkuyu does not get build. The only way we can do this is to continue putting on the pressure and make sure that Turkey at the end of the day sees the light. The day that AECL, Westinghouse, NPI close their offices in Ankara then we can say that Turkey is not interested in Nuclear Plants any more. In the mean time folks please sent your e-mails through http://www.diaspora-net.org/nuclear

Friday, August 20, 1999 From Michael Jansen, in Nicosia The Irish Times http://www.ireland.com/

TURKEY: Suddenly it all became too much for SibelCelik. As another corpse was dragged out of the ruins of Golçuk and zipped into a yellow body bag her grief boiled over into anger. Environmentalists from Turkey, Cyprus, Greece and Canada, as well as Greenpeace, have warned of the risk of a second Chernobyl-type disaster if the planned 1,000 megawatt plant is built at Akkuyu Bay, west of the town of Silifke and about 80 km south-west of Mersin. The bay, an important tourist site, is unsuitable because it is just 20 km from the active Ecemis fault.

Fearful of the consequences of the plant being sited at Akkuyu, the Greek Ministry for the Aegean issued a report early this year which stated: "The existence of the South Anatolian fault in conjunction with the numerous faults in the Aegean makes this a potential site for a major earthquake" and months of after shocks.

Turkey's last major quake (magnitude 5.1) struck Adana, just 125 km northeast of the bay, while last week a quake (magnitude 5.8) was registered in Limassol on Cyprus, a similar distance from Akkuyu. Limassol is still experiencing aftershocks.

Greek scientists, using computers to simulate the spread of nuclear fall-out from an accident at a plant sited at the bay, said radioactive material could be scattered over Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Greece and Cyprus. Cyprus would be the most seriously affected, particularly in summer when strong breezes could carry away almost all the fall-out from a ruptured plant.

Although a leading Turkish nuclear scientist, Mr Tolga Yarman, warned in the Toronto Star that Akkuyu was the"wrong place" to build such a facility, the Turkish government and companies tendering for the $4 billion project are reported to be planning to go ahead without carrying out seismological tests. Canadian scientists working for Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd, the firm most likely to secure the contract, admit that tests made in 1983 by the Turkish Electricity Authority were"incomplete and inadequate in a number of areas."

Other tenders have been submitted by the French-German consortium, Nuclear Power International, and the Japanese multinational Mitsubishi, in collaboration with Westinghouse of the US.

The struggle between proponents and opponents has become a battle between a Goliath of big business, armed with money and influence, and a David represented by the environmental lobby, armed just with words.

In his article, Prof Yarman said that at this stage in its development, "Turkey is not ready for nuclear power.If it were a necessity, many more years of preparation would be required."

Other specialists also say it is not a necessity. The Akkuyu Bay plant would meet only 2 to 3 per cent of Turkey's electricity requirements, which could be met by harnessing natural gas.

Turkey has two sources of plentiful cheap gas, Iran and Turkmenistan.

I am writing to Canada regarding the proposed Nuclear Power Plant sale to Turkey.
I am wondering if there is an ongoing campaign in order to stop the sale of nuclear technology. In Canada we have mounted an aggressive campaign against it and are looking to hook up with people in the States.

Check out http://www.diaspora-net.org/nuclear
Please get back to us as soon as possible.

Thanks
Jim Karygiannis <krygnsmp@yesic.com>

Send a Fax, FREE, NOW, using this site, to the Canadian Prime Minister, and to every Canadian MP! http://www.diaspora-net.org/nuclear/emailtofax.htm

It's very easy to send a fax to the fax-machine of the Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, from anywhere in the world, for free following the next simple steps. Make sure you include your name and home address in your correspondence. If you don't, it will be disregarded.

1. Get the sample letter here. You can use the same letter, or preferably write your own. 2. Copy the sample text. Return to the previous page. 3.Send the fax. An email window will open, paste your text into the body of the message or write your own, and send it. Dont't forget your name and home address! Loading the email addresses will take a few seconds.

Your text will appear on Jean Chretien's machine for free. This email will also be sent to all Canadian MPs, and to the fax machines of Lloyd Axelworthy, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ralph Goodale, Minister of Natural Resources, and Sergio Marchi, International Trade.

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Iraq Putting Missiles Near Houses - U.S. Military

Updated 2:42 PM ET August 24, 1999, By Charles Aldinger
http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/990824/14/international-iraq-shields

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States said Tuesday that Iraq had stationed anti-aircraft missiles close to civilian houses in the northern city of Mosul as human shields against attacking planes.

It said new military reconnaissance photographs showed the missile sites were within 35 yards of civilian houses, and proved that Baghdad was willing to use civilians as human shields to protect weapons that track and fire at U.S. and British warplanes patrolling no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq.

The U.S. military's European Command made the charge in a statement from Germany, the latest volley in a sporadic, nine-month war of bombs and words with Baghdad. It also said that Iraqi anti-aircraft fire, not U.S. bombs, fell back to ground in northern Iraq Monday and killed two Iraqi civilians.

U.S. and British warplanes have regularly bombed surface-to-air missile (SAM) sites and radars in the two no-fly zones since last December when Iraq's military began challenging police overflights by the jets.

"Reconnaissance photographs taken today clearly show two fully-armed SAM launchers stationed within 35 meters of civilian homes" in Mosul, the European command said in the statement from its headquarters in Germany Tuesday.

"The placement of these SAMs in civilian populated areas is further evidence that the Iraqi military uses civilians as shields for their anti-aircraft artillery and other weapons that shoot at coalition aircraft," it said, adding that:

"While such action protects these weapons from coalition aircraft strikes -- 'Operation Northern Watch' will not strike targets where there is a potential for collateral damage -- it endangers Iraqi civilians."

Iraq, which does not recognize the no-fly zones set up by western nations to protect minorities from attack by the Iraqi military, charged Monday that two civilians had been killed by allied bombs in raids in the north.

But the European Command countered Tuesday that the deaths were caused by Iraqi artillery.

"Yesterday, Iraqi forces fired at coalition aircraft from a site in Ba'ashiqah, a town 20 miles northeast of Mosul," it said.

"Unexploded shells from this attack fell to the ground, exploded, and killed two civilians and injured another," the statement added.

It also said that the U.S. military opted not to strike the populated area where the anti-aircraft guns were fired, instead dropping precision-guided munitions on a radar site some 28 miles west of Ba'ashiqah -- the same site struck in raids on August 15 and 16.

Iraq said Tuesday it had protested to the United Nations' Commission on Human Rights against what it termed deliberate killing by Western warplanes enforcing the no-fly zones.

The official Iraqi News Agency quoted a National Assembly letter to the world body as saying that the United States and Britain were committing crimes against humanity "by bombing civilian regions."

Western planes have launched more than 110 strikes against Iraqi targets this year. Iraq reported 20 civilians killed and 10 wounded on August 17 in attacks on targets outside the no-fly zones.

Pentagon officials later confirmed that at least one military target just south of the northern no-fly zone had been attacked because it was being actively used for Iraqi air defense. But they said they had no evidence that civilians had been killed.

---

U.S. Says Iraqis Were Killed by Their Own Artillery Fire

By STEVEN LEE MYERS, New York Times, August 25, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/world/iraq-us.html

WASHINGTON -- Intensifying the war of words over civilian bombing casualties in Iraq, the Pentagon said Tuesday that Iraq's own antiaircraft artillery, not U.S. fighter jets, killed two people during a clash in northern Iraq on Monday.

The Pentagon also said reconnaissance photographs showed that Iraq had put launchers for surface-to-air missiles in residential areas in Mosul, in northern Iraq, in an effort to protect them from attack.

It is rare for Pentagon officials to disclose the extent of aerial surveillance or to provide detailed accounts of the damage caused by U.S. and British jets in Iraq.

But in recent weeks the United States has faced growing international weariness with the repeated bombing of Iraq. There was a sharp rebuke last week from the Foreign Ministry of France, which until last year had contributed aircraft to the patrols of the no flight zones where Iraqi planes are forbidden to fly.

The unusually detailed accounts, officials said, were an effort to undercut sympathy that might be building for Iraq.

The Pentagon has previously accused Iraq of using human shields to protect weapons, knowing that U.S. and British pilots operate under strict guidelines intended to avoid killing civilians. But it was the first time the Pentagon offered photographic evidence of such a tactic.

The U.S. European Command, which oversees U.S. jets patrolling northern Iraq, said the reconnaissance photographs showed two fully armed missile launchers within 115 feet of homes in Mosul.

"The placement of these SAMs in civilian populated areas is further evidence that the Iraqi military uses civilians as shields for their antiaircraft artillery and other weapons that shoot at coalition aircraft," a statement by the command said.

The command also denied that U.S. jets based in Turkey had attacked Baashiqah on Monday, killing two civilians, as Iraq had reported. Instead, the command said, Iraqi antiaircraft artillery had fired at allied jets from the town, which is 20 miles northeast of Mosul, one of the major cities in the north.

Shells from those batteries, the command said, fell to the ground, exploded and caused the two deaths and another injury.

The command did not elaborate on the source of this information.

In keeping with broad rules for responding to threats from Iraqi jets, the pilots reacted to the artillery fire not by attacking the batteries themselves but by striking a radar station near Saddam Dam. That site, 28 miles west of Baashiqah, was also the target of U.S. and British strikes on Aug. 15 and 16.

Skirmishes like the one on Monday have occurred every few days for nearly eight months, ever since President Saddam Hussein declared that the no flight zones were a violation of Iraq's sovereignty and vowed to defy the ban.

The United States and its allies defined the zones after the Persian Gulf War ended in 1991 to protect ethnic groups facing repression from Hussein's government.

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Israeli Jets Attack Edge Of South Lebanon Village

Updated 6:56 AM ET August 25, 1999
http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/990825/06/international-lebanon-israel

TYRE, Lebanon (Reuters) - Israeli warplanes Wednesday attacked the edges of a village close to Israel's south Lebanon occupation zone for the second consecutive day, a Reuters correspondent in the area said.

He said two jets fired 16 rockets at a valley near Zibqine southeast of the port city of Tyre.

The jets raided the same valley Tuesday after Hizbollah (party of God) attacked positions of Israel's proxy militia inside the 15-km (nine mile) deep zone.

There were no apparent casualties from the air attacks, almost a daily occurrence in a war of attrition waged by Hizbollah to drive out Israel from south Lebanon.

Israel, which has occupied different parts of Lebanon since 1978, set up the so-called "security zone" in 1985 saying it needed to protect its northern border.

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Pakistan Warns on Indian Nuke Policy

Wednesday, August 25, 1999; 1:22 a.m. EDT
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990825/V000902-082599-idx.html
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Pakistan-India-Nuclear.html

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Pakistan's foreign minister has warned that India's policy of nuclear deterrence guarantees a nuclear arms race in the volatile subcontinent, a state-run news agency said.

A recent draft of India's nuclear doctrine is ``inherently destabilizing and (weakens) efforts to prevent an arms race in the region,'' The Associated Press of Pakistan quoted Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz as saying on Tuesday.

On Aug. 17, India released a draft of its nuclear doctrine of ``credible deterrence'': that it would respond in kind to a nuclear strike but would not be the first to use nuclear weapons.

Pakistan immediately called the draft ``aggressive'' and the United States, which has pushed both countries to abandon nuclear weapons, said India was ``moving in the wrong direction.'' India's new government after upcoming elections must approve the draft....

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INDIA Nuclear policy a likely vote winner

Date: 19/08/99 Sydney Morning Herald By CHRISTOPHER KREMMER, Herald Correspondent in New Delhi
http://www.smh.com.au/news/9908/19/text/world1.html

India has pushed its nuclear capability to the fore ahead of the September 5 poll by issuing a draft policy doctrine under which it would deploy nuclear weapons.

The Government, which conducted five nuclear blasts last year and declared India a nuclear weapons state, believes the issue is a vote winner.

The doctrine of "retaliation only", says that nuclear weapons would not be used first against non-nuclear states which do not have alliances with countries, such as the United States, which do have nuclear capability.

"India will not resort to the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons against states which do not possess nuclear weapons, or are not aligned with nuclear weapons powers," the document says.

But Australia, Japan, South Korea, Germany and most member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation - all of which have defence treaty obligations with the US - would by implication be potential Indian targets in any nuclear exchange with the US.

In Washington, the US State Department said India was "clearly moving in the wrong direction" by trying to create a credible nuclear deterrence.

Its spokesman, Mr James Rubin, said the US opposed any Indian move to develop a nuclear deterrent because that would only create an "an action-reaction cycle that will increase the risks" to both India and Pakistan.

In Canberra, a spokesman for the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Downer, said that ever since India exploded its first nuclear device in May last year, Australia had been urging the Indian Government to sign the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

India's National Security Adviser, Mr Brajesh Mishra said it was hoped the release of the doctrine would encourage a debate on nuclear issues. "This is a draft ... it will have to wait for a new government," he said.

A victory at the polls could be used as a green light for the doctrine, which analysts said envisaged a much more ambitious nuclear arsenal than the credible, minimum deterrent the Government had previously said it required. "It's a nuclear deterrent with all the bells and whistles, but has the Government made any kind of estimate of what this will cost?" asked Dr Manoj Joshi, a respected defence analyst.

The answer, according to a member of the 27-member National Security Advisory Board, (NSAB) which drafted the document, is a blunt "no".

"We have not tried to get a cost estimate," Dr K. Subramanyam said. "What we're looking for is a nuclear doctrine which will give us a complete scenario."

The doctrine calls for "sufficient, survivable and operationally prepared nuclear forces" based on a triad of aircraft, mobile land-based missiles and sea-based assets.

The bombs would be under the control of the prime minister, or his designated successor or successors. The NSAB even envisages space-based early warning of attack, and says the security of India's nuclear devices will be enhanced by "mobility, dispersion and deception".

Disaster control systems would be developed to deal with potential accidents. "Any nuclear attack on India and its forces shall result in punitive retaliation with nuclear weapons to inflict damage unacceptable to the aggressor," the doctrine warns.

---

AN ELECTION-TIME INDISCRETION
Nuclear talkativeness

By Punyapriya Dasgupta, DECCAN HERALD Wednesday, August 25, 1999
http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/aug25/top.htm

The proclamation, last week, of a nuclear doctrine for India was little short of a fiasco. A document was released under official auspices and a commentary provided at a press conference and then it was admitted that the Government had neither approved nor even considered it at the appropriately high, that is, Cabinet level. This is not the first time that the achievement of our nuclear scientists have been sought to be misused.

BJP politicians went uncontrollably gaga after Pokhran II. A more-than-usual puffed-up Pramod Mahajan declared that India had become a ''global player``. Madan Lal Khurana, whose main interest seems to lie, usually, in promoting the interests of Delhi`s traders and contractors, asked Pakistan to choose the time and place for its next fight with India. Even Lal Krishna Advani, occupying as responsible a position as that of the Home Minister of the Indian Union, could not stop himself from advising Pakistan that a qualitative change had occurred in the geostrategic situation. The gaffes showed how some of those leading today`s India could imagine things and get carried away.

Self-delusion

Yet no lesson was learnt. The Prime Minister`s Office thought last week that it could try its skill at the self-delusory game and make Atal Behari Vajpayee and his party`s prospects of winning the elections even brighter. Brajesh Mishra, the Prime Minister`s Principal Secretary, released a document intended to impress the electorate with a claim that India had attained the capability to retaliate with sufficient weapons to inflict punishment that any nuclear aggressor would find unacceptable. Further, as a responsible power, India would never be the first to use a nuclear weapon in any conflict, nor employ it ever against a non-nuclear weapon country and the Prime Minister will decide when and where to resort to N-arms.

Nothing new

Mr Mishra, a former foreign service officer with no known expertise in matters nuclear, was unconvincing and, to make matters worse, provoked controversies his principal would have been better without. This is proved by Mr Vajpayee`s clarification at a press conference three days later that there was no change in his Government`s nuclear policy and there was nothing new in the draft doctrine that had not been said earlier. When the details are probed, the second part of the prime ministerial statement may not stand as exactly true.

But the fact remains that Mr Vajpayee was taken aback by the national and, more particularly, the strident international reaction to the so-called Indian nuclear doctrine.

In his keenness to disarm critics Mr Vajpayee went a bit too far towards the other extreme and declared his readiness to discuss India`s nuclear policy with all countries including Pakistan. This statement of the Prime Minister may create other problems. No country frames its doctrine of national defence in consultation with others or, as Mr Vajpayee seems to have implied at the least, after allaying the so-called apprensions of others. A national defence policy is not predicated on the consent of others.

How does the Vajpayee Government - or any conceivalule government in New Delhi - hope to allay the ''apprehensions`` of Pakistan or the USA ? Pakistan will never admit safety against India until Kashmir is handed over. And the USA has been saying, with unconcealed hegemonistic arrogance, that it knows better what is good for India`s defence.

Like a typical bully Washington insists, by word and deed, that in the interests of its security it will retain its nuclear arms for ever and none else except the other four ''recognised`` nuclear powers - Britain, France, Russia and China - and the unrecognised Israel, should make similar weapons for the purpose of self-defence.

The Americans go to the extent of alleging that India`s going nuclear for self-defence threatens their security. If India is firm about having nuclear weapons and formulates an appropriate defence doctrine, that can never be done by harmonising its national defence needs with American intentions or Pakistani ambitions.

What was the need for coming out with the six pages purporting to be the Vajpayee Government`s nuclear defence doctrine? It is only a draft by an advisory body, whose very composition created some doubts about its worth. The hope of passing it off as an official policy statement crumbled as soon as it was handed to the media.

Draft doctrine

It was also admitted that the draft doctrine was not a unanimous decision of the advisory board and differences of views existed. Of what good was it then? An afterthought advanced is that the document is intended to elicit public opinion. If that is so, the time chosen is wrong. A national defence philosophy should ideally be based on a national consensus and, fortunately, it may not be unattainable in a country like ours. But the state of electoral politics being what it is now, this is certainly not the time when anyone should think of seeking a national endorsement of a document written at the behest of the BJP- led Government which again, has lost the confidence of Parliament.

Something else too, equally or more disconcerting, is becoming noticeable. The draft nuclear doctrine is concerned almost wholly with the most effective ways of wielding the weapons this country has or may acquire. India has declared itself a nuclear power and is seeking international recognition as such. There is a dilution of India`s original stand that nuclear weapons are an unmitigated evil. Five years ago India strongly urged the International Court of Justice to confirm the ''generally accepted view among nations`` that the use of nuclear weapons is illegal. The draft nuclear doctrine seems to negate India`s argument before the ICJ that neither self-defence nor reprisals justified the use of N-weapons.

Total abolition

It is true that Mr Vajpayee has in his clarifications tried the shift the focus back to the need and demand for total abolition of nuclear weapons. But after India`s unprincipled behaviour on Antarctica, a loud warning is necessary. For many years India argued at the United Nations that the Antarctica should belong to all men on earth and not shared only by some technologically advanced countries operating there. Yet when it successfully established its own research station in the icy content and got a slice of the Antarctic cake India instantly forgot the rights of other not-so-lucky countries.

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Gandhi, Vajpayee Rivalry Heating

By The Associated Press, August 25, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-India-Politics.html

MADRAS, India (AP) -- The capricious queen of Indian politics targeted Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee for more than a year, throwing tantrums and reeling off demands until she finally toppled his government.

Now it seems her latest target is her newest ally: Sonia Gandhi, head of the Congress party and heir to the Nehru-Gandhi family political dynasty.

Jayaram Jayalalitha, a film star-turned-politician revered by an army of fanatic followers in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, had been scheduled to attend a much-hyped campaign rally with Mrs. Gandhi on Sunday.

Mrs. Gandhi, accompanied by her son, Rahul, waited for her ally for an hour. Jayalalitha finally telephoned to say she wouldn't make it.

Her aides say she was held up by ``a sea of humanity'' at roadside rallies. But reporters said she never left home in time for the appearance with Mrs. Gandhi in the tiny town of Villupuram, then lingered on the way.

As Jayalalitha's disappointed supporters left the rally in droves, Mrs. Gandhi delivered a hurried 30-minute speech, then flew off in a helicopter.

Local newspapers have interpreted the sleight as the beginning of a rift between Jayalalitha's party, All India Anna Dravida Munnethra Kazhagham, and Mrs. Gandhi's party before the September-October election.

Mrs. Gandhi, Congress's nominee for prime minister, is running for a parliamentary seat in the fall election and needs support from Jayalalitha's party to help her flagging campaign. She acquired Indian citizenship when her husband, assassinated Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, was running for the post.

Political journalists speculated that Jayalalitha failed to show up in response to a Congress announcement that if it came to power, it would not hinder a slew of corruption cases against Jayalalitha.

Mrs. Gandhi had appeared to defend Jayalalitha in her first formal news conference the week before, saying Vajpayee's party only accused the Tamil Nadu leader of corruption when she allied herself with Congress.

But Vajpayee, the caretaker prime minister until the elections, said Saturday in a public rally in Madras, capital of Tamil Nadu, that his refusal to drop charges against Jayalalitha was one of the reasons why she withdrew her crucial legislative support and toppled the government in April.

Jayalalitha became Vajpayee's bane after he was sworn in as prime minister in March 1998 with the help of her 18 lawmakers. At times, it seemed Jayalalitha's machinations left Vajpayee little time or energy to run the country.

``Dealing with Jayalalitha was the most painful period of my lifelong political career,'' Vajpayee said at the weekend public rally.

But Jayalalitha remains a force to be dealt with because of her strong support in Tamil Nadu, where she served five years as chief minister, the highest elected office in the state.

Building on her screen persona of a Hindu goddess, she initiated populist projects to build support among the poor. She championed women's rights and ordered that at least one-third of all officeholders in her party be women.

She lives extravagantly, traveling with a huge entourage. But reports of her fantastic dinners and royal behavior seem only to draw more admiration from her followers, many of whom are abjectly poor.

Several Congress party leaders openly oppose the alliance and were angered by Jayalalitha's apparent snub of Mrs. Gandhi.

But Tamil Nadu's Congress party president tried to downplay it. Tindivanam Ramamurthy said Jayalalitha simply ``could not make the trip,'' adding that her party ``is always late.''

Several telephone calls to Jayalalitha's offices and spokesmen were not returned.

Two of her high-ranking party members tried to make amends on Tuesday. They met Mrs. Gandhi in Madras, between campaign appearances, and handed her a bouquet of flowers from Jayalalitha.

But it was unclear whether the gesture would smooth over the shaky alliance.

``No party can ally with Jayalalitha and pretend it can get away without paying the price,'' The New Indian Express, a mass circulation newspaper, said in an editorial Tuesday.

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Kremlin link to bank fraud investigated

By Jack Kelley, USA TODAY, 8/25/99- Updated 12:20 AM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/world/nwstue09.htm

LONDON - U.S., British and Russian law enforcement officials said Tuesday that they are investigating whether members of Boris Yeltsin's government knowingly helped a Russian mafia leader launder up to $10 billion through the Bank of New York.

Investigators say some of the money might have been from loans made by the International Monetary Fund to ease Russia's economic troubles since the fall of communism in 1991.

Senior officials of Russia's Prosecutor General's Office in Moscow say they are focusing their investigation on Konstantin Kagalovsky, the husband of Natasha Kagalovsky, a senior Bank of New York executive who was suspended last week amid money-laundering allegations involving the bank.

Konstantin Kagalovsky led Russia's recent debt negotiations with the IMF and is a former senior executive at Russia's Menatep Bank. Russian officials say they have long suspected that the bank was used to launder Russian government and possibly IMF money out of the country to the Bank of New York's London office.

Kagalovsky is considered a close friend of former Russian prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin's and was expected to head Chernomyrdin's presidential campaign next year, say officials of Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Moscow.

Kagalovsky's whereabouts are unknown. Stanley Arkin, a New York defense lawyer representing Kagalovsky in the Bank of New York investigation, declined comment.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, chief of the financial empire that owns Menatep, denied from Moscow that his bank was involved in laundering money. He called the allegation "preposterous." The Bank of New York has said it is cooperating with authorities.

A possible Kremlin link may add to criticism of U.S. support of Yeltsin. The State Department declined comment.

IMF loans to Russia are a source of controversy. Critics say the IMF has failed to ensure that the money is used to help the economy. The IMF said Monday that it is investigating whether $200 million loaned to Russia was illegally diverted.

According to FBI documents reviewed by USA TODAY, Kagalovsky was also a close associate of Semyon Mogilevich, who international law enforcement officials say is a leader of Russia's largest organized-crime group. Mogilevich is responsible for much of the $10 billion laundered through the Bank of New York, senior U.S. and British law enforcement officials say.

According to FBI documents, much of the laundered money came from prostitution rings in Europe, weapons manufacturing plants in Hungary and the sale of art and jewelry that once belonged to Russia's Jewish community. The activities were controlled by Mogilevich, the documents allege.

The documents say that Mogilevich sought out Russian emigrants to Israel in Moscow in the 1980s and offered to sell their jewelry and other valuables. But Mogilevich kept the money, British officials say.

U.S. intelligence officials say they have been listening in on Mogilevich's phone calls, intercepting his e-mails and faxes and following his movements for nearly five years.

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Army To Probe Former Weapons Site

By The Associated Press, August 24, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Virgin-Islands-Chemical-Weapons.html

CHARLOTTE AMALIE, U.S. Virgin Islands (AP) -- The U.S. military may excavate land on a former chemical weapons storage site in the U.S. Virgin Islands to probe for any chemical traces, the Army Corps of Engineers said Tuesday.

Officials said the weapons were stored on Water Island, an islet off St. Thomas, from 1948 to 1950 as part of a test to see how their containers held up in a tropical environment.

The Corps of Engineers is drawing up plans to excavate parts of the island, including a section of its landfill, as part of a routine checkup on the site, said Robert Bridgers, district project manager for the Corps of Engineer's Defense Environmental Restoration Program.

The Pentagon must approve the excavation plans before digging begins, he said. No date has been set yet for the project.

None of the islands 200 residents would have to be moved for the excavation, Bridgers said.

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Argentine Candidate Proposes Scrapping Spy Service

Updated 3:04 AM ET August 25, 1999
http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/990825/03/international-argentina-spies

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - The presidential candidate of Argentina's ruling Peronist party proposed Tuesday scrapping the nation's spy service, known as a tool of repression during Argentine military dictatorships.

"I think it's a dispensable agency," Peronist contender Eduardo Duhalde told reporters when asked his opinion on Argentina's State Intelligence Department (SIDE).

"It's an agency that's lived through military governments and civilian governments, gathering more and more staff. They're agencies that are difficult to control, and it seems to me that scrapping them must be seriously considered," Duhalde said after speaking during a panel presentation on corruption.

He said SIDE's functions could be distributed between the police and other "official agencies," which he did not identify.

The SIDE is burned into Argentina's memory as one of the means of repression and persecution used during the military dictatorship of 1976-83, when between 15,000 and 30,000 people were "disappeared," or killed.

The SIDE recently came under renewed public scrutiny during the trial of a former agent who closed an electric gate at a spy center, killing an elderly woman.

A court in July sentenced the former SIDE agent to 10 years in prison for deliberately closing the electric gate at the National Intelligence School in February 1998, apparently out of exasperation at the woman's habit of feeding cats.

Recent opinion polls show opposition Alliance candidate Fernando de la Rua ahead of Duhalde by about 10 percentage points in the campaign for the Oct. 24 presidential election.