* Tony Auth cartoon, "Happy New Year" Chernobyl
* Chernobyl plant to reach 100% of output
* Chernobyl Plant To Reach Full Output
* Mir Space Station Is Y2K Compliant
* Greenpeace: Bhopal site still contaminated
* Sweden Told To Shut Down Nuke Plant
* Puerto Rico Nuke Museum Said Safe
* Pakistan Not Ready for Y2K Bug
* China deploys new missiles
* U.S.: North Korea Fearful of West
* Back Channels: The Intelligence Community
Congress Restricts Support for Diplomats
* Trump Talks Bluntly on Foreign Policy
* Hanford burial sites scrutinized
* Huge robot to cut up Rocky Flats gloveboxes
* N.M. Nuke Waste Shipments Suspended
* Cloak Over the CIA Budget
* Special Report High-flying troubles for F-16s
* Limited missions cited as reason other nations fare better
* Israeli Warplanes Attack S. Lebanon
* Trade meeting begins after security delay
* Disruptive Trade Pact Temblors

-------- ukraine

Tony Auth cartoon, "Happy New Year" Chernobyl

http://www2.uclick.com/feature/1999/11/28/ta.gif http://www2.uclick.com/client/nyt/ta/
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/editorial/

---

Chernobyl plant to reach 100% of output

USA Today 11/29/99
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/nw1.htm#yeltsin

KIEV, Ukraine - Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear power plant was set to reach its full operating output Monday, three days after authorities restarted it. Chernobyl operators launched the second turbo-alternator of the plant's only working reactor Monday, and it was expected to reach 100% of its electrical capacity by afternoon, officials said. The No. 3 reactor was shut down July 1 for planned repairs. Chernobyl officials insist the reactor is safe. But Western governments and environmental groups have urged the former Soviet republic to shut down the plant completely since reactor No. 4 exploded in 1986, sending a radioactive cloud over much of Europe. That reactor is now covered by a steel-and-concrete sarcophagus, which itself is undergoing repairs.

---

Chernobyl Plant To Reach Full Output

New York Times November 29, 1999 Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Ukraine-Chernobyl.html

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear power plant was set to reach its full operating output Monday, three days after authorities restarted it in the face of international criticism.

Chernobyl plant operators launched the second turbo-alternator of the plant's only working reactor Monday. The reactor was expected to hit 100 percent of its electrical capacity by Monday afternoon, officials said.

The No. 3 reactor was shut down for planned repairs on July 1 and was restarted Friday at 5 percent of capacity.

Chernobyl officials insist the reactor is safe.

Western governments and environmental groups have urged the former Soviet republic to shut down the plant completely since reactor No. 4 exploded in 1986, sending a radioactive cloud over much of Europe. That reactor is now covered by a steel-and-concrete sarcophagus that is currently undergoing repairs.

A 1995 agreement between Ukraine and the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations said the plant should be closed by the year 2000.

But Ukraine has said it doesn't have the $1.2 billion needed to finish construction of two new reactors to replace the output that would be lost by closing Chernobyl.

The government has said it plans to shut down the nuclear power plant at an unspecified time next year and has called on the West to provide the necessary funds.

-------- russia

Mir Space Station Is Y2K Compliant

New York Times November 29, 1999 Filed at 4:48 p.m. EDT By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Russia-Mir-Y2K.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- A Russian space official said that the 13-year-old Mir orbital station would not suffer any computer failures from the Y2K bug, ITAR-Tass news agency reported Monday.

The station has been slated to be discarded and pitched into the Pacific Ocean sometime next year, after its last full-time crew abandons the 140-ton craft in August.

Even in normal years, the station has suffered serious accidents, including a fire, a collision and a malfunction that sent it spinning.

But the year 2000 computer glitch will not bring it down early, Russian Space Agency spokesman Sergei Gorbunov said.

He said mission control engineers, known for their ability to keep the ship aloft through catastrophes, were not expecting any millennial malfunctions, which have been anticipated in computers that mistake the year 2000 for 1900.

The computer systems used to guide the Mir station as it zips around the world every 90 minutes have undergone several upgrades since the core module was launched in 1986.

Meanwhile, the chief of Russia's Strategic Rocket Forces, which controls the country's ballistic missile fleet, said his agency was ``nearing completion'' on Y2K compliance. Gen. Vladimir Yakovlev said the work would be done by December.

Russia has been far behind other countries in preparing for possible Y2K problems. But the U.S. military has been working with Russian officials to ensure that the computer bug does not threaten Russia's nuclear missile systems, and has said it does not expect serious malfunctions on Dec. 31.

-------- india

Greenpeace: Bhopal site still contaminated

USA Today 11/29/99
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/nw1.htm

BOMBAY, India - Toxic chemicals are still poisoning soil and water near the site of the world's worst industrial disaster 15 years after it claimed at least 7,000 lives, the environmental group Greenpeace said Monday. The former Union Carbide plant, which manufactured pesticide, was shut down after a gas leak Dec. 2, 1984. The Greenpeace report says water samples collected from the Bhopal site contains carbon tetrachloride, a chemical suspected to cause cancer, which exceeded limits set by the World Health Organization by 1,705 times. Despite warning signs not to use wells near the site, residents use the water for drinking and washing. Union Carbide paid $470 million as part of an out-of-court settlement in 1989.

-------- sweden

Sweden Told To Shut Down Nuke Plant

New York Times November 29, 1999 By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Sweden-Nuclear-Power.html

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) -- The Supreme Court ruled Monday that one of the country's oldest nuclear reactors must be shut down this week, forcing Sweden to take the first step in its long-delayed move away from nuclear power.

The Barsebaeck plant, owned by Sydkraft AB, was supposed to go off-line last July, but years of legal battles have kept the reactor running.

The ruling gives Sydkraft until midnight Tuesday to shut down the reactor, which began operating in 1975. It will be the first closure since Swedes voted in a 1980 referendum to gradually stop using nuclear power.

The court on Monday denied Sydkraft's final appeal to postpone the shutdown pending a decision by the European Commission, which the company had asked to review the case.

Following the court's decision, officials at the Barsebaeck plant said they would begin draining power from the 600-megawatt reactor Tuesday afternoon.

``You have to press the button in the afternoon to go zero (by midnight),'' said Stieg Claesson, a Sydkraft spokesman.

The other reactor at Barsebaeck, located 25 miles east of Copenhagen, Denmark, was scheduled to be turned off by 2001.

Sweden's remaining 10 reactors were to be closed by 2010, but politicians in 1997 abandoned that deadline, saying the closures would happen when replacement electricity had been arranged.

Twelve nuclear reactors generate about half of the Scandinavian country's electricity, with hydroelectric plants, windmills, solar panels and alternative sources providing the rest.

Consumers, including energy-intensive industries like lumber and newspaper companies, worried that closing nuclear plants would result in higher power costs.

``Now we'll have to import electricity from other countries, especially Denmark, which uses coal,'' Claesson said. ``So it will have a negative environmental impact.''

Government officials and environmentalists have argued, though, that Sweden had a surplus of electricity. They said plans to replace the plants with alternative sources were already in the works.

Environmental activists applauded the court's decision, and said they planned to be at the site Tuesday to cheer the closure.

``The main point is that there are plenty of alternative sources of energy which exist now,'' Dima Litvinov of Greenpeace said.

-------- puerto rico

Puerto Rico Nuke Museum Said Safe

New York Times November 29, 1999 Filed at 2:25 a.m. EDT By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Puerto-Rico-Nuke-Museum.html

RINCON, Puerto Rico (AP) -- Puerto Rico's first museum devoted to nuclear energy is too hot for some: It's inside an old reactor dome, parts of which are still radioactive.

For more than 30 years, the pale green dome has stood off-limits to the public, an incongruity nestled amid palm trees and surfing beaches. To residents, the shuttered U.S. government-run plant was a perplexing symbol of the secrets of the nuclear age.

Puerto Rico state power officials hope to change all that. They predict their museum, once it opens early next year, will draw 100,000 visitors annually to Rincon, a mecca for surfers and winter tourists on Puerto Rico's west coast. They insist there's no safety threat -- but have yet to win over ecologists.

``We want to prove we have nothing to hide'' by opening the museum to the public, said Angel Luis Rivera, the project's supervisor.

The dome once housed an experimental reactor known as Bonus, for Boiling Nuclear Superheater. It operated from 1964 to 1968, when it was shut down because it couldn't produce energy cheaply enough.

Rumors swirled about the 16-megawatt reactor, Latin America's first. Over the years, residents and local press reports suggested that a radiation leak forced the shutdown. Fishermen delivered tales of giant lobsters and crabs lurking offshore.

But now, with routine inspections planned by U.S. officials, they say they feel comfortable opening the facility to the public.

Rivera, chief of the power company's environmental division, said museum workers will be exposed to 10.6 millirems of radiation a year -- an amount only slightly stronger than a single chest X-ray. He insisted visitors will be exposed to five times less radiation than federal standards allow, about the same as standing outside in the tropical sun.

That hasn't eased popular suspicions about the dome, parts of which are still contaminated by cesium-137 -- a radioactive material that was a byproduct of the reactor process -- and will be off-limits to museum-goers. Parts of Bonus' basement also register slightly higher levels of radioactivity but are closed to the public.

Sandra Rios of the Rincon Ecology League insisted the public needs more assurances before the museum is opened.

``We're not being exposed to cesium-137 on a sunny day,'' she said.

The League worries that Puerto Rico's power company, which has allocated $500,000 to the project, won't properly maintain the facility to ensure against potential perils. It cites the company's track record of frequent power outages, and notes that the museum's scheduled opening last year was delayed because Hurricane Georges flooded it.

When Bonus closed, federal workers dismantled the reactor and shipped most contaminated equipment back to the U.S. mainland. They entombed radioactive pipes inside a 3-story-tall concrete monolith within the dome. Designed to outlast the pipes' 140-year danger period, the monolith should withstand the occasional earthquakes that rock the island's west coast, said Mildred Lopez Ferre of the U.S. Energy Department.

Lopez Ferre said she hopes the museum will ease local fears spawned in the '60s.

``No one told them what happened there,'' she said. ``To be able to go inside and see what is in there will be very educational.''

-------- pakistan

Pakistan Not Ready for Y2K Bug

New York Times November 29, 1999 By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Y2K-Pakistan.html

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Pakistan is not prepared for the millennium computer bug and could face a severe disruption of vital services, the head of the country's Y2K team warned Monday.

Ijaz Khawaja said none of Pakistan's airports have fully converted their equipment and computers to guarantee a smooth transition when computer clocks turn from 1999 to 2000.

Moreover, the power grid in Pakistan's largest city and life-sustaining devices at most hospitals could fail.

``First we had no money. Then we found the money, but we had no people. And now if you could give me all the money and all the people, we don't have enough time,'' Khawaja told The Associated Press.

International analysts generally classify Pakistan among the bulk of developing countries in terms of Y2K readiness -- with a moderate risk of serious disruption of unforeseeable scope and duration.

But Pakistan's situation is in one sense singular: It has just been jolted by a military coup.

Pakistan's Y2K preparation was painfully slow under Premier Nawaz Sharif's tenure. When the military deposed him and took control on Oct. 12, all Y2K efforts froze, Khawaja said.

He said the nation's financial institutions, telecommunications and rail system are Y2K compliant. And the Civil Aviation Authority promises the airports will be ready by the end of the first week in December.

``But that doesn't give much time for testing, and we're still not sure that they will be able to meet that deadline,'' he said. The airports have missed every deadline so far, beginning with a Sept. 30 deadline when airports worldwide were to be Y2K compliant.

The national carrier, Pakistan International Airlines, may ground all its flights from 6 p.m. Dec. 31 until noon on Jan. 1, Khawaja said.

``Aviation is an area of very grave concern to us,'' he said.

Elsewhere, the Karachi Electric Company has been unable to fix one of its main generating stations to ensure it won't have problems. The company supplies electricity to Karachi, the industrial and manufacturing heart of Pakistan and the home to 14 million people. The problem could black out the entire city, Khawaja said.

The contingency plan is to supply Karachi from the national power grid. There is enough surplus electricity available, but Khawaja said the request will have to be made well before Dec. 31.

Much of the equipment in government-run hospitals is not threatened by the millennium bug because it does not contain computer chips. But some is at risk, and ``much of that equipment is life-sustaining,'' Khawaja said.

``We're telling hospitals to make alternate arrangements now if they have equipment about which they are not sure,'' he said.

Khawaja said his team received full assurances from the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission that Pakistan's one nuclear power plant is ready for Y2K.

But there was no information from the defense establishment in Pakistan, which last year declared itself a nuclear-weapons state.

``The defense people don't talk,'' said Khawaja. ``But the message we are getting is that they are ready and that they have taken care of everything.''

-------- china

China deploys new missiles

Washington Times November 29 - December 5, 1999 -- Edition By Bill Gertz
http://www.americasnewspaper.com/stories/top.html

China is expanding a missile base across from Taiwan where nearly 100 of Beijing's newest short-range missile systems will be deployed, increasing the threat to the island.

Construction at the People's Liberation Army (PLA) missile base at Yangang, some 275 miles from Taiwan, was photographed by U.S. spy satellites in mid-October, according to Clinton administration officials familiar with intelligence reports on the activity.

The officials said the construction is being carried out for the planned deployment of a brigade of advanced CSS-7 missiles -- also known as advanced M-11s, officials told The Washington Times. A Chinese missile brigade is estimated to have 16 launchers and up to 96 missiles.

U.S. intelligence agencies expect the missiles deployed at the base to be the new CSS-7 Mod 2, which can carry several different types of warheads up to about 300 miles. The new missile was shown publicly for the first time Oct. 1 at the Communist Party's celebration in Beijing of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China.

The missiles can be armed with small nuclear warheads. China has obtained small-warhead technology from the United States through espionage.

According to Pentagon officials, the longer-range version of the CSS-7 is solid-fueled and deployed on road-mobile truck launchers, making them rapid-fire systems that are very hard to detect and track.

Pentagon officials said the new CSS-7s will be armed with conventional high-explosive warheads and have other high-tech payloads available.

Alternative conventional warheads are expected to include cluster bombs -- warheads containing numerous bomblets; deep-penetrating warheads for use against concrete facilities; and exotic electromagnetic-pulse warheads that disrupt electronic devices ranging from cars to computers with a burst of energy similar to that produced in a nuclear blast.

The Chinese also have developed fuel-air explosives for the new missiles. Fuel-air explosives are high-explosive bombs that can destroy large areas, like airfields.

Adm. Dennis Blair, commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, said in an interview earlier in November that the Chinese missile buildup is driving the United States to help Taiwan develop advanced missile defenses.

U.S. support for joint missile defense is allowed under the Taiwan Relations Act, which allows the United States to provide the island with adequate defenses against Chinese invasion.

"We're talking about a balance here," the admiral said earlier in November. "And a count of 500 or 600 [missiles] to very few defenses doesn't seem like a very good balance," he said.

U.S. talks with Taiwan on building missile defenses are "related to the fact that [the Chinese] have an extensive missile-building program going on their side of the Taiwan Strait."

If China does not want Taiwan to have missile defenses, the Chinese should not go ahead with the buildup, he said.

According to a recent Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report, China is building up its short-range missile forces near Taiwan from a few hundred now to as many as 650 by 2005.

The DIA said China produced 150 M-9 and M-11 missiles last year, and most are deployed in units stationed along the Chinese coastline near Taiwan. It said this year China is expected to field a total of 200 missiles and will add some 50 missiles a year.

A second Pentagon report to Congress released earlier this year stated that "in an armed conflict with Taiwan, China's short-range ballistic missiles likely would target air defense installations, naval bases, [command-and-control] nodes and logistics facilities."

"The PLA will continue to field large numbers of increasingly accurate, short-range ballistic missiles and introduce land-attack cruise missiles into its inventory," the report stated.

Still a third Pentagon report said the Chinese buildup will produce "a large arsenal of highly accurate and lethal theater missiles" that represent a "revolutionary departure" from past Chinese military deployments near Taiwan.

In past years, China did not have large forces deployed near Taiwan. Tensions between China and Taiwan increased last summer when Taiwan's President Lee Teng-hui talked about "state-to-state" dialogue with Beijing -- remarks viewed by Beijing as promoting independence.

The missiles are both a psychological weapon and a power-projection threat, the third report said.

"The focus on Taiwan may reflect a view within the People's Liberation Army that force eventually may have to be used," the report said.

A U.S. government official who is an expert on the Chinese military said the Clinton administration has tried to ignore Beijing's missile buildup.

"Both Beijing and the State Department are in agreement that Taiwan does not deserve adequate missile defenses while both are also in agreement that the U.S. and Taiwan should ignore Beijing's blossoming ballistic missiles," the official said.

A State Department spokesman in February sought to play down reports of the missile buildup.

"Reports that suggest that there has been a sudden new deployment are wrong," said James Foley, a department spokesman. "As part of its military modernization, China has been deploying missiles for some time."

-------- korea

U.S.: North Korea Fearful of West

New York Times November 29, 1999 Filed at 5:18 p.m. EDT By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-US-North-Korea.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- North Korea fears that normalized relations with the United States would expose its people to Western ideas and threaten the communist government's control, President Clinton's envoy said Monday.

``I told the president I cannot predict a happy outcome from this,'' William J. Perry said in a speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

In September, Clinton lifted trade, banking and other sanctions that had been in place against North Korea for decades. In exchange, North Korea promised not to test missiles during talks to normalize relations.

The United States hopes the talks will lead to agreement by North Korea to stop production, export, testing and deployment of missiles with a range over 300 kilometers, or about 190 miles. In return, Perry said, North Korea might get improved relations not only with the United States but also with Japan and South Korea.

``One reason I have to be doubtful that they will want to seize this opportunity is because this great benefit from normalization also has, as they see it, a threat tied to it,'' Perry said.

``It's the threat of having Western businessmen in their country and destroying the insularity. They see that as a double-edged sword.''

Kim Jong Il's authoritarian communist government tightly controls North Korea's exposure to outside influences. ``All they hear from the time they are 2 years old and on is what the government wants them to hear,'' Perry said.

He said relief workers ``report no general dissatisfaction'' in the North despite U.S. estimates that famine has killed 2 million North Koreans in this decade.

International officials have said North Korean farm mismanagement and the collapse of the former Soviet Union have caused food shortages for years. But when it asked for international help in 1995, the North Korean government blamed the famine on flooding.

Yet ``the conditions for a popular revolt do not exist in that country, even though the deprivation is widespread,'' he said.

Perry called North Korea ``an armed camp'' and said the United States should make no changes to its military stance on the divided Korean peninsula while talks are unfinished.

The two Koreas remain technically at war because no peace treaty was signed at the end of the 1950-53 Korean conflict. Their border is the world's most heavily militarized, and 37,000 U.S. troops are stationed below the dividing line to help maintain peace.

Perry, a former secretary of defense, said he's ``confident that pursuing talks with North Korea seriously and creatively is a good idea.''

``But I cannot be confident that this process will actually lead to a peaceful peninsula,'' he said. ``Therefore the United States should keep its powder dry. We should make no reduction in military readiness during the course of these talks.''

``Having said that,'' Perry said, ``I am hopeful these talks will lead to normalization and will create an environment that after years of war will finally allow Korea to be stable, ... prosperous.''

-------- us nuc weapons

Back Channels: The Intelligence Community
Congress Restricts Support for Diplomats

November 29, 1999; Page A21, By Vernon Loeb and Walter Pincus Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-11/29/072l-112999-idx.html

Is the CIA too focused these days on supporting the military?

For those in diplomatic circles and on Capitol Hill who think the answer is yes, a new legal restriction on intelligence support for State Department officials underscores a growing contention that military commanders do well and diplomats make do.

The restriction, inserted into the fiscal 2000 intelligence authorization act passed last week, prohibits U.S. diplomats from creating Diplomatic Intelligence Support Centers (DISCs)--formed with personnel from the CIA, National Security Agency and other intelligence organizations--without approval of the director of central intelligence.

A DISC was set up in Sarajevo to handle the Bosnia crisis and worked well. But House-Senate negotiators added the language in conference after a State Department official tried to establish another such center earlier this year in Kosovo over the CIA's objection, even though identical National Intelligence Support Teams (NISTs) are automatically created for Pentagon theater commanders in crisis situations.

State's logic: Diplomacy requires the same intelligence support as a military command in peacekeeping operations. But conferees had little love for State's demand for intelligence help and wrote in their report that creation of such diplomatic support teams is "unwise." They suggested State deploy analysts from its Bureau of Intelligence and Research when needed.

A senior State Department official said Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet is trying to balance diplomatic and military needs. "But DISC vs. NIST is a good example of the difference," the official said. "It doesn't seem to be one size fits all."

An intelligence official denied there was any CIA tilt toward the military. "The DCI has got a very good working relationship with the secretary of state and the secretary of defense," the official said.

MOYNIHAN'S CALL: In an item last week on whether the CIA really missed calling the fall of the Soviet Union, intelligence historian Jeffrey Richelson opined that agency analysts had actually performed well. He blamed Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), the CIA's most vociferous critic, for spreading the erroneous notion that Langley blew it on the U.S.S.R.

Richelson's remarks came as CIA officials declassified 24 high-level intelligence estimates written from 1988 to 1991 showing that agency analysts had indeed foreseen economic and political upheaval in the Soviet Union.

Moynihan responded with an analysis he wrote for Newsweek in November 1979, six years before Gorbachev came to power. Moynihan's call:

"The Soviet empire is coming under tremendous strain. It could blow up. . . . Since 1920 the Communists have rather encouraged ethnic culture, while ruthlessly suppressing ethnic politics. It won't work."

WIZARD OF OZ: House intelligence committee Chairman Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) promises an assessment within four weeks on counterintelligence lapses in the government's Chinese espionage investigation.

The probe by FBI agents and former Department of Energy intelligence chief Notra Trulock came to focus on Wen Ho Lee, a Chinese American physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, despite an absence of evidence tying either Lee or the lab to classified warhead information apparently stolen by Chinese spies.

Goss said the panel's report will review all possible sources of the leaked data, including defense contractors. Goss, a former CIA operations officer, compared the Los Alamos probe to the "Wizard of Oz." Said Goss: "We went down the Golden Brick path, pulled back the curtain--and there's nothing there."

ANOTHER TAKE ON CHINA: Paul H.B. Godwin, an expert on China's defense and security policies recently retired from the National War College, offered his own assessment of Chinese espionage in the journal Current History, taking sharp exception to conclusions drawn in May by a House select committee chaired by Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Calif.):

"China's theft of the W-88 design characteristics used for the [U.S.] Navy's Trident II missile warhead . . . does not allow its engineers to reconstruct the thousands of parts and electronic components that form the completed weapon," Godwin writes. "Even the computer codes China is said to have obtained are mathematical models . . . which cannot be used to design and manufacture a warhead. Chinese engineers may well have obtained some useful information, but they lack the data and experience required to design and build replicas of the sophisticated W-88 using the stolen information."

Vernon Loeb's e-mail is loebv@washpost.com; Walter Pincus's e-mail is pincusw@washpost.com

---

Trump Talks Bluntly on Foreign Policy

Washington Post Monday, November 29, 1999; Page A04 Associated Press
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-11/29/081l-112999-idx.html http://www.pioneerplanet.com/seven-days/2/news/docs/020572.htm
http://www.spokane.net/news-story-body.asp?Date=112999&ID=s713316&cat=

Donald Trump said yesterday he would not rule out a U.S. military first strike to stem North Korea's missile production.

The potential Reform Party presidential candidate also called Russian President Boris Yeltsin "a disaster."

In a wide-ranging interview that touched on Trump's views about U.S. foreign policy and his own prospects for the presidency, he said on CNN's "Late Edition" that he will decide soon whether to run.

Trump said Patrick J. Buchanan has "no hope" of winning the presidency, and he predicted that Buchanan's Reform Party campaign would attract enough Republicans to let Democrats win the election.

Trump said he supports amending the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and negotiating with North Korea because the United States needs a missile-defense shield.

Asked whether he would rule out a military strike against North Korea, such as Israel's attack in 1981 to halt the completion of a nuclear reactor in Iraq, Trump said, "You can never rule it out."

"What Israel did was fantastic," Trump said. If such a strike were ruled out, he said, North Korea would have no reason to talk.

Trump complained that Russia is "out of control" with a leader who is "a disaster." He said U.S. aid "would probably stop if it were me, until they straightened out their act." He contends Russia is using the aid "on developing more nuclear" weapons.

He said that he would probably decide by February whether to run for the Reform Party nomination and that if he did he would spend close to $100 million of his own money on a presidential campaign.

Trump, a billionaire, also said he never took drugs, drank alcohol or coffee, or smoked cigarettes.

-------- us nuc weapons facilities

Hanford burial sites scrutinized

Spokesman Review November 29, 1999 Associated Press
http://www.spokane.net/news-story-body.asp?Date=112999&ID=s713368&cat=

RICHLAND -- Two sites that contained buried radioactive wastes from nuclear fuel tests at Hanford's 300 Area are being studied as cleanup continues at the former nuclear weapons production site.

The two major burial sites in the southeastern portion of the nuclear reservation will cost an estimated $362 million to clean up, with work expected to begin in 2010.

Plans for removing those wastes are about to go public, beginning with a Department of Energy report due out any day that evaluates the situation and possible solutions. The report will go to the Environmental Protection Agency.

The radioactive wastes in the two sites pose two fundamental risks: They could, under certain circumstances, release bursts of radiation or radioactive particles.

The two sites are part of a major chunk of southeastern Hanford dubbed "Operable Unit FF-2," a designation covering roughly 50 solid waste disposal sites around the 300 Area.

From 1953 to 1967, radioactive wastes from nuclear fuel tests and other 300 Area experiments -- including plutonium, strontium and cesium -- were buried there.

The two sites contain materials so radioactive they can only be dug up and moved with remote-control equipment. Cleanup is expected to cost more than $360 million.

---

Huge robot to cut up Rocky Flats gloveboxes

By Berny Morson Denver Rocky Mountain News Staff, November 29, 1999
http://insidedenver.com/news/1129robt7.shtml

The company cleaning up Rocky Flats plans to feed the most contaminated tools and equipment to a robot the size of a small house.

The $7 million robot -- or "remote operated tool" in engineering jargon -- will cut up large gloveboxes and heavy-machine tools with a torch and put the pieces in barrels.

"The primary idea is to keep the worker away from the tooling and away from the hazardous environment," said Randall Walker, a division manager for Kaiser-Hill Co., the firm hired to manage cleanup at the defunct nuclear weapons plant.

Even wearing protective suits and respirators, cutting up contaminated equipment is hazardous. Twice in the past 18 months, workers have stuck themselves through the protective clothing with contaminated tools, in effect injecting plutonium into their blood.

The robot has been under discussion for about three years, and design work is more than half complete. Kaiser-Hill officials hope it will begin eating contaminated gloveboxes and heavy-machine tools in September.

The robot will be a stainless-steel room the size of a small one-story house -- 20 feet wide by 60 feet long and 15 feet high.

A conveyor belt will move the contaminated equipment inside. Workers will watch on monitors as gloveboxes the size of pickup trucks are reduced to radioactive scrap metal and placed in drums.

Except for maintenance and repairs, workers will never go inside. Orders will be issued from a control panel.

The machine is being designed by Maryland-based Oceaneering International Inc., the company that designed many of the tools used to repair the Hubble Space Telescope.

"All we work in is extreme environments, under the ocean or thousands of miles in space," said John Propeck, Oceaneering's manager of advanced systems.

The machine will be equipped with airlocks and ventilation systems to keep plutonium from escaping.

In addition to being safer, the robot will work faster than humans. It will be able to dismantle one glovebox a day, compared to two or three a week for human workers, Walker said.

-------- us nuc waste

N.M. Nuke Waste Shipments Suspended

New York Times / Associated Press, November 29, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-WIPP-Permit.html

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) -- The federal government has suspended shipments of nuclear waste to the nation's first repository of such material until waste-generating weapons sites can prove what is in their barrels.

The shipments were stopped because of a state permit for the waste that went into effect Friday. Environmentalists and the Department of Energy have challenged the permit.

New Mexico has no authority over shipments of solely radioactive waste, but does have jurisdiction over waste that has both radioactive and chemical components.

The long-awaited permit eventually would let the DOE's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad receive shipments of radioactive waste that also contain hazardous chemicals.

All shipments to WIPP will stop for now, however.

After two decades of planning, WIPP opened in late March without the state permit. The DOE has been sending shipments of purely radioactive waste in the meantime, most from Los Alamos National Laboratory, but a couple from the Rocky Flats site near Denver and a federal lab in Idaho.

An exact count of shipments already sent to WIPP, and the number that would be postponed, wasn't available.

The DOE must audit each site that generates waste and submit a report to the state Environment Department. Officials will review the audits to ensure each site complies with the permit's waste analysis requirements, Nathan Wade, a spokesman for the Environment Department, said Monday.

It will take several weeks for the DOE to write the reports and the state to review them, Wade said.

-------- cia

Cloak Over the CIA Budget

Washington Post Monday, November 29, 1999; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-11/29/002l-112999-idx.html

U.S. DISTRICT Judge Thomas Hogan has thrown out a lawsuit that sought to compel the government to tell the public how much it spent on intelligence in fiscal year 1999. The government had released the intelligence budgets for two previous years. Yet by this year, when Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists requested it, the figure once again had become sensitive. The CIA vigorously contested Mr. Aftergood's Freedom of Information Act suit to force its release. That the agency now has won does not make its position any more defensible.

The aggregate intelligence budget is something of an open secret, which alone devalues the contention that it needs to be even nominally secret. While he was director of central intelligence, John Deutch said publicly that President Clinton did not believe its disclosure would harm the intelligence community. Moreover, in 1996 the bipartisan Commission on the Roles and Capabilities of the U.S. Intelligence Community suggested that both the administration's budget request and the actual appropriated figures should be made public each year.

Yet the CIA now contends -- and persuaded Judge Hogan -- that none of this is relevant. The agency argued that disclosure of the figure for a third year in a row, as Judge Hogan put it, "provides too much trend information and too great a basis for comparison and analysis for our adversaries."

As a reflection of trends in intelligence, aggregate expenditures -- which are measured in the tens of billions of dollars -- seem crude. Especially when compared with a recent speech given at Georgetown University by CIA director George Tenet -- who discussed the agency's aspirations for recruitment and improving its capabilities -- the overall budget numbers seem quite benign. And whatever minor risk the CIA may imagine must be weighed against the obvious benefit of some accountability.

It simply cannot be that the same figures can sensibly be unclassified one year and classified the next. For the CIA to claim they can is to invite public doubt about its other assessments of what does and does not need to be kept secret.

-------- us military

Special Report High-flying troubles for F-16s

Washington Times 5am - November 29, 1999, By Frank J. Murray Washington Times
http://www.newslibrary.com/download.asp?DBLIST=wt99&DOCNUM=25963
f-16

The Air Force has spent more than $50 billion buying front-line F-16 jet fighters since 1975. But six million flying hours later, the service and the manufacturers still have not fixed all the myriad and deadly problems that plague the fighter.

In the year that ended Sept. 30, for example, 15 F-16s crashed in noncombat operations. Ten of those crashes were blamed on engine failure, making it the worst year yet for engine problems on F-16s. Two pilots died, and the cost of each crash is calculated at $20 million.

Insiders now consider it certain that an F-16 will be destroyed in a noncombat crash every 20,000 flight hours, a dismal safety record that the Air Force and the manufacturers have failed to improve. An investigation by The Washington Times reveals that a tight little universe of military and corporate management prevents the public and Congress from knowing who, if anyone, is being held responsible for the woes of the F-16.

So the crashes, the pilot deaths -- and the rising costs to the taxpayer continue -- usually out of the sight of the public and the media.

This sense of inevitability was underscored by Col. Michael Haugen, commander of the 119th Fighter Wing at Fargo, N.D., when his F-16 unit was honored for the "phenomenal achievement" of flying more than 40,000 hours without a "Class A mishap" -- one in which someone dies or damage exceeds $1 million.

"Statistically, an average F-16 unit would have had two crashes by this time," Col. Haugen said of setting the safety record for a plane that is so vulnerable when its single engine fails.

Air Force figures indicate that, historically, half of all military crashes are "pilot-induced." But investigative reports obtained by The Washington Times under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) show that most recent F-16 crashes were traced to mechanical flaws that went unnoticed during inspections, including parts that failed prematurely or were not installed.

The Times also found that institutional accountability is rare, thanks to a system of secrecy, immunity from lawsuits for the government and manufacturers, the absence of outside investigators and limits on FOIA disclosure.

What disciplinary action there is takes the form of letters to the personnel file of an individual who is not identified publicly.

"The big thing we have to do right now is focus on why our F-16s are going down. For the most part, it's engines," Air Force Chief of Staff Gen.

Mike Ryan told a trade press reporter in February at the height of the year's losses. "Many of our engines have reliability and maintainability issues."

Pilot Error or Engine Failure?

Brig. Gen. Mark Welsh, commandant of cadets at the Air Force Academy, recently talked about the difficulty of informing family members when one of his squadron's F-16 pilots died at the bottom of "a smoking hole" in the desert.

"I won't forget those phone calls," Gen. Welsh said. "And I won't forget sitting here looking at this airplane with the helmet with [his] name on the visor cover, his name on the canopy, and his spare G-suit hanging under the wing with his crew chief saluting the jet, while bagpipes -- the bagpipe tape of 'Amazing Grace' -- played in the background and every fighter pilot on base had these big stupid sunglasses on so nobody would know that they were bawling their eyes out."

The Air Force always looks closely at whether pilots did all they could to recover control and has not said in public reports whether some are ejecting at the first signs of trouble from planes that might have been saved.

Air Force officials caution that there is inherent danger in flying a relatively tiny plane with a 32-foot wingspan whose fuselage is all engine. When loaded with missiles, fuel and 20 mm ammunition for its 100-shot-per-second Gatling guns, it weighs nearly as much as a small tank.

They point to crashes during military maneuvers that are well over twice the speed of sound that disorient a pilot or cause loss of consciousness from extreme gravitational forces, wingtip-to-wingtip flying or low-level practice attacks. Those almost always rank as pilot error.

Some accidents involved rarer factors, such as a jet hitting a flock of pelicans over Nebraska, two wild pigs grazing on a Florida airport, carelessness during flights to photograph air formations, and even the wiggling and unbuckling pilots do to urinate into spongy "piddle-packs" during long trips in the cramped cockpit.

In one case, the ranks still buzz over the F-16's flight data recorder that showed its pilot took a craft advertised to operate at 50,000 feet or so to astonishing stratospheric levels above 75,000 feet. Once there, the engine quit for lack of oxygen and the plane stalled in the rarefied air.

But investigation reports show the most common current problems are:

Failure of turbine blades from metallurgical stress undetected by periodic inspections. The jet engine destroys itself when either blades in the turbines or stator vanes fail in flight.

Failure of compressor discharge pressure seals, which causes the powerful engine to seize up and quit. In at least two cases, pilots couldn't correct oil-starvation while flying upside down because the switch for the manual pitch override on the left side of the control panel is too far away to reach without "body twist or lean."

Computer errors that cause the digital engine control system to misinterpret high revolutions from a worn generator shaft as an engine racing, leading the computer to reduce power. The computer quickly detects the mistake and adds fuel. But when power is lost during a takeoff roll, even the most experienced pilot ejects and trusts his life to a parachute, leaving the empty $20-million aircraft to crash.

Catastrophic afterburner failure due to some of the 70 spot welds on older augmenter ducts cracking and thus demolishing the engine. When most F-16s were grounded last winter, inspectors checking 712 engines for cracked welds in afterburner augmenter ducts found 63 had cracks that could have caused breakups. At that point, 11 had already failed in flight.

Looking for Solutions

A recent flurry of seven crashes by F-16s from Luke Air Force Base near Phoenix worried former fighter pilot Sen. John McCain, who said he has been told "certain F-16 components common throughout the fleet were a high probability to fail."

"It's very unfortunate, and I share the frustration of many who recognize that there have been such a myriad of problems," the Arizona Republican said in an interview. "I had a lot of concerns because F-16s were falling around Arizona. In retrospect, I think some of them could have been anticipated."

The Air Force (including the Air National Guard and Reserves) now owns 1,443 of the single-engine Super Falcon F-16s and 2,022 engines, including spares. Of these engines, 1,051 were built by Pratt & Whitney and 971 by General Electric.

Over the years, the number of "Class A mishaps" the Air Force attributes by brand was disproportionately high for Pratt & Whitney. Engine failure occurred in 85 planes powered by Pratt & Whitney engines and 34 with GE models.

Often, the engine that destroyed the plane had been rebuilt and put back in service after causing one or more of the 978 less serious mishaps blamed on engine problems since 1983.

The Luke Air Force Base accidents prompted an extraordinary engine conference, at which officials drew up a $117-million shopping list for repairs and ordered more intensive inspections. The training base is home to 25 percent of the Air Force's 793 active F-16s.

Mr. McCain followed up by obtaining $8.5 million for immediate F-16 repairs and increasing the fiscal 2000 budget to about $400 million for repairs that will be contracted by Sept. 30 but not completed for three years after that.

"I think it's unfortunate they cannot act immediately. They tell me they have addressed the immediate safety problems, and I hope that's correct," Mr. McCain told The Times. "On several occasions, the Air Force has assured me it was resolved, and it turned out not to be so."

An FOIA request for reports linked to that meeting was not productive, and an Air Force spokesman spoke in generalities.

"The engine summit identified engine safety modifications that could be accelerated and the funding required," Maj. Chester Curtis said. "Acceleration of six critical safety upgrades-modifications is ongoing."

"It's actually failed parts. It is not maintenance generally," said a congressional staff member who worked on the appropriation.

The staff member, who asked not to be identified, said the number of maintenance hours in some units increased eighteenfold during the year by forcing longer hours and fewer leaves. Flight-line crews say that just increases rapid turnover in the ranks and overwork from international deployments.

The failure rate for similar F-15 engines was slightly higher, but the rate of destruction for F-16s was twice as high because each has only one engine and F-15s have two. The Air Force says it has "no fixed position or preference" on the question of two engines vs. one. The twin-engine F-22 Raptor will be its next generation mainstay, while the Joint Strike Fighter due in service by 2008 has one engine.

"Two engines on an F-16 would help, but that's not going to happen," said Lt. Jason McCurry, of Davis, Okla., a Shaw Air Force Base maintenance officer who said in an interview what many say off the record.

"The F-15s and F-16s don't have the same mission and shouldn't be compared," said Kathryn Hayden of Lockheed Martin Tactical Air Systems, who touted the F-16's outstanding safety record for a "multirole" fighter.

"The world has changed, and the mission has changed, so it gets flown a little bit harder.

"It's been a rough year, and it definitely has our attention," Miss Hayden said. "The fact that the Air Force continues to buy the aircraft means there is continued customer confidence."

GE spokesman Rick Kennedy said the high number of engine problems appears to be the product of "cyclical failure," or too many takeoffs and landings. "These are not systematic problems where they're seeing the same problems over and over again, just the signs of age and overuse."

Pratt & Whitney spokesman Tim Burris took questions on the subject but did not respond. A company press release termed its current model "the safest fighter engine in U.S. Air Force history."

Wary Pilots

So many F-16 pilots have long expected they would be next to die at the bottom of a "smoking hole" that many prefer the admittedly hazardous explosive ejection over prospects of death from riding an uncontrollable jet too long. But some F-16s have regained power after the pilot bailed out.

That does not mean pilots are trigger-happy, said an experienced Navy fighter pilot who has worked on F-16 safety issues.

"Any time the community experiences a slew of these things, you fly more conservatively," the officer said of the tendency of pilots to eject.

Maj. Sharon Preszler, 34, an instructor at Luke, ejected Sept. 20 after reporting an electrical problem on approach to the F-16 training base. Maj. Preszler's plane crashed through a base fence.

Hers was the last Luke F-16 destroyed during the fiscal year ended Sept. 30. Luke owned seven of the 15 lost worldwide by the Air Force but recorded only one Class A air mishap in the two previous years. Officials at Luke's 56th Fighter Wing rebuffed The Times' requests for access and interviews for this article.

"This is a wing that's been jumping through their butts for a year now over this story," spokesman David Smith told The Times in explaining why preparations for a November air show blocked a visit recommended by Pentagon Air Force officials.

A sympathetic Capitol Hill source familiar with Luke's situation said the problem got ahead of safety officers.

"By the time we crash No. 5, we're just finding out what crashed No. 2," said the source, who also is an experienced military pilot.

Maj. Derek Kaufman of the 56th Wing public affairs office at Luke said logistics chiefs attribute their record to parts shortages and overworked mechanics coping with aging airplanes, reduced funding, base closures, changes in mission and the intense work pace the military calls OpTempo.

"I've got utter faith in the guys who work maintenance for us," said Capt. Pete Fry of Grand Ledge, Mich., a six-year F-16 pilot who now flies at another base.

Dependence on overworked young Air Force mechanics may be reduced by the recent shift of overhaul and repair services at Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio to the manufacturers under a $453-million contract awarded 18 months ago to Pratt & Whitney.

Pratt said it is the first time that engines for jet fighters will be serviced "outside the organic depot system." But Air Force personnel still rebuild engines at propulsion depots elsewhere.

Pilots often say they fear they will be blamed for accidents caused by one of the chronic mechanical glitches. They know that the Air Force, like other services, virtually never looks back at "pilot error" decisions when it finally figures out what caused a series of crashes and will not reinvestigate previous crashes to determine whether the newfound flaw was involved.

"Jan, if I crash my F-16 don't cry for me because I died doing what I wanted to do. But get yourself a copy of the safety report and the best attorney in town because it ain't going to be my fault," Capt. Ted Harduvel told his wife who, as a widow, testified to that epitaph back in 1982.

"We all say that," F-16 pilots Lt. Col. Bob Harvey of Baker City, Ore., and Lt. Craig Simmons of Lumberton, Miss., said in unrehearsed unison during an interview last month.

Closed Investigations.

Only 522 F-16s had been built when Capt. Harduvel's plane bored 9 feet into a granite mountain in Korea. That worldwide fleet now has grown to 3,959 fighters, of which 2,205 were delivered to the Air Force and 1,754 to 19 other nations that have generally fared better with safety.

The servicewide, court-approved secrecy for "safety investigations" is particularly criticized by civil aviation experts, including the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which does not extend confidentiality to witnesses and generally refuses to participate in closed military investigations.

"There is no question that the public acceptance of our determination of probable cause and the validity of our recommendations is driven by the openness of our process," Peter Goelz, managing director of the NTSB, said in an interview.

"I think that the military is resistant to any outside authority intruding on their business. They think outsiders don't understand their culture," Mr. Goelz said.

Sen. Ron Wyden, Oregon Democrat, agrees. He challenged the secrecy and military self-investigation after 10 crew members on an Air Force C-130 from Portland died in a crash three years ago.

"I think this is just fraught with conflicts. Allowing the Air Force to police itself on these matters is just breeding a lack of credibility. There needs to be less secrecy, more openness and independent bodies investigating these crashes," Mr. Wyden said in an interview.

"When you have a process that's part secret and part public -- and the findings don't match -- you're going to have folks, especially the families of the deceased, who say this doesn't pass the smell test," he said.

All the military services insist they need to promise secrecy so they can obtain cooperation from those who would not otherwise disclose sensitive facts. Information from the secret probes is added to pilot manuals in bold-faced capital letters, but only an expert could trace them to a specific incident.

"They really are written in blood," Capt. Fry said.

The two-layer military system assures that the public, families of the dead, the courts, Congress and even other military personnel can learn only what is deduced by a "collateral investigation" that is separate by law from the "safety investigation."

Those separate probes are done in the Air Force by "accident investigation boards" (AIBs) headed by an officer assigned temporarily to probe a single crash. Even those board presidents are systematically denied all access to the most sensitive and telling information in a separate confidential "safety report."

AIBs routinely take note of news media interest in a specific accident, citing in their reports whether the nation is watching because a child on the ground was killed or a high-profile issue is involved, as opposed to obscure crashes on government property in which no life was lost.

Normally, F-16 crashes produce only a paragraph or two in the press suggesting an unidentified flier was lost on what almost always was initially referred to as a "routine training mission."

Lapses in Supervision Sometimes, engine failure occurs at ironic moments -- such as when the Air Force is rewarding ground crew members with a ride, as is customary.

That happened to Senior Airman Hugo E. Serrano-Molina, airman of the quarter at Cannon Air Force Base, N.M., last Dec. 4. Airman Molina got a close-up look at engine failure during a reward ride that resulted in a parachute trip and a broken right ankle.

Lt. Col. Randell S. Meyer, the squadron commander, was at the controls when a compressor blade broke free and shut down the engine at 15,000 feet. Every emergency procedure failed, so the pilot pulled the ejection handle for him and for Airman Molina at 2,200 feet. Damage from the lost plane was booked at $18.6 million.

To top off their day, the Air Force ambulance broke down while taking them to the base hospital.

Investigators later determined the turbine blade cracked in an area outside the portion that passed ultrasonic inspection on the ground, a fairly typical finding.

As ominous as failures of inspected parts may be, the second crash in 24 hours at the Air Combat Command's Hill Air Force Base in Utah on Jan. 8, 1998, pointed up a more serious if less common problem -- lapses in supervision.

The pilot, Lt. Col. Judson R. Kelley, was flying in a four-plane formation when his engine compressor stalled. His engine froze, and he ejected. Damage was estimated at $27.4 million.

"Due to the fact that the mishap occurred on federal land and there was no personal property damage or injury, the media's interest was short-lived," AIB President Lt. Col. Jeffrey S. Tice reported.

Lt. Col. Tice learned that the engine in that aircraft had just been rebuilt. He pinpointed the cause of the crash on the failure to install a critical compressor discharge pressure (CDP) seal. That part reduces pressure on the No. 3 bearing from more than 30,000 pounds to a tolerable 8,400 pounds.

Lt. Col. Tice said workers simply "skipped vital steps during a major engine overhaul." Records were so inadequate that he never learned which crew should have carried out the work.

"Poor communication and sketchy documentation practices allowed work crews to complete the engine rebuild without the CDP seal," and supervisors failed to see that it was done, he said.

Air Force officials say two civilian workers were disciplined but said privacy laws meant the actions remain confidential.

Failed CDP seals were involved in several other recent crashes. "We acknowledge risk, and we know it's there. We are in a risky business," said Col. Charles Bergman, the Air Force deputy safety chief, during an interview. "Our risk tolerance is higher than in civilian flying."

The former B-52 pilot said military pilots constantly seek ways "to exploit the envelope" -- meaning they exceed the plane's limits in the hunt for maximum performance.

"The challenge is to make sure [we] rein them in. We tell them to kiss your wife goodbye but make sure at the end of the day you kiss her again," Col. Bergman said.

He said there had been "some underfunding in the past." The Air Force would have a wish list if it got "an unlimited budget," he said, but the service recognized that "always our safety initiatives have to compete with weapons development."

---

Limited missions cited as reason other nations fare better

Washington Times 11/29/99 By Frank J. Murray THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/nation/nation4.html

The military's 20-year love affair with F-16 fighter planes - although beset by problems - is not just an American romance. But for unknown reasons, few of the 19 foreign air forces that fly them report the accident rate the U.S. Air Force endures.

Lockheed Martin, maker of the single-engine aircraft, reports that in 1998, all foreign owners of F-16s combined lost three planes to crashes while the U.S. Air Force lost 17. The U.S. Air Force's "attrition rate" was almost four times as high as other nations.

U.S. officials say other nations can expect fewer crashes because their operations are more limited.

"Israel, for instance, flies a lot of F-16s, but they do it in much more stable weather conditions and don't travel all over the world," said Col. Charles Bergman, the Air Force's deputy chief of safety.

"We probably have more risk because of the level of our training and pushing the envelope," Col. Bergman said.

Bahrain air force Maj. Abdullah Naimi, commander of his country's 12-plane F-16 squadron, which trains in Saudi air space, enthusiastically seconded Col. Bergman's theory.

"With our training areas so close, we don't lose precious flying time in transit to and from the training areas," said Maj. Naimi, whose nation has ordered 10 more F-16s.

Foreign air forces worldwide recorded 226,000 flight hours in 1998. In that same year, U.S. Air Force F-16s were aloft about 360,000 hours. The foreign rate of 1.32 losses per 100,000 in-flight hours was far better than the U.S. rate of 4.72 losses per 100,000 hours.

That allowed Lockheed Martin to average results for its prized product and trumpet what it said was an impressive safety record.

"The F-16 safety records for all users have continued to improve with experience," the company said, citing the one-year tally to support its claim that "the F-16 is likely the safest multirole fighter worldwide."

Lockheed has many satisfied customers, but a prime exception is Taiwan, which lost five pilots and four of its 150 F-16s to crashes in 18 months. Two out of three F-16 crashes among non-U.S. forces last year involved Taiwanese planes.

In August Taiwan threatened to seek compensation.

"If we can prove the cause of the crash to be related to engine failure and find similar problems to have caused the previous crashes, we will demand compensation from the U.S.A. according to our contract," said Lee Guey-Fa, deputy inspector general of the Taiwan air force.

Taiwan says its displeasure centers on faulty wiring and fires in insulation material no longer used by U.S. forces.

An Israeli air force official, conscious of security as well as diplomatic issues, declined to join in comparisons but said his nation's recent order for 50 more F-16s reflects confidence in the low accident rate.

"Reordering the plane is an important and key example of our good experience," he said.

The officer wouldn't discuss numbers, but the new order raised to 325 the Israeli air force's total of F-16s on the ramp or on order. The $2.5 billion purchase -which includes training, the latest available electronics and spare parts - beat out Boeing's twin-engine F-15I.

It was at least the fifth order of F-16s by Israel, which has the world's second-largest F-16 force. Israel Aircraft Industries actually builds about 25 percent of its airframe components, so that model is uniquely labeled the F-16I instead of the usual F-16C.

Price, size and military effectiveness are factors that all governments cite as key to their decision to buy the compact killer-airplane, which ranks as something of a workaday Chevrolet pickup truck among military air fleets.

Air Commodore J. Thomas Bakker, deputy chief of operations for the Royal Netherlands Air Force, couldn't say enough good words about the F-16's role in NATO operations over Serbia and Kosovo. During that mission, one of the jets brought down a MiG-29 during an escort mission and one U.S. F-16 was downed by a missile.

"Just because a country operates the F-16, however, doesn't mean that it can use it properly. So training is another issue," Commodore Bakker said.

F-16 sales are so important to Lockheed that the company said this month that next year's earnings may hinge on U.S. approval of a long-stalled order by the United Arab Emirates for 80 planes.

The U.A.E. deal has been stuck for more than a year on a dispute over whether they can include software codes that identify other aircraft as friendly or hostile. However, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen said in Dubai Oct. 20 that agreement is near.

In 1997, Indonesia backed out of buying 19 F-16s, blaming anti-Jakarta rhetoric from Washington - specifically, the call by congressional Republicans to investigate charges of corrupt ties between the Clinton administration and Indonesian interests.

As of Oct. 1, Lockheed Martin says, 1,754 of the single-engine aircraft were delivered to countries outside the United States and 2,205 delivered to the U.S. Air Force over the span of a little more than two decades.

---

Israeli Warplanes Attack S. Lebanon

New York Times November 29, 1999 Filed at 8:42 p.m. EDT By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Lebanon-Israel.html

NABATIYEH, Lebanon (AP) -- Israel's warplanes fired missiles at suspected guerrilla hideouts in southern Lebanon on Monday, following rocket and machine-gun attacks on its troops, security officials said.

The Israeli jets fired four air-to-surface missiles in two sorties in an area in Iqlim al-Tuffah, a Hezbollah stronghold two miles east of this southern market town.

There was no word on casualties from the evening raid, the Lebanese officials said on condition of anonymity. An Israeli army spokesman in Jerusalem confirmed the strikes.

Prior to the airstrike, Hezbollah guerrillas fired rockets and machine guns at an outpost manned by Israeli troops and allied militiamen of the South Lebanon Army. A Hezbollah statement claimed ``direct hits'' on the Sojod garrison, which faces the Iqlim al-Tuffah highlands.

The Israeli spokesman also said that the SLA uncovered an arms cache Sunday night in a village inside an Israeli-occupied border enclave in southern Lebanon. A statement by Brig. Gen. Oded Ben-Ami said the arms cache consisted of explosive charges, mines, a Kalashnikov rifle, grenades, explosives and detonators.

The Iranian-backed Hezbollah has been leading a guerrilla war to oust the 1,500 Israeli soldiers and 2,500 SLA militiamen from the occupied zone. Israel contends that the zone, set up in 1985, is necessary to protect its northern towns from cross-border guerrilla incursions.

-------- wto

Trade meeting begins after security delay

USA Today 11/29/99- Updated 03:02 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncssun02.htm

SEATTLE (AP) - The World Trade Organization's effort to launch a new round of global trade talks, the largest trade event ever held in the United States, could be shaping up as one of the biggest protest events as well. WTO critics are calling it the ''Battle in Seattle.''

Authorities were forced to delay for several hours the start of Monday's activities after an apparent attempted break-in at the convention center overnight.

After being kept waiting outside for more than four hours as the Secret Service conducted a second security sweep of the huge building, hundreds of reporters and delegates were allowed to start filing in through metal detectors more than four hours later than had been planned.

The center had been cleared of all reporters and delegates Sunday night for a planned check for bombs and the installation of metal detectors before the start of formal events today.

However, WTO spokesman Hans-Peter Werner said the Secret Service performed a second sweep in the early morning hours after someone had apparently tried to break into the building where negotiations among trade ministers from 135 nations will take place this week.

Seattle police spokeswoman Carmen Best said that a female officer guarding the building uncovered what she described as a ''security breach'' around 4:30 a.m. PST and authorities decided to evacuate the building to conduct a search.

Before the formal opening of the WTO meeting on Tuesday, the WTO had planned a full day of discussions among more than 700 non-governmental organizations such as environmental groups and labor unions in an effort to reach out to groups that have been critical of WTO policies.

Trade ministers sought to play down the impact the delayed start would have on the real business this week of overcoming wide differences between nations over what should be included in a new round of trade talks.

Nathan Shamuyarira, minister of industry and commerce in Zimbabwe, called the delay ''a small thing'' and predicted the negotiations would start in earnest on Tuesday. Meanwhile, officials said that informal closed-door discussions were being held in hotel rooms around the city as trade ministers sought to push various compromise proposals.

The WTO, the Geneva-based group that sets the rules for world trade, has become a magnet for hundreds of protest groups who see it as the embodiment of failings in the global economy ranging from environmental degradation to abuses of human and worker rights.

About a mile to the north of the convention center, four demonstrators scaled a giant construction crane today to hang a huge banner protesting WTO policies on the environment. The Rainforest Action Network said it was responsible.

Werner said a WTO symposium for outside groups to be heard, which was to be presided over by U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky, would go on as planned once security officials reopened the building.

Commerce Secretary William Daley defended the administration's trade policies on Sunday, insisting that the benefits of the global marketplace have contributed to the nation's longest peacetime economic expansion. The economy ''will remain strong because of the sort of outward view we've had about trade, not an inward view,'' he said on NBC's ''Meet the Press.''

But hundreds of protesters marched through Seattle's trendy Capitol Hill district, in what likely was just a minor preview of what is to come when many thousands of activists descend on the official start of the talks Tuesday.

Trade ministers of the 135 WTO member nations must address the concerns of union workers who see global trade liberalization as a threat to their jobs, or ''they could set in train the beginning of the end of the WTO,'' said Bill Jordan, general secretary of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions.

Business leaders from Europe said Sunday that labor standards should be discussed as part of any new trade deal. The measure is favored by many in the wealthy West, but it faces stiff opposition from developing nations in Asia and Latin America.

''Core labor standards may be a stumbling block this time,'' said Pascal Lamy, the European Union's trade commissioner.

U.S. and European labor unions say cheap wages and poor working conditions amount to an unfair trade tactic used by the developing nations.

Those countries counter that their more affordable labor is a comparative advantage that has enabled their economies to soar in recent decades. They say it would be wrong to force them to quickly adopt labor and environmental standards that evolved over many years in wealthier countries.

WTO Director General Mike Moore, a former New Zealand prime minister, met the opposition head-on Sunday, telling union representatives that foes of free trade were trying to create a false debate between organized labor and the organization.

''Trade is the ally of working people, not their enemy,'' Moore said.

The WTO nations will try to agree this week to launch a new round of global trade talks, intended to boost world commerce by breaking down barriers to free trade.

President Clinton, who is to address the gathering Wednesday, has staked much on the talks. His administration is saying they must succeed, although WTO negotiators last week failed in Geneva to agree on a format for a new round of talks.

The last world trade talks, known as the Uruguay Round, wrapped up in 1993 after eight years of negotiations.

---

DISRUPTIVE TRADE PACT TEMBLORS

Washington Times Published on 11/29/99, WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.newslibrary.com/download.asp?DBLIST=wt99&DOCNUM=26041

BEIJING - As soon as the United States and China signed an agreement on the latter's admission to the World Trade Organization here earlier this month, attention shifted to Washington. American politicians are already squabbling over the pact even as Seattle prepares for WTO's third ministerial conference to be held tomorrow to Dec. 3.

This WTO agreement is the first positive development in a year marked mainly by anti-China hysteria in Washington. ...