NUCLEAR
World Wonders What's Next in U.S.
Putin Heads to Cuba, Canada
Putin to Stress Trade During Visit to Cuba
Putin pledges deeper ties with Cuba
Britain, N. Korea establish ties
BRITAIN: TIES TO NORTH KOREA
China Tested Missile During Shelton Visit
Safety monitors to inspect Czech N-plant
Czech Nuclear Plant Checks Approved
Czechs Agree to Austrian Safety Demands at Temelin
Pakistan's new appeal
Missile plan won't halt Iran program
U.S. studies North Korea missile talks
U.S., North Korea Open Talks
Navy Sets Referendum for 2001 on Puerto Rican Test Range
Putin steps on Washington's toes
Putin Nurturing Old Friendships of a Soviet Past
Clinton Praises Russian Policy
Progress in Ukraine
Chronology of talks on Chernobyl closure
Preliminary Analysis of Discarded Tapes
Wen Ho Lee Debriefing Ends
Bush Pledges to Be President for 'One Nation Not One Party
MILITARY
It's not only greenhouse gas emissions
Daschle denies blocking bill on military voting
'Tribunal': Air force caused death
Key drug cartel figure sentenced
Europe mulls own defense forces
Dad's Army?
Saddam opens palaces to feed poor
IRAQ: TROOPS WITHDRAWN
Rights group reports Myanmar torture
Burma is lauded on Suu Kyi release
Space Leaders Urge Next U.S. President and Congress to Make Space Policy
China plans manned space flight in five years
Endeavour astronauts return home
Iowa
UN meets to combat organized crime
A High-Ranking Democrat Lobbies for a Dues Break From U.N.
A World Criminal Tribunal
AFGHANISTAN: U.N. AIDES PULL OUT
U.N. hostages freed in Georgia
Next administration will deal with Osprey
USS Cole Returns Home
Yemenis Say Saudi Man Is Top Suspect in Cole Attack
Damaged Cole arrives in Miss. for repairs
Marines ground tilt-rotor V-22 Osprey
OTHER
Stone Cold Warriors
Carl Sagan's 'Cosmos' Returns to TV
Hearing on PCB Dredging Draws Both Sides in a Town
Wildlife group warns on elephants
States
WTO grants sanctions against Brazil
U.S. pursues trade case vs. Mexico
Ex-cop threatened LAPD
Prosecution Ends Its Case on Pepper-Spray Testimony
Study Planned on Ethnicity and Views of Police Acts
TURKEY: A POLICE PROTEST
HARTFORD: OFFICIAL URGED TO QUIT TRAFFIC STOPS
THINGS WE DON'T UNDERSTAND
Alabama
Buckle up for servility
Pressure Is Again Emerging to Free Jonathan Pollard
American sentenced in Beijing for spying
Ex-Spy Chief Fled Peru in Boat
ACTIVISTS
How Polluted Is Your Neighborhood? Find Out For Free
Rioters, police clash at EU meeting
The Real Thing: Democracy as a Contact Sport
D.C. police prepare for protests at inauguration
FBI agents rally to oppose pardon
New York-Based Member of Falun Gong Is Sentenced in China
China sentences Falun Gong member
-------- NUCLEAR
World Wonders What's Next in U.S.
Associated Press
December 13, 2000 Filed at 11:40 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/politics/AP-Recount-World-Reaction.html?pagewanted=all
TOKYO (AP) -- The final result in the U.S. presidential election set off a sigh of relief around the world on Thursday, but concerns also emerged about what will happen next, given the deep divisions in the American electorate, court system and Congress.
Television stations in Japan and other countries in the Asia-Pacific region interrupted programming Thursday morning for live coverage as Vice President Al Gore conceded to George W. Bush, after weeks of vote recounts in Florida and court rulings about the disputed result.
``I think Al Gore made the right decision. People have become bored of the whole thing. He can try again in four years. And when he does, people will remember him in a much better image,'' said Lee Jung-soo, 27, an official at a public relations company in Seoul, South Korea.
``A prolonged confusion like this will have a very negative effect on the U.S. politics and economy. I believe Gore is doing the right thing as vice president and politician,'' said Kim Soo-min, 29, an Internet web master, in Seoul.
Both men's speeches focused briefly global issues.
``Together, we'll have a bipartisan foreign policy true to our values and true to our friends,'' said Bush. ``And we will have a military equal to every challenge, and superior to every adversary.''
In his speech, Gore said: ``I say to our fellow members of the world community, let no one see this contest as a sign of American weakness. The strength of American democracy is shown most clearly through the difficulties it can overcome.''
But other countries seemed less sure of what will happen next in U.S. foreign policy.
In Taipei, a leading 24-hour cable news channel, TVBS, broadcast Gore's speech live as a reporter provided a simultaneous translation in Mandarin. TVBS followed the speech with analysis about how the victory by Bush will change politics in Washington.
TVBS also showed scenes of speeches and debates in which Bush mentioned Taiwan. Of special interest was an earlier speech in which Bush had said that if China attacks Taiwan, the United States must come to the island's defense.
Concerns also emerged in other countries about issues such as the new foreign policy that will emerge in the United States under Bush.
Ham Sung-duk, a political science professor at Korea University, said the sharply divided U.S. electorate and Congress, which split nearly down the middle between Republicans and Democrats, could cause a change in U.S. policies toward North and South Korea.
Under President Clinton, the United States persuaded North Korea to halt its long-range missile tests and supported the South's ``sunshine policy'' that began the long process of reconciling its many differences with the North across the world's most heavily armed border.
``Under President Bush, U.S.-North Korea relations may deteriorate because of his expected hard-line stance regarding North Korea's missile and nuclear issues. That, in turn, could adversely affect president Kim Dae-jung's sunshine policy,'' Ham said.
In Sydney, The Australian newspaper said in an editorial that the protracted race to the White House had no winner, only losers.
``As the curtain comes down on the presidential aspirations of Democrat Al Gore, the real loser of the election is the U.S. political system and its fundamental components -- the legitimacy of its electoral machinery, the independence of its judiciary and the credibility of its politicians,'' the paper said.
``We appear to have a winner. But there is no joy in this victory, only a grim relief that this long election night is almost over,'' the Sydney Morning Herald wrote in a front-page editorial. ``There will be American-style pageantry, and grand speeches about the best democracy in the world. But the myths have gone. The masks are off. The people have seen the underbelly of their politics, and they know,'' it said.
In Japan, an editorial in the Nihon Keizai Shimbun newspaper worried about the ``struggle that divided the United States in two by partisanship,'' including its court system, including the Supreme Court, whose close ruling ended the presidential contest.
Many people in Hong Kong said they preferred Gore because they believed he would represent stability and deal better with the Chinese leadership in Beijing. Bush is viewed as more of an unknown, and some worry that in a worst-case scenario that he could meddle unduly in the delicate status quo between Taiwan and China.
The two rivals have been governed separately for a half century, but China claims Taiwan as a renegade province that must someday be reunified with the mainland, and Beijing has vowed to retake the island by force if necessary.
``I don't like Bush so much because he takes a tougher line toward China,'' said Sandy Lau, a 29-year-old nurse. ``I don't think it will be bad, at least in the short term, unless he encourages Taiwan to declare independence.''
Bush has his fans in Hong Kong, however.
``This is good for the Hong Kong economy,'' said Kevin Chung, a surveyor. ``If the U.S. stock market does well, then the Hong Kong stock market will do well also.''
Others worried about what will happen next in the slowing U.S. economy, whose imports and phenomenal growth helped the Asian region out of its 1997-1998 financial crisis.
``What matters for people like me is the economy. When the U.S. economy is in bad shape, it affects our economy and my business will get hurt. That's what I am worried about,'' said Cho Eun-young, 30, a clothes shop owner, in Seoul.
Front-page stories about the U.S. election result also appeared across London.
``Bush is the 43rd President,'' declared The Times.
``Finally ... It's President Bush,'' said The Guardian.
``Gore finally gives up hope,'' said The Independent.
---
Putin Heads to Cuba, Canada
New York Times
December 13, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Cuba-Russia.html
HAVANA (AP) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin will enjoy a respite from the Moscow winter when he leaves behind his heavy overcoat and official protocol to relax for two days in the sun and sand between state visits to Cuba and Canada.
Putin, who is scheduled to arrive on the island at 11 p.m. EST Wednesday, plans to head out to Cuba's Varadero beach resort early Friday afternoon for a two-day private rest before continuing on to Canada shortly before noon on Sunday, said Russian officials, who spoke here Tuesday on condition of anonymity.
The officials said that Putin's beach holiday was strictly personal and that there would be no news media access to his activities during his stay in Varadero.
Putin will be the first Russian president to visit the communist island since the collapse of the Soviet Union a decade ago. Trade and ways to revive a decades-old relationship that thrived during the Cold War era are expected to top the agenda on Putin's trip
In Moscow, Putin said Moscow is not pushing ideological ties with Cuba, and instead wants practical deals that will benefit Russian business.
``Unfortunately for us, in the years when our economic contacts collapsed, many important aspects of our mutual activity were squandered, and the position of Russian enterprises were taken by foreign competitors,'' Putin said on the ORT television channel.
Russia should use its good relations with Cuba as a bridge to revive contacts with other Latin American nations, he said, speaking to Russian and Cuban media.
Russian trade with Cuba now totals about $1 billion per year, Putin said, according to the Interfax news agency. This is well down from about $3.6 billion in 1991.
The number of top officials scheduled to travel with Putin is relatively small, and include Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev and Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov.
Nuclear Minister Yevgeny Adamov is not scheduled to be in the delegation, Russian officials said. That indicates that no substantive agreements are expected during this trip on the unfinished Juragua nuclear power plant, which was being built with Soviet technical help and financing power before construction was abandoned after the breakup of the former Soviet Union.
Putin, however, was expected to promote Russia's participation in completing construction of Soviet-era projects including the Las Camariocas nickel plant and the Cienfuegos oil refinery, according to Russian media.
Foreign policy aide Sergei Prikhodko said six documents were prepared for the trip, including agreements on cooperation in legal affairs and the health field, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported Wednesday.
Putin meets Thursday with President Fidel Castro, as well as Castro's point man on Cuba-U.S. affairs, National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon.
For the Soviet Union, Cuba -- only 90 miles from the U.S. coast -- was a strategic outpost and ideological ally worth subsidizing. About 20 percent of Cuba's gross national product is estimated to have come from Soviet subsidies.
---
Putin to Stress Trade During Visit to Cuba
Reuters
December 13, 2000 Filed at 1:00 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-putin-c.html
HAVANA (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to Cuba starting Wednesday night will stress trade and economic cooperation, but his hosts will seek concrete financing and investment commitments, not just good intentions.
Putin, the first Russian president to visit Moscow's old Caribbean ally since the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, is expected to try to breathe new life into an economic relationship that is a pale reflection of what it used to be.
His host, Cuban President Fidel Castro, has neither forgotten nor forgiven the way in which the Soviet collapse demolished a solid three-decades-old trade and aid alliance and left communist-ruled Cuba facing the threat of economic ruin.
The Caribbean island survived the resulting recession, but was forced to seek new international commercial partners in a drastic realignment of trade links that relegated Russia to a position behind Spain, Canada and Venezuela.
At the end of Putin's visit, he and Castro are due to sign a broad economic agreement setting out bilateral trade and cooperation goals for the next five years.
Other agreements to be initialed include a treaty to avoid double taxation and a health care cooperation accord.
Moscow is seeking to expand the relationship beyond the still significant but erratic annual exchanges of Russian oil and Cuban sugar that have kept reduced commercial links between the two countries alive during the last decade.
``That's our job, to widen our trade relations so they don't just consist of sugar-for-oil,'' Oleg Podolko, head of Russia's Commercial Mission in Havana, told Reuters.
He said, for example, that renewed exports by Russian companies of non-oil products to the island, such as light vehicles, machinery, spares, fertilizers and rubber goods, had increased by some 30 percent over the last two years.
But Podolko said financial questions, such as the absence of effective insurance and credit mechanisms to support Russian exports to Cuba, were an obstacle to increased trade.
``WILLINGNESS NOT ENOUGH''
The problem of financing, coupled with Cuba's large debt to Russia, were expected to be discussed during Putin's visit.
Also on the table was at least one known Russian proposal, from mining giant Norilsk Nickel, to complete an unfinished nickel plant on the island, one of several giant industrial projects left over from the Soviet era.
Other originally Soviet-built projects that are still looking for foreign partners or investors include an idle oil refinery at Cienfuegos and a controversial unfinished nuclear power plant whose construction has halted in 1992.
Both Moscow and Havana have announced their interest in creating a joint venture to finish the Juragua nuclear plant.
But where the estimated $600 million of investment required to finish the project will come from remains unclear.
Cuban officials welcome Russian moves to reactivate ties but do not hide their skepticism about Moscow's capacity to make good any promises of increased cooperation.
``Willingness is not enough. What you need is financing,'' one Cuban official, who asked not to be named, said.
While Canadian and European investors dominate the 370 foreign capital projects set up in Cuba over the last decade, the first Russian-Cuban joint venture, to assemble and repair sugar locomotive diesel engines, is only just getting started.
The two sides even appear unable to agree on the current quantity of trade between the two countries. Russian official figures put last year's two-way trade at around $900 million, while Cuban Central bank figures show $427 million.
Russian officials say their figures reflect products delivered indirectly by international traders.
Cuba's debt to the Soviet Union, now inherited by Russia, is a thorny problem. Previously estimated by the Russian side at around $20 billion, it has threatened to complicate Cuba's efforts to renegotiate its separate $11 billion convertible currency debt with western creditors.
---
Putin pledges deeper ties with Cuba
Infobeat
Wednesday, December 13, 2000
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405311711
MOSCOW (AP) - Russia should move quickly to revive economic ties with Cuba or risk losing out to companies from other countries already moving onto the island, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview aired Tuesday.
Putin spoke to Russian and Cuban media ahead of his planned visit Wednesday to the former Soviet ally, the first by a Russian leader since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Russia should use its good relations with Cuba as a bridge to revive contacts with other Latin American nations, Putin said.
Putin emphasized that Russia has no ideological agenda in the region this time around, and instead wants practical deals that will benefit Russian business.
``Unfortunately for us, in the years when our economic contacts collapsed, many important aspects of our mutual activity were squandered, and the position of Russian enterprises were taken by foreign competitors,'' Putin said on the ORT television channel.
Russian trade with Cuba now totals about $1 billion per year, Putin said, according to the Interfax news agency. This is well down from about $3.6 billion in 1991.
``Cuba plays a very important role in Latin America, and we hope very much for Cuba's active role in solving a whole number of international problems, in which we have to look for allies,'' Putin said, according to Interfax.
For the Soviet Union, Cuba _ only 90 miles from the U.S. coast _ was a strategic outpost and ideological ally worth subsidizing. About 20 percent of Cuba's gross national product is estimated to have come from Soviet subsidies.
Meanwhile, Putin said in the interview he hopes for positive relations with the new U.S. presidential administration regardless who wins the disputed election.
``We expect that the new U.S. administration, whoever heads it, will use all the positive things achieved in Russian-U.S. relations in recent years, including those in the international security spheres,'' Putin said, according to Interfax.
Putin is scheduled to fly to Canada after visiting Cuba, and will cross U.S. airspace but is not scheduled to make a stopover, the presidential press service said Tuesday.
---
Britain, N. Korea establish ties
Infobeat
Wednesday, December 13, 2000
By SUE LEEMAN Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405311843
LONDON (AP) - Edging further out of its international isolation, North Korea on Tuesday added Britain to the growing list of countries with which it has diplomatic relations.
The decision marks the first time Britain has had diplomatic ties with the communist Democratic People's Republic of Korea since its creation 50 years ago.
Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said his government had been persuaded by Pyongyang's growing rapprochement with South Korea and its decision to end missile launches.
``We believe that dialogue and negotiation are the best ways of securing peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula,'' Cook said.
Welcoming the decision, South Korea's Foreign Ministry said it ``will not only improve relations between the two countries, but also play a positive role in building peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula through inter-Korean reconciliation and cooperation.''
Britain announced in October that it was ready to follow Canada, Italy and Australia, which have established diplomatic links with North Korea this year.
After five days of talks, the British and North Korean governments said in a statement Tuesday they would appoint ambassadors ``as soon as each side has made the necessary arrangements to open a resident mission'' in London and Pyongyang.
Until ambassadors are in place, Britain and North Korea will appoint non-resident charge d'affaires, to be stationed in the South Korean capital Seoul and in Geneva or Stockholm, the statement said.
Cook cited recent ``significant progress'' in the dialogue between the two Koreas, particularly the landmark June summit between their leaders, Kim Jong Il and Kim Dae-jung.
Cook also welcomed the dialogue between the United States and North Korea, and North Korea's ``confirmation of its moratorium on missile launches.''
At the June summit, the two Korean leaders reached a broad agreement to end decades of animosity and work together for reconciliation and eventual reunification.
The Koreas have since stopped propaganda broadcasts, exchanged high-level envoys and started reconnecting a cross-border railway.
---
New York Times
December 13, 2000
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/13/world/13BRIE.html
EUROPE
BRITAIN: TIES TO NORTH KOREA Britain and North Korea agreed to establish diplomatic relations, and Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said the decision was "taken in recognition of the significant progress" in the dialogue between the two Koreas. In a sign of its opening up to the outside world, Pyongyang has this year already established formal ties with Canada, Italy and Australia. Warren Hoge (NYT)
-------- china
China Tested Missile During Shelton Visit
Washington Post
Wednesday, December 13, 2000 ; Page A38
Associated Press
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63001-2000Dec12.html
China conducted a test flight of an intercontinental ballistic missile last month while Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was on an official visit to Beijing, officials said yesterday.
Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said China tested a DF-31 missile over its territory on Nov. 4. He would not reveal details such as how far the missile flew. The test was first reported in yesterday's editions of the Washington Times.
"The test was pretty much as expected in terms of timing and in terms of results," Bacon said. There was no indication that Shelton was advised of the firing by Chinese officials.
The Times also reported that China is preparing another missile test in a few weeks.
Bacon said the Clinton administration is not alarmed by China's effort to modernize its long-range ballistic missile force.
"You can read about the DF-31 in a number of public reports that are put out by the Central Intelligence Agency, by the Defense Department and other agencies. So we are watching it," he said.
"I don't think it's fair to say that this building or this government is worried about what they see in China, but clearly we watch any country that is developing its military, modernizing its military," he said.
-------- czech republic
Safety monitors to inspect Czech N-plant
CNN
December 13, 2000
http://www.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/europe/12/13/austria.temelin/index.html
VIENNA, Austria -- The Czech Republic has agreed to Austrian demands for international monitoring at its controversial Temelin nuclear power plant.
The deal is designed to resolve a row between the two neighbouring countries and bring to an end protests by anti-nuclear supporters.
Czech Prime Minister Milos Zeman, Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel and European Union Commissioner for Enlargement Guenter Verheugen announced the decision on Wednesday after seven hours of negotiations.
"We have reached a sensible agreement and have taken a huge step in the right direction," said Schuessel.
Fiercely anti-nuclear Austria says the Soviet-designed station, built some 50km (30 miles) from the Austrian border and which began operating last month, is unsafe and demanded international safety checks.
It threatened to block Prague's bid to join the EU unless its demands were met, while Austrian environmentalists said they would once again block all borders between the two countries unless checks were made.
"The Czech Republic welcomes the international safety assessments and will respect the outcome of the of these checks," said Zeman.
The row developed into the Czech Republic's biggest diplomatic dispute since the end of Communism 11 years ago.
The Czechs insist that the plant, which is equipped with a Western control system, meets European Union standards.
When Temelin's two reactors are fully operational by 2002, the station will provide about 20 percent of the Czech Republic's power needs.
The plant was originally conceived in 1980, and work began in 1983. But the project to build four VVER-1000 megawatt reactors was re-evaluated after the collapse of communism in 1989.
---
Czech Nuclear Plant Checks Approved
Associated Press
December 13, 2000 Filed at 7:11 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Austria-Czech-Nuclear.html
MELK, Austria (AP) -- Austria and the Czech Republic agreed Wednesday on measures to resolve a bitter dispute over a Czech nuclear power plant that Vienna says may not be safe.
The agreement, announced after seven hours of talks, calls for European Union experts to conduct a comprehensive safety examination of the plant at Temelin. The plant 30 miles from the Austrian border began test operations in October.
Both sides also agreed to establish an information hot line between Vienna and Prague and an early warning system to detect possible safety problems. Both systems are expected to be installed by March. The agreement calls for the EU inspection to be completed by June.
In addition, the two governments agreed to negotiate a bilateral energy partnership agreement with the goal of promoting non-nuclear, sustainable power sources.
There was no comment from anti-nuclear activists, who blocked border crossings between the two countries last month to protest the Temelin plant.
Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel called the measures a ``reasonable agreement'' and told reporters that he considered them a step forward toward allaying Austrian concerns. Austrian citizens narrowly voted down nuclear energy in 1978 and the country remained vehemently opposed to nuclear power since.
``The Czech side assured us that Temelin won't be put in full commercial operation before the results of the environmental and security checks are known,'' Schuessel said.
Czech Prime Minister Milos Zeman said the his government welcomed the EU safety inspection and would ``respect results.''
Taking part in the negotiations was the EU commissioner for expansion, Guenter Verheugen, who hailed the agreement as an example of problem-solving within ``our common European family.''
The Czech Republic is among the leading candidates for EU membership.
Temelin has long been a source of friction between the two neighboring countries. Construction of the Soviet-designed plant was begun in 1980 and upgraded by technology provided by the U.S. firm Westinghouse in the 1990s.
The 1,000-megawatt reactor had been producing only a small amount of power for start-up purposes since October, but did receive permission that month to increase output.
---
Czechs Agree to Austrian Safety Demands at Temelin
Reuters
December 13, 2000 Filed at 6:29 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-czech-a.html
VIENNA, Austria (Reuters) - The Czech government agreed on Wednesday to Austrian demands for international monitoring at its controversial Temelin nuclear power plant in an attempt to resolve a row between the two neighbors.
Czech Prime Minister Milos Zeman, Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel and European Union Commissioner for Enlargement Guenter Verheugen announced the decision early on Wednesday after seven hours of negotiations.
``We have reached a sensible agreement and have taken a huge step in the right direction,'' said Schuessel.
Fiercely anti-nuclear Austria says the Soviet-designed station, built some 30 miles from the Austrian border and which began operating last month, is unsafe and demanded international safety checks.
It threatened to block Prague's bid to join the EU unless its demands were met, while Austrian environmentalists said they would once again block all borders between the two countries unless checks were made.
``The Czech Republic welcomes the international safety assessments and will respect the outcome of the of these checks,'' said Zeman.
The row developed into the Czech Republic's biggest diplomatic dispute since the end of Communism 11 years ago.
Zeman and Schuessel met once in October and postponed a further meeting scheduled in November because of border blockades.
-------- depleted uranium
Depleted Uranium in the Gulf (II)
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/
Environmental Exposure Report
Environmental Exposure Reports are reports of what we know today about certain events of the 1990-1991 Gulf War. This particular environmental exposure report focuses on the use of, and exposures to, depleted uranium (DU). This office published its first report on DU in August 1998. This is a second interim, not a final, report. We hope that you will read this and contact us with any information that would help us better understand the events reported here. With your help, we will be able to report more accurately on the events surrounding DU use and exposures. Please contact my office to report any new information by calling: 1-800-497-6261
Bernard Rostker Special Assistant for Gulf War Illnesses Department of Defense 2000179-0000002 Ver 2.0
Last Update: December 13, 2000
Many Gulf War veterans have expressed concern their unexplained illnesses may result from their experiences in that war. In response to veterans' concerns, the Department of Defense (DoD) established a task force in June 1995 to investigate those incidents and circumstances relating to possible causes. The Office of the Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Defense for Gulf War Illnesses assumed responsibility for these investigations on November 12, 1996, and gathered information on depleted uranium. This is the second interim report on depleted uranium; it updates the August 4, 1998 Environmental Exposure Report, "Depleted Uranium in the Gulf."
To inform the public about the progress of this office, DoD is publishing on the Internet and elsewhere accounts related to the possible causes of illness among Gulf War veterans, along with documentary evidence or personal testimony used in compiling the accounts. This environmental exposure report is such an account.
TABLE OF CONTENTS V. E. I. OVERVIEW V. E.
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s01.htm#I
II. METHODOLOGY V. E.
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s02.htm#II
III. DEPLETED URANIUM-A SHORT COURSE
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s03.htm
III. A. Health Effects from the Chemical Toxicity of Depleted Uranium
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s03.htm#A
III. A. 1. DU's Chemical Properties
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s03.htm#1
III. A. 2. Chemical Effects
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s03.htm#2
III. A. 3. Chemical Toxicity Standards and Guidelines
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s03.htm#3
III. A. 4. Implications for the Military
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s03.htm#4
III. B. Health Effects from the Radiological Toxicity of Depleted Uranium
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s03.htm#B
III. B. 1. General Considerations on Radiation Effects
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s03.htm#1
III. B. 1. a. Radioactivity and Radiation Emissions
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s03.htm#a
III. B. 1. b. Radiation Effects
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s03.htm#b
III. B. 1. c. Exposure to Radiation
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s03.htm#c
III. B. 1. d. Radiation Exposure Quantities and Units
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s03.htm#d.
III. B. 1. e. Sources of Exposure
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s03.htm#e
III. B. 2. DU's Radiological Properties
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s03.htm#2
III. B. 3. Radiological Effects of Depleted Uranium
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s03.htm#3
III. B. 4. Radiological Protection Standards and Guidelines
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s03.htm#4
III. B. 5. Implications for the Military V. E.
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s03.htm#5
IV. POTENTIAL HEALTH EFFECTS FROM DU USE IN THE GULF THEATER, 1990-1991
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s04.htm#IV
IV. A. Summary of Dose and Risk Assessment Methods
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s04.htm#A
IV. B. Level I Exposures (Friendly Fire)
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s04.htm#B
IV. B. 1. Issues with Level I Assessments
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s04.htm#1
IV. B. 2. Refinement of Level I Estimates of DU Intake and Radiation Dose
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s04.htm#2
IV. B. 3. Assessing Possible Health Effects of Refined Level I DU Intake and Radiation Dose Estimates
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s04.htm#3
IV. C. Level II Exposures
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s04.htm#C
IV. C. 1. Field Units
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s04.htm#1
IV. C. 1. a. Estimates of DU Intake and Radiation Dose
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s04.htm#c1a
IV. C. 1. b. Assessing Possible Health Effects
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s04.htm#b
IV. C. 2. Camp Doha Personnel
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s04.htm#2
IV. C. 2. a. Estimates of DU Intake and Radiation Dose
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s04.htm#c2a
IV. C. 2. b. Assessing Possible Health Effects
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s04.htm#b
IV. D. Level III Exposures
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s04.htm#D
IV. D. 1. Field Units
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s04.htm#1
IV. D. 1. a. Estimates of DU Intake and Radiation Dose
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s04.htm#d1a
IV. D. 1. b. Assessing Possible Health Effects
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s04.htm#b
IV. D. 2. Camp Doha Personnel
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s04.htm#2
IV. D. 1. a. Estimates of DU Intake and Radiation Dose
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s04.htm#d2a
IV. D. 2. b. Assessing Possible Health Effects
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s04.htm#b
IV. E. Other Reports Investigated
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s04.htm#E
IV. E. 1. Welders
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s04.htm#1
IV. E. 2. Ammunition Truck Explosion
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s04.htm#2
IV. E. 3. A-10 Crash
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s04.htm#3
IV. E. 4. Misfired DU Rounds on A-10 Aircraft
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s04.htm#e4
IV. F. Summary of Health Assessments V. E.
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s04.htm#F
V. FOLLOW-UP
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s05.htm#V. FOLLOW-UP
V. A. Environmental Assessments
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s05.htm#A
V. B. Post-Gulf War Developmental Testing and Evaluation of DU Munitions
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s05.htm#B
V. C. DoD and VA Medical Surveillance Program for Gulf War Veterans
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s05.htm#C
V. D. Medical Testing By Other Laboratories
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s05.htm#D
V. E. Postwar Research and Literature Reviews
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s05.htm#E
V. E. 1. Embedded Fragment Research
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s05.htm#1
V. E. 2. Literature Reviews V. E.
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s05.htm#2
VI. LESSONS LEARNED AND RECOMMENDATIONS
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s06.htm#VI
VI. A. Doctrine and Policy
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s06.htm#A
VI. B. Organizational Support to Deployed Units
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s06.htm#B
VI. C. Training and Education
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s06.htm#C
VI. D. Materiel
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s06.htm#D
VI. E. Medical Readiness, Force Health Protection, and Risk Management
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s06.htm#E
VI. F. Information Management (Including Record-Keeping) VI.
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s06.htm#F
VII. CONCLUSION VI.
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s07.htm#
TAB A - Acronyms, Abbreviations, and Glossary VI.
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_taba.htm#
TAB B - Units Involved VI.
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_tabb.htm#
TAB C - Properties and Characteristics of DU VI.
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_tabc.htm#
TAB D - Methodology VI.
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_tabd.htm#
TAB E - Development of DU Munitions VI.
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_tabe.htm#
TAB F - DU Use in the Gulf War VI.
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_tabf.htm
TAB G - DU Exposures in the Gulf War VI.
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_tabg.htm#
TAB H - Friendly-fire Incidents VI.
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_tabh.htm#
TAB I - The Camp Doha Explosion and Fires (July 1991) VI.
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_tabi.htm#
TAB J -Tank Fires VI.
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_tabj.htm#
TAB K - DU Notification and Medical Follow-up Program VI.
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_tabk.htm#
TAB L - Research Report Summaries VI.
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_tabl1.htm#
TAB M - Characterizing DU Aerosols VI.
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_tabm.htm#
TAB N - Gulf War Protective Guidance VI.
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_tabn.htm#
TAB O - DU Dose and Risk Estimates for the Gulf War Theater, 1990-1991 VI.
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_tabo1.htm#
TAB P - DoD and VA Medical Surveillance Programs for Gulf War VeteransIV. VI.
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_tabp.htm
TAB Q - General Accounting Office Comments VI.
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_tabq.htm#
TAB R - Changes in this Report VI.
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_tabr.htm#
TAB S - Bibliography VI.
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_tabs.htm#
END NOTES
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/en.htm
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s01.htm
I. OVERVIEW[1]
The Gulf War was the arena for the first battlefield use of armor-piercing munitions and reinforced tank armor incorporating depleted uranium (DU). This very dense metal is a by-product of the process by which natural uranium is "enriched" to produce reactor fuel and nuclear weapons components. The leftover uranium, 40% less radioactive than natural uranium, is called "depleted uranium," or DU.
Figure 1. Abrams tank and DU sabot rounds
Depleted uranium played a key role in US forces' overwhelming success during the Gulf War. Machined into armor-piercing 120mm DU "sabot" rounds (Figures 1 and 2), DU penetrators were called "silver bullets" by armor forces, who quickly recognized the tremendous lethal advantage these rounds provided against enemy tanks. The extreme density of the metal and its self-sharpening properties make DU a formidable weapon; its projectiles slice through thicker, tougher armor at greater ranges than other high-velocity rounds. In addition, DU is pyrophoric-on striking armor, small particles break off and burst into flames spontaneously in air, often touching off fuel and munitions explosions.
Figure 2. DU round discarding its sabot
US forces also used DU to enhance their tanks' armor protection. In one noteworthy incident, an M1A1 Abrams Main Battle Tank (Figure 3), its thick steel armor reinforced by a sandwiched layer of DU, rebuffed a close-in attack by three of Iraq's T-72 tanks. After deflecting three hits from Iraq's tanks, the Abrams' crew dispatched the T-72s with a single DU round to each. (Tab F contains an expanded version of the encounter.) Similarly, Air Force A-10 "tank-busters" and Marine Corps AV-8B Harrier aircraft fired 30mm and 25mm DU rounds, respectively, with deadly effect against Iraq's armor. (Tab F describes DU use in the Gulf.)
Figure 3. M1A1 tank in the Gulf
During the Gulf War, DU helped US forces fight more effectively and defend themselves more confidently. American tanks and A-10s destroyed thousands of Iraq's combat vehicles, which had no DU armor, without enemy fire penetrating the DU armor of a single US tank. Since the Gulf War, DU's battlefield effectiveness has encouraged its steady proliferation into the arsenals of allies and adversaries alike. There is little doubt, therefore, DU will be used on the battlefield against US personnel in some future conflict.
While DU's combat debut showed the metal's clear superiority for both armor penetration and protection, its chemical toxicity-common to all forms of uranium and similar to other heavy metals such as lead and tungsten-and its low-level radioactivity raised concerns about possible combat and non-combat health risks from DU use.
To many veterans and members of the public, the term "exposure," especially when associated with the word "radiation," means health will be adversely affected. In the Gulf War, soldiers were exposed when they came in contact with depleted uranium fragments and particles formed when DU struck armor targets or when they were close to burning DU. This report uses "exposure" in much the same way as we commonly refer to people's daily "exposure" to automobile exhaust, second-hand smoke, or similar noxious or potentially toxic substances. Any effect from an exposure depends on the dose, which is a factor of the strength (how much) and the duration (how long) of the exposure. When doses are low, the exposures are very unlikely to produce any harmful effects, but when doses are high, health might be adversely affected.
The purposes of this report are to determine whether DU posed an unacceptable health risk to American forces and whether personnel had been adequately trained to deal with this risk. To accomplish these objectives, the report examines the documented incidents of DU exposure and discusses what is currently known about the potential health effects from them. This second interim report follows the same format as our initial August 1998 report with important updates on the latest findings of:
the Baltimore Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center DU Follow-up Program for "friendly fire" victims, initiated in 1993;
the expanded VA and DoD DU Medical Follow-up Program, initiated in 1998;
the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry's "Toxicological Profile for Uranium;"
RAND's "A Review of the Scientific Literature As It Pertains to Gulf War Illnesses," Volume 7, "Depleted Uranium;"
the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute's and Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute's animal research efforts on implanted DU;
the US Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine's exposure estimates; and
the Institute of Medicine's Gulf War and Health, "Volume 1, Depleted Uranium, Sarin, Pyridostigmine Bromide, Vaccines."
Office of the Special Assistant investigators interviewed hundreds of Gulf War combatants and eyewitnesses, reconstructed numerous operations, consulted with subject matter experts, and researched the most current body of knowledge about DU's health effects and environmental impact. The investigation classifies possible DU exposures into three levels (I, II and III), encompassing 13 separate activities or incidents, shown in Table 1. We derived these levels from initial assessments of the exposures' potential relative risks, decreasing from Level I to Level III. For each level, Table 1 describes the activity or incident, current estimates of the number of personnel involved, and the personal protective equipment used, if any.
Table 1. Incident Summary
Exposure Classifications: Levels and Scenarios Number of Persons Personal Protection Worn
Level I
Soldiers in or on a US vehicle 104 None when a DU munition penetrated it.
Soldiers who entered US vehicles " 30-60* None to rescue occupants immediately after friendly-fire DU impacts.
Level II
Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) " 10-20* None and unit personnel who removed equipment and munitions from US vehicles struck by DU munitions.
Unit personnel who performed " 60-80* None maintenance on or recovered items from US vehicles struck by DU munitions.
Logistics Assistance Representatives " 6-12* Some Wore PPE
(LARs) who inspected US vehicles struck by DU munitions to determine reparability.
Battle Damage Assessment Team (BDAT) 16 Most Wore PPE
members who examined US combat vehicles damaged and destroyed by DU munitions.
144th Service and Supply Co. 29 None personnel who processed damaged equipment, including some struck by DU munitions.
Radiation Control (RADCON) team 11 Most Wore PPE
members.
Personnel exposed to DU during " 600* None cleanup operations at Camp Doha's North Compound.
Level III
Personnel exposed to smoke from Hundreds None burning DU rounds at Camp Doha.
Personnel exposed to smoke from Unknown None burning Abrams tanks.
Personnel who entered Unknown None DU-contaminated equipment.
Personnel exposed to smoke from Unknown None Iraq's DU-struck equipment.
* Number is not final; remains under investigation.
Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) includes respirator, coveralls, boots and gloves. Reports of respiratory protection ranged from the military M25 and M17A2 respirators to industrial dust mask, surgical-type paper mask, etc.
Level I includes incidents in which US tanks mistakenly fired DU armor-piercing rounds into other US combat vehicles, exposing surviving crew in those vehicles to wounds from DU fragments and/or inhaled and ingested particles formed when DU munitions penetrate armor, especially tank armor. During these "friendly-fire" incidents, personnel rushing to evacuate and rescue fellow soldiers from stricken vehicles also may have been directly exposed to DU. Level I includes these immediate, direct exposures (see Tab G).
Level II exposures to DU occurred after combat, when explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) personnel entered DU-struck vehicles to remove unexploded munitions. In addition to EOD personnel, battle damage assessment teams (BDAT), radiation control (RADCON) teams, and salvage crews worked in and on the damaged or destroyed vehicles as they were processed for repair or disposal. This group also includes personnel involved in cleanup and recovery operations in the North Compound of Camp Doha, Kuwait, after a July 1991 motor pool fire in which DU munitions, among others, detonated and burned. Level II includes these personnel and others who may have come into direct contact with expended DU rounds' dust-like residue (see Tab G).
Level III, also discussed in Tab G, includes personnel whose exposure to DU was short-term and generally very low. These exposures may have occurred as personnel passed through and inhaled smoke from burning DU, casually handled spent DU penetrators, or briefly entered DU-struck vehicles on the battlefield or in salvage yards.
The amount of DU present, route of entry, solubility, particle size, other physical and chemical factors, and toxicity determine potential health effects. The US Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine (USACHPPM) completed its health risk characterization of DU in the Gulf War after we published our initial environmental exposure report on DU. They reassessed earlier Level I estimates the General Accounting Office (GAO) called into question,[2] and developed Level II and III estimates. Although more refined than their original estimates, USACHPPM's new Level I estimates rely on the same test data as used previously. USACHPPM employed statistical tools to develop upper and lower limits for these Level I exposure scenarios. To improve the reliability of these Level I estimates, OSAGWI has directed and funded the US Army to further evaluate DU aerosol concentrations inside combat vehicles penetrated by DU rounds.[3] In the meantime, the Baltimore Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center's comprehensive medical follow-up program provides the most important health assessment for Level I exposures. The VA's studies of these Level I veterans have shown no untoward medical effects to date from depleted uranium's radiological or chemical toxicity. USACHPPM's risk assessments for the Level II and III scenarios are based on much better Department of Defense (DoD) experimental data and indicate that the radiological and chemical risks for these events are well within current regulatory limits for industrial workers. These results for participants in all levels confirm our initial scenario classification.
Since 1993, the Baltimore VA Medical Center has monitored veterans seriously injured in friendly-fire incidents involving depleted uranium. While these veterans have medical afflictions resulting from their wartime injuries, the Baltimore medical evaluators report that the veterans are not sick from DU's chemical or radiological toxicity. About half the original group of 33 still have depleted uranium fragments in their bodies. The VA is following the group very carefully, administering a broad battery of medical tests to determine if the embedded depleted uranium fragments are causing any health problems. To date, the VA has seen no adverse effects in the kidney; only subtle perturbations[4] in the reproductive and central nervous systems; and elevated concentrations of urinary uranium of veterans with retained DU fragments. The study veterans without retained DU fragments generally have not shown higher than normal levels of uranium in their urine or any other medical effects from uranium.
In the summer of 1998, the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs (VA) extended the medical follow-up program to evaluate all individuals who were in or on vehicles struck by friendly fire, as well as those who worked around DU-struck vehicles or burned vehicles containing DU. While their DU exposures were not expected to cause health effects, these veterans are being evaluated to measure any residual DU. The follow-up program guidelines called for OSAGWI to notify these veterans of their exposures and offer a medical evaluation. Thus far, we have notified more than 200 veterans of this follow-up program. Since 1998, the Baltimore VA Program has evaluated more than 30 additional veterans involved in friendly-fire incidents, including 4 with known or suspected embedded DU fragments. In addition, as part of the Gulf War Registry program DoD and the VA agreed to perform a physical examination, collect a questionnaire for DU exposure, and collect a 24-hour urine sample to measure urinary uranium for any concerned Gulf War veteran. To date, 398 veterans have requested and received this examination and are at various stages of completion.[5]
Since we published our initial DU environmental exposure report in August 1998, three major scientific reviews of the toxicology of uranium and depleted uranium have been published. The first was the RAND Corporation's comprehensive medical literature review on depleted uranium's health effects. The study is one of eight the Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Defense for Gulf War Illnesses commissioned from RAND's National Defense Research Institute. The second review, dated September 1999, is the Toxicological Profile for Uranium published by the Department of Health and Human Services' Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR). ATSDR toxicological profiles are recognized internationally as an authoritative source of information about hazardous substances' human and environmental effects. The third review was "Gulf War and Health, Volume 1 Depleted Uranium, Pyridostigmine Bromide, Sarin, Vaccines" recently completed by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) at the request of congress. The National Academy of Sciences established the IOM to perform independent studies. These three reports assess the chemical and radiological effects of uranium on health.
RAND concluded that medical literature contains no evidence of radiological health effects resulting from exposure to uranium or depleted uranium.[6] RAND also concluded that while uranium in large doses can cause changes in kidney function and at very high levels result in kidney failure, no increased kidney disease has been observed in a relatively large occupational population chronically exposed to natural uranium. The RAND study also cited the absence of kidney effects in friendly fire victims with embedded DU fragments in the Baltimore VA follow-up program despite the presence of elevated urine uranium levels.[7] The ATSDR profile concluded that because of scientific evidence and the low radioactivity of natural and depleted uranium, it expects no radiological health hazard from inhalation, dermal, or oral exposure to natural or depleted uranium.[8]
In September 2000 the Institute of Medicine (IOM) released its report on depleted uranium, chemical warfare agents (sarin and cyclosarin), pyridostigmine bromide, and vaccines (anthrax and botulinum toxoid). In assessing the two primary concerns commonly associated with uranium exposures (renal dysfunction and lung cancer) the IOM concluded that there was "limited/suggestive evidence of no association" between uranium exposure and renal dysfunction nor to lung cancer at cumulative exposures less than 20 rem (a unit of radiation dose). Twenty rem is at least four times higher than the highest radiological doses estimated for Gulf War veterans. The finding of "limit/suggestive evidence of no association" is one of five categories used by IOM to classify the evidence of association between exposure and a health outcome. It is the most definitive category available, indicating that no cause-effect relationship has been established between exposure to uranium and the suspected adverse health outcomes; i.e., renal dysfunction and lung cancer at cumulative exposures less than 20 rem. The IOM report also stated the data were inadequate or insufficient to determine whether exposure to uranium is associated with a variety of other health conditions including bone cancer, lung cancer (at cumulative exposures greater than 20 rem), lymphatic cancer, nervous system disease, nonmalignant respiratory disease, and other various health outcomes.[9]
Based on data developed to date, we believe that while DU could pose a chemical hazard at high intakes, Gulf War veterans did not experience intakes high enough to affect their health. Furthermore, the available evidence indicates that due to DU's low-level radioactivity, adverse radiological health effects are not expected. The available scientific and medical evidence to date does not support claims that DU caused or is causing Gulf War veterans' illnesses. Nevertheless, medical research to date has suggested several areas of concern for soldiers with embedded DU fragments that warrant further medical follow-up which DoD and the VA are committed to perform.[10]
This investigation identified significant shortcomings in how the military trained US personnel to operate in DU-contaminated environments. Pre-war training was given only to select military occupation specialties, leaving most servicemembers unaware of DU's use and simple measures that could have mitigated DU exposures. This paper outlines the steps the services have taken to correct this shortfall.
The report begins with a short, but important lesson on DU-what it is and the potential health risks of its chemical and radiological properties (see Section III, "Depleted Uranium-A Short Course"). The report then describes DU exposures that occurred during the Gulf War and relates those exposures to possible health effects (see Section IV, "Potential Health Effects from DU Use in the Gulf Theater, 1990-1991"). Next, we address environmental studies of various DU munitions, environmental assessments of DU contamination on the battlefield, results of current medical studies, future monitoring efforts, and ongoing and planned research (see Section V, "Follow-Up"). The report then presents some lessons learned since the Gulf War (see Section VI, "Lessons Learned and Recommendations"), addressing pre-Gulf War training shortfalls and reporting on the status of corrective action. The Conclusion summarizes the report's contents and relates key findings and conclusions based on evidence analyzed to date.
-------- india / pakistan
Pakistan's new appeal
Washington Times
December 13, 2000
Embassy Row News and dispatches from the diplomatic corridor.
James Morrison
http://www.washtimes.com/world/embassy-20001213174224.htm
Pakistani Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi is sending a message to the next U.S. president to pay more attention to her country and avoid a "piecemeal and sporadic" approach to global crises.
Miss Lodhi, in a speech to the Atlantic Council in Washington this week, also called for renewed dialogue between Pakistan and India over the disputed region of Kashmir, the cause of two wars between the South Asian rivals.
Pakistan believes the United States has tilted toward India since President Clinton made a five-day visit to India in March and spent only a few hours visiting the military ruler of Pakistan.
Both nations demonstrated they possess the ability to build nuclear weapons by detonating nuclear devices in 1998.
Miss Lodhi appealed for a more balanced approach to the subcontinent.
"The new U.S. administration can and should play an active role in promoting durable peace and stability in the world's major crisis areas, including the Middle East and South Asia," she said.
"In doing so, it should move from the approach of crisis management to effective and timely preventive diplomacy."
Miss Lodhi appealed to the next president - be it George W. Bush or Al Gore - for a more realistic approach to international affairs.
"The new U.S. administration, taking office at a time when the U.S. is the world's pre-eminent power will continue to significantly influence the course of events globally and in various sensitive regions of the world," she said.
"We hope that U.S. policy will be determined with greater care and deliberation. And that this is informed by a strategic vision that keeps the big picture in view -and not just responds to the immediate in a piecemeal and sporadic way."
The United States should recognize Pakistan's potential as an economic link between China and the Persian Gulf countries, she said.
"Pakistan is a pivotal state. Its geostrategic and geo-economic location can enable it to play a vital role in the future in becoming the geographic link for the economic fusion of the resource-rich Central Asian states with the growing markets and manufacturing capacities of South Asia," Miss Lodhi said.
"In evolving its longer-term policy towards the region, we expect the U.S. to keep in view this potential role that Pakistan can play as a geo-economic linchpin."
She called on India to "halt repressive measures" in the restless Kashmir region, where India has accused Pakistan of backing Muslim militants fighting Indian rule.
"Peace between Pakistan and India can be built in a step-by-step process that is manifestly fair and equitable," she said.
"This dialogue process could be sustained only if appropriate measures are taken to build mutual confidence that the talks are designed to secure a genuine solution. To this end, India should agree to halt all repressive measures, such as crackdowns, and move Indian troops into their barracks. Pakistan would be prepared to make every endeavor to convince the Kashmiris to respond."
Miss Lodhi called on the United States "to actively encourage and support a viable and fair Kashmir peace process."
-------- iran
Missile plan won't halt Iran program
Infobeat
Wednesday, December 13, 2000
By GEORGE GEDDA Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405311363
WASHINGTON (AP) - Iran, a major recipient of missile technology from North Korea and China, will be only marginally affected if Pyongyang and Beijing follow through on their stated intention to halt exports of missile materials, a top State Department official said Tuesday.
Richard Roth, the No. 2 official in the department's Middle East bureau, said Iran has been relying mostly on Russian cooperation for its missile development.
Roth was one of a number of Iran experts who spoke at a panel discussion sponsored by the Middle East Policy Council, a private research group.
Geoffrey Kemp, a senior aide on Middle East policy in the Reagan administration, said he believes it is a foregone conclusion that Iran will acquire long-range missiles.
``We're going to have to live with them,'' Kemp said.
Last month, China promised to cease exporting nuclear materials, a move welcomed by the Clinton administration. North Korea has indicated interest in pursuing a similar path, and administration officials are hopeful a final agreement can be reached.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright discussed the issue in October with North Korean chairman Kim Jong Il during a visit to Pyongyang.
Iran has tested the Shahab 3 missile, which has a range of 810 miles and is capable of striking Israel or U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia. Iran is now working on longer range versions of the Shahab.
Roth said that if China and North Korea decrease or eliminate missile technology exports, ``it may slow down some aspects of the Iranian missile program but the continuation toward achievement of Shahab 3, 4 and 5 is still very much on track thanks to the Russians.''
The United States has repeatedly accused Russian scientific institutes of selling missile technology and training to Iran.
Kemp said he would not rule out the possibility of China reversing itself on the missile export issue, particularly if it enters into a conflict with the United States over Taiwan.
``U.S.-China relations are going to be red button issue for the coming administration, and China has growing interests and energy needs from the Middle East,'' Kemp said. ``So this is a sleeper issue that we should bear in mind for the future.''
-------- korea
U.S. studies North Korea missile talks
Officials think a deal is at hand to curb the sale of ballistic technology.
Asia experts are skeptical.
Philadelphia Inquirer
Wednesday, December 13, 2000
By Carol Giacomo REUTERS
http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/2000/12/13/national/KOREA13.htm
WASHINGTON - The Clinton administration believes it is on the verge of a deal to curb North Korea's missile program and is likely to undertake talks that could lead to a visit to Pyongyang by President Clinton, U.S. officials said yesterday.
Clinton has been considering a trip to the North Korean capital before he leaves office Jan. 20 despite concerns voiced by some Asia experts.
No decision has been made on Clinton's trip or on sending State Department counselor Wendy Sherman, chief coordinator of U.S. policy toward North Korea, for a new round of talks, officials said. But such talks were likely, they said.
They said an agreement curbing North Korea's missile program was closer than generally believed and they feared it could slip away if left for the next president. "We think we've got the makings of a deal," one official said, although he cautioned that snags could still develop.
Many nongovernmental Asia experts fear that too many crucial details have not been pinned down.
Administration planning has been complicated by the presidential election. U.S. officials said they would like to consult with the next president and his team because the proposed accord is controversial and would depend on the next administration carrying it out.
"Although there is reason to believe a serious agreement could be reached with North Korea, it has to be fully implemented in the next administration," an official said.
North Korea, a Stalinist regime, is a major seller of missile technology and a key reason why the United States is considering building a multibillion dollar missile defense system. In recent meetings with Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and other U.S. officials, North Korea has indicated a willingness to end exports of ballistic missiles. It has also said it would be willing to give up development, production and testing of longer-range missiles, officials said.
A key issue is what North Korea gains in return for lost missile exports. Washington rejected a bid by Pyongyang for cash payments of over $1 billion, and a senior official said any talk now of cash compensation is "not correct."
Another element being discussed is a U.S. commitment to have North Korean civilian satellites launched free of charge each year by the United States, Russia or China.
---
U.S., North Korea Open Talks
Associated Press
December 13, 2000 Filed at 3:31 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-US-NKorea.html
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) -- The United States and North Korea opened talks Wednesday on recovering more remains of U.S. servicemen missing from the Korean War, with the Americans hoping to expand search operations next year after discovering a record 65 sets of possible remains in 2000.
Helped along by this year's tentative thawing in U.S.-North Korean relations, the negotiations between the Defense Department's POW/Missing Personnel Office and the North Korean army were expected to conclude Friday or Saturday.
James L. Greer, the lead U.S. negotiator, said that an unprecedented five joint recovery operations were made in North Korea between April and November this year. They were carried out by 20-man teams as opposed to the 10 allowed previously.
``It was a very successful year by our standards,'' Greer told The Associated Press. ``We're optimistic we can do more. There's been a steady line of progress since we started in 1996.''
That year North Korea first allowed U.S. experts to take part in a single recovery mission that yielded the remains of one U.S. servicemen. As such missions have gradually expanded, remains believed to belong to 107 missing American soldiers have been recovered.
Five have been positively identified and 10 are nearing the end of the forensic identification process led by specialists from the U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii.
The recovery teams have operated in an area about 60 miles north of the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.
The sites where remains have been recovered are in Unsan and Kujang counties, many of them along the Chong Chan River, where many American soldiers were lost in battle. U.S. experts believe that as many as 400 soldiers may be missing in this area.
``We always hope to go to other places in Korea,'' Greer said. ``We have a general idea of where the American losses are, based on wartime records and talks with returning POWs.''
To carry out more than the five missions completed this year, the United States would need to send a greater number of experts or spend more time in the country, Greer said. Icy ground prevents operations between mid-October and spring.
Relations between Washington and Pyongyang are easing this year amid the thaw between North and South Korea following a historic meeting between South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.
In Pyongyang on Wednesday, South Korea's unification minister met for the second day of the fourth round of talks with his North Korean counterpart on speeding up joint projects. Park Jae-kyu of South Korea expressed concerns that the pace of initiatives is slowing, especially regarding family reunions. North Korea cited logistical difficulties.
But for the United States, Kuala Lumpur has become a regular venue for sensitive negotiations with North Korea, especially on the status of the North's ballistic missile program.
More than 8,100 U.S. servicemen are listed as missing in action from the Korean War, fought from 1950 to 1953. It ended without a peace treaty and the United States still stations 37,000 troops in South Korea.
From 1991 to 1994, the North Koreans began returning some unilaterally recovered remains, mostly to visiting high-level U.S. delegations.
Due to crude recovery techniques, only seven of 208 have been identified, the statement said. The United States asked North Korea to stop unilateral recoveries, and by 1996 talks had led to participation of U.S. experts.
-------- puerto rico
Navy Sets Referendum for 2001 on Puerto Rican Test Range
New York Times
December 13, 2000
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/13/national/13VIEQ.html
SAN JUAN, P.R., Dec. 12 - Residents of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques will vote on Nov. 6, 2001, on whether to oust the United States Navy from their island, which has been used for decades as a bombing range and base for war games, officials said today.
Navy Secretary Richard Danzig set the date for the long-promised referendum in a letter to Gov. Pedro Rosselló on Monday. For the first time, the Navy will ask the 9,300 residents of Vieques whether they want the Navy base on the island.
The Vieques bombing range became the object of protests after a civilian security guard was killed in a botched bombing run there in April 1999.
Dozens of protesters occupied the Vieques Navy base for more than a year, forcing a halt to live-fire training. The federal authorities forcibly removed them last May, and the Navy resumed war games in October.
Residents say more than a half- century of military exercises on the island have threatened their health, stunted the island's economic growth and damaged marine life and air quality.
The Navy has argued that the hilly, 33,000-acre island off Puerto Rico's east coast is the only place it can properly conduct simultaneous land, sea and air exercises and is essential to battle readiness.
Under a deal between Governor Rosselló and the White House, the Navy was allowed to continue training with inert ammunition on Vieques for three years, and residents would hold a referendum to decide if they wanted the Navy to leave the island by May 1, 2003.
In his letter to Governor Rosselló, Mr. Danzig said that at least 90 days before the November referendum, the Navy would submit the language to be used on a second option, which would permit indefinite Navy training with live fire.
The second option carries with it a $50 million incentive through economic development projects in the community.
An additional $40 million is being spent before the vote, under the accord brokered with the White House.
Mr. Danzig also sent a letter to Gov.-elect Sila Calderón of the pro- commonwealth Popular Democratic Party, warning that unless her administration supported the White House agreement, the Navy would not be obliged to follow it.
In her campaign for governor, Ms. Calderón promised to quickly enact tougher noise regulations that would ban Navy shelling of Vieques. The regulations would become effective six months after passage.
"The transfer of land and many of the projects cannot go forward without your assurance that your administration will fully support the agreement," Mr. Danzig wrote to Ms. Calderón.
The governor-elect, who takes office in January, was on vacation and could not be reached for immediate comment today.
The letter was made public today by Governor Rosselló at a news conference.
"This should come as no surprise to anyone," Governor Rosselló said of Mr. Danzig's letter. "If she doesn't abide by the agreement, then in essence there is no agreement."
-------- russia
Putin steps on Washington's toes
The Hindu
Wednesday, December 13, 2000
By Vladimir Radyuhin
http://www.indiaserver.com/thehindu/2000/12/13/stories/0313000e.htm
MOSCOW, DEC. 12. The Russian President, Mr. Vladimir Putin, will visit Cuba and Canada this week, bypassing the United States, in another sign of the Kremlin's new assertive foreign policy.
Mr. Putin's trip to Cuba will be the first by a Russian leader since the Soviet President, Mr. Mikhail Gorbachev, visited Havana in 1989. Mr. Putin's predecessor, Mr. Boris Yeltsin, preoccupied with forging ``strategic partnership'' with Washington, turned his back on the former Caribbean ally.
Bilateral trade has slumped to just under $1 billion, a fraction of what it was in the 1980's, when the Soviet Union used to meet nearly all of Cuba's needs in weapons, oil, chemicals, metals and machinery in exchange for sugar, citrus fruits, nickel and cobalt.
Mr. Putin goes to Havana to rebuild not only economic, but also defence ties. The Russian Defence Minister, Marshal Igor Sergeyev, will accompany Mr. Putin and a Russian military news agency quoted a Defence Ministry source in Moscow as saying that arms trade would be ``one of the most important subjects'' during the talks in Havana.
``Both sides no longer have a reason to limit future contacts in the military sphere,'' the source said, adding that the mood in the Kremlin ``creates conditions to re-arm the Cuban army.''
Washington is clearly irked by Moscow's bold stepping into American turf, especially at a time when the U.S. is in presidential election limbo. ``The timing of the trip is ruffling feathers in the outgoing Clinton administration,'' The Washington Post wrote last week.
However, Moscow has made it clear it is not going to take American concerns into account. The Russian Foreign Minister, Mr. Igor Ivanov, said it was time to ``combine efforts to get over a slump'' in Russian-Cuban ties.
Mr. Putin is taking with him to Havana his Atomic Energy Minister, Mr. Yevgeny Adamov, to discuss Russian assistance in finishing a Soviet-built nuclear reactor at Juragua, which the U.S. regards as a security threat.
``Moscow has not yet dared help build a reactor on an island just 60 miles south of U.S. shores,'' an AFP news agency report said.
Mr. Putin is also taking a proposal to help Cuba finish a nickel ore processing plant, whose output can be used to repay Havana's multibillion debt to Russia.
From Cuba, Mr. Putin flies to Canada, which Washington regards as its backyard. ``Taking into account the current (presidential election) situation in the United States, it reminds me of a cavalry raid into the adversary's rear lines,'' said Mr. Vladimir Lukin, a Deputy Speaker in the State Duma, the lower House of the Russian Parliament, and a former Russian ambassador in Washington.
Moscow insists that Mr. Putin's agenda in Montreal will be purely economic, but analysts said Canada's restrained position on U.S. anti-missile defence plans and calls for ending the economic blockade against Cuba were important factors behind Mr. Putin's visit.
---
Putin Nurturing Old Friendships of a Soviet Past
New York Times
December 13, 2000
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/13/world/13PUTI.html
MOSCOW, Dec. 12 - Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz of Iraq was in town doing some lobbying on behalf of President Saddam Hussein last month, and while he was here, he took the opportunity to say on national television what a number of former Soviet client states may have been wanting to say for a long time.
"For the last 10 years, some people have held jobs in the Russian government without knowing the country's history of relations" with its Soviet-era friends, Mr. Aziz said. "Many of them viewed the West as the sole way to resolve Russia's problems."
But under President Vladimir V. Putin that is beginning to change, he said. "Now Russian authorities can feel the traditions extending over the centuries of good relations with the East, with Iraq, the Arab world, India and China."
He could have also listed North Korea, Iran, Libya, Angola and, this week, Cuba, where Mr. Putin will touch down on Wednesday as the first Russian leader since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union to visit the island that radiates so much history of cold war tension for Russians and Americans alike.
Just nine months into office, the 48- year-old Russian president has cast Russia's relations with the world as a much broader net than his predecessor, rebuilding Moscow's ties with traditional client states of the Soviet era, including some of the so- called "rogue states" that have been accused of supporting terrorism or building weapons of mass destruction or both. But in a significant step beyond the Soviet era, Mr. Putin has launched himself like a foreign policy businessman onto the landscape of the old Soviet bloc, now rife with newly emerging democratic states, market economies and not a few stragglers like Cuba that have yet to make the transition to new economies since the Soviet subsidies disappeared a decade ago.
On this old terrain, Mr. Putin has been searching for opportunities, both for Russia's beleaguered national industries and for a more self- assured profile for Russian foreign policy, at once more constructive on issues of war and peace, but also more assertive when Russia's security and trade interests are in the balance.
"Putin's foreign policy looks like a red-star cocktail to me," said Andrei V. Kozyrev, foreign minister when Boris N. Yeltsin was president. "It's the old stuff of anti-Americanism spiced by the support of rogue regimes from Slobodan Milosevic to Saddam Hussein, with the addition of narrowly defined commercial interests."
Still, Mr. Kozyrev has great hopes for Mr. Putin. He argues that the Russian leader is trying to satisfy a broad array of domestic constituencies by coddling old dictators on the one hand and moving closer to the West on the other.
"Keeping this balance is an absolute prerequisite to keeping the market-reform effort going, and I have to congratulate him," Mr. Kozyrev said, adding that he fears that because of this internal balancing act, Mr. Putin has failed to present a coherent Russian view to the world.
"There is an ambition to be independent and self-assertive, but without an overall strategy." he said. "That boils down to awkward moves that make you look different just to be different, and that may be a reflection of our national inferiority complex."
Whatever the underlying motivation, Mr. Putin "has changed the dynamic of U.S.-Russian relations," said Michael McFaul of the Carnegie Moscow Center, who discussed Mr. Putin's foreign policy with a number of Kremlin officials last month. "For a number of years under Yeltsin, we would always come to him with the list of things we wanted to do, and it was always a task of trying to get him to cooperate," Mr. McFaul said. "Putin has changed that dynamic. Suddenly we are responding to him, and frankly some people don't like that."
Much of Mr. Putin's diplomacy seems pragmatic and constructive, experts said, as when the Russian leader visited North Korea in the summer and warned its leader, Kim Jong Il, that North Korea's ballistic missile program was posing a threat to stability in Asia. In the Middle East, Mr. Putin has taken every opportunity to keep the peace process moving forward and to quell the violence, even getting Prime Minister Ehud Barak of Israel on the telephone when the Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, visited the Kremlin last month.
But he has also challenged Washington's proposal to build ballistic missile defenses and has suggested an alternative that would extend the protection to Europe and preserve a crucial 1972 treaty that bans the development of national missile defenses.
When Mr. Putin was elected in March, experts predicted that he would be a domestic policy president. But he has ranged near and far abroad to reacquire old customers and markets for Russian industries - oil, weapons, metallurgy and civilian nuclear power - and to collect billions of dollars in debt still owed Moscow by clients of the Soviet era.
Russia has signed agreements to build nuclear power plants in China, India and Iran, and Mr. Putin is expected to discuss with President Fidel Castro of Cuba this week whether the one-time allies might restart work on an atomic station abandoned there in 1992. The two might also discuss Russian investment in Cuba's extensive nickel reserves.
This fall, Mr. Putin visited New Delhi, the first Russian leader to do so in eight years, and he signed multibillion-dollar contracts to provide supersonic fighters, tanks and other battlefield weapons for the Indian army. In India and China, Russia is after a larger share of the international arms market. And in Angola, where Soviet and Cuban forces once aligned themselves against Western-backed forces, Moscow is trying to pick up business in oil and diamonds. Moscow might also sell some weapons to government forces that trying to put down the 25- year-old revolt of Jonas Savimbi.
In taking these steps, Mr. Putin is connecting Russia's interests with those of the Soviet past - but without the old ideological content. The best that Mr. Putin could say about Mr. Castro in advance of his visit was that "Cuba is our traditional partner" and that "Cuba has been great and extremely important for us because it always had an independent position." His comments were not exactly the rousing rhetoric of old.
This fall, Mr. Putin abrogated an agreement to end Russia's conventional arms sales to Iran under an agreement signed in 1995 between Vice President Al Gore and Viktor S. Chernomyrdin, who was prime minister. Though a number of Russian foreign policy experts disagree with Mr. Putin's reversal on Iran, they have been defending his act.
"Just as Russia does not consider the United States its enemy, Iran is not our enemy either, and Iran is paying in hard currency for all its weapons," said Aleksei Arbatov, a liberal Parliament deputy who sits on the Defense Committee.
Mr. Kozyrev, the former foreign minister, disagrees with Mr. Putin's tilt toward Iran, but argues that Russia has security concerns that only Iran can help address.
"Let's not forget that Iran is the counterbalance to the Taliban in Afghanistan," he said, adding that Iran nonetheless will never supplant the importance of Russia's dependence on the West for technology and investment.
Mr. Putin seems to understand that and, he has been seeking to bind Russia's foreign policy closer to Europe and to secure for Russia a permanent seat at the table among industrial nations and in the global trading system.
"He is first and foremost a Europeanist," Mr. McFaul of the Moscow Carnegie Center said. "He sees that at the end of the day Russia's future is best served if it is integrated as part of Europe."
---
Clinton Praises Russian Policy
Associated Press
December 13, 2000 Filed at 2:15 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-US-Russia.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Clinton was only half joking when he said in 1993, ``Gosh, I miss the Cold War.'' Clinton, of course, was referring to the clarity of those four decades of U.S.-Soviet rivalry -- in contrast to the murkiness of the post-Soviet era.
Now, seven years later, things are no less opaque than they were when Clinton made that statement.
The Russians have a way of keeping people confused by seemingly reaching out in all directions.
And the confusion extends to the assessments of U.S.-Russian relations, with Clinton trumpeting major advances and critics expressing despair over what his policies have wrought.
There are times when Russian President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB official, seems nostalgic for the old days.
This week features a Putin visit to Cuba, a one-time Cold War ally of Moscow. Last week, he proposed restoring the Soviet national anthem as well as the Soviet era insignia for the Russian armed forces.
Two weeks ago, Russia unilaterally walked away from a 1995 agreement with the United States that barred Moscow from making new weapons deals with Iran.
But there are occasions when Putin shows a conciliatory side toward Washington -- as in his recent decision to pardon an American, suffering from ill health, just days after he had been sentenced to 20 years in prison on spy charges.
And a newly released White House ``Fact Sheet'' highlights perceived gains in relations under Clinton.
At Washington's prodding, the document says, Moscow dispatched troops to the Balkans to participate in NATO missions. Clinton also won Russian support for an agreement to end the Kosovo war. In addition, the document touts the institutional links Moscow has established with NATO. As part of that process, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright will meet with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov later this week in Brussels.
As Stephen Sestanovich, the top State Department Russian affairs expert, notes in the current issue of The National Interest, dire predictions by critics of a lasting U.S.-Russian estrangement have not come to pass.
That was the fear when three former Soviet allies -- Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic -- joined NATO last year. Moscow, the critics said, would retaliate by refusing to ratify a nuclear weapons reduction treaty with Washington. Moscow ratified it last April.
Still, Russia has shown a deep reluctance to participate in Western-dominated institutions -- if membership means accepting certain conditions.
An example is its attitude toward joining the World Trade Organization, which sets rules for international commerce. The Russian hesitance contrasts sharply with China's determined bid to join the WTO, a step anticipated in early 2001.
Some of the criticism of Clinton's Russia policies is unsparing.
Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., a Russian affairs expert, faults Clinton for continuing to embrace former President Boris Yeltsin in the face of theft of International Monetary Fund loans by criminal elements and other abuses.
``It wasn't surprising to me that polls last year showed that less than 2 percent of the Russian people were behind Boris Yeltsin,'' Weldon says. ``The only support behind Boris Yeltsin last year was Bill Clinton ... and we wonder why the Russian people lost confidence in America.''
And Peter Reddaway, of George Washington University, says Western economic policies have had a devastating effect on Russia.
``The majority of Russians, who a decade ago saw democracy and free markets as beacons of hope, now see before their eyes ugly perversions of these institutions and wonder if they just won't work in Russia,'' he says. ``Opinion polls show profound doubt and even despair about Russia's future. They also show that that anti-Americanism has permeated the whole society and is probably now deeper than at any time in Russian history.
``A substantial majority believe that the United States and the West have weakened Russia deliberately in order to exploit and humiliate it.''
EDITOR'S NOTE -- George Gedda has covered foreign affairs for The Associated Press since 1968.
-------- ukraine
Progress in Ukraine
New York Times
December 13, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/13/opinion/L13UKR.html
To the Editor:
Re "Headaches Pile Up on Ukraine Leader" (news article, Dec. 6):
President Leonid Kuchma's decision to shut down the Chernobyl nuclear power station is not a "headache," but rather a sign of the success of our reforms and of cooperation with the international community. A 5 percent growth in gross domestic product, a 12 percent rise in industrial output this year, the recent decision of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to provide Ukraine with a loan for winter fuel, and an agreement to reschedule the gas debt to Russia show that we are on the right track.
The problems in Ukraine's relations with the International Monetary Fund have been clarified, and we expect resumption of credits shortly.
On the disappearance of the journalist Georgy Gongadze: The government of Ukraine and law enforcement agencies are doing everything in their power to find Mr. Gongadze, we hope alive, and to get to the bottom of this case.
KOSTYANTYN GRYSHCHENKO Ambassador of Ukraine Washington, Dec. 7, 2000
--------
Chronology of talks on Chernobyl closure
Excite News
December 13, 2000
http://news.excite.com/news/r/001213/08/ukraine-chernobyl-talks
KIEV, Dec 13 (Reuters) - Following are some key facts about the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster and the chronology of talks on the station's closure between Ukraine and the world's leading industrialised nations.
Engineers at the plant were seeking to re-start its last reactor on Wednesday ahead of a closing ceremony on Friday.
APRIL 26, 1986: Reactor Number Four at the Soviet-designed Chernobyl nuclear plant explodes at 1:26 a.m., following an experiment when staff temporarily cut off the reactor's safety systems, aiming to test the unit's capacity.
Shortly afterwards, a series of powerful blasts caused by overheated steam inside the reactor completely ruins the unit, sending a huge radioactive cloud of across Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and much of Europe.
Tonnes of radioactive strontium, caesium, iodine, and plutonium spread across millions of hectares from Chernobyl to North Europe and the Mediterranean, affecting millions of people.
The accident has since been linked to several thousand deaths. Hundreds of thousands of people developed radiation sickness.
APRIL-OCTOBER 1986: Soviet authorities try to hush up the scale of the tragedy, admitting reluctantly that around 30 people had died in the first few weeks after the blast.
Hundreds of thousands of people from all over the Soviet Union, now popularly known as "liquidators," are mobilised by the Communist Party to clean up the disaster. Most of them are now disabled, some are terminally ill and others have died.
NOVEMBER 1986: A unique cover above the reactor, the so-called "Sarcophagus," is built to protect the environment from radiation for at least 30 years.
AUGUST 24, 1991: Ukraine declares independence from the Soviet Union after a failed hardline coup in Moscow.
OCTOBER, 1991: A huge fire forces Chernobyl officials to shut down the station's second reactor.
APRIL 13, 1995: President Leonid Kuchma declares Ukraine is ready to shut down the station by the year 2000. His statement follows a meeting with European Commission officials in Kiev.
DECEMBER, 1995: At a meeting in the Canadian capital Ottawa, Ukraine and the G-7 group of the world's leading industrialised nations sign a memorandum of understanding, agreeing to close Chernobyl.
It involves commitments worth a total of some $2.3 billion in aid from the G-7 to support Chernobyl's closure by the year 2000.
The agreed package of loans for Ukraine's energy sector includes the completion of two more modern nuclear reactors at Rivne and Khmelnytsky stations in the west of the country.
The aid package includes $498 million in G-7 member grants and $1.8 billion in loan financing from international agencies.
Most of the grant money - $349 million - will be for nuclear decommissioning and safety. Over $1.9 billion will be spent to upgrade nuclear plants and the energy sector as a whole.
NOVEMBER, 1996: Chernobyl shuts down reactor Number One after its safe lifespan expires. Only reactor Number Three remains in operation.
NOVEMBER, 1997: At a conference in New York, dozens of nations collect $350 million to rebuild the rapidly deteriorating concrete sarcophagus, but most of this money has yet to reach Ukraine. The reconstruction cost is estimated at $760 million.
APRIL-MAY, 1999: Reconstruction of the sarcophagus begins. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development releases $130 million in grants for the improvements.
APRIL, 2000 - Kuchma reaffirms Chernobyl is to be closed by the year end, but gives no date.
JUNE, 2000 - Kuchma tells visiting U.S. President Bill Clinton that the ex-Soviet state will shut down the station on December 15.
Clinton says the United States will give Ukraine $78 million in fresh funds to help improve safety at the plant, 110 km (70 miles) north of Kiev.
JULY, 2000 - At a conference in Germany, donor nations collect $365 million to rebuild the concrete sarcophagus above the fourth reactor.
After the two donors' conferences, Ukraine has raised a total of $715 million of the $760 million estimated necessary for the reconstruction.
NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2000 - Chernobyl engineers prepare to shut down the last functioning reactor, Number Three, on December 15.
The actual process of making the plant safe will take many years. The last fuel rods will not be taken away until 2008 and it will be between 30 and 100 years before the station is completely decomissioned.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the European Union each pledge to lend Ukraine hundreds of millions of dollars to finish building Soviet-era reactors at Rivne and Khmelnitsky in western Ukraine, to replace lost capacity from Chernobyl.
The EBRD loan is for $215 million, while the EU pledges $585 million. Environmentalists protest against the loans, which they say are going towards reactors which, although safer than Chernobyl's, are still based on ageing technology.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- new mexico
Preliminary Analysis of Discarded Tapes Shows No Link to Ex-Scientist at Los Alamos
New York Times
December 13, 2000
By WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID JOHNSTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/13/national/13LAB.html
Federal officials said yesterday that investigators had found several tapes in a landfill outside Los Alamos, N.M., and were analyzing them to see if any were discarded by Dr. Wen Ho Lee, the former Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist who has told of filling computer tapes with nuclear secrets and then throwing them in the trash.
The suspect tapes are cassettes, officials said, and thus resemble those on which Dr. Lee illegally downloaded highly sensitive weapons data.
But a preliminary analysis so far indicates that none of the tapes are Dr. Lee's, federal officials said yesterday, adding that further inquiry might reverse the tentative finding.
One expert cautioned that investigators digging through the muddy Los Alamos County landfill had previously found tapes suspected of being Dr. Lee's that turned out not to be.
"They have clearly found something," said one official, who added that only detailed analysis by the Federal Bureau of Investigation would tell if any of the recovered tapes could help solve one of the case's central mysteries.
Late yesterday, officials said that they had asked the Los Alamos laboratory to help analyze some of the tapes.
Julie Habiger, a spokeswoman for Los Alamos County, said the F.B.I. started digging at the dump site on Nov. 28, and finished last Friday, breaking for weekends and working a total of nine days.
Workers, she said, used bulldozers and hand rakes to comb through piles of trash, and security agents still guard the site continuously.
Mrs. Habiger said F.B.I. workers did not return to the landfill on Monday and, instead, agents told the county they were finished for now.
"So they could come back," she said, "or maybe they have enough information for their investigation."
Bill Elwell, an F.B.I. spokesman in Albuquerque, said no decision had been made on whether the digging would resume at the landfill.
The hunt started after Dr. Lee told investigators as part of a plea agreement with the government in September that he had thrown the tapes in the garbage, and that they had probably ended up in the landfill.
Dr. Lee, a former weapon scientist at Los Alamos, had originally been charged in a 59-count indictment with illegally downloading a wealth of weapons data with the intention of aiding a foreign nation and harming the United States.
Dr. Lee spent more than nine months in solitary confinement and was described as a major risk to national security.
But the government dropped almost its entire case, and Dr. Lee pleaded guilty to one count of mishandling secrets.
Dr. Lee won his freedom and agreed to explain why he had downloaded the data and what had happened to the tapes, at least seven of which are missing.
His lawyers said earlier that he had destroyed the missing tapes and that no one else had access to them.
After Dr. Lee told of throwing the tapes in the trash, F.B.I. agents determined roughly where the lab's garbage bins were emptied at the landfill and began searching there two weeks ago.
The tapes are regarded by the government as having major importance and have been the focus of an enormous investigation, both to preserve them and to keep them from falling into enemy hands. In court hearings, the tapes were described as containing data that could aid the building of advanced nuclear weapons.
On the tapes, or at least on one of them, was a virtual library of nuclear weapons testing and design data that Dr. Lee admitted to having created over a period of many years.
--------
Wen Ho Lee Debriefing Ends
Associated Press
December 13, 2000 Filed at 4:15 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Scientist-Secrets.html
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) -- The official government debriefing of former Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist Wen Ho Lee has ended, The Associated Press learned Wednesday. There was no word on whether he will take lie-detector exams.
The questioning of Lee under oath ended Tuesday night, according to a source familiar with the case who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Earlier this year, Lee pleaded guilty to one count of illegally downloading restricted government data and agreed to make himself available for debriefing and to possible polygraph tests.
In return, the government dropped 58 charges against Lee. He is to remain available for informal follow-up questioning until September.
Lee family spokeswoman Stacy Cohen and Assistant U.S. Attorney George Stamboulidis did not immediately return calls seeking comment.
Lee was arrested a year ago and held in solitary confinement for nine months. He has maintained that he destroyed 17 portable computer tapes he used to download data while working at the nuclear weapons lab.
A source has said that Lee acknowledged throwing the tapes away in a Dumpster inside the laboratory's top-secret X Division in January 1999. FBI agents searched in the Los Alamos County landfill from late November through last Friday.
FBI spokesmen declined to say whether anything was found, but a federal law enforcement official in Washington said Friday that some portable tapes that might contain Lee's downloads were found and sent to the FBI laboratory for testing. That official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, cautioned that other items found earlier were tested and turned out not to be the Lee tapes.
On Tuesday, another federal law enforcement official said a preliminary assessment indicated the newly found tapes also might not be Lee's. Experts from Los Alamos were being brought in to help.
The tapes were disposed of just days after Lee's security clearance was revoked in December 1998, according to a timetable provided last summer by federal prosecutors. They said that after his access was pulled, Lee repeatedly sought entry to the X Division where he had worked and that he gained access three times.
-------- us nuc politics
Bush Pledges to Be President for 'One Nation Not One Party;
Gore, Conceding, Urges Unity
New York Times
December 13, 2000
By DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/14/politics/13CND-GORE.html
AUSTIN, Tex., Dec. 13 -- George W. Bush spoke to the nation for the first time as president-elect tonight, declaring that the "nation must rise above a house divided" after one of the closest and most disputed presidential elections in United States history.
Speaking from the podium of the Texas House of Representatives, precisely 24 hours after the United States Supreme Court ended a five-week-long dispute by halting a recount of Florida's disputed votes, and thus preserving Mr. Bush's razor-thin lead, the 54-year-old governor devoted his entire speech to themes of reconciliation. "Whether you voted for me or not, I will do my best to serve your interests," he said, "and I will work to earn your respect."
A little more than an hour before, Vice President Al Gore called Mr. Bush to say he was withdrawing from the 17-month-long presidential race, and to congratulate the Texas governor. Minutes later, in his own speech from his ceremonial office next door to the White House, Mr. Gore said that while he disagreed with the Court's ruling "I offer my concession."
Mr. Bush appeared by turns relaxed and slightly nervous, licking his upper lip as he looked around the large chamber, dominated by a huge Christmas tree and filled with his supporters and staff. "I have a lot to be thankful for," he said in a speech that emphasized only common ground between Democrats and Republicans, and made no mention of differences. "I am thankful for America, and thankful that we are able to resolve our electoral differences in a peaceful way."
The choice of locale for his speech underscored the theme: The Texas House is under Democratic control. Mr. Bush used the moment to reiterate some of his campaign themes, talking of making "all our public schools excellent," strengthening Medicare and creating a prescription drug benefit for "all of our seniors." He talked of a "broad, fair and fiscally responsible tax relief," and like Mr. Gore an hour before him, talked of "common ground.
"During the fall campaign, we differed about details of these proposals but there was remarkable consensus about the important issues before us." He spoke of serving "every race and every background," aware that minorities voted overwhelmingly against him in last month's election.
It was not the kind of speech Mr. Bush would have delivered had he won the large of victory his aides were predicting on election night. He offered nothing to the conservative wing of his party, and evoked none of the cultural issues that often divide the two parties.
Though he briefly invoked the words of Lincoln, Mr. Bush referred directly to only one of his predecessors, Thomas Jefferson, who also took office in a disputed election in 1800. "I will be guided by President Jefferson's sense of purpose," he said, "to stand for principle, to be reasonable in manner, and, above all, to do great good for the cause of freedom and harmony." "The Presidency is more than an honor, more than an office," he concluded. "It is a charge to keep."
Mr. Bush's speech to the nation tonight was no ordinary victory address.
After five weeks of legal maneuvering and two rapid-fire decisions by the Supreme Court which effectively ended Mr. Gore's hopes for a recount on Tuesday night, the Texas governor had much more to accomplish this evening than simply declaring himself the victor on a typical Election Day.
A man who is at his most uncomfortable with formal addresses in formal settings was called on to give one that he knew would set the tone of his first term. It was a night for perfect pitch and appropriate symbolism, "chiefly the olive branch," one aide said.
Outlining Mr. Bush's goals, aides said he had to be humble, while making it clear that other nations and his political opponents at home should not question his command of the office. He had to appeal to those who, despite a nearly year-and-a-half-long campaign and a five-week recount, still question whether he comes to the job adequately prepared, or risks becoming captive to a talented set of advisers.
This afternoon his aides, led by his communications director, Karen P. Hughes, and his speechwriter, Michael Gerson were fine-tuning drafts of the speech with an eye to closing a breach with Democrats far wider today than it was on Election Day. They were acutely aware that his Republican majority in the House of Representatives is razor thin, especially compared to the substantial Democratic majority President Clinton enjoyed in 1993, before losing it two years later, and that the Senate is now divided precisely 50-50.
So Mr. Bush chose his setting with bipartisan care: The Texas House is controlled by Democrats, and he was introduced tonight by its Democratic speaker, Pete Laney. Although the Legislature is not in session, nearly all of its members attended.
But even that could not overcome some of the other oddities of today's events.
Mr. Bush is not the first president to take office in an election that was for all practical purposes settled by Supreme Court. But not since 1888, when Benjamin Harrison won the presidential election, has anyone assumed the presidency after losing the popular vote but winning the electoral vote.
Mr. Bush also shares that dubious electoral distinction with two others: Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876 and John Quincy Adams in 1824. Mr. Adams, of course, was also the only other son of a president to win the presidency.
"The challenge tonight is making the case that he has a legitimate claim to the presidency, without ever really acknowledging that there is any real question of legitimacy," one of Mr. Bush's advisers, who was not involved in drafting the speech, said this afternoon.
He added: "He can do it."
Under very different circumstances, other presidents have faced tasks similar to Mr. Bush's tonight. Another politician who learned his political skills in the chamber where Mr. Bush spoke tonight, Lyndon B. Johnson, faced a similar task of unifying the nation after he was thrust into the presidency by the assassination of his predecessor, John F. Kennedy. But the tragic circumstances of his ascendancy created a well of sympathy that Mr. Bush does not enjoy.
Gerald R. Ford had a more analogous job of reunifying the nation after a bitter and partisan division, and hours after President Richard M. Nixon resigned he declared that "our long national nightmare is over."
"Both Johnson and Ford were far more successful in sending out unifying messages than anyone thought at the time they could be," said Michael Beschloss, the presidential historian, who has focused intensively on Mr. Johnson's term.
But both men, he noted, were thrown into the Oval Office by fate; Mr. Bush must overcome suspicions among many of his political opponents that he took office by obstructing a reliable recount of the Florida vote.
He also had to take firm command of a national agenda while still acknowledging, even if obliquely, that the manner of his election may impose limitations on his powers. While he alluded tonight to the broad themes of his campaign -- improving education, reforming social security, returning America's surpluses to its taxpayers he was scrupulously nonspecific.
Many of his advisers say that in the next few months, he must focus on common ground with his Democratic opponents, and win bipartisan passage of some major piece of legislation to show that he is willing to come to the middle. But there is still debate within the Bush camp about what that piece of legislation should be.
He also faces an array of immediate challenges, at home and abroad, that will not wait for Senate confirmations or the selection of roughly 800 senior White House staff.
The economy is clearly slowing, and while Mr. Bush's running mate, Dick Cheney, has several times warned of an impending recession born in the Clinton administration, it will be up to a Bush administration to keep it from happening. Privately some of his advisers worry that Mr. Bush's economic bench is not as deep as his national security bench.
His chief economic adviser, Lawrence B. Lindsey, is a respected former member of the Federal Reserve Board, but the search for a treasury secretary has focused on Wall Street.
"We're looking for a Republican version of Bob Rubin to reassure the markets," said one Washington-based adviser to Mr. Bush, referring to Mr. Clinton's treasury secretary, an ardent Democrat who managed to look Republican.
"Of course," he added, "in 1992, who had heard of Bob Rubin?"
Whoever gets the job will have to decide with Mr. Bush whether to pursue the kind of deep tax cuts that the Texas governor talked about as a candidate. Many Republicans believe that Mr. Bush's plans will have to be dramatically scaled back given the composition of Congress, though most believe some reductions in estate taxes and the elimination of the marriage penalty could prove low-hanging fruit for Mr. Bush's first few months in office.
Mr. Bush is also looking for a respected figure to head the Defense Department, and much speculation is on a retired Democratic senator, Sam Nunn of Georgia, one of the leading experts in defense and nuclear arms. But Mr. Nunn said again tonight on CNN that he has "made it clear I want to stay in private life," and the ultimate selection may determine whether Mr. Bush can make good on his promise to drastically cut America's nuclear arsenal and build a missile defense system that has, so far, failed many of its early benchmark technological tests.
Mr. Bush faces other long-term problems that he spoke about only rarely during his presidency. A man who has traveled abroad only three times with the exception of many trips to Mexico must now handle an increasingly assertive Russia, a Middle East in crisis, and enormous division in his own party about how to deal with China. He has vowed to bring home American peacekeeping troops in the Balkans, but said little about how he would keep the peace there. He has called for a stronger military, and less use of it.
He also faces increasing suspicion of America's economic, military and cultural power, and the resentments it has engendered.
"That will be a key test for him," said Joseph S. Nye, the dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and a former official in the C.I.A. and the Defense Department during Mr. Clinton's first term. "He has said he will not tolerate isolationism. What isn't clear is what his position is on unilateralism."
-------- MILITARY
It's not only greenhouse gas emissions: Washington's new world order weapons have the ability to trigger climate change
Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research
11/00
By Michel Chossudovsky Professor of Economics, University of Ottawa and TFF associate, author of The Globalization of Poverty, second edition, Common Courage Press http://www.transnational.org/forum/meet/2000/Chossu_GreenHouseHAARP.html
The important debate on global warming under UN auspices provides but a partial picture of climate change; in addition to the devastating impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on the ozone layer, the World's climate can now be modified as part of a new generation of sophisticated "non-lethal weapons." Both the Americans and the Russians have developed capabilities to manipulate the World's climate.
In the US, the technology is being perfected under the High-frequency Active Aural Research Program (HAARP) as part of the ("Star Wars") Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI). Recent scientific evidence suggests that HAARP is fully operational and has the ability of potentially triggering floods, droughts, hurricanes and earthquakes.
HAARP is a mass destructive weapons - not part of any negotiations
From a military standpoint, HAARP is a weapon of mass destruction. Potentially, it constitutes an instrument of conquest capable of selectively destabilising agricultural and ecological systems of entire regions.
While there is no evidence that this deadly technology has been used, surely the United Nations should be addressing the issue of "environmental warfare" alongside the debate on the climatic impacts of greenhouse gases.
Despite a vast body of scientific knowledge, the issue of deliberate climatic manipulations for military use has never been explicitly part of the UN agenda on climate change. Neither the official delegations nor the environmental action groups participating in the Hague Conference on Climate Change (CO6) (November 2000) have raised the broad issue of "weather warfare" or "environmental modification techniques (ENMOD)" as relevant to an understanding of climate change.
The clash between official negotiators, environmentalists and American business lobbies has centered on Washington's outright refusal to abide by commitments on carbon dioxide reduction targets under the 1997 Kyoto protocol.(1) The impacts of military technologies on the World's climate are not an object of discussion or concern. Narrowly confined to greenhouse gases, the ongoing debate on climate change serves Washington's strategic and defense objectives.
"Weather warfare"
World renowned scientist Dr. Rosalie Bertell confirms that "US military scientists · are working on weather systems as a potential weapon. The methods include the enhancing of storms and the diverting of vapor rivers in the Earth's atmosphere to produce targeted droughts or floods."(2)
Already in the 1970s, former National Security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski had foreseen in his book "Between Two Ages" that:
"Technology will make available, to the leaders of major nations, techniques for conducting secret warfare, of which only a bare minimum of the security forces need be appraised... [T]echniques of weather modification could be employed to produce prolonged periods of drought or storm."
Marc Filterman, a former French military officer, outlines several types of "unconventional weapons" using radio frequencies. He refers to "weather war," indicating that the U.S. and the Soviet Union had already "mastered the know-how needed to unleash sudden climate changes (hurricanes, drought) in the early 1980s." (3) These technologies make it "possible to trigger atmospheric disturbances by using Extremely Low Frequency (ELF) radar [waves]." (4)
A simulation study of future defense "scenarios" commissioned for the US Air Force calls for: "US aerospace forces to 'own the weather' by capitalizing on emerging technologies and focusing development of those technologies to war-fighting applications." From enhancing friendly operations or disrupting those of the enemy via small-scale tailoring of natural weather patterns to complete dominance of global communications and counterspace control, weather-modification offers the war fighter a wide-range of possible options to defeat or coerce an adversary. In the United States, weather-modification will likely become a part of national security policy with both domestic and international applications. Our government will pursue such a policy, depending on its interests, at various levels. (5)
The high-frequency active aural research program - HAARP
The High-Frequency Active Aural Research Program (HAARP) based in Gokoma Alaska --jointly managed by the US Air Force and the US Navy-- is part of a new generation of sophisticated weaponry under the US Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Operated by the Air Force Research Laboratory's Space Vehicles Directorate, HAARP constitutes a system of powerful antennas capable of creating "controlled local modifications of the ionosphere".
Scientist Dr. Nicholas Begich --actively involved in the public campaign against HAARP-- describes HAARP as: "A super-powerful radiowave-beaming technology that lifts areas of the ionosphere [upper layer of the atmosphere] by focusing a beam and heating those areas. Electromagnetic waves then bounce back onto earth and penetrate everything -- living and dead." (6)
Dr. Rosalie Bertell depicts HAARP as "a gigantic heater that can cause major disruption in the ionosphere, creating not just holes, but long incisions in the protective layer that keeps deadly radiation from bombarding the planet." (7)
Misleading public opinion
HAARP has been presented to public opinion as a program of scientific and academic research. US military documents seem to suggest, however, that HAARP's main objective is to "exploit the ionosphere for Department of Defense purposes." (8) Without explicitly referring to the HAARP program, a US Air Force study points to the use of "induced ionospheric modifications" as a means of altering weather patterns as well as disrupting enemy communications and radar.(9)
According to Dr. Rosalie Bertell, HAARP is part of a integrated weapons' system, which has potentially devastating environmental consequences: "It is related to fifty years of intensive and increasingly destructive programs to understand and control the upper atmosphere. It would be rash not to associate HAARP with the space laboratory construction which is separately being planned by the United States. HAARP is an integral part of a long history of space research and development of a deliberate military nature.
The military implications of combining these projects is alarming. The ability of the HAARP / Spacelab/ rocket combination to deliver very large amount of energy, comparable to a nuclear bomb, anywhere on earth via laser and particle beams, are frightening. The project is likely to be "sold" to the public as a space shield against incoming weapons, or, for the more gullible, a device for repairing the ozone layer. (10)
In addition to weather manipulation, HAARP has a number of related uses: "HAARP could contribute to climate change by intensively bombarding the atmosphere with high-frequency rays. Returning low-frequency waves at high intensity could also affect people's brains, and effects on tectonic movements cannot be ruled out. (11).
More generally, HAARP has the ability of modifying the World's electro-magnetic field. It is part of an arsenal of "electronic weapons" which US military researchers consider a "gentler and kinder warfare". (12)
Weapons of the new world order
HAARP is part of the weapons arsenal of the New World Order under the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). From military command points in the US, entire national economies could potentially be destabilized through climatic manipulations. More importantly, the latter can be implemented without the knowledge of the enemy, at minimal cost and without engaging military personnel and equipment as in a conventional war. The use of HAARP -- if it were to be applied-- could have potentially devastating impacts on the World's climate.
Responding to US economic and strategic interests, it could be used to selectively modify climate in different parts of the World resulting in the destabilization of agricultural and ecological systems. It is also worth noting that the US Department of Defense has allocated substantial resources to the development of intelligence and monitoring systems on weather changes. NASA and the Department of Defense's National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) are working on "imagery for studies of flooding, erosion, land-slide hazards, earthquakes, ecological zones, weather forecasts, and climate change" with data relayed from satellites. (13) POLICY INERTIA OF THE UNITED NATIONS According to the Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) signed at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro:
"States have, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and the principles of international law, the responsibility to ensure that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to the environment of other States or of areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction." (14). It is also worth recalling that an international Convention ratified by the UN General Assembly in 1997 bans "military or other hostile use of environmental modification techniques having widespread, long-lasting or severe effects." (15) Both the US and the Soviet Union were signatories to the Convention. The Convention defines "environmental modification techniques" as referring to any technique for changing--through the deliberate manipulation of natural processes--the dynamics, composition or structure of the earth, including its biota, lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere or of outer space." (16) Why then did the UN --disregarding the 1977 ENMOD Convention as well as its own charter-- decide to exclude from its agenda climatic changes resulting from military programs?
European Parliament acknowledges impact of HAARP
In February 1998, responding to a report of Mrs. Maj Britt Theorin--Swedish MEP and longtime peace advocate--, the European Parliament's Committee on Foreign Affairs, Security and Defense Policy held public hearings in Brussels on the HAARP program.(17) The Committee's "Motion for Resolution" submitted to the European Parliament: "Considers HAARP by virtue of its far-reaching impact on the environment to be a global concern and calls for its legal, ecological and ethical implications to be examined by an international independent body; [the Committee] regrets the repeated refusal of the United States Administration to give evidence to the public hearing into the environmental and public risks [of] the HAARP program." (18.)
The Committee's request to draw up a "Green Paper" on "the environmental impacts of military activities", however, was casually dismissed on the grounds that the European Commission lacks the required jurisdiction to delve into "the links between environment and defense". (19) Brussels was anxious to avoid a showdown with Washington.
Fully operational
While there is no concrete evidence of HAARP having been used, scientific findings suggest that it is at present fully operational. What this means is that HAARP could potentially be applied by the US military to selectively modify the climate of an "unfriendly nation" or "rogue state" with a view to destabilizing its national economy. Agricultural systems in both developed and developing countries are already in crisis as a result of New World Order policies including market deregulation, commodity dumping, etc. Amply documented, IMF and World Bank "economic medicine" imposed on the Third World and the countries of the former Soviet block has largely contributed to the destabilization of domestic agriculture. In turn, the provisions of the World Trade Organization (WTO) have supported the interests of a handful of Western agri-biotech conglomerates in their quest to impose genetically modified (GMO) seeds on farmers throughout the World.
It is important to understand the linkage between the economic, strategic and military processes of the New World Order. In the above context, climatic manipulations under the HAARP program (whether accidental or deliberate) would inevitably exacerbate these changes by weakening national economies, destroying infrastructure and potentially triggering the bankruptcy of farmers over vast areas. Surely national governments and the United Nations should address the possible consequences of HAARP and other "non-lethal weapons" on climate change.
NOTES
1. The latter calls for nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5.2 percent to become effective between 2008 and 2012. See Background of Kyoto Protocol at http://www.globalwarming.net/gw11.html.
2. The Times, London, 23 November 2000.
3. Intelligence Newsletter, December 16, 1999.
4. Ibid.
5 Air University of the US Air Force, AF 2025 Final Report, http://www.au.af.mil/au/2025/ (emphasis added).
6 Nicholas Begich and Jeane Manning, The Military's Pandora's Box, Earthpulse Press, http://www.xyz.net/~nohaarp/earthlight.html. See also the HAARP home page at http://www.haarp.alaska.edu/).
7. See Briarpatch, January, 2000. (emphasis added).
8 Quoted in Begich and Manning, op cit.
9. Air University, op cit.
10. Rosalie Bertell, Background of the HAARP Program, 5 November, 1996, http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/envronmt/weapons.htm
11. Begich and Manning, op cit.
12. Don Herskovitz, Killing Them Softly, Journal of Electronic Defense, August 1993. (emphasis added). According to Herskovitz, "electronic warfare" is defined by the US Department of Defense as "military action involving the use of electromagnetic energy·" The Journal of Electronic Defense at http://www.jedefense.com/ has published a range of articles on the application of electronic and electromagnetic military technologies.
13. Military Space, 6 December, 1999.
14. UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, New York, 1992. See complete text at http://www.unfccc.de/resource/conv/conv_002.html, (emphasis added).
15. See Associated Press, 18 May 1977.
16. Environmental Modification Ban Faithfully Observed, States Parties Declare, UN Chronicle, July, 1984, Vol. 21, p. 27.
17. European Report, 7 February 1998.
18. European Parliament, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Security and Defense Policy, Brussels, doc. no. A4-0005/99, 14 January 1999.
19. EU Lacks Jurisdiction to Trace Links Between Environment and Defense, European Report, 3 February 1999.
(c) Copyright by Michel Chossudovsky, Ottawa, November, 2000. All rights reserved.
Michel Chossudovsky Department of Economics, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, K1N6N5 Voice box: 1-613-562-5800, ext. 1415, Fax: 1-514-425-6224 E-Mail: chossudovsky@videotron.ca; (Altern. E-mail: chossudovsky@sprint.ca)
On the Globalisation of Poverty and the Financial Crisis: "Seattle and Beyond: Disarming the New World Order" http://www.transnational.org/forum/meet/seattle.html Global Poverty in the Late 20th Century http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/chossu.htm http://www.transnational.org/features/chossu_worldbank.html http://www.transnational.org/features/g7solution.html http://www.heise.de/tp/english/special/eco/ http://heise.xlink.de/tp/english/special/eco/6099/1.html#anchor1
Recent articles on Yugoslavia at: http://emperors-clothes.com/artbyauth.html#C NATO's Reign of Terror in Kosovo http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/yugo_archive/19990816mcpaper.htm
Overview of the War: http://www.transnational.org/features/Yuoverview.html
On the role of the KLA: http://www.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/co/2743/1.html Breakup of Yugoslavia: http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/62/022.html
The Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research Vegagatan 25, S - 224 57 Lund, Sweden Phone + 46 - 46 - 145909 Fax + 46 - 46 - 144512 http://www.transnational.org E-mail: tff@transnational.org Contact the webmaster at: comments@transnational.org (c) 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000
------
Daschle denies blocking bill on military voting
Washington Times
December 13, 2000
By Rowan Scarborough THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-20001213233150.htm
The office of Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle yesterday denied he is blocking a bill on military polling places but could not guarantee that Democrats will let the measure come to a vote before the congressional session ends in two weeks.
Republican aides continued to insist that Mr. Daschle has held up action on the bill since mid-October.
"I'm 100 percent positive. Senator Daschle has not attempted to block the bill," said Ranit Schmelzer, spokeswoman for the South Dakota Democrat. "He has not blocked it. He never would block it."
Mr. Daschle's office received angry phone calls from citizens yesterday after The Washington Times reported he is holding up the bill that would allow polling places on domestic military bases. The Clinton administration is on record as opposing the measure, saying it would violate Pentagon rules against political activity on armed forces installations.
Republican Senate aides said yesterday that the House-passed bill "cleared" all Republican senators for a floor vote. But when staffers checked with cloakroom aides representing Mr. Daschle, they were told the bill was being "held," sources said.
But Ms. Schmelzer disputed that. She said that after Republican aides in the cloakroom, the party's legislative command post, asked their Democratic counterparts, they checked with Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee and received no clearance to proceed.
She said that from that point in mid-October the aides working for Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, Mississippi Republican, never pressed for a floor vote.
"The way you know Republicans want to push a bill and force us is to publicly object," Ms. Schmelzer said. "They never even took this to that point. They never really pressed the bill. It never reached the level of Senator Daschle. . . . If they were really trying to push, Lott would have pushed Daschle or pushed for unanimous consent to force us to block it publicly, which they never did."
"It stopped at the cloakroom level. They're using Daschle as a general phrase that the Democrats haven't passed this by unanimous consent."
Ms. Schmelzer said she does not know if the bill will reach a floor vote because there could be Democratic opposition.
A Republican aide said, "If they're not willing to clear it right now, there is Democratic opposition. . . . If they're telling you he's not holding the bill, he's not telling the truth. It's cut and dried."
The aide said that shortly after the bill arrived from the House on Oct. 13, it was "hotlined" for unanimous approval on the Senate floor before Congress recessed prior to the November election.
The source claimed that Mr. Daschle's aides said the bill was being held on "numerous" occasions, including as late as Friday.
"The Republican cloakroom checked numerous times with the Democratic cloakroom, and they were told it was not cleared. It's not cleared on the Democratic side. That means Daschle is holding it up. So Daschle has a hold on this bill."
Asked why Republicans did not push publicly for a vote, the aide said, "Right now, the Republicans are not trying to embarrass the Democrats at all because we are trying to close our budget battle."
The bill's fate is being debated amid a backdrop of angry complaints from service members against the Democrats. Party lawyers launched a Florida-wide effort last month to disqualify scores of overseas military ballots to help Vice President Al Gore overtake George W. Bush's slim lead.
The bill passed the House Oct. 12 in a 297-114 bipartisan vote.
Chiefly sponsored by Rep. Bill Thomas, California Republican, the bill would authorize - but not order - service secretaries to allow polling places on U.S. military bases. Mr. Thomas, chairman of the House Administration Committee, said personnel at remote bases, such as Edwards Air Force Base in California's Mojave desert, must drive considerable distances to vote.
Mr. Thomas said he proposed the bill after the Pentagon began more vigorously enforcing a policy against opening voting booths on military bases. The policy does not prevent polling stations at state-controlled National Guard armories.
"We're fielding a lot of calls from military people," said Mr. Thomas' spokesman, Jason Poblete. "'We want this. We want this.'"
"Our committee has been told by the Senate leadership that there is a hold on the bill from Senator Daschle's office. So there's been staff-to-staff communication to that effect," he said.
The Clinton administration went on record as opposing the bill in an Oct. 10 letter to Mr. Thomas from Pentagon General Counsel Douglas A. Dworkin.
"We strongly disagree that it is appropriate for the fundamental political activity of voting to take place at locations that the Department of Defense strives to make politically neutral and nonpartisan," Mr. Dworkin wrote.
"We recognize that some installations have overlooked the department's policy on this issue in the past and that some military facilities have been used as polling places in some localities. In some cases, short-term waivers of the policy have been granted if an alternative location could not be identified in time to avoid disruption to an upcoming election."
Mr. Thomas said that, if his legislation dies this year, he may include it in a broader election bill next year.
-------- colombia
'Tribunal': Air force caused death
Infobeat
Wednesday, December 13, 2000
By JARED KOTLER Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405318572
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - A symbolic tribunal made up of U.S. jurists and clergy said Tuesday that evidence suggests the Colombian air force caused the death of 17 civilians when it dropped a bomb on a village two years ago.
The unusual group, headed by a former Illinois Supreme Court justice, has no legal standing. But it hopes to prod Colombian authorities into investigating the attack, in which six children were among the dead.
The Colombian air force has denied it dropped a U.S.-made bomb on Santo Domingo, a village near the border with Venezuela, while troops battled rebels nearby on Dec. 13, 1998. It claims that a truck bomb planted by leftist guerrillas caused the shrapnel deaths.
The 11-member ``tribunal of opinion'' organized by Chicago-based Northwestern University's law school rejected that version in an 82-page ``judgment'' given to reporters.
There was no immediate response from the Colombian or U.S. governments. Attempts to reach the U.S. Embassy in Bogota late Tuesday for comment were unsuccessful.
The tribunal held hearings in Chicago in September in which it reviewed evidence, villagers' testimony and a video prepared by Colombia's military. The group was presided over by former Illinois Supreme Court justice Seymour Simonand included two law professors, a rabbi and an auxiliary Roman Catholic bishop from Chicago.
The tribunal cited an FBI report, conducted at Colombia's request, that found that bomb fragments from the scene were ``consistent with'' a 20-pound AN-M41 bomb. The U.S. military has provided such bombs to Colombia in the past.
But in September, air force Gen. Jairo Garcia told The Associated Press that rebels set off the explosion with a truck bomb and later planted at the scene the bomb fragments later analyzed by the FBI.
-------- drug war
Key drug cartel figure sentenced
Infobeat
Wednesday, December 13, 2000
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405312519
LOS ANGELES (AP) - The man said to be the broker for one of the biggest drug-money laundering operations ever broken up in the United States was sentenced to nearly 23 years in prison.
Victor Manuel Alcala Navarro, who pleaded guilty to 27 counts of money laundering and conspiracy, was sentenced Monday to 22 years and 10 months by U.S. District Judge Lourdes Baird. In exchange for his guilty pleas, prosecutors dropped a charge of running a continuous criminal enterprise that could have resulted in a life sentence.
``I would like to apologize first before God and before my family for putting them through this agony,'' he told Baird.
Alcala Navarro, who worked for the Juarez drug cartel, was one of 100 people indicted along with three Mexican banks in 1998.
The others included two of his brothers, one of whom pleaded guilty and another who was acquitted after a trial.
Prosecutors said Alcala Navarro, 37, was responsible for moving narcotics money from the United States to Mexico. It was in this role, they said, that he was duped into bringing two undercover Customs agents into the operation.
-------- europe
Europe mulls own defense forces
USA Today
12/13/00- Updated 11:13 AM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/world/nwswed05.htm
BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) - Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on Wednesday warned against ''decoupling'' the United States from Europe, as leading European countries press ahead with plans to form their own armed forces separate from NATO.
While expressing support for ''a European capability'' within NATO, Albright told reporters it was important ''that there not be a decoupling of the United States from Europe.'' She touched on that message again at a lunch hosted by the American Chamber of Commerce, declaring: ''The United States will stay in Europe.''
Albright was following up on recent critical comments by Defense Secretary William Cohen, who told America's European partners that if they don't work out a new European Union-NATO relationship, the alliance ''could become a relic of history.''
The 15-nation European Union is working to develop its own rapid-reaction force, separate from NATO. However, the EU plans to share some NATO planning facilities, intelligence and communications.
It would use the force to address crises that NATO does not want to get involved in. The EU wants to be able to field a 60,000-member force by 2003.
Albright, who arrived here Tuesday for a two-day visit, is expected to repeat her concerns when she meets her NATO counterparts in Brussels on Thursday.
Senior U.S. administration officials have criticized what they feel could be a political motivation for the new force on the part of France and other European Union members seeking to compete with the United States rather than looking for a convergence of resources.
The EU force plans have been followed with particular alarm by countries still outside the European Union - like NATO-member Hungary - that feel their own security could be threatened if Washington's military role is diminished.
''Hungary attaches utmost importance to the so-called trans-Atlantic link,'' said Hungarian Foreign Minister Janos Martonyi. ''We very much insist on a continuation of American presence and assistance in this continent.''
Albright also expressed concern over the arrest of Russian media magnate Vladimir Gusinsky, suggesting his detention could be an attempt by the government in Moscow to muzzle criticism.
Gusinsky was arrested shortly after midnight Monday at his villa in southern Spain. Russian prosecutors accuse Gusinsky of fraud, but his spokesmen call the charges politically motivated and have urged Spain to reject Russia's extradition request.
Albright arrived here from Algeria, where she witnessed and signed on to a peace agreement between Ethiopia and Eritrea. The agreement formally ended a two-year conflict over a stretch of border territory between the two African nations.
Earlier Wednesday, she urged Eastern European and Balkan nations to embrace ethnic and religious tolerance as she awarded a prize honoring Hungarians who distinguished themselves in democracy building and human rights.
Albright's comments appeared in part prompted by continuing U.S. concerns about Serb-ethnic Albanian tensions in the Kosovo region, as well as a strong showing in Romanian presidential elections by an ultranationalist candidate who gained prominence through racist and anti-Semitic comments.
Albright came to Hungary Tuesday from Africa. Her visits to South Africa, Mauritius and Botswana were meant to highlight three African democracies with strong economies, while focusing on the AIDS crisis devastating the continent.
---
Dad's Army?
Washington Times
December 13, 2000
Helle Bering
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-column-2000121319235.htm
"Good sense and good nature must forever join." So British poet Alexander Pope wrote in his "Essay on Man." Somehow echoes of that phrase kept coming to mind, mostly by their absence, as discussions went on in Nice last weekend about a future military force of Europeans to deal with ethnic crises and humanitarian emergencies on their own continent.
Eminently reasonable as this idea may seem, tempers flared all around. French national pride was on display, the London tabloids went berserk over Tony Blair's role, the Turks sulked and there were the obligatory befuddled signals from the Americans, who again managed to be on both sides of the issue. Such squabbling among old allies. The above mentioned writer in the same poem over 200 years ago also called man "a being darkly wise and rudely great" - and he would have found plenty of evidence thereof at Nice.
The most recent impetus for discussions of a European defense force (attempts at which go back far enough to predate the North Atlantic Treaty Organization), was the Balkan wars. They illustrated in the most embarrassing way the state of European military capabilities. The EU failed miserably to deal with the Bosnia crisis until the Americans got involved in 1995, and the bombing of Kosovo, for which the U.S. Air Force was almost solely responsible, provided a painful moment of truth. Subsequently, it was only natural - and necessary - for Europe to engage in a serious defense debate. The EU was starting to look like a very large head, full of airy thoughts of political union, on a tiny unmuscular body.
The fight last week even broke out before the heads of the EU countries (plus some aspirant members) arrived at Nice to discuss crucial constitutional issues in preparation for EU enlargement. Some 18 months of negotiations had finally yielded a blueprint for a European Security and Defense Policy, to include a 60,000-man force ready by 2003. It would have the capability of deployment at 60-days notice, a mission duration of up to one year, and a decision-making body in Brussels headed by former NATO secretary general and current European foreign policy czar Javier Solana.
True to form, French President Jacques Chirac, who never passes up an opportunity to irritate the Americans if he can help it, insisted that the force be independent of NATO - an organization led by the United States and from which France disengaged itself militarily in 1966 under Gen. Charles de Gaulle. Since most of the assets of the proposed rapid reaction force would have to be shared with NATO (because overwhelmingly the same countries will be participating in both), close coordination is inevitable. Yet Mr. Chirac, playing to domestic audiences, opined that "planning and implementation" ought to be "independent" of NATO.
This elicited a rare broadside from U.S. Secretary of Defense William Cohen, who said that "the United States is strongly committed to NATO as an institution, but much will depend upon . . . the Europeans." While having been an enthusiastic supporter of the rapid-reaction force concept, Mr. Cohen tried to apply the brakes in a display of typical American ambivalence. After complaining for decades about the inadequacy of the European pillar of NATO, Americans now look with alarm and suspicion at this new defense initiative which they fear will cause a rift within NATO. (And if it were all up to the French, it most certainly would.)
Eventually, cooler heads in the shape of the British government prevailed. Prime Minister Tony Blair took on Mr. Chirac at Nice, with the result that the summit communiqué asserted that "NATO remains the basis of the collective defense of its members and will continue to play an important role in crisis management."
In a particularly ironic twist, only two months ago, President-elect George W. Bush's foreign policy adviser, Condoleezza Rice, suggested in an interview with the New York Times that Mr. Bush might eventually pull the 5,200 U.S. troops out of the Balkans, leaving Europeans to keep the peace there. One might have thought that the Europeans, whose troops already outnumber the Americans in Bosnia and Kosovo, would leap at the chance to show their mettle. But one would be wrong. Instead, howls of protest rose from Europe's capitals, charging that the Americans were disengaging from the continent. Vice President and eternal presidential candidate Al Gore went so far as to suggest it could lead to World War III.
Perhaps this peculiar reaction was best analyzed by former British NATO official and Woodrow Wilson Fellow Sir Michael Quinlan, who spoke Friday at the Atlantic Council. "The Europeans will contribute more readily if they know the Americans are there in case something goes wrong," he said.
This may make the Europeans look a tad silly, but if both sides agreed that cooperation, consultation and burden-sharing is essential for the future of the transatlantic relationship, they could stop hyperventilating.
E-mail: helle.bering@washtimes.com.
Helle Bering is editorial page editor of The Washington Times. Her column appears on Wednesdays.
-------- iraq
Saddam opens palaces to feed poor
Infobeat
Wednesday, December 13, 2000
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405318734
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Saddam Hussein is welcoming Iraq's poor to religious meals in his palaces, mansions that have become symbols of both his opulent lifestyle and his secretive government.
The palaces are serving the main fast-breaking meal to hundreds of Muslim faithful during the holy month of Ramadan, official media reports said Tuesday.
Access to Hussein's palaces _ ranging from individual homes to sprawling complexes of mansions and offices _ has been a touchy subject since U.N. weapons inspectors were repeatedly denied access to them following the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The U.S. government has criticized the Iraqi leader for using scarce funds to build palaces instead of alleviating the hardship facing Iraqis as a result of sanctions imposed on the country for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
In 1998, the palaces became part of the tug of war between Iraq and the West when an estimated 2,000 Iraqis, including women and children, responded to a call by the Iraqi leader to stay in the premises at a time when a military strike by the United States and Britain was expected. At the time, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan accused Baghdad of using Iraqi people as human shields. On Tuesday, daily Al-Qadissiya quoted the government thanking Iraqis for defending the palaces.
---
New York Times
December 13, 2000
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/13/world/13BRIE.html
MIDDLE EAST
IRAQ: TROOPS WITHDRAWN Iraqi troops have withdrawn from positions they took in a weekend incursion into a Kurd-controlled part of northern Iraq, Kurds in the region said. Kurdish factions have controlled most of northern Iraq since Baghdad was defeated in the 1991 gulf war. The Kurdish enclave is protected by American and British jets that enforce a no-flight zone over northern Iraq. No fighting was reported in the incursion. (Agence France-Presse)
-------- myanmar
Rights group reports Myanmar torture
Infobeat
Wednesday, December 13, 2000
By VIJAY JOSHI Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405311158
VIENTIANE, Laos (AP) - Myanmar won praise from Southeast Asian and European officials Tuesday for indicating it will soon release pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, but faced fresh criticism from a human rights group that it commonly tortures its opponents.
Two days of talks in Laos between the European Union and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations ending Tuesday were dominated by discussion of Myanmar's military government, which faces widespread condemnation for human rights abuses and failure to turn over power to a democratically elected government.
The past few months have seen international pressure building on Myanmar's junta, particularly after Suu Kyi and eight other top leaders of her National League for Democracy were confined to their homes in September. The limits were imposed after she tried to travel to the countryside to do political organizing. Six of the NLD leaders _ not including her _ were freed on Dec. 1.
Myanmar Foreign Minister Win Aung gave assurances at the meeting that his government would free Suu Kyi from confinement and allow an EU team to meet with her in January when it comes to Myanmar, which is also known as Burma.
``There is much to be done, but I am encouraged by their response,'' said John Battle, the British minister of state for the Commonwealth. He called Myanmar's comments a major breakthrough.
Meanwhile, the report by London-based Amnesty International was just the latest shot in a barrage of criticism the junta has faced from critics ranging from the White House to the International Labor Organization.
The estimated 1,700 political prisoners in Myanmar are at high risk of torture and beatings, it warned.
``Members of the security forces continue to use torture as a means of extracting information; to punish political prisoners and members of ethnic minorities; and as a means of instilling fear in anyone critical of the military government,'' Amnesty said.
Win Aung said a dialogue with Suu Kyi's party can begin only when it drops its hostile attitude. He also said she would be released at ``an appropriate time,'' refusing to specify whether it would be before the European visit.
``If they want genuine dialogue they should abandon their confrontational approach and their ... threatening words,'' he said. ``When the confrontation and also the threat of international pressure is no more, (then) it will create a common ground where both sides can stand together.''
A joint statement from the Southeast Asian ministers and the EU had noted U.N. efforts to forge a reconciliation between the junta and Suu Kyi's pro-democracy movement, and expressed the hope that they would lead to an ``early dialogue'' between the two sides.
Ministers from ASEAN, which generally opposes pressuring the junta, said they were happy with the meeting's results. The foreign ministers' meeting had been held up for the past three years because of the EU's reluctance to have Myanmar attend.
``What we want is that people must also understand our perspective,'' said Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar. ``There is no such thing as a meeting of one regional organization trying to impose on the other. It is a partnership of equals.''
Myanmar's current regime took power in 1988 after crushing a popular uprising against military rule in place since 1962. Over the past 12 years, thousands have been arrested for opposition activities _ including many detainees from Suu Kyi's party, which swept 1990 general elections but was barred by the military from taking power.
According to Amnesty's report, as more people were arrested, the use of torture increased.
Win Aung said the report was wrong and its sources were not credible.
``As far as I know, there are no rampant human rights violations,'' he said. ``We are Buddhists. As Buddhists we have not just tolerance, we have love and kindness.''
---
Burma is lauded on Suu Kyi release
Washington Times
December 13, 2000
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-20001213223917.htm
VIENTIANE, Laos - Burma won praise from Southeast Asian and European officials yesterday for indicating it will soon release pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, but faced fresh criticism from a human rights group that it commonly tortures its opponents.
Two days of talks in Laos between the European Union and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations ending yesterday were dominated by discussion of Burma's military government, which faces widespread condemnation for human rights abuses and failure to turn over power to a democratically elected government.
-------- space
Space Leaders Urge Next U.S. President and Congress to Make Space Policy a Priority
Space.com
13 December 2000
By Stew Magnuson and Jeremy Singer Spacenews.com Staff Writers http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/business/aerospace_urges_changes_001213.html
http://www.msnbc.com/news/503025.asp?cp1=1
WASHINGTON - A number of American government and industry officials are seeking basic changes in the way Congress, the Pentagon and the White House oversee U.S. space activity. And they want these changes to be a high priority when the new American president and Congress take office in January.
David Thompson, president and chief executive officer of Orbital Sciences Corp. [ORB], Dulles, Virginia, said in a recent speech in Washington that the next presidential administration's top priority should be shifting the responsibility for satellite export licenses from the U.S. State Department back to the U.S. Department of Commerce.
http://space.yellowbrix.com/pages/space/coOverview.nsp?coID=1976&qSymbol=ORB&ID=space&scategory=Aerospace%2FDefense%3ASpace
The Strom Thurmond National Defense Authorization Act of 1999 categorized satellites as weapons and transferred jurisdiction over satellite exports from Commerce to State in the wake of allegations that sensitive U.S. missile technology was falling into the wrong hands through satellite exports.
"The new president should waste no time in working with the 107th Congress to effect the transfer of this responsibility back to Commerce," Thompson said at a speech to the Washington Space Business Round Table Dec. 7.
Thompson said the industry has lost more than $1 billion of new international satellite procurement opportunities in the past 18 months, along with an almost equal amount of canceled contracts previously awarded to U.S. suppliers.
Structural changes suggested
The next president also should consider reviving a national space council, Thompson said.
Texas Gov. George Bush has signaled that he would revive a body similar to the National Space Council, which was eliminated by U.S. President Bill Clinton's administration in 1993. Vice President Al Gore's advisers have said the president will direct space policy himself, Thompson noted. A space council would be able to resolve intra-agency disputes such as the satellite export law, he added.
Air Force Maj. Gen. Brian Arnold, director of space and nuclear deterrence in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, agrees that a space council or similar body is needed. The advantage, Arnold said, is that a White House-level council can monitor the numerous federal agencies involved in space issues.
The White House also should consider adding a special assistant for space to its National Security Council, Arnold said. This new position could oversee military and intelligence space issues, while the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy could focus on civil and commercial issues, he said.
Internally, the Pentagon should establish a Defense Space Council, headed by the deputy secretary of defense and the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with participation from the director of central intelligence and others, Arnold said. The senior leaders would set a focused vision for the Pentagon's space operations, Arnold said.
Military space programs also would have a higher priority on Capitol Hill if Congress added an aerospace power subcommittee to one of its existing committees, Arnold said. The Pentagon would also benefit from a space power caucus on the Hill, which could advocate for space issues in the same way that existing caucuses support naval and air power, he said.
However, a Senate aide said that space already is a top priority for the Senate Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee, and that a new subcommittee is unnecessary. While Senate members need more education on the importance of space programs, progress already has been made in this area and is expected to continue, the aide said.
A plea for modernization, funding
In addition to the organizational changes, the Pentagon needs more money for its space programs, Arnold said. The military has received increased funding for other emerging priorities in the past, such as the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Cold War, he said.
The Department of Defense also needs to step up the pace of modernization of space systems, such as the Global Positioning System, said Sen. Wayne Allard (R-Colorado).
"It is clear the Department of Defense has not adequately stepped up to modernization of key space systems," Allard said at a Dec. 7 Space Round Table sponsored by Arlington, Virginia-based ProSpace and The Space Frontier Foundation in Studio City, California.
Because military space systems often are expensive, they tend to be the first items cut from a budget. The next administration needs to recognize the importance of space systems to the military and fully fund them, he said.
Allard also said steps should be taken to keep qualified space specialists in the military as more personnel leave to take up careers in other industries.
"There's a need to strengthen the space career field and provide incentives for space specialists to remain in the field," he said at the ProSpace Round Table.
Money for Mars
Lori Garver, NASA associate administrator for Policy and Plans, said the agency is gearing up for a manned mission to Mars, but needs a consistent budget to pursue this goal.
"It's quite clear that [NASA] has set our sights on Mars...we believe that other exploration with humans must depend on a continued budget, however," Garver said at the ProSpace Round Table.
"NASA has in the area of human exploration been, I think, fairly consistent in our view that we should open up new frontiers, leaving behind those technologies and opportunities for the private sector," Garver added.
NASA will continue to move toward privatization of Earth-orbit enterprises, such as the space shuttle and International Space Station, while looking towards a Mars, Garver said.
Meanwhile, the next administration and Congress will have to wrestle with issues such as patents, licensing and intellectual property resulting from research derived from the space station, Garver said.
"Everybody believes in commercialization [of the International Space Station]. It's a question of how we do it," Garver said.
---
China plans manned space flight in five years
Environmental News Network
Wednesday, December 13, 2000
http://www.enn.com/news/wire-stories/2000/12/12132000/reu_chinaspace_40779.asp
China aims to put an astronaut into space in the next five years, state media said today, setting an official timetable for the first time.
State radio and the Xinhua news agency said several unmanned spacecraft would be launched starting next year before the manned flight. They gave no further details.
The reports also said China would launch more than 30 satellites between 2001 and 2005.
Chinese leaders are eager for the pride and prestige that would come if China joined the United States and former Soviet Union as the only countries to put a person into space.
A government policy "white paper" on space last month said only that China would establish a manned space flight program over the next 20 years.
That document also said China planned to become a leading player in space exploration and commerce by building mainly on its home-grown rocket and satellite program.
A top aerospace official said last month that China would soon put a person into space, perhaps "at the beginning of the 21st century."
"It will not be long before Chinese astronauts can ride locally made spaceships into space," said Vice President of China Aerospace Science Technology Corp, Hu Hongfu.
In November last year, China successfully launched an unmanned spaceship, Shenzhou.
State radio said China had so far launched 47 domestically-made satellites, developed the "Long March" series of rockets and established three launch sites.
China, which has launched satellites for U.S. and Brazilian operators, is vying for a bigger slice of the lucrative market for launching commercial satellites.
Its launch industry was given a major boost last month when the United States waived sanctions against China for past missile technology transfers to Iran and Pakistan. That move opened the way for the United States to resume processing licences for commercial space cooperation with Chinese firms.
---
Endeavour astronauts return home
Infobeat
Wednesday, December 13, 2000
By MARCIA DUNN AP Aerospace Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405313054
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - Space shuttle Endeavour's five astronauts returned from the international space station and, within minutes, were receiving accolades for pulling off NASA's most complicated and critical construction mission yet.
``In anybody's ballpark, this mission was really a home run,'' said shuttle program manager Ron Dittemore.
Endeavour's flight ended Monday evening the same way it began: right on time.
The shuttle touched down on the illuminated runway just four minutes after the space station, Alpha, soared overhead with its gleaming, new solar wings. The station was clearly visible as it streaked through the dark sky. By the time the shuttle landed, the station was just off the Virginia coast, its three residents supposedly asleep.
``Outstanding job. Welcome back,'' Mission Control told Endeavour commander Brent Jett Jr. once he guided the shuttle to a safe stop.
During their week at the space station, Jett and his crew installed the world's largest and most powerful solar wings. Three spacewalks were required to attach the $600 million wings, hook up all the cables and then tighten the slack right wing.
The astronauts also spent one day inside Alpha, helping commander Bill Shepherd and his two Russian crewmates with computer problems and cargo transfers.
``It was a fantastic 11 days, very challenging, by far the most challenging mission I've been on,'' Jett said Tuesday before heading home to Houston with his crew.
It was NASA's third space station mission in as many months, but the most critical by far ``because we knew we had to get those solar arrays installed and deployed,'' Dittemore said.
The mood in and outside Endeavour was tense at times, the astronauts said Tuesday. Always lurking in the back of their minds was the possibility that the slack solar wing might have to be cut loose from the space station and junked.
``That was just something that I didn't even want to accept,'' said Carlos Noriega, one of the crew's two spacewalkers. ``But I also knew that somebody was going to find a way to fix that thing. It was just a really tough night emotionally.''
Thanks to the new electricity-producing solar wings, which stretch 240 feet from tip to tip, Shepherd and cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev no longer have to conserve power aboard the space station. They also now have access to the entire three-room complex; one room had been sealed off because there was not enough power to heat it.
Altogether, the solar wings cover half an acre and make Alpha one of the brightest ``stars'' in the night sky. NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin was thrilled to see Alpha fly overhead.
``Fantastic! No binoculars, no telescopes,'' Goldin said. ``It's a symbol of what great accomplishments we've made.''
Shepherd and his crew have been aboard the space station for one month and have three more months to go before they return to Earth. Their ride home aboard space shuttle Discovery likely will be delayed a week or two because of damaged thrusters that need to be replaced, Dittemore said.
The next space station visitors will be five astronauts who are supposed to deliver the American-made lab Destiny aboard space shuttle Atlantis in January.
NASA held off moving Atlantis to the launch pad Monday to inspect electrical connectors for explosive devices used to separate the two solid-fuel boosters from the shuttle during liftoff. One of those devices failed to work during Endeavour's climb to orbit on Nov. 30; a backup charge severed the left booster as planned.
------
USA Today
12/13/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
Iowa
Ames - An Iowa State University researcher is working with NASA scientists to determine whether creatures once lived on Mars. Microbiologist Dennis Bazylinski is studying a meteorite from Mars to find signs of bacteria. He said the microscopic crystals he has found on the rock are similar to those made by bacteria on Earth. That could be a sign that there was life on Mars billions of years ago.
-------- u.n.
UN meets to combat organized crime
Infobeat
Wednesday, December 13, 2000
By FRANCES D'EMILIO Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405318507
PALERMO, Sicily (AP) - The United Nations opened a conference Tuesday aimed at providing countries with sophisticated laws to keep up with organized crime activities ranging from cyber-crime to smuggling in human beings.
As the site for the meeting, it chose a city long dominated by mobsters but now giving lessons on how to fight them.
The conference began with a minute of silence in honor of the prosecutors, police, journalists and others who lost their lives in Sicily over the last three decades in trying to wipe out Cosa Nostra.
By the time the gathering ends Friday, U.N. officials hope scores of the countries that sent delegates here will have signed anti-crime accords, hammered out earlier in the year.
The package of a treaty and two protocols commit signatory nations to outlaw banking secrecy, provide protection to those brave enough to testify against mobsters, confiscate laundered cash, crack down on corruption and go after gangs that have joined forces around the globe to smuggle prostitutes, child laborers and other illegal immigrants from poor countries into rich ones.
``Criminal groups have wasted no time in embracing today's globalized economy and the sophisticated technology which goes with it,'' U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan told the conference. ``But our efforts to combat them have remained up to now very fragmented and our weapons almost obsolete.''
While the signing conference itself is a formality, the accords will have teeth when lawmakers back home update their laws.
The U.N. anti-crime ``czar,'' Undersecretary-General Pino Arlacchi, a sociologist who studied organized crime in his native Italy, urged countries to react swiftly to the new challenges from mobsters, especially in the smuggling of human beings.
Italy has been touting its pioneer program in which women who were forced into prostitution to pay off their trip can earn permission to stay in the country if they testify against their ``slave drivers.''
The U.N. accords call for similar benefits for women and children who are virtual sex slaves or indentured sweatshop laborers.
To help poorer countries afford more sophisticated investigative tools, especially to combat cyber-crime, some of the proceeds from wealth confiscated from mobsters will go into a fund.
Sicily has been turning property seized from Cosa Nostra into soccer fields and police training grounds.
Palermo Mayor Leoluca Orlando said his city until a few years ago exported only the ``scourge'' of the Mafia but today exports the therapy to combat ``a still-strong evil.''
Palermo was showing off the fruits of its renaissance of the last few years, inviting delegates to an abandoned warehouse now used as space for theater companies, art shows and a library. The warehouse is located in a poor neighborhood where the Mafia had long recruited unemployed youths to run errands for bosses.
Hundreds of young Italians protested Tuesday behind police barricades a few blocks from the conference, saying that money for the conference would have been better spent generating jobs in Italy's high-unemployment south.
Police in riot gear lined up rows deep against the demonstrators. There were tense moments, but no violence.
---
A High-Ranking Democrat Lobbies for a Dues Break From U.N.
New York Times
December 13, 2000
By BARBARA CROSSETTE
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/13/world/13NATI.html
UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 12 - Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., the highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, came to the United Nations today to do a little politicking.
In the Security Council and in a closed-door meeting later at Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke's official residence with diplomats from a range of nations, Mr. Biden put himself in the middle of the conflict over the level of dues for the United States. He left the impression that if the rest of the world would give Congress the lower dues it wants for the regular United Nations budget, there might be a slight relaxation of the hard line on reducing American payments for peacekeeping.
He noted, as other members of Congress visiting here have recently, that there is far less hostility toward the United Nations in Congress now, and more knowledge about it, than there has been for many years.
Mr. Biden, a Delaware Democrat, visited just as diplomats here were beginning to believe that they may after all come up with some figures that the Republican-led Congress could accept. That would mean lowering the percentage of the United Nations operating budget billed to the United States to 22 percent, from the current 25 percent.
A group of Latin American nations is also leading an effort to work out a compromise on the peacekeeping budget that would eventually reduce American payments to about 26 percent, from 30.
Congress passed a law in 1995 saying it would pay no more than 25 percent of the peacekeeping budget. Some diplomats are concerned that if they agree to their part of Mr. Biden's deal and lower American payments to the regular budget to 22 percent, Congress may still balk at the peacekeeping figure of 26 percent, and there is no guarantee that in future years Republican-controlled committees will not come back demanding even more cuts.
Senator Biden had jointly devised the Congressional position with the Foreign Relations Committee chairman, Senator Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina. He said he spoke for himself today when he saw room to maneuver in the Senate. He told reporters and diplomats that he would not have tied budget payments to a host of conditions, the most important being a change in dues.
"But quite frankly," he said, "my view is not a majority view." He added that a reduction to 22 percent in regular dues by the General Assembly, which handles financial decisions, is an absolute requirement. Without that, he said, diplomats can forget the whole package.
Many members of the United Nations are concerned that their payments will go up if the United States pays less. Few deny that the existing scales for both regular budget assessments and peacekeeping are out of date. China, for example, pays next to nothing, though its economy has grown enormously. But many diplomats still bridle at the way the United States gave the United Nations a take-it-or-leave-it ultimatum that holds American payments hostage until rates change. The United States is $1.7 billion in debt to the United Nations.
European anger was demonstrated again today in the Security Council by Ambassador Jean-David Levitte of France, which currently holds the rotating European Union presidency. He reminded Mr. Biden that the European Union had the same gross national product as the United States but pays nearly $1 billion more a year.
---
A World Criminal Tribunal
New York Times
December 13, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/13/opinion/13WED2.html
Two years ago, representatives of virtually every country met in Rome to complete work on the design of an International Criminal Court. The finished document was endorsed by 120 nations. Only seven voted against it - among them Iraq, Libya, China and the United States. Now President Clinton has a last chance to reverse this mistake and embrace the court.
The United States, which has been a strong proponent of international tribunals for war crimes in the Balkans and Africa, balked at a permanent court that would be able to judge those accused of genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes worldwide. Despite safeguards that would allow the court to take over only if national governments were unable or unwilling to bring the accused to justice, the Pentagon worries that the court could be used to try American soldiers unjustly.
The Pentagon's objections are misplaced, as the court will have sufficient safeguards to prevent frivolous prosecutions. But the Defense Department has been vehement enough to keep the United States from endorsing a court that would further American interests. As one of the nations most often asked to clean up the messes created by troublemakers like Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein, the United States would greatly benefit from the existence of a court that could try such men and put them behind bars.
Mr. Clinton's signature now would not make the United States a party to the treaty that created the court. That would require ratification by the Senate, which would be desirable but is unlikely to happen soon. By signing, however, Mr. Clinton would encourage eventual ratification, preserve American influence in continuing discussions about the details of the court and maintain Washington's global leadership in human rights and efforts to bring international criminals to justice.
Mr. Clinton can sign until the end of the year. After that, countries must simply ratify the treaty. His signature now would further American interests and the cause of justice worldwide for decades to come.
---
New York Times
December 13, 2000
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/13/world/13BRIE.html
ASIA
AFGHANISTAN: U.N. AIDES PULL OUT Eight United Nations officials have left Kabul for security reasons, fearing a violent reaction if the organization goes ahead with an American and Russian request to hit Afghanistan with more sanctions. The proposed curbs include an arms embargo against the Taliban, without a similar ban on opposition forces. Barry Bearak (NYT)
---
U.N. hostages freed in Georgia
USA Today
12/13/00- Updated 01:08 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/world/nw1.htm
TBILISI, Georgia - Two United Nations observers were freed Wednesday, three days after being kidnapped by rebels in a breakaway province of the former Soviet republic of Georgia, officials said. The U.N. officers, Greek army Capt. Efstathios Kokkinides and Polish Lt. Col. Zbigniew Blechacz, were taken hostage Sunday in the Kodor Gorge area of the Abkhazia district. Officials said earlier that they had reached a deal, but no ransom would be paid.
-------- u.s.
Next administration will deal with Osprey
USA Today
12/13/00- Updated 09:14 AM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncswed01.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Marine Corps' chief of aviation says the crash of an MV-22 Osprey in North Carolina should not be a ''show stopper'' for the troubled $40 billion program. It appears increasingly likely, however, that it will be up to the next administration to decide whether to build a full fleet.
The Marines now plan to buy 360 over the next 14 years to replace aging helicopters. Three of the first 15 delivered - including prototypes and experimental models - have been involved in fatal crashes, including two this year that reduced the fleet of operational models from 10 to eight.
Four Marines were killed in the crash Monday several miles from Marine Corps Air Station New River, near Jacksonville, N.C. The four bodies remained at the scene Wednesday morning. The $43 million aircraft burst into flames upon crashing in a heavily wooded area.
The Pentagon grounded the aircraft, and Defense Secretary William Cohen planned to appoint a panel of outside experts to review Osprey performance, cost and safety issues.
The tilt-rotor Osprey takes off and lands like a helicopter but flies like an airplane. Built by Boeing Co. and Bell Helicopter Textron, it is a linchpin of the Marine Corps' aviation future. The Air Force also plans to buy 50 of the aircraft, which have the potential to be adapted for a wide variety of missions.
Lt. Gen. Fred McCorkle, head of Marine Corps aviation, told a Pentagon news conference that the Osprey had been conducting night landing practices and was returning to New River when the pilot issued a distress call at 7:27 p.m. That was the last word from the Osprey before it crashed about seven miles from the base.
''Whatever is wrong with it - or if there was something wrong with it that caused this accident - we plan on finding out what it was and fixing it,'' the three-star general said. He said a flight data recorder had been recovered intact, but there was no immediate indication of what caused the accident.
McCorkle said he remained confident in the Osprey, despite the second fatal crash this year.
''I don't think this will be a show-stopper,'' he said, referring to the possibility of the program being canceled.
The Marine Corps already has spent $10 billion on the program.
If George W. Bush is the next president, he will bring to Washington the man who tried unsuccessfully to cancel the Osprey program billions of dollars ago - Dick Cheney, who scratched the Osprey from the Pentagon budget shortly after he became secretary of defense in 1989. Congress put it back.
The Navy Department, which has responsibility for naval as well as Marine Corps programs, had been expected to make a final decision this month whether to approve moving the Osprey into full-rate production. On Tuesday, the day after the Osprey crash, the Marines asked that a decision be put off indefinitely.
The Marines had hoped to get the go-ahead for full-rate production this year and to field the first operational squadron next year.
Defense Secretary William Cohen, a supporter of the Osprey, is going to appoint a panel of technical experts to review the entire Osprey program, spokesman Kenneth Bacon said Tuesday. The review will focus on safety, performance and cost issues in light of Monday's crash and other issues.
Lt. Col. Keith M. Sweaney, 42, of Richmond, Va., the pilot of the Osprey that crashed Monday, was to become commander of the first Osprey squadron. He was chief of the Osprey testing program and had recently briefed top Marine Corps and Navy leaders on the aircraft's performance and suitability.
The three other victims were identified as Maj. Michael L. Murphy, 38, originally of Blauvelt, N.Y. and most recently of Wilmington, N.C.; Staff Sgt. Avely W. Runnels, 25, of Morven, Ga.; and Sgt. Jason A. Buyck, 24, of Sodus, N.Y.
Before becoming a test pilot for the Osprey, Murphy spent three years as one of the pilots flying President Clinton on the Marine One helicopter.
In April, an Osprey crashed in Arizona, killing all 19 Marines aboard. That stirred questions among the victims' families and in Congress about the Osprey's safety. The aircraft were grounded until June, and this fall, after more testing and evaluation, the Marines declared the aircraft to be ''operationally suitable.''
At a news conference Tuesday, McCorkle, the Marine Corps aviation chief, expressed sympathy for the families of the latest victims.
He said the accident investigation board will be headed by a general officer - a more senior official than normal - indicating the seriousness of the problem.
''We want to make sure everyone knows that this is not 'business as usual,''' McCorkle told reporters. ''This program is very, very important to the Marine Corps, to me and I think to the nation, and we're going to work very hard to find out what happened.''
---
USS Cole Returns Home
Associated Press
December 13, 2000 Filed at 8:38 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Cole-Return.html
PASCAGOULA, Miss. (AP) -- With a shroud covering the gaping hole in its side, the bomb-damaged USS Cole returned for repairs Wednesday to the shipyard where it was built, arriving piggyback aboard a heavy-duty transport ship.
A senior member of the House Armed Services Committee who joined spectators gathered for the ship's arrival said the Cole's skipper, Commander Kirk Lippold, won't face a military court for failing to protect his ship.
Lippold followed standard procedure ``based on threat conditions at the time,'' said Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss. ``We've obviously learned from the mistake.''
Taylor's chief of staff, Wayne Weidie, said the congressman had been following the investigation of the bombing closely, and spoke about the matter based on recent briefings.
The Cole, a $1 billion Navy destroyer, was attacked by terrorists during a refueling stop in the port Aden, Yemen, on Oct. 12. Seventeen U.S. sailors were killed in the attack.
The damage to the port side of the ship was so extensive, it had to be returned aboard the Norwegian-owned heavy-lift ship Blue Marlin. It was taken Wednesday to the same shipyard in Pascagoula where it was christened in 1995 and where it was built by Ingalls Shipbuilding.
``I hate to see it coming back in that shape,'' said B.C. Lee, a carpenter who helped build the Cole. ``It makes me feel good the Navy chose us to repair it.''
At least 100 employees in hard hats worked alongside a huge crane that pulled the Blue Marlin and its cargo to the dock. As sailors standing on the deck of Cole looked on, metal bumpers designed to ease the docking snapped as the Blue Marlin bumped the dock.
``It's a sad occasion when you think of the 17 sailors who died,'' Taylor said as he stepped onto the dock.
A patch for the ragged 40-by-40-foot hole in the hull will be welded in place before the Cole is removed from the transport ship, and weapons will be unloaded. The destroyer will go into dry dock for repairs next month.
The work is expected to take about a year at a cost of $150 million to $170 million.
American and Yemeni authorities are still investigating the bombing. Yemen's prime minister has said that three to six Yemenis suspected of belonging to an international terrorist network will go on trial next month in connection with the attack.
Over the next few days, FBI investigators will examine parts of the ship that were submerged when the Cole was in Yemen.
The Pentagon is also trying to determine whether the crew employed all the security measures the ship's captain had drawn up before it was hit.
---
Yemenis Say Saudi Man Is Top Suspect in Cole Attack
New York Times
December 13, 2000
By JOHN F. BURNS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/13/world/13SHIP.html
SANA, Yemen, Dec. 12 - Nearly two months after the suicide bombing of the destroyer Cole, Yemeni officials are focusing their inquiries on the Saudi-born man they have identified as the mastermind of the attack, Muhammad Omar al-Harazi. He is said to have paid for the safe houses in Aden that were used in the plot and to have trained the two men who rammed the Cole with an explosives-laden skiff, killing themselves and 17 American sailors.
Senior Yemeni officials and state- owned newspapers have given new details about Mr. Harazi, who was first identified last week by aides to President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Those accounts say Mr. Harazi was born into a family of Yemeni origin in Saudi Arabia, lived in Afghanistan at one time and spent several months before the bombing moving between Aden and the United Arab Emirates. Top Yemeni officials have visited the Emirates recently in the hope of tracking down Mr. Harazi, who is said to have left Yemen four days before the bombing.
Yemeni officials' accounts in the last week indicate that a bombing plot may have been hatched as much as three years before the attack on the Cole. Interior Minister Hussein Arab said in an interview published today in Al Bayan, a newspaper in the Emirates, that the investigators now know that the attack was "prepared and planned in Yemen since 1997" by Arab men who were veterans of the Muslim guerrilla struggle against Soviet forces in Afghanistan.
A report in the Yemeni Army newspaper on Friday said that investigators were redoubling their efforts to hunt down Mr. Harazi, who was described as an "Arab Afghan," a term for militants who were drawn to Afghanistan during the war against Soviet occupying forces in the 1980's. In its investigations into Islamic terrorist attacks on American targets in recent years, the F.B.I. has identified Arab Afghans as the core group in the network of organizations that have declared a "holy war" against the United States.
The two men thought to have carried out the attack have been identified by Yemeni officials as Arab Afghans and as having families with roots in the province of Hadhramaut, more than 400 miles east of Sana, the capital. Hadhramaut is the also ancestral home of the family of Osama bin Laden, the F.B.I.'s most-wanted terrorist.
The army paper, September 26, which takes its name from the date of a 1962 revolution that overthrew the monarchy, said Mr. Harazi's family came from Saafan, a village in the Haraz Mountains about 55 miles west of Sana. The mountains are famous for their beauty and ancient walled villages. The area is also a stronghold of Ismaili Muslims, a generally secretive Shiite sect, frequently persecuted, that established a political base in Yemen in the 10th century and briefly ruled much of the Muslim world from Cairo.
But officials have not said whether Mr. Harazi was an Ismaili; a follower of the Zaydis, a rival sect more powerful in Yemen; or Sunni, of the largest group among the world's one billion Muslims. Experts consider the distinctions significant since many of the most active terrorist groups in recent years, including Mr. bin Laden's organization, have consisted mainly of Sunnis.
From the outset, Yemeni and American investigators have said their working theory about the bombing was that it was inspired, and possibly ordered, by Mr. bin Laden. The recent Yemeni disclosures suggest that investigators are finding it difficult to move beyond circumstantial evidence.
American officials say they have been pleased by recent cooperation from Yemeni investigators. But they have been frustrated by Mr. Saleh's suggestions that someone other than Arab Afghans - Israeli intelligence, for example - might have been involved.
The references to Israel, American officials say, seem to be prompted more by Mr. Saleh's desire to associate himself with the widespread condemnation of Israel across the Arab world.
But American officials say that when Mr. Saleh is not giving interviews, he has rarely wavered from his early theory that the plot was hatched by Arab Afghans linked to a militant Egyptian Islamic group, which American law enforcement officials say effectively merged in 1998 with Mr. bin Laden's network.
The Yemeni plan to try six suspects in the bombing in January is causing conflict between American and Yemeni investigators. The six include several Arab Afghans, who are said to have provided false documents, the skiff used in the attack and other equipment, and several hundred pounds of explosive.
F.B.I. officials and the American Embassy in Sana have appealed to Yemen to delay the trial, saying it would be premature when the investigation has turned up many leads that remain to be followed.
---
Damaged Cole arrives in Miss. for repairs
USA Today
12/13/00- Updated 11:03 AM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/nphoto.htm
PASCAGOULA, Miss. (AP) - The USS Cole, ravaged by a terrorist bomb in Yemen that killed 17 sailors, returned Wednesday to the Mississippi shipyard where the $1 billion destroyer was built. The Navy warship, forced to ride piggyback on the deck of a Norwegian-owned heavy-lift ship because of a gaping hole in her port side, arrived at Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula about 9:30 a.m..
The Aegis-class destroyer was christened at Ingalls Shipbuilding, a subsidiary of Litton Industries, in 1995. A large tarp covered the hole located midship of the destroyer.
At least 100 employees wearing hard hats worked alongside a huge crane that was pulling the vessel to the dock.
As sailors stands on the deck of Cole looked on, metal bumpers designed ease the docking procedure snapped as the hauling vessel touched the dock.
Crowds gathered in cold, overcast weather outside the gates, slowing morning rush-hour traffic on coastal roads.
Dozens of media representatives gathered inside the shipyard but were kept away from Cole's docking space.
Den Knecht, vice president of industrial relations for Ingalls, said the repairs will take about a year and will cost roughly $240 million.
The shipyard has already prepared a patch to cover the ragged 40-foot by 40-foot hole in the Cole.
The patch will keep out water while weapons are unloaded. U.S.
Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., stood at the dock to watch the arrival. Newsmen who were accompanying the congressman were told to leave once the ship arrived.
American and Yemeni law enforcement authorities are still investigating the Oct. 12 attack on the destroyer.
The FBI has not reported any conclusions, however Yemen's prime minister has said at least three Yemenis suspected of belonging to an international terrorist network will go on trial next month in connection with the attack.
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Marines ground tilt-rotor V-22 Osprey
Washington Times
December 13, 2000
By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-20001213222926.htm
The U.S. Marine Corps grounded all of its new tilt-rotor aircraft yesterday after a fiery crash of the helicopterlike plane that killed four Marines in North Carolina.
The crash, the second this year, is raising new questions about whether the Pentagon will go ahead with full-scale production of the V-22 Osprey troop transport.
Lt. Gen. Fred McCorkle, head of Marine Corps aviation, told reporters at the Pentagon that investigators had recovered the flight data recorder from the crash site near Jacksonville, N.C.
"Whatever is wrong with it - or if there was something wrong with it that caused this accident - we plan on finding out what it was and fixing it," the general said.
The V-22, a "hybrid" that takes off and lands like a helicopter but rotates its wings to fly like an airplane, crashed seven miles from Marine Corps Air Station New River around 7:27 p.m. Monday.
Witnesses said the plane exploded in a remote wooded area, killing all four Marines on board.
"The rotors got real loud, and it disappeared behind a tree," Mark Calnan, who lives near the crash site, located in the southeastern part of the state, told the Associated Press in North Carolina. "There was an orange flash, a great big one. Then I heard a pop. It crackled like thunder."
The pilot, Lt. Col. Keith M. Sweaney, 42, of Richmond, was the Marines' most experienced V-22 pilot. Others who died were Staff Sgt. Avely W. Runnels, 25, of Morven, Ga.; Maj. Michael L. Murphy, 38, of Blauvelt, N.Y.; and Sgt. Jason A. Buyck, 24, of Sodus, N.Y.
Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James L. Jones asked for a delay in the Navy's decision on whether to enter full production of the V-22, and asked Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen to convene a special review panel to look at the V-22 program, including its costs, performance, and safety issues, Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon told reporters. The panel will be set up soon, he said.
Eight of the Marine versions of V-22s were grounded as result of the crash. The Air Force uses a different model of the aircraft.
The crash was the second time an Osprey went down this year. In April, 19 Marines died when a V-22 crashed in Arizona. That accident was blamed on the pilot descending too fast.
The V-22 is a key airlift tool for the Marines. If production is approved, the plane will be the first new troop transport for the Marines in years and will replace aging CH-46 Sea Knight and CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopters, some of which are decades old.
"We want to make sure everyone knows that this is not 'business as usual,' " Gen. McCorkle told reporters. "This program is very, very important to the Marine Corps, to me and I think to the nation, and we're going to work very hard to find out what happened."
Gen. McCorkle said even though the program is "in trouble," he is confident the safety and accident probes now under way will not cripple the V-22 program, which has an estimated $40 billion cost.
"I don't think this will be a show-stopper," he said of the possibility of canceling the program, on which the Marines already have spent $10 billion.
The V-22 has had problems throughout its development. One prototype crashed in June 1991 in initial flight tests, and another prototype crashed in July 1992 near Quantico, killing seven persons.
The Pentagon was close to making a final production decision on the aircraft, which is made by Bell-Boeing. The contract for 20 V-22s is worth up to $1 billion.
In addition to being used for troop transport, the V-22 will be used by U.S. special operations commandos.
-------- OTHER
Stone Cold Warriors
Village Voice
Published December 13 - 19, 2000
by J. Hoberman
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0050/hoberman.shtml
Galloping into the holiday season with a cloud of dust and a hearty "Hi-yo, Silver," Thirteen Days evokes a thrilling yesteryear of beehive hairdos, afternoon editions, and open-top limousines-when being president of the United States actually meant something. The veteran director Roger Donaldson and young screenwriter David Self have risen above their previous work to fashion a tense and engrossing political thriller from the transcripts of tapes made in the secretly bugged White House offices where John F. Kennedy and associates managed the potential Armageddon known as the Cuban missile crisis.
Although Thirteen Days runs nearly two and a half hours, it cuts immediately to the chase-October 16, 1962-with reconnaissance photographs of Soviet offensive weapons in Cuba hand-delivered to the president (Bruce Greenwood). Trusty aide Kenny O'Donnell (Kevin Costner) rushes from the warmth of his big Boston Irish family to the icy ramparts of the New Frontier: "I feel like we caught the Jap carrier steaming for Pearl Harbor" is his pithy summation. The Joint Chiefs argue for an immediate air strike to be followed by an invasion. Dredged up for advice, old Cold Warrior Dean Acheson (Len Cariou) agrees.
Thus, while figuring out how to confront the duplicitous Russians, JFK must simultaneously restrain his own military commanders. It's the suits against the brass as well as America versus the Communists. To avoid complicating this neat moral equation, Thirteen Days selectively obfuscates some extenuating facts. One is Kennedy's concern that Operation Mongoose, the administration's ongoing plot to terminate Fidel Castro in time for the midterm elections, remain secret; another is that CIA director John McCone had actually reported the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba some two months before.
Thirteen Days, which takes its title from Robert Kennedy's posthumously published account of the crisis, is pure existential drama. Played out largely around burnished wooden tables, the movie has aspects of high-level boardroom chicanery-but what corporate takeover can compare to this? (The week that JFK blockaded Cuba was a week, Norman Mailer later wrote, "when the world stood like a playing card on edge. . . . One looked at the buildings one passed and wondered if one was to see them again.") Going on television to invoke World War II to prepare the nation for World War III, Kennedy is shown as heroically cool and totally hands-on-the movie should only boost the polls that declare him the most popular of American presidents, surpassing even Ronald Reagan.
Greenwood's JFK and Steven Culp's Robert Kennedy have the appropriate body language, vocal inflections, and coiffures-as does Dylan Baker's secretary of defense, Robert McNamara. Villainy is provided by Olek Kupra's Lugosi-like Soviet envoy Andrey Gromyko and Kevin Conway's air force general Curtis LeMay, who openly taunts the president in his itchy eagerness to get "those red bastards." Heart, of course, is supplied by Costner. Thirteen Days puts the actor in brisk Bodyguard mode, but with the helpful dramatic crutch of an exotic accent. His hard-nosed op is nothing less than JFK's brain, stomach, and conscience-serving the quarterback in chief as a combination defensive lineman and cheerleader.
Costner's presence reinforces Thirteen Days as a sort of JFK prequel, while as the only real star in the wax museum, he provides a sort of friendly Forrest Gump effect. His Kenny is the fly on the wall who always sees what's really happening. He's the first to recognize that the Chiefs want war, the person the president dispatches to check on a potential back-channel overture, the only one who believes that Adlai Stevenson has the balls to stand up to the Russians at the UN. Vital to JFK's triangulation between hawks and doves, Stevenson (Michael Fairman) wryly calls himself a "coward" and reasonably proposes swapping the new Soviet missiles for obsolete U.S. rockets stationed in Turkey.
Although the Stevenson plan was ultimately employed, Camelot spinmeisters, including the president himself, wasted little time in casting him as an appeaser-one of the most horrific aspects of the missile crisis was that appearance was all. Given the nuclear-armed Soviet submarine fleet, missiles in Cuba did not appreciably change the balance of power-the Russians already had the capacity to reduce Washington to radioactive rubble. Moreover, despite the bogus "missile gap" that had propelled Kennedy to the presidency, America's nuclear capacity exceeded by tenfold that of the Soviets-perhaps the reason why the Russians never put their forces on military alert. (The movie downplays this for understandable dramatic reasons.)
The Chiefs, on the other hand, exceeded Kennedy's orders to ratchet up American forces to DefCon Two, or a single step below nuclear war-a posture that the enraged JFK worries will "look like an attempted coup." With macho pilots flying low over Cuba and their commanders ranting about the rules of engagement, the situation could have easily gone out of control. Indeed, it is difficult to watch Thirteen Days without superimposing the Dr. Strangelove scenario. McNamara facing off against some crazed admiral in the war room gives a second meaning to the crisis's most celebrated sound bite, "We were eyeball to eyeball, and the other fellow just blinked."
Thirteen Days adds little to what is known about the missile crisis but subtracts quite a bit. The Cubans are barely a factor-although, according to Russian archival material published in 1997, Castro panicked and began agitating for a nuclear first strike. Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, the man who blundered into the crisis and who, more than anyone else, found a way to blunder out, is totally invisible. I also regret the omission of the final LeMay outburst: When the Chiefs were informed Khrushchev had agreed to remove the missiles, the general pounded the table and bellowed, "It's the greatest defeat in our history! . . . We should invade today!" (McNamara remembered looking at JFK and noting that the shocked president was "stuttering in reply.")
Less comic than cautionary, Thirteen Days ends with the euphoric McNamara and McCone thinking about seizing the opportunity to "run the table" on Khrushchev in Vietnam. Did the successful resolution of the missile crisis pump up America for the disaster to come? The movie excludes Kennedy from this overconfidence. It was the actual O'Donnell, after all, who was most responsible for the unverifiable story-popularized by Oliver Stone, among others-that, once he was safely reelected in 1964, JFK planned to withdraw America totally from Vietnam.
Thirteen Days doesn't explain how the world came to the brink of nuclear war, only that it did . . . and that catastrophe was averted. But it is also a movie of its own moment. The TV docudrama Missiles of October was broadcast only four months after Richard Nixon's resignation and served a useful social purpose in rehabilitating the prestige of the American presidency. The timing of Thirteen Days is scarcely less uncanny, although the effect may not be so comforting-the film encourages the audience to ponder, if they dare, the spectacle of George W. Bush under pressure.
Dubya may appear hopelessly inadequate, but the cool JFK exhibited on Day Nine of the missile crisis is nothing compared to the presence of mind with which Russell Crowe simultaneously bamboozles Russian tanks and Chechen insurgents to liberate a hostage and pull himself into an airborne chopper under rocket fire in the precredit sequence of Proof of Life.
Crowe's next assignment is to free David Morse, playing an idealistic American engineer abducted by the ski-masked narco-guerrillas of a pseudo Colombia code-named "Tecala." That the kidnapping occurs one scene after Morse's big quarrel with wife Meg Ryan adds a bit of psychological piquance to the otherwise mechanical proceedings. Crowe's character is a man of absolute faith and unblinking realism who explains to naïve Ryan and her obnoxious, hysterical sister-in-law (Pamela Reed) that the issue is not revolution but money. Taking hostages is a third-world business. As in American electoral politics, "the end of the Cold War changed everything."
Its nonsensical narrative complications fleshed out with lazy stereotypes (the locals are mainly nightclub fascists or crazed Communists; the scariest moment has Crowe replaced by some Tecalano jerk), Proof of Life derives its emotional coherence from generic models. It's Rambo with a split hero-Morse absorbing punishment and Crowe wreaking vengeance-as well as a Casablanca triangle with Crowe as Bogie. There's a key moment when the star kisses his pretty client and she swoons. To judge from the heat, their much publicized on-set romance could have been a desperate PR stunt to promote an otherwise undistinguished movie.
---
Carl Sagan's 'Cosmos' Returns to TV
Associated Press
December 13, 2000 Filed at 10:35 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-AP-on-TV-Sagans-Cosmos.html
NEW YORK (AP) -- Twenty years after the broadcast of ``Cosmos,'' Carl Sagan's love letter to the universe, Ann Druyan remembers it all.
``I have the tape running in my head all the time,'' she says.
This makes a certain amount of sense. Druyan co-wrote the PBS series with Sagan, her astronomer husband; she was there when it became the most popular limited series in the history of public television at that time, when it won Emmy and Peabody awards.
She saw it become a phenomenon, seen by more than 500 million people in 60 countries. She witnessed how it made Sagan a celebrity, caricatured in cartoons and parodied by comics who seized on his references to ``billions and billions'' of stars.
But for those who do not have that tape running in their heads all the time, Druyan has good news: The 13-part series is now available -- remastered and digitally restored -- on video, with a DVD version that offers subtitles in seven languages and Dolby sound.
There is a two-CD set, ``The Music of Cosmos -- Collector's Edition,'' featuring old and new music by Vangelis, composer of the ``Cosmos'' theme.
And an hour-long distillation of the greatest moments of original shows, ``The Best of Cosmos,'' is being shown on PBS stations through March.
Sagan is not here to see the ``Cosmos'' comeback; he died in 1996 after a long battle with bone marrow cancer. Druyan has devoted herself to continuing his work, and she says ``Cosmos'' stands up well ``even after 20 of the most eventful years in science.''
``Some of the haircuts, the style of the trousers -- these kinds of things are the only things that dated it,'' Druyan says.
If he had known then what is known now, she says, Sagan could have been more definitive in his discussion of what caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. But when Druyan watched the second episode -- her favorite, exploring the origins of life -- she found that ``there wasn't a line that had to be withdrawn.''
``Everything that Carl did was for the record,'' she says, noting that he was a guiding force in the effort to place a phonograph record filled with information about Earth on the Voyager spacecraft, in the hope that it might communicate with alien life sometime in the next billion years as it careened through the universe.
Of course, a Carl Sagan in the new millennium would use a compact disc. But no one has replaced him, and this saddens Druyan. ``There is no voice for the wise, long-term use of science and technology,'' she says, no ``voice for a deep appreciation of the universe.''
That voice -- deep and sonorous, given to spiritual fulminations while expressing skepticism about UFO sightings and the like -- is what makes ``Cosmos'' so watchable today.
``The cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be,'' he says.
``We ourselves are built of star stuff,'' he says.
``The cosmos is full beyond measure,'' he says.
He demonstrates man's small part in the universe by breaking all of time into a ``cosmic calendar.'' If all of time was broken into 365 days, all of mankind's recorded history would fit in the last 10 seconds of that year, he says.
To understand ``Cosmos,'' Druyan says, you have to remember that it was made during the days of the nuclear arms race, when many scientists were involved in building weapons of mass destruction. ``To him, science was a sacred enterprise and to see it misused ... it was a nightmare to him.''
So with this series -- filmed in 40 locations around the world over two years -- Sagan wanted to distill all he had learned, to show the wonders of the universe and what might be lost if nuclear weapons were unleashed.
His influence continues: ``I wish I know how many people were attracted to careers in science because they saw this series. I hesitate to say that it would be astronomical, but it would be very, very high,'' Druyan says. And she often receives e-mail messages from teen-agers who have never seen Sagan on television, but have come across one of his books.
Druyan and Internet entrepreneur Joe Firmage have created Cosmos Studios to follow in Sagan's footsteps, ``awakening one billion people to our relationship with the cosmos by 2005,'' according to its charter. One upcoming project: a miniseries based on Sagan's life.
Druyan is also founder and president of The Carl Sagan Foundation, which is building a Carl Sagan Discovery Center, a pediatric hospital in the Bronx, with views across the Hudson to New Jersey. In addition to its state-of-the-art medical equipment, each room will have high-definition television sets connected to computers.
And when the children pull down the shades at night, there will be a surprise: Printed on each shade will be the same view of New Jersey, but of New Jersey 100 million years ago, complete with dinosaurs.
``Isn't that cool?'' asks the widow of Carl Sagan.
-------- environment
Hearing on PCB Dredging Draws Both Sides in a Town
New York Times
December 13, 2000
By KIRK JOHNSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/13/nyregion/13HUDS.html
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y., Dec. 12 - The scientists, the bureaucrats and the corporate executives have all had their say about the Hudson River and its toxic PCB troubles. But tonight, for about 20 students in the 9th and 10th grades at Mohonasen High School in Rotterdam, what had been a mostly academic debate over the river became local and personal and real.
The students, who have been studying the river and its pollution in biology class at their school, just outside Albany, were among more than 1,100 people crowded into a downtown ballroom on a frigid night for the first public hearing on a plan to clean up the Hudson. For two months, the federal Environmental Protection Agency will try to gauge local feeling in the Hudson River Valley about a plan to make General Electric dredge the river to remove the pollutants embedded in its sediment.
"They've really gotten into it," said Adam Barr, a biology teacher from Mohonasen who accompanied the students. "And they're divided right about down the middle - half support dredging and half don't."
For both the government and G.E., such equations of public sentiment are crucial. Federal law requires the E.P.A. to consider local opinion before it issues a final order next year on what could be the largest river dredging operation in the nation's history. The nearly $500 million project would remove 100,000 pounds of PCB's, or polychlorinated biphenyls, and thousands of tons of earth.
But the hearing process also promises to be a major test for General Electric and the extensive public relations and advertising battle that it has waged upstate over the last year, trying to convince local residents that dredging would be an environmental disaster.
Last week the federal agency proposed a plan to dredge portions along the most polluted 40 miles of the river, between Troy and the two G.E. factories, in Hudson Falls and Fort Edward. The factories, about 20 miles north of Saratoga Springs, dumped and spilled an estimated 1.3 million pounds of PCB compounds into the river over 30 years, until PCB's were banned in 1977.
In form, the hearing seemed about halfway between a town meeting and a civics class. About 110 speakers had signed up to speak for their allotted two minutes before the microphone, and while some ranted and yelled, others calmly asked questions, and one woman even recited a poem she had written for the occasion, in support of dredging. Almost every speaker got a round of mixed cheers and jeers when finished.
One of the high school students, Nina Evans, a 10th grader, said she learned as much about people at the hearing as she did about the river.
"I learned a lot about how people can get rude," she said.
What people actually said at the hearing was only part of the evening's drama, which began with dueling rallies preceding the meeting.
The Sierra Club, the national environmentalist group, went first, just before 5 p.m., and demonstrated in support of the dredging plan. Several dozen people, some in the white toxic-waste suits that have become standard attire for environmental protesters, held a banner that whipped in the cold wind, and sang a parody of "Jingle Bells," with words that went, in part, "Jingle Bells/ Hudson smells/ G.E.'s got to pay."
An anti-dredging rally, called by a group called Cease, based in the Hudson Falls-Fort Edward area, largely fizzled, though. A chartered bus with seats for 100 arrived with fewer than 20 people, and it was 20 minutes late for its own rally.
"We thought we'd have more," said Mary Ann Nichols, a Fort Edward resident who got off the bus with a "We Oppose Dredging" sign. "But there's a high school basketball game tonight between Fort Edward and Fort Ann - lot of people stayed home for that."
When it comes to the Hudson and General Electric, opinion is a tricky business. Since the late 1970's, scientists have differed over whether PCB's already in the river can contaminate new areas, and whether a complex river like the Hudson, which has a strong reverse tidal surge that sends currents many miles up river from New York Harbor every day, can ever be entirely understood.
The relative health threat from exposure to PCB's has also been in dispute. Many studies have linked PCB exposure to cancer in humans and to other problems in wildlife, and the E.P.A. currently warns that children under 15 and women of child- bearing age should not eat anything taken from the river's waters. A study sponsored by G.E., however - examining the cancer rates of more than 6,000 workers in the company's factories in Fort Edward and Hudson Falls - concluded that PCB's had not increased the workers' likelihood of getting cancer.
Some of the residents who came out tonight to oppose dredging were, they said, really opposing other things, like big government and people from New York City.
"One of the things that bothers me is having a lot of downstate people who are up here to tell us what to do," said Harrison Downs, a resident of Schuylerville, about 30 miles north of Albany. Mr. Downs said he thought that most New York City residents were probably in favor of dredging, and most upstaters were not, though, he hastened to add, he had nothing against people from New York City.
------
Wildlife group warns on elephants
Infobeat
Wednesday, December 13, 2000
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405318553
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/13/world/13ELEP.html
GLAND, Switzerland (AP) - Asia's beleaguered elephant population could plummet if action isn't taken to resolve conflicts between man and beast, the World Wide Fund for Nature said in a report Tuesday.
Animals are being poisoned by plantation workers, shot by angry farmers, and killed for their meat, hide and tusks, according to the group, known as the World Wildlife Fund in North America. Train and road collisions have also resulted in accidental deaths of elephants.
In 1997, 126 wild elephants died because of conflict with humans in Sri Lanka alone, the organization said, while about 300 people die in India every year when hungry elephants forced from their traditional migration routes raid crops.
``Of the 35,000 to 50,000 Asian elephants that cling to survival, most are being squeezed into increasingly smaller woodland areas,'' said Elizabeth Kemf, WWF's species conservation information manager and report co-author.
Asian elephants survive in the wild in only 13 countries today, and the population is a tenth of that of African elephants.
The WWF called on governments to ensure that companies working in areas where elephants live comply with species protection laws. It also called for stronger enforcement of an international treaty that bans trade in Asian elephant products, and for enough well-trained people ``to deal with the sociological, economic and ecological problems which threaten the survival of a heritage that belongs not only to Asia, but all the world's people,'' said Kemf.
---
USA Today
12/13/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
Montana
Helena - City commissioners have unanimously approved a $1.7 million settlement with two developers over a residential subdivision. The settlement was held up for months in a dispute with environmentalists. The case stems from a proposed development of 160 acres on Mount Ascension. Developers Gene Thayer and Pete Hamper claimed the city violated their property rights by denying them permission to subdivide the land.
North Carolina
Wilmington - The owner of a defunct shooting range agreed in principle to clean up lead pollution left by bullet fragments that accumulated in dirt mounds, state officials said. Regulators found lead concentrations 166 times over the level considered safe for residential areas near the former Wilmington Gun Club. High lead levels were also found along Howe Creek, indicating pollution is moving downstream.
North Dakota
Grafton - A carbon monoxide leak at a window-making plant here forced evacuation of about 280 workers during the first shift. Manager Hans Halvorson said about 15 workers from the Marvin Windows plant were treated at an area hospital and released. The cause of the leak was under investigation.
-------- imf / world bank
WTO grants sanctions against Brazil
Infobeat
Wednesday, December 13, 2000
By NAOMI KOPPEL Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405311703
GENEVA (AP) _ The World Trade Organization on Tuesday granted Canada permission to impose $226 million per year of sanctions against Brazil in a dispute over subsidies to the aircraft industry.
The approval followed an arbitrator's ruling that the sum was the amount Canada was losing because of Brazil's Proex export subsidies program to aircraft maker Embraer.
Canada has published a preliminary list of imports from Brazil on which it would consider imposing punitive tariffs, including sugar, tobacco, steel and textiles, but it has not yet specified exactly which items would be targeted.
It has no obligation to start imposing sanctions immediately, and it seems likely that it will wait to see whether the mere threat will force Brazil to change policy. Canadian Ambassador Sergio Marchi told the meeting that five separate WTO rulings had gone against Brazil, but the program was still in place.
Brazilian Ambassador Celso Amorim told the meeting that new regulations had been put into place last week and that the new system was legal under WTO rules _ a claim disputed by Marchi.
Amorim said Brazil and Canada could have settled their differences through consultations a long time ago had it not been for Ottawa's ``unreasonable demands'' about the new Proex system.
A WTO panel ruled in July that Canada was no longer breaking WTO rules in the way it subsidizes its own aircraft maker, Bombardier Inc. The two countries had originally accused each other of acting illegally in a series of claims and counterclaims taken to the WTO.
The original WTO ruling on Brazil said purchasers of hundreds of Embraer aircraft had costs reduced by several million dollars a plane due to the subsidy program, which reduced interest rates on financing for the export of Brazilian aircraft.
Only a handful of disputes have gone as far as trade sanctions in the six-year history of the WTO. Canada, along with the United States, is imposing sanctions on the European Union over its ban on hormone-treated beef and the United States also is applying sanctions over EU banana imports.
If Canada acts, it would be the first time that a developed country had imposed sanctions on a developing nation. The only developing country so far to seek permission for sanctions is Ecuador, which also sought to retaliate over bananas, but it has not yet taken action.
---
U.S. pursues trade case vs. Mexico
Infobeat
Wednesday, December 13, 2000
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER AP Economics Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405317234
WASHINGTON (AP) - The United States formally asked the World Trade Organization on Tuesday to appoint a hearing panel to rule on its claims that Mexico is unfairly keeping U.S. companies from competing in Mexico's $12 billion telecommunications market.
U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky said her office filed a formal request with the WTO in Geneva after discussions with the administration of new Mexican President Vicente Fox failed to produce a breakthrough. Fox took office on Dec. 1.
Barshefsky said she had ``very productive'' discussions with new Mexican Trade Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez on Monday and both sides had agreed to further talks.
But she said that the administration went ahead with its request for appointment of a three-member WTO hearing panel to keep the case moving forward. Mexico exercised its right to postpone action on the U.S. request, which will delay actual appointment of a hearing panel until the WTO's dispute settlement body meets again on Feb. 1.
American telecommunications companies including AT&T Corp. and WorldCom Inc. allege that Mexican telecommunications giant, Telefonos de Mexico, known as Telmex, is conspiring with the Mexican government to keep foreign companies out of the Mexican market through high interconnection fees and other anti-competitive measures that violate WTO rules.
Barshefsky said it was her hope that the matter could be resolved before the 3-member dispute hearing panel is named in February. If the case goes forward, the WTO will have six months to rule on the dispute.
``We do want to work with Mexico to try and resolve the issues,'' she said. ``Resolving these issues in a manner consistent with the WTO would be in Mexico's own interest.'' Barshefsky made her comments during an appearance at the Foreign Press Center.
On other trade matters the administration is trying to wrap up before leaving office on Jan. 20, Barshefsky said that she was neither ``optimistic nor pessimistic'' about the chances that WTO negotiations to admit China into the body that governs world trade can be completed in early January. The WTO China working group meets in Geneva then.
``I think that the pace of the talks will be as it has always been, up to China,'' she said. ``We will move as quickly as China wishes to move.''
President Clinton won a hard-fought victory this year when Congress gave final approval in September to awarding China permanent normal trade relations with the United States as part of that country's WTO membership.
Since then, however, negotiations to wrap up the market-opening pledges China made with other WTO members have been going slowly.
-------- police
Ex-cop threatened LAPD
Infobeat
Wednesday, December 13, 2000
By LINDA DEUTSCH AP Special Correspondent
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405318760
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Disgraced Los Angeles police Officer Rafael Perez told a fellow inmate: ``I am going to blow LAPD up like the World Trade Center,'' according to affidavits filed Tuesday in the case of three officers convicted of framing gang members.
Statements from three jailhouse informants also alleged that Perez boasted he would wreak revenge on his former police colleagues by making up stories about misconduct they did not commit.
The allegations were submitted to Superior Court Judge Jacqueline Connor in support of a motion to grant a new trial or acquittal to Sgt. Brian Liddy.
Liddy, Officer Michael Buchanan and Sgt. Edward Ortiz were convicted last month of perjury and conspiracy in the first major trial resulting from the corruption scandal touched off by Perez's allegations.
Attorneys for the men have argued that jurors deliberated on the wrong issue in the case and the verdict should be overturned.
Affidavits from jurors said they focused on whether Buchanan and Liddy suffered great bodily injury from a confrontation with gang members they said hit them with a truck. Lawyers said jurors were never required by law to make that determination.
In his motion, attorney Paul DePasquale, representing Liddy, said some of the information had been obtained by police interviewers as early as last April but was not given to the defense for six months.
DePasquale quoted inmate Kenny Boagni, who said he and Perez became friends in jail.
``Ray Perez told him he was angry because his fellow officers had shied away from him and treated him like dirt,'' an affidavit said. ``He wanted to get all their ... and could get anybody investigated.''
Another inmate, Henry Rodriquez, was quoted as saying Perez ``would throw the names of people ... into a hat and have them investigated whether they were innocent or not.''
He said Perez regarded the district attorney as his ``savior'' and felt he was ``untouchable'' once he had been sentenced on cocaine charges.
Perez made a deal for a light sentence in exchange for information that triggered the largest scandal in Police Department history with claims of widespread misconduct in the Rampart gang-fighting unit.
The documents said Perez spoke to the inmates about officers he particularly disliked, including Liddy and Buchanan.
Attached to the motion was a Sept. 22 letter from Police Cmdr. Daniel R. Schatz, commanding officer of the Rampart Corruption Task Force. He acknowledged that information about a jailhouse informant was documented in April but never given to the district attorney's office until late September. He said there was no intentional effort to mislead anyone or to hide the information.
In a separate motion on behalf of Buchanan, attorney Harland Braun said the conviction of the three officers on charges of perjury and conspiracy was the result of massive publicity about the Rampart scandal.
``This verdict represents a jury responding to public opinion, media sensationalism and political propaganda rather than an impartial review of the law and the evidence,'' Braun said.
He added, ``Every peace officer in Los Angeles should view this verdict as a threat to the competent performance of his duty. Why bother to stop a gang member or do more than the minimum police work when the reward for superior police work may be a felony conviction.''
---
Prosecution Ends Its Case on Pepper-Spray Testimony
New York Times
December 13, 2000
By RONALD SMOTHERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/13/nyregion/13ORAN.html
NEWARK, Dec. 12 - The prosecution rested its case today in the federal trial of five Orange, N.J., police officers by introducing a statement in which one of the defendants said police officers assaulted with pepper spray a handcuffed suspect who later died in police custody.
Later, the defense highlighted its strongest point so far: the inability of the prosecution's experts to find any trace of pepper spray in the dead man's body tissue or on his clothes.
The prosecution alleges that the officers violated the civil rights of the man who died, Earl Faison, 27.
A Federal Bureau of Investigation agent, Ed Quinn, read from his report on a September 1999 interview with Officer Tyrone Payton, conducted before Officer Payton became a suspect in the case.
Mr. Payton told F.B.I. agents of the immediate aftermath of the chase and arrest on April 11, 1999, of Mr. Faison. Officers thought Mr. Faison fit the description of the suspect in the killing of an Orange police officer, Joyce Carnegie.
Mr. Payton, 34, told federal investigators that while Mr. Faison was on the floor of a stairwell in police headquarters, handcuffed and surrounded by several officers, someone sprayed pepper spray directly into his mouth and nose area. The prosecution has maintained that Mr. Faison, who had asthma, had a reaction to the spray.
Prosecutors have argued throughout the trial, now in its sixth week, that it was Officer Brian Smith, 31, who sprayed Mr. Faison. As the defense started its case, one of Mr. Smith's lawyers, John A. Young, called an expert who testified about the spray.
Cameron Logman, chief executive of Zarc International, maker of a brand of pepper spray, said that "as long as you don't remove it," the pepper spray residue "just sits there. It remains and is hard to decontaminate."
---
Study Planned on Ethnicity and Views of Police Acts
New York Times
December 13, 2000
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/13/nyregion/13STUD.html
A City University professor has won a federal grant to study police- community relations in an effort to learn when New Yorkers from different ethnic backgrounds feel that aggressive policing crosses the line to police abuse.
The study, in its general outlines, was first proposed by the Civilian Complaint Review Board nearly three years ago, but was abandoned in the face of political resistance and a lack of financing, said two board officials familiar with the early plans for the survey.
But after the city and the National Institutes of Justice declined to pay for the study, the professor who was initially approached by the review board persisted, and last month, she won approval for about $300,000 from the National Science Foundation to do the study on her own, the board officials said.
The study, which will be discussed today at the review board's monthly meeting, will survey about 1,100 New Yorkers, said Carroll Seron, the sociology professor who is conducting it. Professor Seron teaches at the School of Public Affairs at Baruch College, a division of the City University of New York.
The survey comes as the administration of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and the Police Department are trying to convince federal prosecutors in Brooklyn that they have significantly improved the procedures under which officers accused of abuse are investigated and disciplined. The prosecutors, after a three-year inquiry into police disciplinary practices, are prepared to file a lawsuit seeking reforms if they fail to negotiate a settlement on changes.
Department officials also say they are battling a perception of the police - belied by the declining number of police abuse complaints - shaped by incidents like the shooting of Amadou Diallo and the station house torture of Abner Louima.
Professor Seron said in an interview yesterday that the survey was intended to gauge how people from different ethnic backgrounds view police brutality and how they view the discipline meted out to officers who are found to have engaged in brutal acts.
The professor, who published a survey of race and gender bias in federal courts in 1997, hopes to learn whether people with different ethnic backgrounds draw the same line between aggressive and appropriate policing and police abuse.
"I want to know whether, regardless of race, people agree, whether there is consensus about when a cop crosses a line in an encounter with a civilian," she said.
The study will be conducted based on a series of 17 vignettes that will be read to the respondents, who will then answer questions about them, she said. Each vignette will tell a story about an encounter between a police officer and a civilian.
Among the questions will be what constitutes just punishment for abusive behavior, she said.
"I think the goal is to understand the legitimacy of the police in the eyes of the public and whether there are significant differences by race" in how people view that legitimacy, she said.
Thomas Antenen, the Police Department's deputy commissioner for public information, said Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik had not seen the proposal for the survey and would not comment on it until he had.
Frank H. Wohl, the chairman of the review board, also declined to comment before the survey is discussed at the panel's meeting today.
---
New York Times
December 13, 2000
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/13/world/13BRIE.html
TURKEY: A POLICE PROTEST About 3,000 policemen marched through Istanbul to protest the overnight ambush of a police bus that killed two officers and injured 12. Waving guns and chanting slogans, the police demanded better protection and tougher sanctions against criminals. The attack on the bus occurred in a neighborhood where the police clashed last week with protesters opposed to moving inmates to small-cell prisons from the current dormitory-style rooms in Turkish prisons. Douglas Frantz (NYT)
---
New York Times
December 13, 2000
Metro Briefs
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/13/nyregion/13MBRF.html?pagewanted=1
HARTFORD: OFFICIAL URGED TO QUIT TRAFFIC STOPS Gov. John G. Rowland has told Connecticut's State Police commissioner, Arthur L. Spada, left, to stop pulling over speeding or erratic drivers. Commissioner Spada, who is driven by a state trooper, has admitted that he has occasionally pulled over drivers he spotted driving erratically during weekend commutes. Governor Rowland said yesterday that Mr. Spada, 68, carried no weapon and had no training in police procedures, and should leave traffic enforcement to armed state troopers. The commissioner said he would honor Mr. Rowland's request. Paul Zielbauer (NYT)
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THINGS WE DON'T UNDERSTAND
DayTips' Strange News: 12/13/00
Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2000 04:24:32 -0800
The police chief of Lewiston, Maine, says he was just kidding around when he pretended to strangle two domestic violence counselors. The incident took place in April 1999 during a photo session at a police conference in Rockport. The women -- who at the time worked for the Abused Women's Advocacy Project, headquartered at the Lewiston Police Station -- said the mock strangling was rigorous enough to leave marks on their necks. They filed charges against Police Chief William Welch with the Maine Human Rights Commission. On Monday, the panel found Welch guilty of discrimination by a 4-1 vote. "Police need to know, must know and do know how threatening they can be to people by the actions they take, " Human Rights Commissioner Warren Kessler told the Lewiston Sun-Journal.
---
USA Today
12/13/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
Alabama
Prichard - Police asked Prichard schoolchildren to exchange fake guns and rubber knives for non-violent items such as dolls, basketballs and coloring books. Then they discovered a problem It's against school system rules to bring fake weapons onto school grounds. Police Chief Sammie Brown amended the Peace Toys for War Toys program. The toy weapons are now to be taken to the police station, not to school.
Louisiana
Baton Rouge - A city police officer accused of making sexual comments and touching people inappropriately in two incidents earlier this year has been fired. Officer Tramelle Neldare, who joined the Police Department in 1998, has denied one incident and said the other was blown out of proportion.
Maine
Augusta - The Maine Human Rights Commission sided with two female domestic violence activists who say Lewiston Police Chief William Welch discriminated against them when he mockingly choked them at a community policing conference. The panel's 4-1 vote does not have the weight of law but can be grounds for lawsuits. Welch has apologized, saying it was a joke.
New Jersey
Trenton - A new law bars all police agencies in the state from using ticket quotas as a prerequisite for officers' promotions or other benefits. Gov. Whitman, who signed the bill, said officers will be able to focus on public safety. Police unions backed the measure. Representatives from the New Jersey State Association of Chiefs of Police said local departments do not use quotas.
Oregon
Salem - The Oregon State Police Firearms Instant Check System unit passed its first major test over the weekend, processing more than 1,300 background checks, almost four times the average during the three-day period. It was the first weekend after implementation of Measure 5, which requires background checks on rifles and shotguns and all weapons sales at gun shows.
Virginia
Richmond - A House of Delegates committee killed a Senate bill that would allow police to pull over a car if they believe an adult inside isn't buckled up. Under current law, not wearing a seatbelt is a primary offense only if it involves a passenger under 16. The bill failed on a 10-10 vote, but supporters promised to bring it back up in the General Assembly session next month.
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Buckle up for servility
Washington Times
EDITORIAL • December 13, 2000
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-house-20001213194210.htm
"Safety" enforced at gunpoint is hardly worth our freedom - or so you might think. But Virginia's state legislature, though controlled by Republicans who are supposed to believe in less government, not more, are poised to pass legislation that would give police authority to turn on their sirens and pull motorists over for no greater "offense" than their failure to wear a seat belt.
Under existing law, police may issue a ticket for failure to comply with Virginia's mandatory seat belt law - which requires that people buckle-up when in a motor vehicle - but only after pulling a motorist over for another offense, such as speeding. The new law would confer "primary enforcement" powers upon the seat belt patrol - enabling the gendarme to interfere with your trip, hassle you, inspect your person and vehicle - all solely because you happened not to be wearing your seat belt like a good little boy or girl.
Of course, the Virginia legislative proposal has its origins in emotionalism. The Washington Post carried an article Saturday relating to the story of a woman whose son was killed in a car accident. He wasn't wearing his seat belt. Ergo, every resident of Virginia must be treated like a child. "Seat belts could have saved his life," she told The Post. "They don't infringe your rights. They just save your life."
The problem - the rational dilemma - is that this argument could be used to justify all kinds of invasive measures. If police have a right to force us, at ticket and gunpoint, to wear our seat belts "for our own good," then perhaps dietitians should be sent to the homes of every officer and legislator in the state to make certain that no "unhealthful" foods are consumed that may lead to atherosclerosis. After all, society has an interest in the well-being of its public servants - correct? And it isn't "safe" if Officer Friendly is clogging his arteries with greasy cheeseburgers while on the job; he might have a heart attack and wreck his car. What about the children?
The fact is that seat-belt usage has absolutely nothing to do with either the safe operation of a motor vehicle or public safety - which are areas over which the state has legitimate jurisdiction because they affect other people. Police should only have authority to interfere with the conduct of private individuals when their conduct clearly threatens other people or their property. Failing to wear one's seat belt, while certainly increasing the odds of injury or death in the event of a traffic accident, presents no such threat to others - let alone to "society."
Virginia lawmakers are overstepping their bounds by contemplating this measure. One hopes they realize the precedent they would establish.
-------- spying
Pressure Is Again Emerging to Free Jonathan Pollard
New York Times
December 13, 2000
By DAVID JOHNSTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/13/world/13SPY.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 - As President Clinton nears the end of his time in office, he is facing a new round of pressure to free Jonathan Jay Pollard, the convicted spy whose life sentence has become a battleground between Jewish leaders and intelligence officials.
Administration officials said Prime Minister Ehud Barak of Israel raised the issue with President Clinton on Monday, and the president essentially restated the official position on the matter, telling Mr. Barak he would review the issue along with other clemency requests.
But the officials said Israel and Jewish leaders in the United States would probably continue to press Mr. Clinton to commute Mr. Pollard's sentence before his presidency ran out. Senior law enforcement and intelligence officials were just as likely to maintain their strong opposition to freeing Mr. Pollard, a civilian naval intelligence analyst who in 1987 was sentenced to life in prison as a spy for Israel.
A Clinton administration official traveling today with the president in Ireland said that the case was not under review. "From time to time, Prime Minister Barak has raised this issue, but there's nothing new," the official said. "That is not under active consideration."
American Jewish leaders have long lobbied on Mr. Pollard's behalf, and in New York earlier this year, Hillary Rodham Clinton was pressed during her successful race for the Senate to support clemency. She endorsed an improvement in Mr. Pollard's confinement conditions, but did not support releasing him.
In Israel, the case has been championed by both Labor and Likud Party governments. But if Mr. Pollard is released, Mr. Barak, who faces an election as early as February, would probably claim the victory as his accomplishment, saying it was the product of a relationship that he nurtured with the White House.
The president considers pardon and clemency issues throughout the year, but often announces decisions at the holiday season. They are rarely announced ealier, particularly in an election year.
In recent days, Mr. Pollard's lawyers have filed a motion in Federal District Court here seeking to have Mr. Pollard's sentence vacated. "We have advised the court that we have requested President Clinton to grant him clemency to time served," said Eliot Lauer, a lawyer for Mr. Pollard.
Today, government officials said the White House had given no indication that Mr. Clinton planned to reopen the Pollard case.
Even so, one official who opposes clemency said that such a review was expected despite White House denials. He added that a concession to Mr. Pollard's supporters in the waning days of Mr. Clinton's presidency, when such actions are almost risk-free politically, would still arouse deep resentment among law enforcement and intelligence officials.
The Pollard case has been hotly debated for years. Two years ago, the case nearly shattered peace negotiations at the Wye Plantation in Maryland when Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister at the time, demanded that Mr. Pollard be freed. George L. Tenet, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, threatened to resign if Mr. Clinton acceded to the Isreali demand. In the end, Mr. Clinton refused to free Mr. Pollard.
At times Mr. Clinton has seemed poised to grant some form of clemency, as a gesture to promote the Middle East peace effort. He has considered clemency for Mr. Pollard on at least three occasions, in 1993, 1996 and 1998, and once ordered a separate reassessment of the case, which concluded that Mr. Pollard had seriously damaged national security.
Some officials said Mr. Clinton, who wields exclusive clemency authority, could weigh a variety of options, among them shortening Mr. Pollard's sentence or allowing him to be transferred to an Israeli prison, where Mr. Pollard, who obtained Israeli citizenship in 1995, would almost certainly soon be released.
Law enforcement and intelligence agencies have vigorously opposed such a step, saying Mr. Pollard's crimes were far too serious to provide any basis for clemency. Each time, faced with unequivocal opposition, Mr. Clinton has backed away from the case.
Mr. Pollard, who worked at the Navy's Anti-Terrorism Alert Center in Suitland, Md., has said he was punished too severely; he says he obtained information that the United States should have been supplying to its ally. But American officials have said he betrayed vital secrets to the Israelis, who did not cooperate fully with investigators or return all the documents Mr. Pollard provided them.
In an interview, Joseph E. diGenova, the prosecutor in the Pollard case, reflected the unyielding view of many government officials. "This is a decision of such gravity that it will taint this president's legacy forever," he said. "It is absolutely indefensible from either a legal or humanitarian standpoint to grant clemency to this American citizen who had done the gravest kind of damage to the United States."
---
American sentenced in Beijing for spying
Washington Times
December 13, 2000
By Christopher Bodeen
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-20001213235326.htm
BEIJING - A New York acupuncturist who helped publicize China's crackdown on the Falun Gong meditation sect was sentenced yesterday to three years in prison for spying.
Teng Chunyan, a Chinese citizen and a U.S. permanent resident, was convicted by a Beijing court of disclosing national security information to foreigners, a U.S. diplomat said.
The Falun Gong member's father confirmed the sentence to an official at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, the diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Neither Teng nor her husband, a U.S. citizen whom the diplomat would not identify, have signed waivers allowing the release of personal information about them, he said.
Prosecutors and officials at Beijing's No. 1 Intermediate People's Court did not respond to telephone queries. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue would not confirm the sentence but said, "The relevant parts of the Chinese government are handling the case according to law."
Teng joined Falun Gong in New Jersey and entered China earlier this year to gather information on the ban against the sect.
Using the pseudonym Hannah Li, Teng tipped off foreign reporters in China about sect members' protests against the ban on the group and arranged interviews with them.
A purported copy of her indictment, released by a Hong Kong-based rights group, specifically accused Teng of giving a digital camera to an accomplice, who then sneaked into a center outside Beijing where Falun Gong members were being held. Teng then gave foreign news media the film.
Detained in May, Teng was indicted two months later and tried during a Nov. 23 hearing. Only her lawyers were allowed at the hearing.
The secrecy that shrouded her case is typical in trials involving the vague and partly unpublished laws against spying. The 16-month-old crackdown against Falun Gong is among China's most sensitive political issues.
Teng faced up to 10 years in prison. Her relatively light sentence followed protests by the U.S. government. A State Department spokesman last week called Teng's case "deeply disturbing."
Falun Gong grew to millions of members during the 1990s, offering what it claims are a health-giving exercise regimen and morally uplifting philosophy derived from Taoism, Buddhism and the ideas of its founder, Li Hongzhi, a former government grain clerk now living in the United States.
Alarmed by the size and organizational prowess of the group, China banned it in July 1999 as a dangerous sect and has sent hundreds of members to prison and labor camps.
[Beijing also is cracking down on banned places of worship, according to the London Daily Telegraph.
[The Telegraph yesterday reported that Chinese authorities in the city of Wenzhou have torn down or blown up more than 200 illegal churches and temples.
[A further 239 small places of worship in the east coast city, many of them linked to the underground Roman Catholic church, have been forced to close, the paper said.
[The places of worship closed and demolished in Wenzhou were reported to include Buddhist and Taoist temples as well as Catholic and Protestant churches, the Telegraph said.]
--------
Ex-Spy Chief Fled Peru in Boat
New York Times
December 13, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Peru-Montesinos.html
LIMA, Peru - Fugitive ex-spy chief Vladimiro Montesinos fled Peru in a yacht and was last seen three weeks ago on a sail boat off Costa Rica, according to testimony by three army officers broadcast Wednesday.
According to the account, which could not be confirmed, Montesinos fled Peru on Oct. 29 and spent a week holed up in a small hotel in the Galapagos Islands, before continuing his island-hopping escape with Venezuela as his apparent destination.
The tale of Montesinos' high seas journey was carried by radio and television, part of a videotaped statement sent to Congresswoman Anel Townsend, a member of a congressional committee investigating him. The men claimed to be members of Montesinos' security detail since 1996.
Montesinos, ousted President Alberto Fujimori's security adviser, is wanted on charges from money-laundering and influence-peddling to directing death squads.
Rumors as to his whereabouts have swirled since he returned to Peru in late September after a failed asylum bid in Panama. Many people thought he was still in Peru, shielded by his allies in the armed forces.
A videotape of Montesinos apparently bribing a congressman led to the scandal that eventually toppled Fujimori, who is now in Japan.
Townsend said she had verified many of the dates, locations and names mentioned by army Maj. Alejandro Montes, Capt. Javier Perez and technician Manuel Tullume. The men gave the following account:
After returning from Panama, they holed up with Montesinos for a week in a house in an exclusive Lima neighborhood with the knowledge of top military leaders.
Montesinos and the men slipped out of the country before dawn from Lima's port of Callao on a yacht called the ``Carisma,'' sailing for nearly seven days before reaching Isabela, one of the most remote islands in the Galapagos group, 600 miles off Ecuador.
For a week, the men stayed in a small hotel, while Montesinos remained on the boat during the days, only going ashore by night to avoid being recognized.
The men said it was on Isabela that they learned that Swiss authorities had frozen more than $48 million in bank accounts linked to Montesinos, which investigators later alleged were the proceeds of shady arms deals.
They said that at point they wanted to abandon Montesinos, who implored them to stay, saying they ``were like a family,'' Tullume said. Having no money to reach the mainland, they agreed.
Montesinos called a friend in Venezuela to arrange for a private plane to pick him up. But then he dashed the idea when he was told the trip to Venezuela would require a stopover in Ecuador's coastal city of Guayaquil, where he feared he would be recognized.
Instead, they set sail north to Costa Rica's Coco Island, a national park 350 miles off the mainland with no immigration office and few officials to spot them.
From there, Montesinos once again used his satellite phone to contact his Venezuelan friend to send a sail boat that would rendezvous with the yacht at sea.
Montes was the only one of the three who went with Montesinos, and said he saw him get onto the other boat.
-------- activists
How Polluted Is Your Neighborhood? Find Out For Free
From: Action Network <actionnetwork@processrequest.com>
Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2000 15:36:48 -0600
The Questions:
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Who We Are
Environmental Defense http://www.ProcessRequest.com/apps/redir.asp?link=XbcbgieiDA,YdifjgcieEF is a leading national non-profit organization dedicated to protecting the environmental rights of all people, including future generations. Among these rights are clean air, clean water, nourishing food, and a flourishing ecosystem. Representing 300,000 members, we link science, economics and law in a unique way. Accomplishments include the banning of DDT and forging pollution reduction partnerships with such companies as McDonald's and Federal Express. But we accept no funding from our corporate partners. That's why your support is so important.
Recent Success Stories
* Ecosystems: We're saving songbirds in Texas and red wolves in North Carolina.
* Pollution: We helped get the EPA to crack down on "dirty diesel" engines.
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Rioters, police clash at EU meeting
Wed, 13 Dec 2000 14:29:46 -0800
TurbulentTimes # 2 -- December 2000
A weekly compendium of direct action news.
Leftists, anarchists blame trade bloc for host of social ills
Protesters ran amok in the chic, palm-lined streets of the Riviera's main resort city and police fought back with tear gas and stun grenades Thursday as the European Union opened its most important meeting in a decade.
For the rioters, a motley collection of leftist revolutionaries, anarchists and separatists, the 15-nation EU is a cog in the process of globalization that they blame for many of the world's ills.
As the trade bloc's leaders gathered in the morning at a squat downtown conference centre aptly nicknamed "The Bunker" by Nice residents, an estimated 4,000 demonstrators set upon the site and got within 100 yards.
Young men, many of whom wore cowls or kerchiefs to hide their faces, hurled rocks, set fire to a bank branch, tossed fire extinguishers through shop windows and painted slogans such as "Death to Money" on storefronts.
French officials, hosts for the Nice summit, had vowed that there would be none of the embarrassing mayhem here that disturbed last year's World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle or the International Monetary Fund's gathering in September in Prague, Czech Republic.
Choking clouds of smoke wafted in the direction of the convention centre, making French President Jacques Chirac sneeze as he stood outside to greet foreign leaders. Some dignitaries, including leaders of other countries that want to join the EU, coughed and mopped their eyes.
"These acts are radically contrary to the democratic traditions of all European countries," Chirac later said in disgust. Authorities said 20 police officers were hurt in the fracas on Nice's rain-slicked streets, one seriously. Forty-five protesters were arrested.
The Nice summit is considered the EU's most crucial since the 1991 Maastricht Treaty, which laid the basis for a common European currency, the euro, and serious consideration of common policies in fields including defence, citizenship and protection of the environment.
The agenda here calls for the EU to reform its inner mechanisms so it can function after absorbing new members, chiefly ex-communist countries in Eastern and Central Europe. Twelve nations are negotiating to join, including the three former Baltic republics of the Soviet Union.
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The Real Thing: Democracy as a Contact Sport
13 Dec 2000
By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
A couple weeks ago, we received an invitation to attend an event at the Library of Congress.
Coca-Cola was about to make an "historic contribution" to the Library of Congress, and the Library, and Coca-Cola, were inviting reporters to cover the event. We accepted the invitation.
We learned from the morning papers that the "historic contribution" was a complete set of 20,000 television commercials pushing Coca-Cola into the American digestive system.
Remember the one where the kid hands Pittsburgh Steeler Mean Joe Greene his bottle of Coke, and in return, Mean Joe tosses the kid his football jersey? Or what about on a hilltop in Italy where the folks start sing "I'd like to buy the world a Coke and keep it company"?
The event was at the Great Hall of the Thomas Jefferson Building -- named after the Thomas Jefferson who, in 1816, wrote: "I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws our country."
Anyway, we pull up at the appointed hour (7:15 p.m. on November 29, 2000) at the Thomas Jefferson building, and there's a traffic jam created by stretch limousines blocking the entrance.
In addition to lowly reporters, the 400 or so guests included ambassadors, members of Congress, corporate chieftains and other dignitaries. Good thing we dressed up.
The Main Hall is this absolutely stunning room, with marble staircases. A string quartet is playing. Waiters are serving Coke in classic bottles. The food is fabulous -- lamb chops, trout, Peking duck. We rub shoulders with the Ambassador from Burma.
The "aristocracy of our monied corporations," as Jefferson put it, had taken over the place, and Coca-Cola wanted to make sure that everybody knew it.
After all, Coke could have just donated the ads to the Library and left it at that. But this wasn't about Coke's largesse. It was about public relations -- whether the public would view the company as a racist company (Coke had just agreed to pay $192.5 million to settle allegations that it routinely discriminated against black employees in pay, promotions and performance evaluations) or a junk food pusher (consuming large quantities of sugared Coca-Cola has led to ours being one of the most overweight generations in history) -- or instead, a generous contributor to the Library of Congress.
James Billington, the Librarian of Congress, was called on to deliver good things to Coke, and he did. He turned over the keys of the Main Hall to Coke, and Coke decked the place out with its logo, stitched in red beside the logo of the Library of Congress. Television sets were placed throughout the hall, the better for the Ambassadors and members of the Democratic Leadership Council to check out the commercials.
Billington was selling the soul of the library to one of the world's most powerful corporations. In addition to the ads, Coke was establishing a fellowship at the Library for the study of "culture and communication" -- one fellow will receive $20,000 a year for the next five years.
Gary Ruskin, director of Commercial Alert, was outside the event, protesting. "It is not the proper role of the taxpayer-financed Library of Congress to help promote junk food like Coca-Cola to a nation that is suffering skyrocketing levels of obesity," Ruskin said. "It is crass commercialism for James Billington to degrade Jefferson's library and founding ideals into a huckster's backdrop."
But without shame, Billington introduced Doug Daft, the president of Coca-Cola, who said that "Coca-Cola has become an integral part of people's lives by helping to tell these stories." Nothing about profits. Nothing about overweight kids. Nothing about racism.
After Daft spoke, the room went dark, and the ads ran on the television screens. Nostalgia swept the room. When the ads were finished, the lights went back on and the crowd cheered.
About 80 high school students, dressed in Coca-Cola red sweaters, filled the marble staircases and sang -- "I want to buy the world a Coke." Again, the crowd cheered. Doug Daft, standing downstairs, came back to the microphone to continue his statement. We were upstairs at this point, and we looked down at him and asked, in a loud voice -- "Why are you using a public library to promote a junk food product?"
The room went quiet. Library of Congress police charged up the marble staircase. Doug Daft put his hand to his ear and shouted back to us: "What did you say?"
In a louder voice, we shouted back: "Why are you using a public institution to promote a junk food product?"
The next thing we know, we are on the ground. The Library of Congress police had tackled us. Again, the crowd cheered -- not for our question, but for the tackle.
We were dragged downstairs, past the Ambassador from Burma, and hauled outside, where police officers from the District of Columbia were waiting for us.
Out of the Thomas Jefferson building came running a man from Coke. "This is a private event," the man from Coke told the police. "I'm from Coca-Cola."
At first, the police wanted nothing to do with the man from Coke. But the man from Coke insisted. They huddled.
Apparently, the man from Coke didn't want us arrested for asking an obvious question. Apparently, the man from Coke didn't want a public trial. The man from Coke was standing up for our First Amendment rights to ask his boss a question.
The police said we were to leave the grounds. And we weren't to come back. Ever.
Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor. They are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1999).
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D.C. police prepare for protests at inauguration
Washington Times
December 13, 2000
By John Drake THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/metro/default-2000121322282.htm
Anti-establishment activists and liberals are planning to flood the District with massive protests on Inauguration Day, prompting city police to brace for the deluge with an unprecedented level of security.
Many of the groups that demonstrated against the World Bank here in April intend to return to the District with their puppets and mantras, regardless of who takes the presidential oath of office on Jan. 20.
And supporters of Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore, led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, are planning a "civil rights explosion" if Republican George W. Bush is officially named the winner.
"We're not planning civil disobedience, but we are planning to fill the streets of Washington with thousands of people," said Brian Becker, co-director of the New York-based International Action Center, which is coordinating the protests.
Meanwhile, law enforcement officials said they are preparing on an even greater scale than they did in April for the anti-World Bank/International Monetary Fund protests.
"What we would hope is that any demonstrations that are planned are peaceful," said Metropolitan Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey. "We'll be as gentle or as forceful as we need to be, and play the situation out based on what they do."
"We have to be prepared for anything that may occur. It will not be [the police department] that creates the problem, but we will resolve it," he added.
Chief Ramsey will mobilize the entire Metropolitan Police Department for the event, and he has invoked "mutual aid" agreements with police in surrounding counties to increase staffing.
As many as 950 officers from Fairfax, Montgomery, Arlington and Prince George's counties and Alexandria will be federally deputized so they can enforce D.C. laws, officials said.
Federal police agencies will be out in force, and other agencies - such as the FBI, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms - will be on standby for major incidents.
Publicly, law enforcement officials said they do not anticipate anything out of the ordinary, even if anti-establishment protesters stage large demonstrations.
But the closest presidential race in history has produced unusually intense partisan tensions, and the new anti-establishment movement could attract many more demonstrators.
For those reasons, police forces are "anticipating problems" among anti-establishment protesters and partisans disappointed at their candidate's loss, several officials told The Washington Times.
"The uncertainty of the election process, regardless of who wins, makes us think they will use the inauguration to show their displeasure one way or the other," a law enforcement official told The Times.
Gore supporters have hinted they will demonstrate if the U.S. Supreme Court, which is considering the propriety of ballot recounts in Florida, rules in favor of Mr. Bush, essentially ensuring his victory.
"There will be nonviolent, disciplined protests if the scheme to disenfranchise voters is successful," Mr. Jackson told The Times yesterday.
"We can afford to lose an election in democracy, but you cannot afford to lose your franchise," he said. "And Americans will not take well, and should not take well, to be disenfranchised because of these very sinister schemes in Florida."
Asked if he would encourage sit-ins, Mr. Jackson said, "No, we're not there yet."
The assortment of groups working under the International Action Center are bipartisan protesters - they will demonstrate if Mr. Bush or Mr. Gore wins, Mr. Becker said.
"It will be a loud protest, we think, and very visible," he said.
However, "if [Mr.] Bush wins, there will be thousands, perhaps more, of people from unions and civil rights organizations who will want to join us," he added.
Mr. Becker stressed that his organization and groups working with it do not plan to shut down the inauguration. But they will not abide by what activists derisively call "protest pits," fenced-in areas usually far from the official public event.
"We're not going to go for that," Mr. Becker said. "It would be very much in the interests of police to do the right thing, and that is to allow us to stage a spirited but legal and orderly protest close to the inaugural route, even if it's an 'inconvenience,' rather than trying to marginalize us or shut us down."
Local and federal law enforcement agencies have been meeting for months about security and shared intelligence on groups that could disrupt the inauguration, officials said.
"The law enforcement partnership is aware and cognizant of events, being fully briefed and will be that much more aware of their duty," a federal official said.
D.C. police had intelligence as far back as two or three months ago that anti-establishment activists were planning Inauguration Day protests, Chief Ramsey said.
Despite the promises by protesters not to break the law or commit violence, Chief Ramsey has not forgotten how events played out in April, when city police arrested hundreds of activists blocking streets.
"My experience with these folks is that they tend not to do what they say," he said.
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FBI agents rally to oppose pardon
Washington Times
December 13, 2000
By Jerry Seper THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-20001213213125.htm
FBI agents will stage a White House vigil Friday to encourage President Clinton to deny a presidential pardon to Leonard Peltier, the American Indian Movement leader convicted in the 1975 execution-style murder of two FBI agents.
The demonstrating agents, led by John Sennett, president of the FBI Agents' Association, also will present a letter asking that Peltier's pending clemency request be rejected. The vigil will include a silent march around the White House, beginning at noon.
The letter and pending demonstration follow a memo last week by FBI Director Louis J. Freeh asking Mr. Clinton not to commute Peltier's life sentence, saying his pardon would "signal disrespect" for law enforcement and the public.
"Mr. President, there is no issue more deeply felt within the FBI or more widely shared within the law enforcement community than the belief that this attack by Peltier was nothing less than a complete affront to our cherished system of government under the rule of law," Mr. Freeh said.
The director previously has said Peltier's guilt had been "firmly established," noting that the two agents - Jack R. Coler, 28, and Ronald A. Williams, 27 - were fatally shot as they lay wounded on the ground.
He said the FBI "cannot forget this cold-blooded crime, nor should the American people."
The White House confirmed last month that Mr. Clinton is reviewing pending requests for executive clemency, including Peltier's, and will make a decision before he leaves office Jan. 20.
Mr. Clinton promised during a Nov. 8 radio interview he would consider a pardon for Peltier, telling Pacifica Radio he owed it to both sides of the Peltier issue to give the pardon request "an honest look-see" before he leaves office.
"I believe there is a new application for him in there and when I have time, after the election is over, I'm going to review all the remaining executive clemency applications and, you know, see what the merits dictate," Mr. Clinton told the radio network.
Mr. Clinton's right to grant pardons "for offenses against the United States" is guaranteed by the Constitution. He has pardoned 185 persons and commuted the sentences of 21 others, one of the lowest rates among modern presidents.
Peltier, eligible for parole in 2009, is serving two consecutive life terms at the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kan., for the murders of Agents Coler and Williams. He was sentenced June 2, 1977, in Fargo, N.D., two years after the killings at South Dakota's Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, near Wounded Knee.
The Pine Ridge incident occurred June 26, 1975, when Peltier's vehicle was stopped by the two agents who were looking for a suspect in a kidnapping and assault. According to court records, Peltier was himself a fugitive and thought he was about to be arrested.
The records show Peltier fled the vehicle with two other men and began shooting at the agents with semiautomatic rifles. Agents Coler and Williams were immediately wounded. Crime-scene experts testified the agents fired five shots before they were hit, compared with more than 125 bullet holes found in their car.
Prosecutors said Peltier and the two others approached the wounded agents and fired three shots at point-blank range, hitting Agent Williams in the face as he knelt and Agent Coler, who was still unconscious, twice in the head.
Agents taking part in Friday's vigil are part of a nationwide effort by law enforcement authorities to prevent a Peltier pardon. The undertaking is aimed at countering a move by several Hollywood celebrities, many of whom are Democratic campaign donors, to pressure Mr. Clinton to grant the pardon.
The Leonard Peltier Defense Committee has drawn support from the Hollywood community, which contends the FBI withheld evidence and coerced witnesses to win a conviction.
That effort is led by Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Robin Williams and Robert Redford. Defense Committee leaders said they have received positive reaction from both Mr. Clinton and Vice President Al Gore.
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New York-Based Member of Falun Gong Is Sentenced in China
New York Times
December 13, 2000
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/13/world/13GONG.html
BEIJING, Dec. 12 - A New York- based member of the Falun Gong spiritual movement has been sentenced to three years in jail by a Chinese court after being charged with giving sensitive information to foreigners, a senior American diplomat said today.
The member, Teng Chunyan, a Chinese citizen with permanent resident status in the United States, came to China early this year to gather information on the Chinese government's crackdown on Falun Gong, which has been banned for almost 18 months here.
Her indictment accused her of providing foreign journalists with photographs of Falun Gong practitioners detained in a psychiatric hospital, according to the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy. She also gave foreign reporters advance notice of demonstrations by the group.
Almost every day for the last year small groups of practitioners have staged silent protests on Tiananmen Square, unfurling banners or beginning their meditation exercises. They are quickly whisked away into waiting vans by the dozens of uniformed and plainclothes police officers who patrol the square.
On significant dates, like the anniversary of the start of the crackdown and the birthday of the group's exiled leader, Li Hongzhi, the protests have been larger and hundreds of people have been detained.
A number of overseas practitioners of Falun Gong have entered China, either to join the demonstrations or to show their support for Chinese members. A number have been detained.
But until recently such people have been quickly released and sent back to the United States. Ms. Teng is the first foreign-based Falun Gong member to be put on trial. Ms. Teng, an acupuncturist, is married to an American citizen and has United States permanent residency.
Although American embassies do not automatically give permanent residents the same degree of help as citizens, the diplomat said the embassy here had discussed her case with the Chinese several times before the verdict and would continue to raise her case. He said that United States government had hoped for a "benign outcome to the trial and if not that then a speedy return of Teng to the United States."
Ms. Teng, who was jailed in March and later charged with "releasing national security information to foreigners," could have been sentenced to up to 10 years in prison. She was tried on Nov. 23 in a closed hearing at the Beijing Intermediate People's Court.
Hundreds of Chinese Falun Gong members have been sentenced to long prison terms. Thousands more have been placed in lesser forms of detention, like labor camps, which does not require a trial, human rights groups say.
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China sentences Falun Gong member
Infobeat
Wednesday, December 13, 2000
By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405311227
BEIJING (AP) - A New York acupuncturist who helped publicize China's crackdown on the Falun Gong meditation sect was sentenced Tuesday to three years in prison for spying.
Teng Chunyan, a Chinese citizen and a U.S. permanent resident, was convicted by a Beijing court of disclosing national security information to foreigners, a U.S. diplomat said.
The Falun Gong member's father confirmed the sentence to an official at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, the diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Neither Teng nor her husband, a U.S. citizen whom the diplomat would not identify, have signed waivers allowing the release of personal information about them, he said.
Prosecutors and officials at Beijing's No. 1 Intermediate People's Court did not respond to telephone queries. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue would not confirm the sentence but said, ``The relevant parts of the Chinese government are handling the case according to law.''
Teng joined Falun Gong in New Jersey and entered China earlier this year to gather information on the ban against the sect.
Using the pseudonym Hannah Li, Teng tipped off foreign reporters in China about sect members' protests against the ban on the group and arranged interviews with them.
A purported copy of her indictment, released by a Hong Kong-based rights group, specifically accused Teng of giving a digital camera to an accomplice, who then sneaked into a center outside Beijing where Falun Gong members were being held. Teng then allegedly gave foreign news media the film.
Detained in May, Teng was indicted two months later and tried during a Nov. 23 hearing. Only her lawyers were allowed at the hearing.
The secrecy that shrouded her case is typical in trials involving the vague and partly unpublished laws against spying. The 16-month-old crackdown against Falun Gong is among China's most sensitive political issues.
Teng faced up to 10 years in prison. Her relatively light sentence followed protests by the U.S. government. A State Department spokesman last week called Teng's case ``deeply disturbing.''
The U.S. Embassy raised her case with the Chinese government several times, hoping she would be allowed to return to the United States, the diplomat said. He said the embassy would continue to lobby China on her behalf.
Falun Gong grew to millions of members during the 1990s, offering what it claims are a health-giving exercise regimen and morally uplifting philosophy derived from Taoism, Buddhism and the ideas of its founder, Li Hongzhi, a former government grain clerk now living in the United States.
Alarmed by the size and organizational prowess of the group, China banned it in July 1999 as a dangerous cult and has sent hundreds of members to prison and labor camps. State media accuses the sect of conspiring against the government, cheating adherents and causing 1,500 deaths.
Falun Gong members in the United States who met Teng after she joined the movement said they weren't surprised she chose to return to China to help foreign journalists obtain information on the crackdown.
``She went to tell the truth about what has happened, the atrocities. She was trying to expose the injustice that's occurring in China,'' said Gail Rachlin, another Falun Gong member.
Teng's experiences in the United States and her ability to communicate in both Chinese and English prompted her return, Rachlin said. ``She had a very good life life here. It was extremely dangerous for her to return and she knew that,'' Rachlin said.
Teng moved to the United States about eight years ago and had lived in the New York City borough of Queens with her mother. She recently married a U.S. citizen, whose family apparently lives in New Jersey. Falun Gong members were unsure of his name.
While in the United States, Teng taught classes in acupuncture at the New York College and Holistic Health Center in Syosset, N.Y. She had also opened a private practice in midtown Manhattan.
One former colleague, Dr. Chi Chow, president of the New York Institute of Chinese Medicine, said Teng was an effective teacher.
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