NUCLEAR
Inspections to End Under INF Treaty
SWITZERLAND: MISSILE CONTROL PACT
Putin Sees Cuba As Russia's Gate to Latam
Putin Feels Whiff of Soviet Era in Cuba
A Russian Return to Havana
In Cuba, Putin Signals Russia's Return to Region
U.S., ex-republics sign agreement
Putin talks with Castro in Cuba
Putin, Castro speak on relationship
China Sets Terms for Rights Talks With U.S.
Putin may discuss U.S. policy during Canada visit
Russia increases number of single-warhead missiles in service
Putin Hopeful on U.S. - Russian Relations Under Bush
Russia To Deploy More Missiles
Russia Will Allow Norway Inspection
Chernobyl shut down for good
Chernobyl powers down permanently
Chernobyl Closing: A Relief For Many
Chernobyl at a Glance
Lights Go Out at Chernobyl Nuclear Plant
Chernobyl Nuclear Plant Shut Down for Good
Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Shut Down
Chernobyl Is a Vast Wasteland
Workers Bid Ill-Fated Chernobyl a Bitter Farewell
Chernobyl nuclear plant shut down for last time
Ukraine to close Chernobyl nuke plant
After disaster: the people who call Chernobyl home
Chernobyl - One Secret the Soviets Could not Keep
Military Chief Seeks Money, Saying Forces Are Strapped
Man with windmill scheme tilts against U.S. missile shield
America's Nuclear Flying Saucer
Wen Ho Lee mystery deepens
Search for Lee Tapes Fruitless
FBI might resume digging for secret tapes
To Prevent Price Jumps, Changes in Electricity Market Are Urged
DOE makes first steps in fluorine cleanup
Tribe Wants 2 Hanford Landfills Recleaned
World waits to see how Bush will handle global issues
Meeting the World
Run to the Right, Not the Middle
Clinton, Winding Up Trip, Tells Developed Nations Not to Forget the World's Poor
Congratulations, and Some Skepticism, as Other Nations Size Up Bush
Conservatives Looking for Action
Bush Turns to Foreign Policy Experts
DOE To Probe Leak Re Yucca Mountain DOE, Industry Scam
MILITARY
Workers Get Greater Drug Test Protection
New Charges in Ecstasy Case Are Filed Against Gravano
U.S. arrests 50 in Mexican drug ring probe
U.N. Peacekeeping Mission to Congo Is Revived
Final slap
Gen. Shelton sees China as growing threat to U.S.
Military votes must count
OTHER
Recount, Sue, Await Results. Sound Familiar?
Modified-Crop Studies Are Called Inconclusive
I'm Not Dead Yet
American Jailed as Spy in Moscow Is Freed on Putin's Orders;
Yemen on Delicate Path in bin Laden Hunt
Fearing Terrorism, U.S. Keeps Consulates in Turkey Closed
Yemen chief says role of bin Laden not clear
Terrorism strategy criticized
Pope expresses joy over prison release
ACTIVISTS
Dyspeptic D.C. demonstrations
FBI agents protest Peltier clemency request
Protesters Lift Road Blockade in Southern Serbia
Serbs enforce blockade near Kosovo border
Police hold 39 after Greenpeace protest missile campaign at NATO
-------- NUCLEAR
Inspections to End Under INF Treaty
International Herald Tribune
Friday, December 15, 2000
Reuters
http://www.iht.com/articles/4417.htm
GENEVA The United States and Russia signed an agreement Thursday to end inspections of each other's missile assembly plants begun under the landmark Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which scrapped medium-range missiles and denuclearized Europe.
Under the treaty, the missiles were due to be eliminated by May 1991 and the inspections by May 2001.
"Although the INF Treaty is of unlimited duration, the treaty's extensive inspection regime, including continuous monitoring at missile assembly plants at Magna, Utah, U.S.A., and Votkinsk, Udmurtia, Russia, will be concluded at midnight on May 31, 2001," a joint statement said.
U.S. officials will continue to monitor the Votkinsk plant under the 1991 START Treaty, while Russia has no such rights at the Magna facility under the 1991 START pact, U.S. officials said.
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SWITZERLAND: MISSILE CONTROL PACT
New York Times
December 15, 2000
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/15/world/15BRIE.html
Arms control negotiators meeting in Geneva from the United States, Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine have agreed to the phased elimination under the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty of the last 50 to 60 SS-24 intercontinental ballistic missiles on Ukrainian soil. The negotiators also signed an accord to complete the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty's inspection regime, which involves continuous monitoring at missile assembly plants in Utah and Russia. Elizabeth Olson (NYT)
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Putin Sees Cuba As Russia's Gate to Latam
New York Times
December 15, 2000 Filed at 3:18 p.m. ET
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-cuba-ru.html
HAVANA (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Moscow would like to use communist-ruled Cuba, its former Cold War ally, as a stepping-stone for a wider and more active role in Latin American and the Caribbean.
Putin ended the official part of his five-day visit to Cuba early on Friday by laying a wreath and holding a news conference -- before taking off for a weekend in the sun at the Caribbean island's leading beach resort of Varadero.
``Our visit to Cuba is a kind of demonstration of intent of reactivation of Russia's external political efforts in Latin America's direction in general,'' Putin told reporters.
``Currently very many countries want to see a more active position of Russia in international affairs. And Russia understands that this corresponds to its national interests. And here we find an understanding by Cuba's authorities.''
Although himself a proponent of multi-party democracy and free-market economics -- both of which Castro has rejected in Cuba -- Putin wants to rekindle Moscow's political and economic ties with Castro's four-decade-old government.
In addition to the bilateral trade and investment benefits for Cuba, Putin is thought to want to rebuild Russia's global role, particularly in the Third World, and has not been shy about making advances to other nations viewed suspiciously by the West -- including Libya, North Korea and Iraq.
NO CHALLENGE TO WASHINGTON
Putin said the positions of Russia and Cuba relating to most international issues coincided or were close to each other. But, he said, Cuba and Russia had no agreements aimed against ``third countries'' -- a comment referring to some interpretations of his visit as a challenge to Washington.
After flying in the night before, Putin spent most of Thursday with Castro for formal ceremonies, talks and the signing of documents aimed at breathing new life into Moscow- Havana ties that disintegrated after the Soviet collapse.
There was apparently no breakthrough in the crucial question of Cuba's enormous Soviet-era debt, estimated at $20 billion. Moscow wants repayment, but Havana says Russia should write it off as ``compensation'' for damages caused to Cuba's economy by the abrupt Soviet fall.
``The debt is counted by billions. This issue is being discussed by experts. It has not yet been solved definitely ... But this should be solved on the basis of the special character of friendly relations between the two countries,'' Putin said.
``We intend to offer to Cuba a most favorable regime (of debt solution), but, naturally, within the framework of international rules.''
Putin said an immediate task for Russian and Cuban experts would be a decision on the fate of unfinished industrial projects left from the Soviet era. He said Russia had recently had to invest around $30 million in preservation work at the Juragua nuclear station, which Cuban authorities were not interested in completing.
``We don't insist (on its completion) but we have to understand what to do with this project as we have invested a lot in it,'' he said.
RUSSIA MULLS OLD PROJECTS
Moscow believes part of Cuba's debt could be covered by Russian participation in some potentially lucrative projects left over from the Soviet era. Unfinished projects include a nickel ore processing plant at Las Camariocas, and the modernization of the Cienfuegos and Santiago oil refineries.
Putin said Russia would like to continue cooperating with Cuba in traditional sectors, but also in new high-tech spheres such as telecommunications.
On Thursday Putin joined Castro in condemning the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba. But he was also careful to send congratulations to U.S. President-elect George W. Bush, and, in another gesture to Washington, has freed a convicted U.S. spy.
Also on Thursday, Putin visited with Castro the Russian- operated Lourdes electronic intelligence center outside the Cuban capital, laid a wreath at the monument to ``the Soviet internationalist warrior'' and met parliamentary speaker Ricardo Alarcon, seen by some as a possible Castro successor.
Putin said Russia and Cuba were keen to keep the Lourdes base, which U.S. opponents want to see dismantled.
``It functions in strict accordance with the international norms and rules currently in force ... Russia and Cuba are in favor of continuing its existence, but what will happen later, let's wait and see,'' he said.
Putin also visited a biotechnology center before heading to Varadero for a weekend on the beach. He was personally invited to Varadero by Castro, who is expected to join him for part of the time until he flies to Canada on Sunday.
---
Putin Feels Whiff of Soviet Era in Cuba
New York Times
December 15, 2000
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/15/world/15PUTI.html
HAVANA, Dec. 14 - Russia and Cuba, two battered allies who fell out a decade ago when the Soviet Union fell apart, officially got back together today when President Vladimir V. Putin and President Fidel Castro pledged to reinvent the relationship based on a modest agenda of trade and commerce and an equally modest smattering of ideological alignment.
The Russian leader wore a business suit - he is here mostly to talk business about the billions of dollars in Soviet-era investments in Cuba that have come to naught, and for which debts are owed.
And the Cuban leader, looking fit and animated at 74, wore the trademark olive fatigues of his revolution - reflecting his own preoccupation with the evils of globalization, the poverty of many nations in a world of great wealth and the "repression" that Cuba continues to suffer under four decades of an American economic blockade.
Mr. Castro and Mr. Putin found some common language in complaining about the advent of a world dominated by the United States. Mr. Castro claimed seniority in the struggle by asking, "Who knows better than the country situated only 90 miles from the biggest superpower of the world?"
Mr. Putin, without mentioning the United States, agreed that such "unipolarity" allows one country to "monopolize international relationships and to dominate them." He said the last time this occurred, "we all know how it ended," apparently a reference to Nazi Germany and World War II.
Both leaders condemned the continuing American economic embargo of Cuba.
But Mr. Putin signaled in other ways that the world has changed and that Russia is not looking to return to the era of confrontation with the United States. As he arrived in Cuba late Wednesday, the Kremlin acted on his decree and released Edmond Pope, the American businessman convicted of espionage by a Moscow court a week ago and sentenced to 20 years in jail.
And in a telegram to President- elect George W. Bush, Mr. Putin sent good wishes for "success in this important and responsible post," adding, "I am counting on an intensive and constructive dialogue with you and your administration" with a goal of "further deepening of the productive and mutually beneficial cooperation between Russia and the United States" and a "strengthening of international security and strategic stability."
Mr. Castro was less effusive. A government statement today said, "It seems that the empire finally has a new leader" and "from the new boss, we expect little."
Mr. Castro, seated next to Mr. Putin at a news conference, challenged Washington's "preoccupation" with increasing its military spending after the cold war and criticized Mr. Bush's support for erecting an antimissile shield over the United States.
In the Palace of the Revolution, the two leaders signed minor accords to cooperate in medical research, reopen a $50 million line of credit for Cuba and lay the groundwork for future trade, but they have yet to announce agreement on how Cuba might repay its estimated $20 billion in debts accumulated over three decades during which Moscow subsidized Cuban agriculture, industry and a significant military buildup.
Mr. Putin pointed out that even though the Russian and Cuban economies have contracted by a third or more in the past decade, the two countries still carry on nearly $1 billion in trade a year, mostly in barter by which Cuba receives Russian oil and sends much of its annual sugar output to Russia.
"This level of trade is not bad," Mr. Putin said. "But there are still some problems that have accumulated in the last 10 years, and they demand especially close attention. The Soviet Union has invested a lot in Cuba's economy. This is worth billions of dollars, and we have to understand what to do about this."
Russian officials traveling with Mr. Putin said Moscow is most concerned that if it does not re-establish strong trade ties with Cuba, Europe, Canada and eventually the United States will move in and capitalize on abandoned Soviet-era investments and equipment, which still form much of the island's industrial base.
These officials said Moscow had presented to Mr. Castro several proposals for swapping Cuba's debt for Russian stakes in potentially profitable Cuban enterprises in oil refining, nickel production and other sectors.
But Cuban officials are looking for debt forgiveness as part of the bargain, pressing Cuba's standing grievance that aid was withdrawn by Moscow so abruptly that Cuba's economy suffered billions of dollars in damage and has yet to recover.
Mr. Castro indicated that Cuba, as a charter member of the World Trade Organization, which Russia would like to enter, has leverage that might be of use to Moscow, but he has yet to publicly specify his price.
Mr. Putin also brought along his defense minister, Marshal Igor D. Sergeyev, for discussions that appeared to be related to the degraded state of the Cuban armed forces since Soviet advisers were withdrawn and spare parts for Soviet equipment left in Cuba dried up.
Mr. Putin and Mr. Castro toured the secret intelligence base that Russia inherited at Lourdes, outside Havana, where a huge array of antennas allows Russian military technicians to monitor civilian and military communications in the United States and Latin America. Russia still pays rent for the facility with oil shipments, Western officials say.
Western journalists were barred from the tour.
Also unresolved at this stage of Mr. Putin's visit is whether the two countries can find the financing that would allow Russia to complete a large nuclear power station near Cienfuegos.
The electricity plant, with most of its foundations complete and about 40 percent of its reactor and generating equipment delivered, requires an estimated $600 million in additional investment.
Neither Russia nor Cuba is able to finance the completion, and efforts over the past decade to find financing elsewhere have failed. The plant's design is not the Chernobyl- style graphite-core reactor that is of greatest concern to Western governments, but is based on pressurized- water reactors within a containment building.
Still, the plant's location - 180 miles southwest of Key West, Fla. - has prompted American officials to express concern about Cuba's ability to operate it safely.
For ordinary Cubans, Mr. Putin's visit carries much less excitement than that of the last leader from Moscow, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who came here in 1989 at the peak of perestroika and glasnost. Those Soviet reforms emboldened a generation of dissidents to challenge Mr. Castro's authoritarian lock on the country.
"Cuban intellectuals used to read with great interest the materials that would come from Russia about reform," said Elizardo Sánchez, a leading dissident. "But in the last four to five years, we have not received much material from Russia, and there is no clear picture here of who Putin is, except that people realize that he comes from the K.G.B. and that he is governing a different country" than the Soviet one.
"For this reason, we don't expect a great deal from this visit," Mr. Sánchez said, noting that Russia and Cuba today harmonize their opposition to human rights programs at the United Nations.
"On the contrary," he added, "we expect the alliance between these two countries to reinforce each other's positions on human rights."
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A Russian Return to Havana
New York Times
December 15, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/15/opinion/15FRI3.html
President Vladimir Putin is in Cuba this week, on a visit rich in symbolism. But Mr. Putin, the first Russian leader to visit Havana since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, brings a substantive agenda as well. He seeks to repair political and economic ties that have frayed in recent years. The days are past when Moscow's relations with Havana threatened American security. But Mr. Putin should not provoke Washington by expanding Russian arms sales to Cuba or helping Havana complete an unfinished civilian nuclear reactor.
After the demise of the Soviet Union, Moscow cut off its $2 billion annual subsidy, plunging Cuba into economic crisis. European and other Western companies stepped in with investments and trade, shouldering Russian businesses aside. Annual trade between Moscow and Havana has plummeted from $3.6 billion in 1991 to less than $1 billion today.
How far Mr. Putin plans to go in rebuilding the relationship is unclear. He will surely promote new Russian investment, particularly in developing Cuba's rich nickel deposits, and will try to work out terms for repayment of some of the estimated $20 billion that Havana owes Moscow. But his ambitions may go beyond the purely commercial. There has been discussion of new Russian weapons sales to Cuba's military and of help in completing the unfinished power reactor, near Cienfuegos. Washington fears that once this reactor is completed, its fuel could be secretly diverted to nuclear weapons production. It is also concerned about safety risks to Florida.
This trip is part of Mr. Putin's effort to raise Russia's diplomatic profile after its erosion during the final years of Boris Yeltsin's rule. He has tried to strike a balance between challenging American policies on problems like Iran and Iraq and cooperating with Washington on other issues, like arms control and Mideast peace.
Yesterday Mr. Putin made the right decision in pardoning Edmond Pope, the American businessman convicted of espionage last week. Mr. Pope suffers from bone cancer and his release is a welcome humanitarian and diplomatic gesture. But Moscow was wrong in pressing Spain earlier this week to arrest Vladimir Gusinsky for extradition to Russia on fraud charges. Mr. Gusinsky's television stations and print outlets have been critical of the Putin government, and his prosecution appears politically motivated.
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In Cuba, Putin Signals Russia's Return to Region
Washington Post
Friday, December 15, 2000 ; Page A30
By Scott Wilson Washington Post Foreign Service
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/world/americas/A7577-2000Dec14.html
HAVANA, Dec. 14 -- Russian President Vladimir Putin began an official visit to Cuba today, a high-profile sign of Russia's desire to revive an alliance with a country that the Soviet Union supported for decades but effectively abandoned after the Cold War.
The visit is the first by a Kremlin leader since the collapse of the Soviet Union, which plunged Cuba into a decade-long economic crisis it is still trying to escape. For the first time in years, Cubans witnessed caravans of Russian-made limousines, brought out just for the occasion, speeding through the capital's streets. Billboards written in Russian celebrated Putin's arrival.
Putin wasted no time in giving his hosts hope for at least a partial restoration of close ties, agreeing to new trade deals and joining Cuban President Fidel Castro in criticizing U.S. plans for a national missile defense system.
Both leaders hope to benefit politically from the reunion of old allies, once aligned against the United States and still deeply anxious about its role as the lone superpower. In a brief news conference today, Putin and Castro pointedly outlined their concern about the emerging "unipolar world." As part of a joint declaration, Putin pledged to "increase cooperation with Latin American and Caribbean countries, a region rapidly becoming an independent center in the formation of a multipolar world."
"Putin does want to stake out a position for Russia as a world power that doesn't always do what the United States wants," a Western diplomat here said. "Cuba is a good place to start. Putin and Fidel reinforce each other."
In pre-visit interviews with Cuba's state-run media, Putin said his visit to "Russia's old and traditional ally" should be understood as a return to a region that was a primary Cold War venue for confrontation with the United States. He said Russia has been preoccupied with domestic issues, but that he viewed returning to Latin America as a strategically important step for Russia.
"Now it is clear that the moment has arrived to reestablish our position in this region of the world," Putin said in an interview with the Communist Party newspaper Granma. "This corresponds with the economic and national interests of Russia, and it will permit us to strengthen our position around the globe."
Castro is also eager for a fresh start with a country that 10 years ago accounted for 80 percent of its foreign trade--or about $7 billion. That figure sunk to $250 million five years later, but this year is expected to exceed $1 billion.
Today Cuban and Russian officials signed agreements to continue their long-standing trading of Russian oil for Cuban sugar and expand it to other products, establish a historic archive of Cuban-Russian relations and cooperate on public health issues. No agreement was announced regarding Russian aid to help repair Cuba's Soviet-era military equipment, although talks described by Russian defense officials as "technical" are proceeding.
Castro, facing chronic power shortages and an international credit crunch, had hoped Putin would commit more than $1 billion to restart construction of a nuclear power plant and oil refinery in southern Cienfuegos and a nickel mine in northeastern Holguin province. The United States has repeatedly raised concerns about the nuclear power plant, begun in the 1980s, because of what it calls faulty design standards.
Putin suggested decisions on those issues might have to wait until the two countries can resolve Cuba's roughly $20 billion debt to Russia.
"Russia wants to produce some answers to get these projects going again and raise the level of the relationship between Russia and Cuba," Putin said. "I don't have any doubt about [the success] of this."
Putin's visit comes during what human rights activists here describe as one of the harshest government crackdowns on dissent in decades. More than 200 people have been jailed since Dec. 6 during a period of high-profile visits by politicians and trade groups from the United States, China and Russia. Though most were jailed briefly, two of those arrested were tried this week in secret hearings and sentenced to one-year prison terms, according to the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation.
"Putin has said he hopes to reform Russia's market economy and strengthen democracy--things Cuba has no intention of doing," said Elizardo Sanchez, president of the independent commission that is Cuba's most prominent dissident group. "Cuba is trapped in the past. This is the big difference between our countries."
Putin's three-day stay will take him to Cuba's pharmaceutical factories and tourist resorts, the country's most promising foreign currency earners. Though it was not listed on his official agenda, Putin also made a visit this afternoon to the Russian listening post at Lourdes, east of Havana, a Soviet-era installation he plans to modernize.
Castro and Putin, who have met only once before, in New York, plan to spend the weekend together at a beach resort.
The last Kremlin leader to visit was Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1989, who, despite a bear hug from Castro on arrival, told Cuba it could no longer count on favorable trading terms.
After the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, the relationship worsened under Russian President Boris Yeltsin, whom Castro viewed as unreliable and a pawn of the United States. But in Putin, a former KGB official whose crackdown on separatists in Chechnya paved the way for his presidency, Castro sees a potential ally.
Castro has used U.S. plans to construct a missile defense system to persuade Putin to help Cuba repair its military equipment and strengthen its economy as a countermeasure. President-elect Bush has been a strong supporter of the anti-missile system, which Putin and others have said violates U.S.-Russia nuclear arms-control agreements.
"The amount of arms [the United States] exports, the breaking of nuclear agreements--this worries us enormously," said Castro, sitting at Putin's side.
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U.S., ex-republics sign agreement
Infobeat
December 15, 2000
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405344964
GENEVA (AP) - An agreement signed Thursday by five nations spells out the details of ending round-the-clock monitoring at missile plants in Utah and Russia.
The May 31, 2001, deadline for dismantling the plants' monitoring systems was set out in the U.S.-Soviet treaty banning intermediate-range nuclear weapons. Thursday's agreement, signed by the United States and the former Soviet republics of Russia, Ukraine, Kazakstan and Belarus, spelled out the technical details of how to accomplish the dismantling.
The Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces treaty was signed by Presidents Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in December 1987. It banned intermediate-range nuclear missiles and was the first treaty to lead to the destruction of an entire class of nuclear weapons.
``Although the INF treaty is of unlimited duration, the treaty's extensive inspection regime, including continuous monitoring at missile assembly plants in Magna, Utah, and Votkinsk, Russia, will be concluded at midnight May 31, 2001,'' the countries said in a joint statement.
``The newly signed amendment provides principles and procedures for the completion of INF inspections,'' it added.
The round-the-clock monitoring system at the gates to the two missile assembly plants has to be dismantled by the May 31 deadline.
The INF treaty imposed a permanent ban on ground-launched missiles with ranges between 310 and 3,418 miles.
Belarus, Kazakstan and Ukraine were, along with Russia, the former Soviet republics most concerned with the class of weapons.
The same five nations on Monday signed an agreement specifying procedures for the phased elimination, under the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, of the last SS-24 intercontinental missiles in Ukraine.
It will see major components that are essential to the missiles' use destroyed in a first phase, after which they will no longer be usable. The final date for the missiles to be eliminated is Dec. 4, 2001.
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Putin talks with Castro in Cuba
Infobeat
December 15, 2000
By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405345231
HAVANA (AP) - Reviving a friendship that withered after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian President Vladimir Putin met Thursday with Cuban leader Fidel Castro, promising little by way of economic aid but pledging to strengthen ties.
``We decided we will build a relationship between our countries based upon the warm feelings and high level relations that already exist,'' Putin said after their morning meeting. ``We agreed to give a new push to solving problems that have piled up during the last years.''
But the only solid economic agreement from talks between the two leaders was $50 million in commercial credit from Russia to Cuba _ an amount that pales in comparison with the multibillion-dollar subsidies of the Soviet era.
The generous Soviet-era aid to Cuba ended abruptly in the early 1990s when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev cut subsidies shortly after his 1989 visit to Cuba. He added to the insult by deciding to withdraw Soviet troops without consulting Havana.
Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin, Putin's predecessor, never even visited Cuba.
Putin has made a point of restoring ties with old Soviet allies alienated by his predecessor. There were none of the bear hugs and kisses typical during Soviet times, but after meeting Castro, Putin extolled the old friendship and pledged to strengthen it.
``We must clearly and precisely realize what in our relationship has perspective and what is the heritage of the past,'' Putin said.
Russian and Cuban officials signed agreements in the economic, legal and medical spheres but failed to reach a solution on uncompleted Soviet-era projects in Cuba that would cost billions of dollars to finish. There also was no agreement on how to eliminate part of Cuba's $11 billion Soviet-era debt with Russia.
But the two leaders found common ground in international politics, discussing the need to develop the multipolar world _ a reference to what they see as U.S. attempts at global domination. In a joint statement, they condemned the United States' economic embargo against Cuba.
Meeting at the Palace of the Revolution, where a military band struck up both countries' anthems before they went inside for talks, Putin and Castro also agreed to further political dialogue, economic cooperation and trade.
The two countries do about $1 billion in trade a year, down from about $3.6 billion in 1991, Putin said Thursday.
The Soviet Union valued Cuba during the Cold War, and considered it a strategic outpost. Twenty percent of Cuba's gross national product is estimated to have come from Soviet subsidies. But today, in a country much changed since the Soviet collapse, politics are now second to economics.
Later Thursday, Putin was to attend a ceremony honoring Cuba's monument to the Unknown Soviet Soldier, then meet with Ricardo Alarcon, president of Cuba's National Assembly and Castro's point man on Cuba-U.S. affairs.
A state dinner, not listed on the original agenda, was scheduled for the evening, Russian officials said.
The Russian delegation included Gen. Valentin Korabelnikov, head of military intelligence, who apparently will accompany Putin on his visit to the Russian electronic intelligence center in Lourdes, the only remaining Russian military facility in Cuba.
On Friday, the Russian president was to play tribute to Cuban independence hero Jose Marti and visit Cuba's Institute of Genetics and Biotechnology. He then heads to Cuba's Varadero beach resort for a two-day rest before going to Canada on Sunday.
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Putin, Castro speak on relationship
Infobeat
December 15, 2000
By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405354067
HAVANA (AP) - Reaching out to an old ally, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke to Fidel Castro about reviving Moscow's Soviet-era friendship with communist Cuba - but suggested it will come without the handouts of the past.
``We decided we will build a relationship between our countries based upon the warm feelings and high-level relations that already exist,'' Putin said Thursday after meeting with the Cuban president, who welcomed a Russian leader to Cuba for the first time since the 1991 Soviet collapse.
But the only solid economic agreement to emerge from Thursday's talks was $50 million in commercial credit from Russia to Cuba - and even that was merely an extension of an earlier credit line.
The amount pales in comparison with the multibillion-dollar subsidies of the Soviet era, when Cuba's location just 90 miles from Florida made the island nation a peerless Cold War ally of the Kremlin. The subsidies were equal to 20 percent of Cuba's gross national product.
The generous aid stopped when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev cut subsidies shortly after his 1989 visit to Cuba and then added to the insult by deciding to withdraw Soviet troops without consulting Havana. The sharp economic crisis that ensued has fed anti-Russian feelings in Cuba.
Putin's predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, never visited Cuba, reflecting both his disdain for communism and economically struggling Russia's worldwide retreat. Trade between Cuba and Russia was $1 billion last year, down from about $3.6 billion in 1991, Putin said.
Putin has made a point of restoring ties with old Soviet allies. His cold and formal style differed sharply from the bear hugs and kisses of the Soviet times, but after meeting Castro, Putin extolled the old friendship and pledged to strengthen it.
At the same time, however, he emphasized the need for a more practical relationship this time around.
``We must clearly and precisely realize what in our relationship has promise and what is the heritage of the past,'' Putin said.
Russian and Cuban officials signed agreements in the economic, legal and medical spheres but failed to reach a solution on uncompleted Soviet-era projects in Cuba that would cost billions of dollars to finish.
Putin did not push Cuba on paying off its Soviet-era debt to Russia - estimated by Cubans at $11 billion, while some Russian media have put it above $20 billion. Neither leader mentioned the debt Thursday.
They were on the same page in a discussion of international affairs, stressing the need to develop a multipolar world - a reference to what they see as U.S. attempts at global domination. In a joint statement, Putin and Castro condemned the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba and assailed American plans to develop a missile-defense system.
Meeting at the Palace of the Revolution, where a military band struck up both countries' anthems before they went inside for talks, Putin and Castro also agreed to further political dialogue and economic cooperation.
Putin later visited an electronic intelligence center in Lourdes that is the only Russian military facility left in Cuba. Accompanied by Castro, he also visited a nearby Russian military cemetery and laid flowers to a monument honoring fallen soldiers.
The Russian president ended the day with a state dinner after meeting with Ricardo Alarcon, president of Cuba's National Assembly and Castro's point man on Cuba-U.S. affairs.
Putin's wife, Lyudmila, met with teachers and students of Russian at the University of Havana. In a brief interview with Associated Press Television News, she praised Cuba's beauty and the kindness of its people.
On Friday, Putin was to pay tribute to Cuban independence hero Jose Marti and visit Cuba's Institute of Genetics and Biotechnology. He was then scheduled to head to Cuba's Varadero beach resort for a two-day rest before going to Canada on Sunday.
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China Sets Terms for Rights Talks With U.S.
Inside China Today
Dec 15, 2000
http://www.insidechina.com/news.php3?id=230208
WASHINGTON -- (Reuters) The Chinese embassy in Washington said on Thursday that a human rights dialogue with the United States would be possible only when Washington gives up what it called a confrontational approach.
One example of such an approach would be U.S. sponsorship of a resolution critical of China's record at next year's meeting of the UN Human Rights Commission, embassy spokesman Zhang Yuanyuan told a news conference.
The meeting of the commission, in Geneva in the northern hemisphere spring, has become an annual showdown between China and the United States. China has repeatedly thwarted attempts to have the commission debate its human rights record.
After a meeting in Brunei in November between U.S. President Bill Clinton and Chinese President Jiang Zemin, a U.S. official said the two leaders had agreed in principle to resume human rights talks, frozen since the United States bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999.
The official, Assistant Secretary of State Stanley Roth, described the understanding as an agreement in principle and said issues such as a date would be worked out later.
The embassy spokesman did not mention the Brunei agreement but he put the burden on Washington to prove it was willing to create the right atmosphere for the human rights talks.
"If the United States insists on this confrontational course, which includes introducing or getting others to introduce anti-China resolutions at the UN Human Rights Commission meeting, that means we are not seeing the United States willing to return to the course of dialogue," he said.
"So we hope the United States will give up its confrontational approach, return to the negotiating table and we are for dialogue," he added.
The decision on how to handle China at the Geneva meeting will be one of the first big decisions which an incoming Republican administration led by President-elect George Bush will have to take in relations with China.
FALUN GONG
Zhang argued that China's human rights record is improving and that it is inappropriate to apply to a developing country like China the standards of a country like the United States.
The United States says China's record deteriorated in 1999, especially because of a crackdown on the Falun Gong spiritual movement and a campaign against pro-democracy activists.
The spokesman, commenting on protests in the United States in support of the Falun Gong, said the U.S. government should "stamp out anti-China activities on its soil".
Falun Gong protesters are a regular sight just across the street from the Chinese embassy in Washington.
Asked about Bush's support for the controversial Taiwan Security Enhancement Act, Zhang said: "We pay attention to the campaign rhetoric but, once a person gets elected, we place more emphasis on what he is going to do."
The bill, which would establish direct military ties between the United States and Taiwan, was passed in the House of Representatives this year but not in the Senate. The Clinton administration strongly opposed it on the grounds that it would damage Chinese-American relations.
The spokesman also reminded the incoming Bush administration of Chinese opposition to U.S. plans for a national missile defense (NMD) system or a more limited theater missile defense system covering Taiwan.
"We will certainly weigh the impact of NMD on China's security environment and adjust our policies on disarmament, nuclear reduction and non-proliferation accordingly," he said.
President Clinton has left to his successor the decision on whether to start deploying the missile defense system, meant to protect the United States from a limited nuclear attack.
-------- russia
Putin may discuss U.S. policy during Canada visit
CNN
December 15, 2000
http://www.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/americas/12/15/russia.canada.reut/index.html
MOSCOW, Russia (Reuters) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin flies to Canada on Sunday for talks stressing the similarities of the two vast snowbound countries, but discussion may gravitate to arms control and the new U.S. administration.
http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/maps/russia.moscow.jpg
Putin arrives on Sunday for meetings with Prime Minister Jean Chretien after a four-day visit to restore close ties with Cuba -- Washington's longstanding Caribbean antagonist where Canadian investment is high despite U.S. objections.
Talks also open three days after the emergence as U.S. President-elect of George W. Bush, a proponent of both a tougher line on Russia and a new National Missile Defense system denounced by Moscow and viewed with deep suspicion in Canada.
NATO-member Canada has periodic, subtle foreign policy differences with the United States and, like Russia, it says the 1972 U.S.-Soviet Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty must stay intact.
Bush flavors altering ABM to be able to proceed with the new system to guard against possible missile strikes by "rogue states" like Iran and North Korea.
Diplomats say Putin and Chretien will sign a "statement on strategic stability issues," but they discount any suggestion that Moscow might try to exploit Canada's reservations.
"Nuclear disarmament will be a big issue. The National Missile Defense and overall missile numbers will be among things discussed," Canadian ambassador Rodney Irwin told reporters.
"We hope common ground can be found between Canada, Russia and the United States. I don't think you will see Canada being played off against the United States. That would be too unsophisticated for Russian diplomacy."
In an interview with the CBC and CTV television networks and the Toronto Globe and Mail before his departure, Putin pointed to the missile issue as proof of potential for closer ties.
"The fact that our positions are very close on issues of world security, on maintaining the treaty of 1972, shows that we can find points of contact on key issues and use them for the benefit of our countries and all mankind," he said.
But he added: "Our agreements must not and cannot be directed against the interests of third parties."
Both leaders are riding high from election victories, Putin gliding to power last March after taking over from Boris Yeltsin in the Kremlin on New Year's Eve, and Chretien securing his third straight majority last month with unexpected ease.
Putin will not be accompanied by the prominent figures with him in Cuba, like Foreign Minister Sergei Ivanov and Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev. Included are Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Khristenko and officials committed to developing depressed areas of northern Russia.
The two sides say geography and common experience with a harsh climate and far-flung minorities make Russia and G7-member Canada ideal partners.
Ahead of the visit, officials laid on a seminar on federalism to explain Canada's approach to regional issues, the threat of separatism in French-speaking Quebec notwithstanding.
But strategic interests again enter the equation.
Sergei Rogov, director of Russia's USA and Canada Institute, told Reuters it was natural for Russia to draw closer to Canada and Cuba as the United States extends its influence in what Russians refer to as the "near abroad" of ex-Soviet states:
"If the United States has interests in Russia's 'near abroad', Russia has interests in Canada, Mexico and Cuba...
"Russia is not now a superpower. It is an important player, but to some extent belongs to the league to which Canada belongs."
Both sides hope to boost trade, due to climb back this year to around C$1 billion ($650 million) -- about the same as before Russia's 1998 financial crisis, but less than Canada's daily volume of trade with the United States. Canada will offer support for Russia's bid to join the World Trade Organization.
--------
Russia increases number of single-warhead missiles in service
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Friday, December 15, 2000
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/business/miss16.shtml
MOSCOW -- Russia will equip a third regiment of its strategic missile forces with the Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missile before the end of the year, the strategic forces commander said yesterday.
The government says the recently developed Topol-M will form the backbone of its nuclear forces for years to come. The small, rugged missile can be fired from a mobile launcher, which means it would be hard to detect and therefore more likely to survive a first strike in a nuclear confrontation.
The single-warhead missiles will be deployed to the regiment Dec. 25-26, Gen. Vladimir Yakovlev was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency. Russia already has 20 Topol-M missiles in service, 10 per regiment, deployed late in 1998 and 1999.
--------
Putin Hopeful on U.S. - Russian Relations Under Bush
December 15, 2000
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-russia-.html
HAVANA (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin, visiting one of the U.S. government's traditional arch- enemies Cuba, said on Friday he was optimistic about the future of Washington-Moscow ties under incoming President-elect George W. Bush.
``Currently we have no special grounds to worry about the fate of Russian-American relations,'' Putin told a news conference in Havana on the second full day of his visit to the communist-ruled Caribbean island.
Putin, who sent a message on Thursday congratulating Bush, added, however, that Russia continued to have various ''differences'' with the United States, including issues of international security.
``Much will depend on the policy of the new administration. The most important thing is that all the positive things we accumulated in recent years be preserved and increased. We have ground to hope that this development is possible,'' he said.
``During Bush's election campaign he expressed exactly this attitude to the prospects of Russia-U.S. relations. And judging by the staff surrounding the U.S. president-elect, these people are quite well-known professionals, who know the situation deeply in the relations between the two states.''
Putin underlined, however, Moscow's outstanding bones of contention with Washington.
``We have differences with the U.S. Our positions referring to the anti-missile defense and to the system of international security differ,'' he said. ``We don't think that the principle of humanitarian interventions is right.''
PUTIN CALLS FOR BETTER RICH-POOR BALANCE
Putin, who joined President Fidel Castro in publicly condemning on Thursday the U.S. embargo on Cuba, also called for a narrowing of wealth differences between ``the golden billion'' and the rest of the world's population.
``We believe that in order to guarantee more balance to the world the interests of both poor and rich countries should be taken into account,'' he said.
Asked about the effect of the recent jailing then pardon by Moscow of American Edmond Pope, convicted of being a spy, he said that should not have any lasting impact on U.S.-Russian ties.
``The activities of secret services of any state is aimed to protect state interests. But actions of these services, including intelligence and counterintelligence, shouldn't interfere in relations between states especially such key states as Russia and the U.S.,'' said Putin, a former KGB agent.
In Germany on Friday, the newly freed Pope denied he was a spy and said he would write a book about his eight-month-long ordeal in Russia which led to his conviction for espionage.
Massive pressure from outgoing President Clinton won a pardon for Pope from Putin in a gesture interpreted by analysts as likely to ease relations with the incoming Bush administration.
Putin's visit to Cuba, intended to revive political and economic ties with what was one of Moscow's strongest and most controversial Cold War allies, has raised some eyebrows in the United States. It has followed earlier rapprochement with other nations viewed suspiciously by the West such as North Korea, Libya and Iraq.
-------
Russia To Deploy More Missiles
Associated Press
December 15, 2000 Filed at 5:32 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-Missile-Deployment.html
MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia will equip a third regiment of its strategic missile forces with the new Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missile before the end of the year, the strategic forces commander said Friday.
The single-warhead missiles will be deployed on Dec. 25-26, Gen. Vladimir Yakovlev was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.
The government says the recently developed Topol-M will form the backbone of its nuclear forces for years to come. The small, rugged missile can be fired from a mobile launcher, which means they would be hard to detect and therefore more likely to survive a first strike in a nuclear confrontation.
Russia already has 20 Topol-M missiles in service, 10 per regiment, deployed late in 1998 and 1999.
---
Russia Will Allow Norway Inspection
Associated Press
December 15, 2000 Filed at 10:33 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Norway-Russia-Radiation.html
OSLO, Norway (AP) -- Russia will allow Norway to inspect a Russian storage area for spent nuclear fuel and radiocative waste, the Norwegian government said Friday.
Norway considers the site, located in the Russian arctic near the Norwegian border, to be a threat.
The area has been off limits because it's near a key submarine base on Russia's Kola Peninsula, the foreign ministry said Friday.
``This is a breakthrough,'' deputy foreign minister Espen Eide was quoted as telling the Norwegian news agency NTB by telephone from Moscow, where he met this week with Russian foreign ministry officials.
``For several years, we have been sitting on 20 million kroner ($2.1 million) that have been earmarked for cleaning up of Andreeva Bay,'' he said.
Andreeva Bay is considered one of the world's most radioactively dangerous places. There are more than 100 nuclear submarines at Russian's Northern Fleet bases on the Kola Peninsula, which borders Norway. Most are rusted hulks, often with nuclear fuel on board, according to Bellona, a Norwegian environmental group that specializes in the issue.
Many containers at Andreeva are leaking, Bellona claims.
Norway is concerned because Andreeva is just 28 miles from its northeast border.
Eide said Norwegian assistance during the Kursk nuclear submarine disaster, in which 118 Russian sailors died off the Kola Peninsula last August 12, may have influenced the decision. Norway twice sent deep-sea divers to the wreck site to confirm that the crew was dead and then to recover some bodies.
Wealthy Norway, the world's second-largest oil exporter and a member of the NATO military alliance, has been willing to held fund a cleanup.
``The Russians admit improper storage, but they wanted the money to clean up themselves,'' Eide was quoted as telling NTB. ``We, the whole time, have wanted access.''
He said one hurdle was Russian reluctance to have NATO visitors see advanced nuclear submarines docked nearby.
-------- ukraine
Chernobyl shut down for good
BBC News
Friday, 15 December, 2000, 15:15 GMT
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1071000/1071344.stm
Mr Kuchma and PM Yushchenko remember the dead
The ill-fated Chernobyl nuclear plant has been permanently shut down in Ukraine - more than 14 years after a reactor exploded in the world's worst civil nuclear catastrophe.
Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma gave a nationwide television address before ordering the Chernobyl control room to turn a knob shutting down the last working reactor.
"To fulfil a state decision and Ukraine's international obligations, I hereby order the premature stoppage of the operation of reactor No 3 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant," Mr Kuchma said.
His words were relayed to Chernobyl via a live television link.
In the control room, shift chief Oleksandr Yelchishchev turned a black switch - marked BAZ, short for "rapid emergency defence" - sending containment rods sliding into the reactor core to stop the atomic chain reaction.
Workers' tears
Within seconds, a dial showed the reactor's output dropping to zero.
"Mr President of Ukraine, the third reactor is being stopped for good. I have nothing more to add," reported the station's director, Vitaly Tovstonohov, wearing white protective clothing.
About 100 workers at the plant followed events in the control room on a large television screen. Many had tears in their eyes as they stood to watch.
Representatives from more than 10 countries including the United States attended the closing ceremony.
The ceremony followed a church service in Kiev to remember those who died in the nuclear disaster.
Thirty-one people, mostly firemen, were killed immediately after the explosion, and several thousand more - those involved in the clean-up and children - have since died from radiation-related illnesses.
Ukraine says the health of millions of its people have been affected by the disaster.
International pressure
The country agreed to close down the plant under intense international pressure. The schedule was finally agreed during a visit by US President Bill Clinton to Kiev earlier this year.
Even so the Ukrainian parliament made a last-minute attempt on Thursday to keep the plant open for the rest of the winter, voting to postpone closure until April 2001.
Angry Chernobyl workers staged protests as President Kuchma took foreign dignitaries including the premiers of Russia, Belarus and Georgia on a tour of the plant, which supplies roughly 5% of the country's electricity needs.
Ukraine has pledged not to use Chernobyl for electricity generation again, though it will take until 2008 before the last fuel rods are removed from the plant.
The disaster occurred nearly 15 years ago on 26 April 1986, when an experiment went wrong, causing the fourth reactor to explode and melt down.
Funding plans attacked
The European Union has agreed to provide a total of nearly $1bn to help two replacement nuclear reactors in the former Soviet republic.
But environmentalists Greenpeace International condemned the EU plans terming them as "utterly cynical".
The pressure group's nuclear expert, Tobias Munchmeyer, said Ukraine should instead meet its energy capacity needs through renewable sources and improving efficiency.
Greenpeace International also said the closure of the Ukrainian plant should be followed by shutdowns at similar plants in Russia and Lithuania.
"We cannot afford to wait another 14 years before the remainder are shutdown," said Mr Munchmeyer.
International funds have been made available to make safe the concrete sarcophagus hastily thrown up around the ruins of the stricken fourth reactor, in the months following the 1986 explosion.
However a permanent solution, including the possible construction of a second shelter, remains a long way in the future.
---
Chernobyl powers down permanently
CNN
December 15, 2000
http://www.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/europe/12/15/chernobyl.shutdown/index.html
CHERNOBYL, Ukraine (CNN) -- The Chernobyl nuclear power station in Ukraine has been officially closed down -- 14 years after the plant exploded and sent a cloud of radioactive dust over Europe.
The country's president, Leonid Kuchma, gave the order to shut down the plant permanently, saying the world would now be a safer place.
More than 4,000 Ukrainians who took part in the hasty clean-up effort since the 1986 disaster have died and 70,000 were disabled by radiation, according to government figures.
About 3.4 million of Ukraine's 50 million people, including some 1.26 million children, are also considered to have been affected by Chernobyl.
Kuchma issued the instruction during a televised ceremony in the capital, Kiev, over a video link-up with the plant 135 kilometres (84 miles) away.
Speaking at the Ukraina Palace, where the ceremony took place, Kuchma said the former Soviet republic had taken a historic step.
"This decision came from our experience of suffering," he said. "We understand that Chernobyl is a danger for all of humanity and we forsake a part of our national interests for the sake of global safety."
Engineers then pressed the plant's closedown button for the last time, lowering control rods into Chernobyl's last functioning reactor.
Chernobyl shift chief Oleksandr Yelchishchev turned the black AZ switch, activating the automatic safety system at 1.16 p.m. (1116 GMT).
Within seconds, a dial showed the reactor's output dropping to zero. The shutdown went to plan, the plant reported.
The simple procedure closed a facility that has become synonymous with nuclear fears. It was in 1986 that a fire engulfed reactor number four in the same building and triggered the world's worst nuclear disaster.
U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Ruchardson, who attended the closing ceremony, told CNN: "It is a historic day because it signals the end of Chernobyl and that Ukraine is moving away from its Soviet past.
"The West and the U.S. should look at the Ukraine and say 'they kept their word' and now we have to return the favour and help them."
He said this assistance would come by helping to clean up the site, by creating alternative employment, and by developing new sources of energy in the Ukraine, using its gas and oil resources.
CNN's Moscow bureau chief Jill Dougherty said: "The shutdown is just the beginning of a complex and dangerous process of closing it forever -- something that scientists say could take 100 years."
She added that the closure is welcome news for the outside world, but to the residents of the nearby town of Slauvitch, almost all of whom work at Chernobyl, "the closure is a tragedy."
About 6,000 people will lose their jobs, although some staff will continue working at the plant.
Some people at the site said Chernobyl was safer than many Russian nuclear power stations and it was only being closed on political grounds.
Ukraine plans to construct a new encasement for the mammoth concrete and steel sarcophagus covering the ruined reactor number four.
There is no decision yet on how to treat the tonnes of radioactive dust and nuclear fuel inside, and work on making the structure environmentally safe will take decades.
It will also take years to unload nuclear fuel from the three other Chernobyl reactors.
The European Commission has approved a $585 million loan to help Ukraine build two new reactors to replace the electricity produced at Chernobyl, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development will provide $215 million.
But environmental group Greenpeace urged Ukraine to honour the memory of Chernobyl victims by looking for alternative sources of energy.
CNN's Moscow bureau chief Jill Dougherty, the Associated Press & Reuters contributed to this report.
---
Chernobyl Closing: A Relief For Many
Washington Post
Friday, December 15, 2000 ; Page A30
By Sharon LaFraniere Washington Post Foreign Service
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7315-2000Dec14.html
CHERNOBYL, Ukraine, Dec. 14 -- From her narrow cot at a treatment clinic in Kiev, Jenna Nitsko views Friday's closing of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant with grim satisfaction.
The 24-year-old dark-haired mother has a thick, ugly scar across her throat where, six weeks ago, a surgeon removed a large malignant tumor from her thyroid. Her doctor blames her cancer on the 1986 meltdown at one of Chernobyl's reactors. It was the world's worst nuclear accident, spewing radioactive dust and debris over Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and other parts of Europe.
"Excellent," said Nitsko, pausing momentarily from her book to comment on the Ukrainian authorities' decision to shut down the plant for safety reasons.
Her view is widely shared by the patients and staff at Kiev's National Institute of Endocrinology, where the number of thyroid cancer patients has grown exponentially since the disaster.
But two hours away by car, in the town of Slavutich, built especially for Chernobyl workers, people regard the closing with dread.
As they see it, they risked their physical well-being in exchange for what they thought would be life-long, well-paying jobs at the Chernobyl plant, which provides about 5 percent of Ukraine's electricity. Now they will have fears for their health, but no work.
Anatoli Ignatenko, a 23-year veteran of the plant, said Ukrainian authorities are breaking their promises to Chernobyl workers for purely political reasons. "They told us this would be a city of [the] 21st century," he said. "I think they just deceived us."
As the debate between the clinic and the town illustrates, Chernobyl's fallout continues even as workers prepare to push the button in the control room of reactor No. 3, the only unit of four still operating. Nor will the fallout end any time soon.
Questions persist about how to safely deal with the 200 tons of uranium and plutonium that remain inside the ruined reactor No. 4, which blew up on April 26, 1986. Reactor No. 2 was shut down in 1991 after a fire and reactor No. 1 was closed in 1996 at the end of its safe lifespan.
The long-term health consequences of the accident are also a matter of continuing debate. In a recent report, the United Nations said the worst effects might be yet to come.
More than 4,000 Ukrainians who took part in the cleanup effort have died and 70,000 were disabled by radiation, according to the government. About 3.4 million of Ukraine's 50 million people, including about 1.26 million children, are believed to have been affected by the accident.
Under pressure from the West, Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma decided this summer to decommission the plant, although Ukraine badly needs the power and the jobs it provides. Western funding will help complete replacement reactors in western Ukraine.
U.S. officials have argued for years that the RBMK Chernobyl-style reactors--which exist only in Russia and the former Soviet Union--are highly unsafe.
Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said today that Kuchma's decision "is a turning point for the Ukraine, a symbolic break from its Soviet past and an entrance into the West."
With the plant closed, U.S. officials hope Ukrainian authorities can focus on the job of encasing, for the second time, the reactor that melted down 14 years ago, releasing 100 times more radiation than the atomic bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II. That reactor unit is now entombed in a "sarcophagus" of concrete and metal sheeting above which a reinforced smokestack rises about 250 feet.
The cover, built in the months after the accident, was supposed to last 30 years. But water leaks inside, and under some scenarios the whole basketball arena-sized structure could collapse.
Plans call for a new one to built on top of the old one over the next seven years. Western countries have pledged to come up with $710 million of the estimated cost of $750 million. But how exactly it will be done, without risking more lives, is not yet clear. "There has never been a project like this before," said Carlos Pascual, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.
Fresh evidence of the uncertainties that surround that reactor block surfaced only a month ago. Plant officials said an eight-inch radioactive chunk of melted fuel dislodged itself from the smokestack and dropped onto the 10-story-high sarcophagus roof. Now workers must figure out how to remove it.
At Kiev's endocrinology institute, deputy director Valery Tereschenko faces more puzzles. He knows that the Chernobyl accident dramatically drove up thyroid cancer rates in children. Among children who lived closest to the plant, the rate of thyroid cancer--curable if caught early enough--is 100 times greater than the norm, he said. The disease won't peak until 2005.
What can't be said for certain, according to Tereschenko, is what other health problems might be traced to Chernobyl. "Decades will pass before we know all the consequences," he noted.
Chernobyl workers have heard this kind of talk almost since the day of the accident, which killed 31 workers. But today, foremost in their minds is how they will live after the closure of the plant, not what a doctor might tell them in the future.
About a third of the plant's 9,192 workers will lose their jobs after the televised ceremony in reactor No. 3's control room. Eventually, only a few thousand workers will pass through the plant's phone-booth-sized radiation detectors every day.
Slavutich, with its cheerful yellow apartment buildings, grove of trees and electric train to the plant, could start to resemble Pripyat, Chernobyl's old housing development. Evacuated after the accident, Pripyat is now deserted and decaying under the shadow of a rusted Ferris wheel, its yellow seats frozen in the air for 14 years.
---
Chernobyl at a Glance
Yahoo News
World News
Friday December 15 3:02 PM ET
By The Associated Press
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20001215/wl/chernobyl_glance_1.html
Some facts and figures about the Chernobyl nuclear plant and its 1986 disaster:
-DISASTER: The April 26, 1986 explosion and fire at reactor No. 4 was the world's worst nuclear accident. It resulted from a badly conceived safety experiment and was aggravated by faulty reactor design. The disaster contaminated vast areas and sent a radioactive cloud over Europe.
-HEALTH EFFECTS: Some 9 million people were directly or indirectly affected, according to the United Nations (news - web sites). The official Soviet death toll was 32, among them 30 who died within three months of the disaster. Ukraine has reported more than 4,000 radiation-related deaths among cleanup workers.
-CONTAMINATION: 64,000 square miles contaminated in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus. An area of 1,400 square miles around the plant remains off-limits.
-EVACUATION AND CLEANUP: At least 120,000 people from 90 towns and villages around Chernobyl evacuated and eventually resettled. An estimated 600,000 people were involved in the hasty Soviet cleanup effort, often working with no proper protection from radiation.
-COSTS: At least $300 billion already incurred and to be incurred in the future, according to the Greenpeace environmental group.
-THE PLANT: Located 84 miles north of the Ukrainian capital, Kiev. Nearly 9,200 people employed, including over 3,500 at related enterprises.
---
Lights Go Out at Chernobyl Nuclear Plant
Yahoo News
Top Stories News
Friday December 15 11:28 AM ET
By Dmitry Solovyov
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001215/ts/ukraine_chernobyl_dc_7.html
CHERNOBYL, Ukraine (Reuters) - The lights finally went out at the Chernobyl nuclear power station on Friday.
Duty operator Serhiy Bashtovoi, 30, turned a switch on the command of Ukraine's President Leonid Kuchma, and one by one the bright circular array of lights indicating activity in reactor Number Three went out.
``The atmosphere in here was very glum,'' he told Reuters in an interview in the control room just a few hours after the shutdown. ``A feeling of despair. I guess life goes on.''
The official closure of the site of the world's worst nuclear accident in 1986 was marked by congratulatory messages from around the world and a gala performance after a lavish ceremony in the capital Kiev, 70 miles away.
Workers watching a television broadcast of the ceremony reacted with anger and disgust. ``Idiots,'' said one. ``We despise Leonid Kuchma,'' said another.
However odd it may seem that people would want to work at the center of a radioactive no-go zone surrounded by deserted houses with grass growing through their roofs, the 6,000 staff of Chernobyl clung to the hope that their jobs provided.
``This reactor was the only one of its type left in Ukraine,'' said Bashtovoi. ``I just don't have the skills to do anything else.''
Prospects Bleak
Another employee, a woman in her 30s who did not want to be named, cried: ``What am I meant to do? I'll turn into a beggar, become virtually homeless. I have no money.''
The government has promised to look after the workers' social welfare, but in a country where pensions are frequently paid late or not at all and state coffers are often empty, such pledges hold little credibility.
It was the Number Four reactor that exploded 14 years ago. Reactor Two was shut down in 1991 after a fire, and Reactor One reached the end of its service life in 1996.
But Reactor Three limped on, providing energy-poor Ukraine with five percent of its electricity.
A tour of the control room of the first reactor showed what lay in store for the years ahead. A draught blew through the darkened room, with just one black-and-white television monitor flickering in the corner, showing the reactor hall where some fuel rods are still stored.
It will take years to remove all the fuel rods from the reactors, guaranteeing some jobs at least until 2008.
The crumbling concrete sarcophagus encasing the burned-out wreck of Reactor Four is also in need of repair. Nobody knows exactly how much radioactive dust and debris are trapped inside, but the experts fear the quantities are huge.
Stray dogs now sniff around the complex -- once a proud example of Soviet engineering. They go unheeded by depressed workers who received cards on Friday congratulating them on Energy Day -- their trade's national day -- this Sunday.
Casting a glance at the reactor building, surrounded by fog and with light drizzle falling, one worker, Serhiy Pavlovsky, apologized for the lack of hospitality.
``You are always welcome here, but we cannot be as welcoming as usual,'' he said. ``Today, it is as if someone had died.''
---
Chernobyl Nuclear Plant Shut Down for Good
Top Stories News
Friday December 15 1:05 PM ET
By Dmitry Solovyov
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001215/ts/ukraine_chernobyl_dc_8.html
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-ukraine.html
CHERNOBYL, Ukraine (Reuters) - Engineers at the Chernobyl nuclear power station flicked its stop switch for the last time on Friday, officially closing the plant which became a chilling symbol of the dangers of atomic power.
President Leonid Kuchma relayed an order to the control room of reactor Number Three, where duty operator Serhiy Bashtovoi turned a switch marked BAZ for ``rapid emergency defense.''
That lowered control rods into Chernobyl's last functioning reactor to begin the long process of decommissioning a plant which, in 1986, caused the world's worst nuclear accident.
Western governments and environmentalists breathed a sigh of relief and Ukraine took a step away from the disaster's legacy.
``What is Chernobyl for Ukraine?'' Kuchma said during a lavish ceremony in Kiev, 70 miles south of the plant.
``It's almost three-and-a-half million victims of the catastrophe and its consequences. Almost 10 percent of our territory tainted by radiation. 160,000 people who had to leave the places where they were born and move elsewhere.''
Outgoing President Clinton (news - web sites) sent a videotaped message of congratulation, played on major television channels.
``It's fitting that while a communist government of the USSR built this unsafe plant, a free and independent Ukraine is shutting it down,'' he said.
Fourteen years after the accident, the concrete-entombed, burned-out and highly radioactive remains of Reactor Number Four, which exploded after a controversial experiment, looms over a small monument to 30 firemen who died fighting its flames.
Thousands are thought to have died since as a result of radiation which spewed from the reactor's burning shell. One in 16 Ukrainians, and millions of Russians and Belarussians suffer health disorders attributable to the disaster, including thyroid cancer and respiratory problems, Ukrainian authorities say.
Chernobyl is encircled by a poisoned 20-mile no-go zone, which scientists say will be uninhabitable for centuries.
Lavish Ceremony Irks Workers
More than 2,000 invited guests packed Kiev's cavernous Palace of Ukraine hall to watch the ceremony, including French couturier Pierre Cardin and a group of bemused-looking clean-up workers who dealt with the accident's aftermath.
Seen from a ramshackle assembly hall at the Chernobyl complex, where around 100 workers watched the television broadcast, the event in Kiev seemed a pompous affair.
The station's 6,000 workers now face an uncertain future and one worker cried out: ``We despise Leonid Kuchma.''
Another worker, Anatoly Fedchenko, 42, said with tears running down his face: ``What do I have to be happy about? I worked here for 12 years and now will have to leave.''
It will take many years to decommission the station and the last fuel rods are not expected to be removed until 2008.
Chernobyl's Number Three reactor has, on-and-off, been providing Ukraine with five percent of its electricity.
Reactors One and Two are already stopped. Two was shut after a huge fire in 1991 and One passed its expiration date in 1996.
But technical glitches had forced the reactor to shut down twice in the past two weeks. It was only restarted on Friday, at minimum power output, for the benefit of the ceremony.
Chief engineer Yuri Neretin remembers when he oversaw Number Three reactor's launch in 1981, a prestigious Soviet project. Now he directs a desolate complex infamous throughout the world.
``I look at this as a lifecycle. The station was born, it has lived through its lifecycle, and now we should see it off with honors,'' he said.
``The atmosphere in here was very glum,'' Bashtovoi, who turned the final switch, told Reuters just a few hours after the shutdown. ``A feeling of despair. I guess life goes on.''
Years Of Western Pressure
It was only after years of Western pressure and promises of financial aid to complete replacement reactors elsewhere that Kuchma agreed to the closure.
But, in his speech in Kiev, he said the country also saw it as a moral obligation, likening it to the ex-Soviet state's voluntary dismantling in the mid-1990s of its inherited nuclear arms, the world's third largest arsenal.
The Red Cross and Red Crescent in Geneva welcomed the shutdown, but warned that thousands still lived on contaminated land. Italy and Germany, which this year began a long-term phaseout of nuclear power, also hailed the closure.
Environmental group Greenpeace called for closures of other Soviet-designed nuclear plants, especially those built around the same notorious RBMK-1000 reactors used at Chernobyl.
In Lithuania, the closure of one of those reactors, at Ignalina, had been delayed but officials said they expected to get it back on track in January.
---
Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Shut Down
Associated Press
December 15, 2000 Filed at 10:05 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Ukraine-Chernobyl.html
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20001215/ts/ukraine_chernobyl.html
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20001215/ts/ukraine_chernobyl_11.html
http://www.msnbc.com/news/501684.asp
KIEV, Ukraine - Operators shut down the Chernobyl nuclear power plant with the flip of a switch Friday, closing the facility for good 14 years after it spawned the world's worst nuclear accident.
The simple procedure ended the long, troubled run of a facility that became a synonym for nuclear fears and the dangers of atomic power.
Ukraine President Leonid Kuchma gave the shutdown order from Kiev over a video linkup with the plant, located some 85 miles away. ``To fulfill the state decision and Ukraine's international obligations, I hereby order to start work for the premature stoppage of the operation of reactor No. 3 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant,'' Kuchma said.
At 1:16 p.m., Chernobyl shift chief Oleksandr Yelchishchev turned the black AZ switch, activating the automatic safety system of the plant's only working reactor and sending containment rods sliding into the reactor core.
Within seconds, a dial showed the reactor's output dropping to zero. The procedure went flawlessly, the plant reported.
The shutdown, which followed years of intense international pressure, should erase the danger of future accidents at the plant. Yet Ukraine will suffer the effects of the 1986 Chernobyl accident for years to come: Millions of its citizens are affected by radiation-related ailments.
The leaders of this former Soviet republic said they were undertaking a historic mission in closing down the last functioning reactor at Chernobyl.
``The world will become a safer place. People will sleep in peace,'' Kuchma said Thursday during a ceremony to commemorate the shutdown.
The plant's last reactor, the one shut down Friday, was reactor No. 3. It is located in the same building as reactor No. 4, which exploded and caught fire on April 26, 1986, contaminating vast areas of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus and spewing a radioactive cloud over Europe.
The Kremlin tried to conceal the accident and delayed evacuation of people from nearby towns for days. Firefighters and other workers who were the first at the destroyed reactor had little or no protection from radiation.
Those moves only added to the death toll: More than 4,000 cleanup workers have died since and 70,000 have been disabled by radiation in Ukraine alone. About 3.4 million of Ukraine's 50 million people, including some 1.26 million children, are considered affected by Chernobyl.
``Chernobyl was a complex page of our history, in which there was much heroism and a lot of unique deeds,'' said Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko.
Since the accident, the plant has experienced numerous malfunctions. Many Ukrainians, tired of living with radiation scares, were relieved at its closure.
For others, though, the shutdown means lost electricity and lost jobs.
Kuchma, who on Thursday toured the ill-fated plant and tidy Slavutych, the town where Chernobyl workers live, was confronted by dozens of gloomy protesters wearing black armbands. Thousands from among the plant's 6,000 workers will be laid off.
``I have not seen anything better than this,'' Yevhen Laptsov, a Chernobyl electrician who lives in Slavutych, said of his town. ``I have two small children and we all live in this beautiful town. I'm very much afraid of the closure.''
For years, energy-strapped Ukraine faced pressure from environmental groups and foreign leaders to close Chernobyl. But it refused to do so, citing the electricity the plant provided and demanding foreign aid in return. Kuchma finally pledged to shut down Chernobyl during a visit by President Clinton earlier this year.
``This decision came from our experience of suffering,'' Kuchma said. ``We understand that Chernobyl is a danger for all of humanity and we forsake a part of our national interests for the sake of global safety.''
The European Commission has approved a $585 million loan to help Ukraine build two new reactors to make up for Chernobyl's electricity. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is to chip in another $215 million.
Despite the closure, much remains to be done at Chernobyl.
Ukraine plans to construct a new casing for the mammoth concrete and steel sarcophagus covering the ruined reactor No. 4. There is no decision yet on what to do with the tons of radioactive dust and nuclear fuel still inside, and work on making the structure environmentally safe will take decades.
It also will take years to unload nuclear fuel from the three other Chernobyl reactors.
``We shall continue to bear this,'' a weary Kuchma said Thursday in Slavutych. ``This is our fate.''
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Chernobyl Is a Vast Wasteland
Associated Press
December 15, 2000 Filed at 2:33 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Chernobyl-Zone.html
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20001215/wl/chernobyl_zone_1.html
CHERNOBYL, Ukraine (AP) -- At first glance, it looks the same as the outside world: forests, fields and streams, peaceful village houses. But barbed-wire fences, radiation warning signs and checkpoints caution visitors that they are entering a different land.
It's called the ``Zone,'' a term lifted from a Soviet science fiction novel written by the Strugatsky brothers more than a decade before the April 26, 1986, Chernobyl nuclear plant accident.
Here the rivers, land and trees are poisoned by radiation, and a closer look reveals that the quiet wooden houses are crumbling structures abandoned 14 years ago.
Barred to outsiders by about 800 guards, the 19-mile-radius zone around Chernobyl absorbed the bulk of the radioactive fallout from the 1986 explosion and fire. It covers 1,400 square miles and was once home to 120,000 people who lived in 90 communities.
Winding roads now lead to ruined settlements. In a field, nearly 1,400 contaminated vehicles and aircraft used in the Chernobyl cleanup are rusting.
The forests are rich in berries, mushrooms and animals, including some exotic varieties like the Przhevalsky horses brought here to eat and stamp out the high grass which is highly contaminated by radiation.
Pripyat, once the area's largest city and home to 48,000 people before the accident, is a ghost town of apartment high-rises still sporting Communist Party slogans and Soviet-era symbols, overgrown bushes and an abandoned playground with a motionless Ferris wheel and broken toy cars.
Electric poles and wires announce the approach to the Chernobyl plant itself. A giant red structure surrounded by rusty cranes is the remnant of two unfinished reactors. A sprawling building behind a fence houses reactors No. 1 and No. 2.
A bust of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin greets visitors at the plant's entrance. Next to it stands a curvy modernist statue, a memorial to those who died trying to contain the 1986 catastrophe.
Farther away is a huge building, its single smokestack supported by metal bearings. This is where it all happened 14 years ago.
At one end is reactor No. 3, Chernobyl's last working one, which was stopped for good on Friday. The building's other reactor, No. 4, is encased in a 1.1-million-ton sarcophagus that looks like a haphazard assortment of cement and rust-streaked steel plates.
Beneath is all that remains of reactor No. 4, a maze of collapsed ceilings, corridors littered with debris, and bizarre cankers produced by melted nuclear fuel that no human can approach without being killed by radiation.
Just one brick-sized piece of fuel that recently fell onto the sarcophagus roof emits deadly radiation. And radiation on a balcony facing the sarcophagus is about 80 times normal background levels.
The road out of the zone passes through the ``Red Forest'' -- trees so damaged by radiation that they took on a reddish hue. Today, most of the forest is dead, and only a few dried trees stretch out their branches in a silent reminder of the century's worst nuclear accident.
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Workers Bid Ill-Fated Chernobyl a Bitter Farewell
New York Times
December 15, 2000
By MICHAEL WINES
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/15/world/15CHER.html
PRIPYAT, Ukraine, Dec. 14 - Fourteen years and seven months after an experiment here went unimaginably awry, spewing the radiation of dozens of Hiroshimas across Europe, workers at the Chernobyl nuclear complex gathered today to bid the site's last working nuclear reactor - and many of their jobs - a bitter goodbye.
Standing outdoors before a jet- black statue of Prometheus, the Greek of myth who stole fire from the gods, they watched President Leonid Kuchma lay a wreath in memory of the dead and dying of the world's worst nuclear power disaster and then assure them that they would not be forgotten, either.
"I want you to know from me and the goverin Ukrainenment that nobody will be ignored," Mr. Kuchma told workers in a brief speech.
Many of them are nevertheless disbelieving.
"We're hearing a lot of promises, but they're not backed up by finances," said Yevgeny Lobtsov, 43, an electrician who began working at Chernobyl two months after the accident. "I don't know what will be done for my children now."
On Friday, Mr. Kuchma will send an order from his presidential palace in Kiev to shut Unit 3, the lone remaining working part of the Chernobyl complex.
That reactor is separated by only a wall from Unit 4, which exploded in a ball of flame and dust on April 26, 1986.
Thirty-one workers died in the immediate aftermath of the blast. Thousands of Ukrainians have since died or contracted thyroid cancer or leukemia directly associated with the spread of radioactivity after the explosion.
The shutdown order for Friday arrives after a decade of intense pressure by Western nations, led by the United States, that fear that the ancient Soviet-design reactor at Unit 3 is another Chernobyl disaster in waiting.
But to Ukrainians, the principal effect of the command will be to begin a process already destined to lead within two years to the layoff of 2,200 of the plant's 5,600 operators and 3,000 support workers.
Many additional workers are widely expected to be gone by 2008, when the last of the reactor's fuel is to be unloaded and what once was the world's mightiest atomic power station will officially become its biggest and most infamous nuclear graveyard.
Ukrainians are no less horrified by the disaster than others. But they have a huge economic dependence on the complex - and no small fear that closing the last reactor will remove their best lever to pry loose international aid vital to maintaining the site.
The closing of Unit 3 will cut off 5 percent of the electricity supply in a nation already deeply in hock to Russia for natural gas and dogged by shortages in its shoddily run power grid.
The closing will also gradually eliminate the jobs of thousands of Ukrainians whose work depends, directly or indirectly, on Chernobyl's continued operation as a power plant. Beyond the layoffs at the plant itself, thousands of Ukrainians provide goods or services to Chernobyl workers.
Ukraine also faces immense costs in the future - $750 million to cover the disaster site with a new dome- shaped sarcophagus, hundreds of additional millions of dollars to remove 180 tons of lethal melted fuel and steel from the damaged core of Unit 4 and to store it safely, millions to build a new heating system and other necessities for the crews that will permanently care for the idle reactor site and millions for solid and liquid waste-processing plants to handle the fuel from the closing of Unit 3.
The wealthiest industrial nations have pledged much of the money needed to build the new dome and help construct other projects. But they have been reluctant to commit more money, given Ukraine's history of pervasive corruption and mismanagement since the Soviet collapse.
One key to assuring the shutdown fell into place this month, when Ukraine obtained a $215 million international loan to complete the construction of two long-idled reactor sites that will make up for the loss of Unit 3.
Mr. Kuchma sought to today to put a good face on the shutdown, traveling to the reactor to honor the dead workers and the Ukrainians sickened by radiation.
Later, he spoke to workers in Slavutich, a trim city of 30,000 built in the late 1980's for Chernobyl workers who lost their houses in the disaster.
In both places, he encountered signs of resistance. Some workers at Chernobyl signaled their opposition to the shutdown by wearing black ribbons on their jumpsuits. In Slavutich, knots of workers unfurled banners that called the shutdown a tragedy and declared, "No!" to the closing.
Slavutich residents have been rewarded for their Chernobyl labors with far higher pay and more amenities than most Ukrainians, from more modern apartments to free cable television. The town's future is cast into doubt by closing the plant.
In the dreams of Soviet planners, Chernobyl was to have been a mammoth array of eight reactors, a wellspring of cheap power for Ukraine and neighboring Belarus. The disaster changed that.
Today, the unfinished hulk of a fifth reactor - the last attempted - sits a few hundred yards from the explosion site. The two other undamaged reactors, Units 1 and 2, were closed years ago.
Officials have declared everything within 18 miles of the reactor an irradiated no man's land of decaying ghost towns and burial pits for thousands of bulldozers and trucks used in the cleanup and now too radioactive to touch.
An extensive decontamination effort has rendered the reactor complex itself comparatively secure for workers and visitors, officials insist.
"It's safe where we are," Sergei Saversky, deputy chief of the agency that manages the no man's land, said today. "Just don't walk where you're not supposed to."
In the ghost city of Pripyat about a mile from the disaster site, a city of 50,000 that the publicity-wary Soviets did not evacuate until 36 hours after the explosion, that means staying on streets blacktopped after the disaster and avoiding the grass. Most safe areas have been paved over or bulldozed, removing the top 40 inches of radioactive soil.
In a Pripyat scene straight from the apocalyptic novel "On the Beach," blocks of deserted apartment houses faced gardens grown wild and sidewalks cracked by sprouting weeds. Journalists who sought to visit a surreally silent amusement park, its yellow Ferris wheel parked dead still a few hundred yards away, were told that it was too dangerous.
Although Geiger counter readings that flash around the reactor complex suggest that all is well - the radiation exposure for visitors today was said to equal that of a two-hour airplane ride - outside experts are skeptical.
In particular, they say the hulking steel-and-concrete sarcophagus erected over the blown-apart Unit 4 - 10,000 tons of material thrown together by remote-control cranes and helicopters - may be rusting inside and is increasingly vulnerable to collapse.
Hazards continue to pop up. Last month, a sweep detected a red-hot chunk of melted reactor core eight inches long atop the steel roof of the sarcophagus. How it arrived outside the reactor is unclear. Experts said they suspected that it was somehow spewed upward through the 250-foot smokestack in the initial explosion and went undetected until it fell from atop the stack a few weeks ago.
Workers are studying how to remove the lethal piece of metal.
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Chernobyl nuclear plant shut down for last time
Washington Times
December 15, 2000
By Sergei Shargorodsky
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-2000121516323.htm
KIEV, Ukraine -- Chernobyl was shut down forever with the flip of a switch today, shifting attention to needed repairs on the sarcophagus covering the nuclear plant's ruined reactor, which is leaking radiation 14 years after the world's worst nuclear accident.
The closing of Chernobyl's last working reactor was intended to prevent disasters like the one that sent a radioactive cloud across Europe, affecting millions of people and leaving a poisoned zone in this former Soviet republic.
President Leonid Kuchma, issuing the order to halt the reactor, alluded to the difficult work still ahead, saying: "This menacing page of the book of modern history cannot be considered closed."
At a state ceremony in Kiev, Mr. Kuchma gave the order to halt the reactor over a video linkup with the plant 84 miles away. At 1:16 p.m., Chernobyl shift chief Oleksandr Yelchishchev turned a switch, sending containment rods sliding into the core of reactor No. 3. Within seconds, a dial showed the atomic reaction in the core dropping to zero.
Mr. Kuchma asserted that energy-starved Ukraine was "forsaking a part of our national interests for the sake of global safety."
President Clinton, in a taped address released by the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, called it a "triumph for the common good."
"America is on your side. We wish you God speed," he said, adding in Ukrainian: "Slava Ukrayini (Glory to Ukraine)!"
On April 26, 1986, Chernobyl's reactor No. 4 exploded and caught fire, contaminating vast areas of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus -- all part of the Soviet Union at the time -- and spewing a radioactive cloud over Europe.
The Kremlin tried to conceal the accident and delayed evacuation of people from nearby towns for days. Firefighters and other workers who were the first at the destroyed reactor had little or no protection from radiation.
More than 4,000 cleanup workers have died since and 70,000 have been disabled by radiation in Ukraine alone. About 3.4 million of Ukraine's 50 million people, including some 1.26 million children, are considered affected by Chernobyl.
A haphazardly built concrete and steel sarcophagus covers the ruined reactor, but it has developed leaks over the years. It emits high radiation levels and is also leaking water that may be contaminated.
The grayish Soviet-era structure is believed to contain up to 66 tons of melted nuclear fuel, in addition to some 37 tons of radioactive dust.
The covering now "automatically assumes a leading role. It's our largest project," said the structure's director, Valentyn Kupny.
Ukraine hopes to build a new, airtight covering over the sarcophagus as part of a $758 million international project running through 2007. But that will not solve the problem entirely, Mr. Kupny said.
"The work of handling the fuel remaining inside will take dozens of years," he said. "We'll have to work out an engineering decision on what to do with this fuel. At present, there is no such decision."
The unloading of fuel rods from the other idled reactors will also last for years. And Ukraine still has to figure out how to help the 6,000 plant workers and their families survive the closure.
U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said today in Kiev that he had approved a grant to create a nuclear safety center that would employ Chernobyl workers, but which likely could offer jobs only to a fraction of those laid off. He did not say how much funding the grant would provide.
While many Ukrainians, tired of living with radiation fears, rejoiced over the plant's closure, some nuclear workers and officials called today a day of mourning.
"This event is like a funeral," said Russian Atomic Energy Minister Yevgeny Adamov.
Anatoliy Brig, a veteran nuclear worker who participated in the cleanup and attended today's closure ceremony, was bitter.
"This child of ours should have been kept working," Mr. Brig said. "This reactor could have heated the country until 2007."
For years, the energy-strapped government faced pressure from environmental groups and foreign leaders but refused to close the plant, citing the electricity it provided and demanding foreign aid in return. Mr. Kuchma finally pledged to shut down Chernobyl during a visit by Mr. Clinton earlier this year.
The European Commission has approved a $585 million loan to help Ukraine build two new reactors to replace the electricity produced at Chernobyl, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development will provide an additional $215 million.
The environmental group Greenpeace has called on Ukraine to abandon nuclear plant construction and find alternative sources of energy.
Pierre Cardin, the French fashion designer attending the ceremony as a UNESCO goodwill ambassador, seemed to echo that sentiment.
"It is a big, very big day today for your country and for the world too," he said. "Don't begin again the drama of Chernobyl."
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Ukraine to close Chernobyl nuke plant
Washington Times
December 15, 2000
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-20001215213148.htm
KIEV, Ukraine - Ukraine lays to rest the world's most powerful symbol of the dangers of nuclear power today when engineers at the Chernobyl power station depress a button marked BAZ "rapid emergency defense" for the final time.
The button will slowly drop control rods into Chernobyl's last functioning reactor and herald the start of a long process of decommissioning the plant that caused the world's worst nuclear accident in 1986.
Fourteen years after the accident, the concrete-entombed, burned-out and highly radioactive remains of Reactor Number Four, which exploded after an experiment, loom over a small monument to 30 firemen who died fighting its flames.
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After disaster: the people who call Chernobyl home
The power plant that triggered the worst-ever nuclear accident shuts down today.
Christian Science Monitor
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2000
By Scott Peterson Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2000/12/15/fp7s1-csm.shtml
CHERNOBYL EXCLUSION ZONE, UKRAINE
For the contaminated area closest to Chernobyl - site of the world's worst-ever nuclear accident -time appears to have stopped on April 26, 1986.
Silence took over as more than 100,000 evacuees fled fallout 100 times more radioactive than the two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II.
Across a vast restricted area, towns and villages remain eerily empty, an amusement park lies in ruins, weeds have grown into trees. The moss near an empty bumper car makes a Geiger counter crackle and sing at three times the normal rate. Nearby, pine trees show multiple signs of mutation.
Today, after years of Western pressure on Ukraine, Chernobyl is to be officially shut down. It's something of a formality-Reactor No. 3 has been on-again, off-again during three weeks of technical glitches. Engineers will press the button that stops the nuclear chain reaction for the final time, in a move critics say is long overdue.
Fallout persists
Chernobyl's legacy of contamination across Eastern Europe is expected to last for decades. Among victims are the 30 or so firemen who died in the initial explosion of Reactor No. 4, and the thousands of subsequent deaths widely attributed to the fallout in Ukraine, Belarus, and western Russia - although the figure is disputed by some.
"The danger is tremendous, and we don't know the impact on future generations because we don't know about lower doses," says Andrei Zabov, with the nuclear nonproliferation project of the Carnegie Endowment in Moscow. Ukraine took over the reactor after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.
"Living there is a risk, and the risk is higher than in other areas," he adds. "People take risks every day, just crossing the road. But I would be afraid to go there."
Contamination is still spreading: One town 30 miles west of Chernobyl was evacuated just last year. But as scientists debate the long-term effects of low-level radiation exposure, amid the radioactive detritus there is a human face. The risks are in the eye of the beholder, and there may be no more cavalier attitude than among the few who live closest to the reactor itself, in the barbed-wire fenced "exclusion zone" that marks an 18-mile radius from the epicenter of the blast.
"We've already consumed all that radiation," says Nina Franko, a large-handed collective farm veteran in the near-empty village of Obachichi. She is one of 3,000 people who returned to homes in the zone a year after the blast, despite warnings. Today, only 300 remain, all of them elderly.
"We've stayed here all these years. It means we got used to the radiation, and the radiation got used to us," says Mrs. Franko, who worked briefly as a cleaner at the reactor. Virtually all other plant workers commute to work by shuttle from a purpose-built city outside the zone perimeter.
The radioactive cloud was large: Belarus received 70 percent of the fallout, and research in 1989 indicated that one-fifth of that former-Soviet state is "significantly contaminated." In Ukraine, officials say 3.5 million people live on "hot" soil. Cases of thyroid cancer have surged 100-fold in some areas, and by one count, 15,000 have died.
As many as 800,000 soldiers and volunteers, called "liquidators," were heavily exposed to radiation while helping to clean up the Chernobyl site. There is no record of who they were, or their current state of health.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan noted earlier this year: "The catastrophe is far from over. It continues to have a devastating effect not only on the health of the people, but on every aspect of society."
Still, those living nearby get by. More than 40 percent of the exclusion zone is covered with pine trees, and many of the so-called "self-settlers" left after a 1991 forest fire spread radioactive particles farther and turned some villages to ash.
"We thought we would die when we returned, but we are still here," laughs Nastasia Chikalovets, the silver-capped arc of her teeth flashing with a broad smile. She runs a modest farm, though nobody beyond the exclusion zone will touch the local produce.
Locals shrug off the fears of outsiders, point to their own robust health, and cite tests-selective though they may be-that show no danger as long as 22 pounds of local mushrooms are not consumed at a single sitting. Radiation levels, they contend, are higher elsewhere in Ukraine.
"What is radiation?" asks Mrs. Chikalovets. "We didn't feel it then, we don't feel it now. Let it be radiation. It's on our land."
"They explained it all to us," adds Valentina Kortunenko, as Fluffy, her long-haired cat, slinks through the living room graced with six perfect red roses from the garden. "They said don't go, its dangerous. Don't eat anything," Mrs. Kortunenko says. Since then, "all the world" has visited, measuring radiation levels and writing reports.
So these three friends, who might be simple babushka anywhere else in the former Soviet Union, know some things about radiation. They can tick off differences in the half-life and ionizing characteristics of radioactive elements that they live with: plutonium, cesium-137, strontium, and radioactive iodine. That is also the language of nuclear scientists and officials at the Chernobyl plant, who argue that Ukraine desperately needs the 5 percent of the nation's electricity it produces.
The destroyed core of the reactor has been encased in a "sarcophagus," a concrete and steel shell that requires constant care and remains extremely radioactive. Inside, the control room for unit No. 4 is covered with a veneer of purple goo designed to keep down radioactive dust.
In front of the console, a technician points to the trigger for the accident: the last button pushed at 1:26 am on April 26, as part of an experiment to test the reactor's capacity, while most safety mechanisms were off.
"Half of Ukraine's regions have 'hot' spots," says Nikolai Dmytruk, of the official InterInform agency in Chernobyl, who estimates that some 3.5 million Ukrainians "live in contaminated areas. Even now, the zone grows to the west." Other towns in that direction are likely to be evacuated in coming years.
Part of the cesium cloud that soared into the atmosphere during the explosion was detected across Europe, as well as in northern Iraq.
Lingering concerns
Officials here worry that the international community may forget about Chernobyl - and its continuing need for cash to be safe - once it shuts down for good.
A particular concern is the river that flows past the reactor and feeds into the Dnieper River, past the capital, Kiev, and finally into the Black Sea - the watershed that provides 9 million Ukrainians with drinking water.
In the "exclusion zone," where settlers this year fought off growing packs of wolves, the government provides an allowance for buying "safe" food from outside. A vehicle brings food for purchase every week.
Still, residents say they find a certain pleasure in being pioneers, though it is often a lonely business. No one, for example, lives in Pripyat, a city once home to 50,000 people, where lamp posts are still hung with festive Soviet hammer-and-sickle signs, in preparation for 1986 May Day celebrations that never took place.
The amusement park was supposed to open that day, too.
Back in Obachichi village, the three lady friends laugh about a neighbor who once dug up her entire garden. "I never found radiation!" the woman exclaimed. "Where is it?"
"We are sorry the villages are empty and trees grow in the gardens. It's very sad," says Kortunenko. "It is awkward to live here. But they won't take us forcefully."
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Chernobyl - One Secret the Soviets Could not Keep
Russia Today
Dec 15, 2000
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=230241
LONDON -- (Reuters) There were secrets even the mighty Soviet propaganda machine could not keep from the prying eyes of the outside world.
Two days after Reactor Number Four at Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear power plant blew up in 1986, it was a softly-spoken engineer in Sweden who first began to guess the source and scale of what emerged to be the world's worst nuclear disaster.
His discovery helped prise the truth from the Communist leadership, which for all Mikhail Gorbachev's talk of glasnost and openness did its utmost to hide the accident from a worried West puzzled by high radiation levels across Europe.
"It happened on the Monday, two days after April 26th 1986," recalls Frigyes Reisch, former chief engineer at Sweden's Nuclear Inspection Board, referring to the date of the blast.
"A nuclear power station near Stockholm found high radiation levels and reported them to us. The strange thing was that they found nothing inside the plant but did find traces of radiation in the grass around the plant."
He asked all of Sweden's nuclear stations to report their radiation levels, and made a simple but startling discovery.
"While the other plants found similar high radiation, the levels were decreasing as we moved from east to west," he told Reuters by telephone from Stockholm.
"It was then that we looked at each other and realized what had probably happened -- that this was coming from the East."
He and other nuclear scientists piecing together the events surrounding Chernobyl are convinced that the trickle of details from Moscow at that time triggered the chain reaction of social and political change which would bring down the Iron Curtain.
FULL PICTURE SLOW TO EMERGE
Reisch's suspicion prompted a visit by Sweden's scientific attache in Moscow to the authorities. He was told blankly that nothing had happened.
But the first chink in the Kremlin's armor came soon after, with a report from the official Tass news agency the same evening that an accident had hit the Chernobyl plant north of Kiev in Ukraine with some casualties.
One or two days after that, with the world desperate for more news, Soviet diplomats posted in Western Europe made discreet contacts with scientists to gather information on how to contain the crisis.
Reisch described his own meeting with a Soviet diplomat as businesslike, but in an historical context a "real ice-breaker".
It took weeks for the official death toll from the reactor blast to reach 30, and only a sensational presentation by the Soviet authorities to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) based in Vienna late in August finally put the details straight.
Until then the nuclear world was adrift on a sea of rumor and ignorance, yet all the time knowing that the levels of radiation so far away from the source meant it was serious.
"Everyone thought at the time of the first revelations by the Swedes, 'My God, this is a big one'," said Jim Reed, who was working for Britain's nuclear watchdog at the time.
"But even when we found out it was Chernobyl most of us were asking ourselves 'where is it?' Until the Vienna conference there was a lot of conjecture about what could have gone wrong. We were completely in the dark."
The picture is much clearer 15 years on. At 1.26 a.m. on that fateful day, after staff had temporarily cut off the fourth reactor's safety systems to test the unit's capacity, it exploded, triggering a series of powerful blasts.
Tonnes of radioactive strontium, caesium, iodine and plutonium spread from North Europe to the Mediterranean.
The accident has been linked to thousands of deaths. Hundreds of thousands of people developed radiation sickness.
SECOND BOMBSHELL
The second bombshell in the Chernobyl story came at the IAEA conference in Vienna, four months after the disaster.
The Soviet Union's chief delegate Valery Legasov stunned his audience with a detailed and frank expose of what went wrong.
Among those present was Professor John Gittus, reporting from the meeting for the British government.
"We had tried to work out what had gone wrong," he said. "But it was not until we got to Vienna that we understood. This was the first time they gave out such detailed information."
He received a thick package of carefully prepared documents containing details such as copies of chart recorders at Chernobyl's stricken reactor at the time of the blast.
"For me this was the beginning of perestroika," he said. "We didn't realize that at the time, of course, but Chernobyl was a turning point -- a punctuation mark in Russian history."
Legasov urged scientists to check their systems "twice, three times and again". A medical annexe to the report estimated that there would be nearly 6,500 cancer deaths, including 1,500 from thyroid cancer over the next 70 years.
"Chernobyl was one of the key factors in Gorbachev's perestroika. It forced the Soviet Union to be open with the West and with the country itself," said Adrian Collings, who was then working at Britain's Central Electricity Generating Board.
But despite radical changes over the last decade, a culture of suspicion and secrecy still lingers in Russia, he added:
"To reveal this secret (of Chernobyl) was totally against the fear of information getting to the outside, and we still see this kind of thing even now, as with the Kursk disaster."
The Russian navy said initially that there were no deaths when the nuclear submarine sank to the bottom of the Barents Sea in August killing all 118 on board, and that rescuers were in contact with the crew. Officials later said there was never contact with the crew, most of whom died instantly.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Military Chief Seeks Money, Saying Forces Are Strapped
New York Times
December 15, 2000
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/15/politics/15DEFE.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 14 - Gen. Henry H. Shelton, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned today that the military faced "an unsustainable burden" caused by aging equipment, shrinking forces and the pace of military operations.
General Shelton's warnings, which echoed those he and other senior commanders had made in recent weeks, underscored the increasingly public campaign under way at the Pentagon to increase military spending as a new administration takes office.
The timing of General Shelton's remarks - at the National Press Club here the day after Gov. George W. Bush of Texas became president- elect - was coincidental. But his wide-ranging speech amounted to an outline of the strategic and fiscal problems that Mr. Bush will face as he juggles campaign promises.
General Shelton, who will continue to serve as chairman until next September, said there was a growing imbalance between the nation's military strategy and the forces and equipment the armed services have.
Although he stopped short of asking for a specific budget increase, he generally endorsed recent studies that advocated significant rises in the Pentagon's budget, which this year totals $309 billion. He cited a study by the Congressional Budget Office that called for increasing spending on new weapons and equipment to $90 billion a year, from roughly $60 billion today, saying the armed services needed to replace weapons built a generation ago.
"Flush from historic victories in the cold war, Desert Storm and most recently in Kosovo, the extraordinary capabilities of our forces are in great demand," General Shelton said. "We were just unable to anticipate how high that demand would be. And the results are that our men and women in uniform are busier than ever before. And the wear and tear on our equipment is significant, leading to what has been termed as a fraying of our force."
The themes of General Shelton's remarks - and even some of the language - were similar to those of Mr. Bush's campaign. Mr. Bush and his running mate, Dick Cheney, a former secretary of defense, complained that the armed forces had withered under President Clinton and vowed to rebuild the country's military might.
In his address to the nation on Wednesday night, Mr. Bush restated that pledge, vowing, "We will have a military equal to every challenge and superior to every adversary," a phrase General Shelton cited today.
But the scale of the increases in military spending embraced by General Shelton and other senior commanders far exceeds the $4.5 billion that Mr. Bush's campaign outlined in its proposals. And it could probably clash with the host of competing spending demands, like tax cuts and new programs, that will face Mr. Bush and a narrowly divided Congress.
In recent interviews, commanders of the armed services made arguments similar to General Shelton's. Gen. Michael E. Ryan, chief of staff of the Air Force, said on Wednesday that downsizing after the cold war led the nation to postpone modernization of its equipment. General Ryan said the need for new weapons like the Air Force's F-22 fighter meant the nation could no longer defer significant spending increases.
"We've taken a holiday from procurement and paid the peace dividend over the past decade," General Ryan said. "And now it's time to recapitalize the force, if you want it to be the premier, in my case, air force in the world."
General Shelton and the others agree that the Pentagon's upcoming strategic study, the Quadrennial Defense Review, would have to confront the increasing demands on the military.
He complained that the last review, in 1997, had been driven by budgetary constraints rather than strategic concerns. Although the new review has only begun, he made it clear that the Pentagon needed additional forces to do all that is asked of it, whether conducting humanitarian operations or preparing to fight two major wars nearly at once.
In making the case for increased spending, General Shelton cited the "changing nature of the international security environment," noting the potential threats posed by the rise of nationalism in Russia and the increasingly anti-American sentiment in China.
In unusually pointed language, he warned that China had a "distrustful view" of the United States and was "aggressively modernizing" its conventional and nuclear forces.
"I am firmly convinced," General Shelton said, "that we need to focus all elements of U.S. power and diplomacy on ensuring that China does not become the 21st-century version of the Soviet bear."
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Man with windmill scheme tilts against U.S. missile shield
Pioneer Planet
Published: Friday, December 15, 2000
ROBIN WRIGHT LOS ANGELES TIMES
http://www.pioneerplanet.com/seven-days/3/news/docs/018023.htm
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/12/17/MN161506.DTL
BERKELEY, Calif. Peter Hayes is a Don Quixote for the 21st century, a tall, dashing dreamer with a mission that some find foolhardy and others farfetched, but all deem noble in spirit and purpose. With a lot of imagination and a little money, Hayes has set out to rid the world of its deadliest weapons.
And he's trying to do it with windmills.
To counter a well-financed campaign to build a U.S. missile defense system, Hayes is putting up wind turbines and windmills -- ``like right out of Kansas in the 1930s,'' he says -- in Communist North Korea.
The graceful towers with their spinning wheels are already providing water for dozens of North Korean homes and fields. The tall, spindly turbines, planted in fields of cabbage cultivated for the Korean dish kimchee, produce electricity for kindergartens, clinics and homes in the village of Unhari, about 60 miles southeast of the capital, Pyongyang.
The goal is to demonstrate the viability of alternative energy sources, particularly in rural areas, so the government will feel less need to build nuclear power plants that could, in turn, be used to develop nuclear weapons.
To some arms experts, it is indeed a Quixotic quest. And Hayes concedes that his project is not a solution for the entire country -- nor a guarantee that a potential nuclear foe will soon become a peaceful neighbor. ``North Korea is not a windy place. Windmills won't work everywhere,'' he said in an interview in a modest office in Berkeley, Calif.
But to others, the groundbreaking collaboration between American and North Korean scientists represents a new kind of ``alternative defense'' that might reduce pressure for multibillion-dollar programs to block Pyongyang's ability to fire a nuclear-tipped missile at the United States.
In recognition of his imaginative approach, Hayes this year was awarded one of the ``genius'' grants given to thinkers, scientists, writers and other innovators by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
At its heart, Hayes' windmill project underscores a brewing debate over the best way to defend a nation in the 21st century.
``The missile defense argument is like saying the solution to America's handgun problem is for everyone to wear body armor. It doesn't work,'' said Hayes, founder of the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainable Development, one of America's smallest think tanks.
``Besides, the issue really isn't about missiles and warheads. It's about strategic rivalry and distrust and perceptions at a much deeper level. And that's what we're trying to deal with.''
An energy specialist who's worked for the United Nations and the World Bank, Hayes began looking for ways to reverse tensions when North Korea crossed the nuclear threshold a decade ago by building reactors it said would be used to generate electricity. By 1994, the government's suspected ability to siphon off fissile material to make nuclear weapons led the Pentagon to devise plans to attack the reactors.
The United States pulled back from ``the brink of war,'' according to a recent book by former Defense Secretary William Perry, after Perry advised the Clinton administration it might ignite a wider conflict. Former President Jimmy Carter then mediated an agreement that froze North Korea's nuclear program in exchange for U.S.-orchestrated aid and technology to build two ``safe'' nuclear reactors.
But the danger remains. For one thing, North Korea does not have to give a full accounting of its nuclear program until the reactors are built and working. Meanwhile, it may have in reserve enough plutonium for one or two bombs.
Because the reactors won't be ready for several years, Pyongyang still feels vulnerable. Fuel supplies ended after the Soviet Union's demise. North Korea's electrical grid has been devastated by natural disasters. Millions of people have been left without regular electricity, contributing to the collapse of industry, communications, agriculture, transportation and the economy.
So Hayes and a small crew of energy experts set out to find an interim source of energy -- and to plant the seeds of a relationship between the nations.
With funding from American foundations, the Hayes team took the first seven wind turbines to Unhari in 1998. In October, on his sixth trip, he took a team to build two windmills to channel water for crops and human consumption to ease a famine that has killed an estimated 2 million people.
Both windmills and wind turbines have appeal because of low cost ($2,500 to $12,000 each), low maintenance, readily accessible technology, environmental safety and sustainability, even in rural areas. The next step is designing a windmill using local materials.
The project illustrates the evolution of ideas about national security policy.
Throughout history, military might has been the key to defending a nation. But after World War II, with the development of apocalyptic weapons, President Harry Truman proposed nuclear disarmament. President Dwight Eisenhower created the first nuclear-power monitoring agency. And President John Kennedy, who warned that 25 nations could have nuclear arms by the end of the 1960s, launched the first major treaty banning nuclear-weapons tests in the water and atmosphere.
A half-century of treaties on all weapons of mass destruction -- nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and ballistic missiles -- has led to destruction of existing arms, and agreements to halt new weapons, and has limited the spread of nuclear arms to only eight countries.
By 1996, former Defense Secretary Perry dared to say that the first line of defense was no longer weaponry but pieces of paper -- a network of treaties.
``Paper has been more effective in intercepting and destroying more missiles than other weapons,'' said Joseph Cirincione, director of the Non-Proliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. ``And the military has increasingly become the second line of defense, as a deterrent threat against those who use these weapons against you.''
Others disagree. ``Treaties codify the status quo. But pure military power is still the key to influence, the coin of the realm,'' said Mitchell Reiss, former chief U.S. negotiator with North Korea and member of the National Security Council during the Reagan and Bush administrations.
As the 21st century dawns, two other visions are shaping ideas about defending a nation.
One is a national missile defense shield, a popular, pricey idea of uncertain capability. Some arms experts call it the third line of defense; others say it should become the first.
Building a national missile defense will mean renegotiating the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty or scrapping it altogether. Because of widespread opposition from Paris to Moscow and Beijing, changing the treaty could begin to unravel the entire network of arms treaties, since each one builds on the one before it, most experts agree.
It could also trigger a new arms race by escalating the level of armament to a new plane.
A fourth line of defense is the emerging effort by disparate organizations, from the International Monetary Fund to the Nautilus Institute, to unravel the causes of tension before they become conflicts. ``The IMF does it with economic factors on a global scale with billions of dollars,'' Cirincione said. ``Peter Hayes does on a local scale what big institutions can't or won't.''
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America's Nuclear Flying Saucer
Fri, 15 Dec 2000 12:47:10 EST
BY Jim Wilson, Illustration by Tom Freeman
http://www.popularmechanics.com/popmech/sci/0011STSPAM.html
A trail of secret documents reveals the startling truth about the U.S. Air Force's flying disc aircraft.
In 1949, the biggest black hole in the universe wasn't in space, but across the Bering Strait. Stretching across 12 time zones, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was, as Winston Churchill would so memorably describe it, "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma." The few things that most people knew about life behind the Iron Curtain seemed to be pieces of an incomprehensible puzzle. For the handful of intelligence experts who saw how the pieces fit, the "workers' paradise" presented a clear and present danger to the American way of life. What the intelligence community knew, and most people did not, was that in the final frantic hours of World War II, the Soviet army had hastily raided Germany's most advanced weapons research laboratories. And, on Aug. 29, 1949, only four years after Hiroshima, the technological booty from those raids turned a country whose farmers still used horse-drawn plows into a nuclear superpower.
The fireball of the communist atomic bomb cast a sinister new light on an event that previously seemed quite inconsequential. In the summer of 1945, an unusual rumor had begun to circulate within the intelligence division of the European Command. During interrogations, captured German aircraft engineers referred to an extraordinarily fast rocket plane under development at a secret base in Bavaria. Unlike the Messerschmitt Me 163 rocket planes that had begun to attack Allied bombers in the last months of the war, this aircraft had an odd-looking curved wing that blended into its fuselage. The aerodynamic advantage of this configuration had been known to American designers for more than a decade. It created more lift than a standard wing, especially at low speeds, and provided more internal capacity for carrying bombs. In the early days of the war, the U.S. Navy had briefly experimented with circular wing design for those very reasons.
Anticipating that the first generation of communist atomic bombs would be as heavy as those America had dropped on Japan, it seemed reasonable to U.S. defense planners that the Soviet air force, which then lacked a nuclear bomber, would try to adapt German disc technology. The United States was, after all, doing exactly the same thing with the V-2s and Nazi rocket scientists it had spirited away in Operation Paper Clip.
In our July 1997 cover story, "Roswell Plus 50," POPULAR MECHANICS detailed how Air Force interestin duplicating Nazi technology led to two American flying disc projects. Project Silver Bug sought to build a vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. Project Pye Wacket was to create small discs for use as air-to-air missiles. Documents declassified since then point to a third secret project, a 40-ft. "flying saucer" designed to rain nuclear destruction on the Soviet Union from 300 miles in space.
The official designation for America's nuclear flying saucer was the Lenticular Reentry Vehicle (LRV). It was designed by engineers at the Los Angeles Division of North American Aviation, under a contract with the U.S. Air Force. The project was managed out of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, in Dayton, Ohio, where German engineers who had worked on rocket plane and flying disc technology had been resettled.
The LRV escaped public scrutiny because it was hidden away as one of the Pentagon's so-called "black budget" items-that is, a secret project that is incorporated into some piece of nonclassified work. On Dec. 12, 1962, security officers at Wright-Patterson classified the LRV as secret because: "It describes an offensive weapon system." The project remained classified until May 1999, when a congressionally mandated review of old documents changed the project's status as a government secret, downgrading it to public information. The Department of Defense did, however, successfully seek to have the document's distribution restricted to defense contractors. PM obtained its copy as the result of a Freedom of Information Act request.
Inside The LRV
"The operational mission design is six weeks' duration at a nominal orbital altitude of 300 nautical miles, with a crew of four men," according to the report. The weapons bay would hold "four winged weapons" that could be either launched or detached and parked on orbit. There are repeated references to the LRV launching weapons-carrying clusters.
A considerable part of the design study focuses on the details of building a 40-ft.-dia. airframe and strengthening it against the acceleration of 8 g's and wind shear it would experience during launch. However, no mention is made of the type of booster the disc would ride into space.
Click here for detail.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/popmech/sci/0011STSPAF.jpg
Illustration by John Batchelor
Most likely, the LRV would have flown atop a multistage rocket, like the Saturn booster used in the Apollo moon program. The engineering study, however, suggests a more intriguing possibility. At some point, the LRV could have been powered by one of the nuclear rockets then under development by the Air Force and the Atomic Energy Commission. Several of these rockets were in fact built and successfully tested in Nevada. Although the government claims all of its nuclear rocket program records have been declassified, a search of the Department of Energy (DOE) human radiation experiment database indicates otherwise. PM has learned that 40 cu. ft. of records related to the human health effects of the nuclear rocket program, compiled between 1956 and 1975, are stored in a secured location-Building 1001-at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, N.M. A DOE spokesman told PM that the only reason these records would have remained classified was if they dealt with an operational military system.
Although these rockets were not called multiple independent reentry vehicles (MIRVs), they match the description of these multiple-warhead-delivery devices, which were later banned by disarmament treaties. An MIRV-equipped LRV would have been able to eliminate the war-making capabilities of the Soviet Union, China and North Korea at the push of a button.
In normal operations, the capsule would function as the LRV's flight control center. In an emergency, the crew could fire the capsule's independent 50,000-pound-thrust solid-fuel rocket motor and return to Earth. The capsule's final descent would be slowed by a parachute, much like the X-38 "lifeboat" planned for the international space station now under construction.
A textbook mission would conclude with the entire LRV returning to Earth. It would fire its nuclear or liquid-fueled main rocket to brake, then travel edge-first into the atmosphere. Its disc form would dissipate the heat of re-entry, then act as a wing. Its flattened tail structure would provide directional stability and control. A minute or so before landing, skids would extend and the LRV would settle onto a stretch of dry lakebed.
The engineering study does not describe how the LRV, which would weigh just over 17,000 pounds without its crew, weapons, fuel and stores, would then have been returned to the launch pad. One possibility, suggested by the inclusion of a high-pressure helium storage tank, is that it would have been ferried by a heavy-lift balloon, as shown in the drawing on the opposite page. While the LRV would not have had sufficient helium to inflate a balloon, the tank would have had sufficient capacity for replenishing the lift-bag to permit trips of several thousands of miles.
In 1997, as part of its effort to debunk the Roswell alien landing myth, the Air Force revealed details of several heavy-lift balloon research projects. Among those were experiments in which 15,000-pound payloads were lifted to 170,000 ft. While not specifically acknowledging the LRV by name, an Air Force spokesman conceded that during the Cold War it routinely used high-altitude balloons to lift unusual airframes for aerodynamic tests. Airframe tests of secret planes were most likely the cause of still-unexplained UFO sightings. And a balloon-lifted LRV test flight would certainly match the classic UFO reports of a silvery disc hovering motionless in the sky, then silently shooting upward.
Crash Debris
The engineering study obtained by POPULAR MECHANICS contains language that describes a re-entry heating test that, at the time, could have been accomplished by only a high-altitude drop of a flying prototype. A further indication that the LRV flew comes from a retired Air Force contractor. He tells PM he personally saw a craft fitting the description of the LRV at a Florida base that he had been visiting on unrelated business in the late 1960s. However, what is by far the most compelling evidence that the LRV, or a flying prototype, was actually built comes from Australia.
In 1975, Jean Fraser found an odd bit of honeycomb-like debris on her family's ranch south of Brisbane. The area is in the vicinity of what was then a secret Australian testing range where the British and Americans conducted some of their most secret atomic experiments. Since the LRV was to carry a small nuclear reactor to provide electricity for flight systems, it is conceivable that tests would have been conducted at this isolated location.
Local legends claim the honeycomb was debris from a flying saucer that exploded over the test range in 1966. The remaining pieces were supposedly collected by the military and returned to the United States aboard a U.S. Air Force plane. Interested in learning if the debris was extraterrestrial, Dick Smith, a Sydney businessman, arranged for the University of New South Wales to perform a chemical analysis.
The debris contained minerals commonly found in aircraft-grade fiberglass panels. Based on the university's report, the Mufon UFO Journal, the monthly magazine of the Mutual UFO Network (www.mufon.com), debunked rumors of the debris having any alien origin.
The materials recovered from the Fraser farm bear a striking resemblance to LRV engineering drawings. Unexplained Residue
PM became interested in revisiting the Australian debris analysis when we noticed a similarity between a photograph of the mystery honeycomb and a cross-section diagram in the LRV engineering study.
We've put the two images next to each other (left). Let us know what you think.
We were also curious about two points that were raised in the university's chemical analysis, but not pursued once it was determined that the debris originated on Earth. The first has to do with the presence of small amounts of titanium. Titanium is a strong, lightweight metal used extensively in spacecraft. While some fiberglass products also contain titanium, it is not in the chemical form found in the debris.
The second curiosity has to do with chemical residues. Those found on the honeycomb were similar to those typically found in the vicinity of high-temperature chemical explosions. A possible explanation for such an explosion can be found in LRV engineering drawings. Like the German Me 163 rocket plane, the main engine of the LRV was designed to burn hypergolic fuel, highly reactive fluids that can explode on contact, releasing tremendous amounts of energy. Plans show that the LRV would have carried 9375 pounds of nitrogen tetroxide and hydrazine.
In Germany, landing Me 163s were plagued by on-board fires, caused by the sloshing of a type of hypergolic fuel in mostly empty fuel tanks. According to the design study, the tanks aboard the LRV could never be completely emptied either, making accidents like those aboard Me 163s all but inevitable. LRV project managers would have been well aware of this unique danger, as one of the members of the Wright-Patterson aeronautical research team was Rudi Opitz, one of Germany's first Me 163 test pilots.
LRV documents released thus far tell only part of the story. But in time, the secrecy on progress reports, construction drawings and perhaps even operational records will expire and we will be able to tell the rest of the story. Perhaps they will reveal that the LRV remained a general's pipe dream, a multimillion-dollar paper plane that never took flight. Or they may tell the story of the most astounding adventure in the history of flight.
--------------------
LRV Specifications
Crew 4
Weapons 4 nuclear missiles
Mission Length 6 weeks
Dimensions
Diameter 40 ft. Center 90 in. Edges 6 in. Wing 1548 sq. ft.
Weights
Launch 45,000 lb. Landing 33,395 lb. Empty 17,042 lb.
Engines
Booster Chemical/Nuclear Main Hypergolic/Nuclear Capsule Solid fuel Electric Power 7 kw (thermal nuclear)
Designer North American Aviation
The four-man crew would ride a wedge-shaped capsule built inside the LRV. The capsule would divide the front portion of the disc into separate work and off-duty areas. The nuclear-tipped rockets would be stored in the rear segments.
=========
Comments:
This story and others in the Popular Mechanics articles gets real close to some of the greater veiled truth on UFO's and stories to mislead a gullible public.
All the German V-2's and experimental aircraft were taken to Roswell AFB in NM, right ajacent the White Sands missile test range and the Trinity test site.
The first Trinity test used RADAR to look at the atmopsheric ionization effects that would blind RADAR. Subsequent tests were done in 47 using balloon suspended bomb and aircraft loaded with real humans to look a survival effects. RADAR experts from around the country were brought to Albuquerque, NM to observe the RADAR effects southward at White Sands zone. The aircraft facet of this test was one of the captured German lenticular designs balloon suspended with no wings and loaded with aliens from jungles that had been used in US chemical and radiological warfare testing in Panama and the Amazon. The balloon suspended aircraft left the White Sands controlled areas and drifted into farmland near Roswell, and was seen by a farmer. The test killed some of the aliens and blackened their eyes from the bombs flash. An elaborate cover story was made up to cover up this test.
The aircraft lenticular shapes offered a degree or RADAR invisble passive shapes, and these tests lead into what is now the passive absorber Strealth aircraft that were designed at Area 51 and elsewhere. Much of the passive shape and absorber information is kept at Area 51, and includes all the information on these captured German aircraft tests.
This tests and others at the NTS using aliens are essentially war crimes and are covered up by the US Govt using faked up stories tossed out for a gullible US population to buy into.
The US Govt has many more of these nuclear powered aircraft that they prefer not to admit and thus are kept in the UFO domain.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- new mexico
Wen Ho Lee mystery deepens
None of tapes found at dump contains missing nuclear data
MSNBC
12/15/00
By Walter Pincus THE WASHINGTON POST
http://www.msnbc.com/news/503901.asp?cp1=1
Dec. 15 - FBI crime laboratory and Energy Department experts have determined that none of more than 10 cassette tapes retrieved from the Los Alamos County Landfill are the infamous tapes of U.S. nuclear weapons secrets made by Wen Ho Lee, Clinton administration officials said Thursday.
Under the terms of Lee's plea agreement, the only step left for the government is to administer a polygraph or 'lie detector' exam.
THE FINDING raises fresh doubts about the Taiwanese American scientist's assertion that he tossed the tapes into the trash at Los Alamos National Laboratory in January 1999. But, officials were quick to point out, they have no physical evidence to disprove Lee's story, either.
When federal prosecutors agreed to a plea bargain that let Lee out of jail in September, they thought they were trading his freedom for answers. But the mysteries of the case have only deepened, and investigators from the FBI and Energy Department are reluctantly concluding that they may never know what happened, officials close to the investigation said.
After questioning Lee under oath behind closed doors for 10 days in recent weeks and after digging through a giant pile of trash, the FBI still is not sure why he made the tapes or exactly what he did with them.
MANY TRIPS TO TAIWAN
Moreover, investigators have determined that Lee made at least 10 trips to Taiwan over the past 25 years, many more than they had realized.
They also have raised their estimate of the number of tapes he made from the classified computer system at the laboratory's X Division, where Lee worked and where most of America's nuclear weapons were designed.
Originally, there were said to be seven missing tapes, based on notations found in Lee's notebooks. Now, the FBI believes there may be several times that number; Lee has said he cannot remember exactly how many he made, according to officials familiar with the investigation.
Efforts to reach Lee's lawyers for comment were unsuccessful.
Under the terms of Lee's plea agreement, the 10 days of questioning granted the government are over; the only step left for the government is to administer a polygraph or "lie detector" exam.
"If he shows deception" on the fundamental questions of why he made the tapes and whether he destroyed them, a senior official said, "we are right back where we were when we first discovered what he had done."
Over 40 hours on 70 days in 1993, 1994 and 1997, Lee downloaded 1.4 gigabytes of data, the equivalent of about 400,000 pages, from the secure computer system at Los Alamos, according to the FBI. Often working on nights and weekends, and circumventing security safeguards, he moved the data to his office desktop computer and to pocket-sized tapes that look like 8-mm videocassettes, a bit thicker than conventional audio cassettes. He then made copies of some of those tapes.
COMPUTER FAILURE SAFEGUARD?
In the recent FBI questioning, sources said, Lee has steadfastly maintained that he made the tapes as a safeguard against computer failures. Other scientists at Los Alamos have questioned the plausibility of that explanation, noting that there were simpler, authorized ways to protect data from computer crashes, such as backing up the files on hard drives.
Lee also has assured investigators that he never removed any of the tapes from the laboratory or showed them to anyone. A few days after losing his security clearance in December 1999, he has reportedly said, he threw the tapes into a Dumpster outside the lab's X Division.
Based on that information, FBI agents began searching the county landfill in late November. Using records of when trash was dumped into various parts of the landfill, they isolated a section of the site and combed through tons of garbage with rakes. By last Friday, the agents had found more than 10 computer tapes, which were sent to the forensic laboratory at FBI headquarters for analysis.
Officials said Thursday that the tapes were not the ones Lee made.
Lee was investigated by the FBI from 1996 to 1999 as a suspect in the loss of some data about America's latest nuclear warhead, the W-88, to China. But he denied ever passing information to any foreign country, and he was never charged with espionage.
The discovery of his downloading came later, after he had been fired from the laboratory for security violations in March 1999. At the time, Capitol Hill was in a political furor over allegations of Chinese espionage. Lee was indicted and held in solitary confinement on 59 felony counts, including alleged violations of the Atomic Energy Act that carried the threat of life imprisonment.
CASE COLLAPSES
The case against Lee collapsed even before trial, however. Expert witnesses questioned whether the information he had downloaded really represented the "crown jewels" of the U.S. nuclear program, and defense lawyers showed that the lead FBI agent on the case had given faulty testimony. When Lee pleaded guilty in September to a single felony count, a federal trial judge not only freed him, but also apologized and said his harsh treatment had been an embarrassment to the nation.
After treating Lee for months as a major threat to national security, Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis J. Freeh justified the plea agreement as an essential step to secure his cooperation in determining what happened to the tapes and whether U.S. secrets had been compromised.
One of the factors that originally drew investigators to Lee was that he had made trips to mainland China in 1986 and 1988. On both occasions, he stopped in Taiwan, where he was born and has close relatives. In 1998 he was also a visiting scholar at the Chung Shan Institute of Science and Technology, Taiwan's leading nuclear research center.
In 1982, the CIA had learned that scientists at Chung Shan were secretly building a plutonium separation facility for nuclear weapons, and U.S. officials successfully pressed Taiwan to close it. As a result, Taiwan has since been on an Energy Department list of sensitive countries, which requires U.S. government scientists visiting there to be briefed and debriefed before and after their trips.
Officials said Thursday that investigators recently compiled a list of at least 10 trips that Lee made to Taiwan beginning in the late 1970s. In several cases, the officials said, there is no record that he informed the U.S. government before or after the visits, but it is possible that those records were lost.
In 1989, when Lee's security clearance was due for a five-year review, his file was sent to Energy Department headquarters here. It was lost in the Forrestal Building and was not reconstructed until 1992.
---
Search for Lee Tapes Fruitless
New York Times
December 15, 2000 Filed at 12:56 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Scientist-Secrets.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The FBI and weapons lab experts have concluded that 10 computer tapes dug out of a New Mexico landfill do not contain nuclear secrets illegally downloaded by a fired scientist, a federal law enforcement official said Friday.
Checking out the story told by nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee after he pleaded guilty to mishandling secret data, FBI agents, garbed in white protective clothing, had unearthed the 10 pocket-sized tapes at a landfill containing trash collected from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, according to two federal law enforcement officials. They spoke on condition they not be identified.
During a debriefing that he agreed to as part of his deal to plead guilty, Lee had told investigators this fall that he threw the computer tapes, consisting of downloaded data on nuclear secrets, into the trash at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1999.
The tapes were examined both by the FBI laboratory and by experts from Los Alamos before a final conclusion was reached, officials said.
Federal officials could not say Friday whether FBI agents would resume digging at the dump. The excavation that had begun in late November was suspended Dec. 8 after the tapes were found. FBI officials said at the time that the agents doing the digging were exhausted.
While the latest finding raises new doubts about Lee's assertion that he dumped the tapes, officials have acknowledged they have no physical evidence to disprove his story, The Washington Post reported.
Lee told investigators after he was freed from prison in a plea bargain in September that he got rid of the tapes after losing his security clearance by putting them in a trash bin outside the Los Alamos laboratory.
Lee was investigated by the FBI from 1996 to 1999 about the alleged loss of data on the United States' latest nuclear warhead, the W-88, to China.
He was indicted on 59 felony counts, including alleged violations of the Atomic Energy Act, after being fired for security violations in 1999. He pleaded guilty to a single felony when it was shown that the lead FBI agent in the case had given false testimony. The government dropped the other 58 counts in a deal it said was designed to learn what happened to the tapes and to recover them if possible.
---
FBI might resume digging for secret tapes
USA Today
12/15/00- Updated 04:34 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncsfri04.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - The FBI and weapons lab experts have determined 10 computer tapes dug out of a New Mexico landfill do not contain a fired scientist's downloaded nuclear secrets, so agents might resume digging, federal law enforcement officials said Friday.
The government has been trying to confirm the story told by nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee after he pleaded guilty Sept. 13 to mishandling secret data at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. FBI agents were hoping to find up to 17 pocket-size computer tapes he said he threw into a trash bin at the weapons laboratory in 1999.
Their options for finding the tapes and corroborating Lee's account are dwindling as more than one batch of tapes thus far dug from the landfill have turned out not to contain the secrets Lee illegally downloaded, federal law enforcement officials said, requesting anonymity.
The FBI has done no digging at the 50-acre landfill since agents were pulled off Dec. 8, FBI Special Agent Bill Elwell said in Albuquerque, N.M. That was not long after the 10 tapes were found, other officials have said.
''It's still an option that they could be sent out again'' to resume digging, Elwell said Friday. Agents digging in the landfill since late November had been pulled off for other duties and have been catching up on those this week, he added.
The official government debriefing of Lee under oath ended Tuesday night, The Associated Press has learned.
When Lee pleaded guilty to one count of illegally downloading restricted government data, he agreed to make himself available for debriefing and to take possible polygraph tests.
In return, the government dropped 58 charges against Lee and held up hope he would tell enough so FBI agents could recover the tapes or confirm their destruction.
There has been no word on whether Lee will take polygraph tests. Lee is to remain available for informal follow-up questioning until September.
FBI agents, garbed in white protective clothing, had unearthed the 10 pocket-sized tapes at the muddy, snowy Los Alamos County landfill that contains trash collected from the Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory, federal law enforcement officials have said. They dug in an area that was filled at the time Lee said he discarded the tapes.
This batch of 10 tapes was examined by the FBI laboratory and by experts from the Los Alamos weapons lab before the government concluded they were not the sought-after tapes, a federal law enforcement official said Friday.
Lee's lawyer John Cline had no comment on the report that no secret data was found on the 10 tapes.
Earlier, other items dug from the dump were suspected to be among Lee's 17 discarded tapes, but tests showed they weren't either, a federal law enforcement official said.
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 Lee repeatedly sought access to the Los Alamos X Division after his access card was deactivated and that he gained access three times, including once in January 1999 when a fellow lab employee let him in.
Lee has sworn he never passed any secrets to any unauthorized person. The government never charged him with espionage although Lee was investigated by the FBI from 1996 to 1999 about the alleged loss of data on the U.S. W-88 nuclear warhead to China.
-------- new york
To Prevent Price Jumps, Changes in Electricity Market Are Urged
New York Times
December 15, 2000
By JOSEPH P. FRIED
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/15/nyregion/15POWE.html
New York State regulators called yesterday for changes in the state's wholesale electricity markets to prevent the kind of sharp price increases that angered consumers last summer.
The state's Public Service Commission urged that federal energy regulators - and the private group that works under federally approved rules to administer the state's wholesale electricity markets - pursue faster action to "investigate and mitigate" wholesale price spikes.
The commission said the private group, the New York Independent System Operator, should be permitted to penalize electric generating companies if they repeatedly use improper tactics to increase, above competitive levels, the prices paid by utility companies that distribute electricity to consumers. The commission called for the Independent System Operator to be given authority to order refunds to electric consumers of financial gains made from such tactics.
Those and other recommendations are in a report that the state commission made public in the latest step in a flurry of criticism and response ignited by last summer's high electric bills and fears of such increases again next summer.
"These sensible reforms, combined with our efforts to increase supply, will help ensure that New Yorkers will not have to go through another summer of dramatic price swings," said Maureen O. Helmer, chairwoman of the Public Service Commission. She said a copy of the report would be sent to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which has authority for the Independent System Operator.
The Independent System Operator began administering the state's wholesale electricity market 13 months ago as part of steps to reduce public regulation of energy markets to open them to competition. Deregulation was meant to lower prices to energy consumers, but the Independent System Operator's procedures "do not yet work as intended," the report said.
Kenneth Klapp, a spokesman for the Independent System Operator, said, "Many of the initiatives in the report are already being addressed and will assure that the markets operate efficiently." He added that "one of the most important factors affecting electric prices is the need for the approval of new generating capacity." The report recognizes "tight supply conditions" as a factor.
A spokeswoman for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Tamara Young-Allen, said she could not immediately respond to the state commission's report.
In September, Consolidated Edison also urged the federal commission to act, charging that last summer's higher bills resulted from "excessively high wholesale energy costs." Many customers had blamed Con Edison and other distributors for the higher charges. Then in October, a consultant for the Independent System Operator held that much of last summer's electricity price rise for Con Ed customers had resulted from Con Ed's need to shut down its Indian Point 2 nuclear plant in Westchester after an accident there in February.
-------- tennessee
DOE makes first steps in fluorine cleanup
Knoxville News-Sentinel
December 15, 2000
By Frank Munger, News-Sentinel senior writer
mailto:twig1@knoxnews.infi.net
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/20234.shtml
OAK RIDGE -- The U.S. Department of Energy mobilized emergency teams Thursday to deal with a fluorine leak at the K-25 plant, cordoning off a large area of the plant to protect workers and making plans to eliminate the hazard. Oak Ridge officials said the leak, first detected Wednesday afternoon, apparently was contained inside Building K-1302 and did not pose a threat to the public or the environment. About 230 workers were told to stay home Thursday as a precaution.
"We do no believe there is a threat based on the sampling that we've done," DOE spokesman Steven Wyatt said.
But investigators proceeded cautiously with plans to enter the old building, a deactivated facility used years ago as a storage site for fluorine gas.
Fluorine was used in large quantities when K-25 operated as a gaseous diffusion plant, enriching uranium for nuclear fuel. However, that operation was shut down in 1985, and officials said the plant no longer maintains a stockpile of the hazardous gas.
The five storage tanks inside K-1302 reportedly were drained eight years ago, although inspectors said some residual material may have leaked from one of the tanks or a distribution line.
The gas is hazardous, even at relatively low concentrations, irritating the eyes and skin of exposed individuals. In severe cases, fluorine can cause blindness and lung ulcerations and other health problems.
Depending on monitoring results Thursday night, authorities planned to enter the building with workers (wearing protective suits) or a heavy-duty robot to mist the interior space with water to reduce the fluorine levels and set the stage for cleanup, Wyatt said.
Initial monitoring of the situation Wednesday found low levels of fluorine and hydrogen fluoride (formed when fluorine combines with moisture in the air) outside the building. Hazardous levels later were measured inside the building when a monitoring probe was placed there, and officials decided to delay entry into the structure.
John Lea, environmental projects manager for Bechtel Jacobs Co., a DOE contractor, said no detectable levels of the gas were found Thursday during surveys outside the building. Those results reduced the concern of a possible off-site release, he said.
Lea said investigators still do not know the source or the cause of the gas leak, although it appears to be coming from the vicinity of a 5,000-gallon tank -- the largest storage container in the facility.
On Thursday, DOE and its contractors established a 1,000-foot exclusion zone around the K-1302 building. Those restrictions apparently will remain in place today.
Five people have been treated for nausea and headaches apparently associated with the leak. The storage facility was constructed during the World War II Manhattan Project. It is scheduled for demolition within the next six months.
Frank Munger can be reached at 865-482-9213 or twig1@knoxnews.infi.net.
======
Comments:
Thousands and thousands of low level Fluorine and HF leaks have occured at this plant over its more than 50 years of operations, making this work force already overdosed with fluorides. HF toxic effects are cumulative and you can get the same toxic dose at low levels over many days as one can get from one toxic dose that can be smelled. The high level promt dose symtoms are the burning skin, eyes, lungs. The long term effect involve far more symptoms to include damage to thyroid/parathyroid, bone/joints/arthritus, lung/heart damage, neurological/foggy memory, fatigue, damage to immune system white and phage cells and deregulation of paracites, etc.
These news articles leave off the long term low level health effects that directly associate to the so called mysterious illness seen in these plant workers and in the surrounding communities. Such mysteries are the results of a long standing cover up of this effect by DOE-ORO, ORNL, and Y-12 that began after the Sr-90 problems at K-25 were investigated in the mid 80's.
-------- washington
Tribe Wants 2 Hanford Landfills Recleaned
Salt Lake Tribune
Friday, December 15, 2000
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.sltrib.com/12152000/nation_w/53960.htm
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/news/oregonian/00/12/nw_61nez15.frame
RICHLAND, Wash. -- The Nez PercZ Tribe wants the U.S. Department of Energy to more thoroughly clean two Cold War-era landfills, contending contaminants remain at the traditional root-gathering sites on the Hanford nuclear reservation.
The hazardous contaminants prevent people from safely gathering roots for food at those locations, the tribe said in its request for an investigation by Hanford's Natural Resources Trustee Council.
Before the arrival of white settlers, the area of south-central Washington that includes Hanford was a crossroads in the migratory lives of several tribes that fished, hunted and gathered roots here.
The Nez Perce, the Yakama Nation and the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, under 1855 treaties with the U.S. government, retained fishing, hunting and gathering rights for the land that became Hanford in 1943.
The 560-square-mile reservation was set up for the top-secret Manhattan Project. Plutonium for nuclear bombs was made here during World War II and the Cold War, leaving Hanford the most-contaminated nuclear site in the country.
The Department of Energy is looking into the tribe's concerns after meeting with representatives last week,said Kevin Clarke, manager of the department's Indian nations program.
The tribe contends that the pesticide DDT showed up in samples from Horseshoe Landfill and the degreasing chemical trichloroethylene is present in the groundwater at the Horn Rapids Landfill. Both landfills have been officially declared clean by the DOE.
-------- us nuc politics
World waits to see how Bush will handle global issues
CNN
December 15, 2000
http://www.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/12/15/world.issues/index.html
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- As George W. Bush prepares to assume the U.S. presidency, many of the world's nations are watching nervously for clues about how he might change America's international policies.
Although several leaders have said publicly that they look forward to good relations with Bush and the United States, some nonetheless are concerned about the perception -- whether accurate or not -- that the president-elect has a lack of experience with and knowledge of the world beyond U.S. borders.
Some also are concerned about statements Bush made on international policy during his presidential campaign, which they believe could strain relations if put into practice.
Peacekeepers and missile defense
For example, members of NATO, along with Russia, are worried about suggestions that Bush might pull U.S. peacekeeping troops out of the Balkans, and try to implement a space-based missile defense system. Russia's leadership, in particular, has said that going ahead with such a missile program would violate a 1972 ballistic missile treaty and plunge the United States and Russia once again into an expensive, dangerous arms race.
The missile issue also raises concern in China, where leaders fear that Bush might use a missile defense system to thwart the Communist mainland from asserting control over Taiwan. Chinese leaders will be watching the new administration carefully, as well, for any sign that it might sell arms to Taiwan. China considers Taiwan to be a renegade province and has threatened military action against the island if it declares itself an independent nation.
Other key issues in U.S.-China relations that Bush will likely have to approach include China's expected entry into the World Trade Organization and the sensitive subject of human rights. The United States has long been critical of how China deals with political dissidents and has based U.S. policy in large part on demands that China give its citizens more freedom. But China views the U.S. demands as unjustifiable interference in its internal affairs.
Elsewhere in Asia, Bush faces important strategic issues. India's relationship with Pakistan, and an ongoing dispute over the Kashmir region have brought the two countries into conflict in the past. India's military and economic clout add to its importance in U.S. international policy. Both India and Pakistan are nuclear powers. Analysts will try to gain a better understanding of Bush's position on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which he is said to oppose.
Middle East: Continuity or change?
In the Middle East, Israel is counting on Bush to continue the strong U.S. support that the Jewish state has had for decades. The Palestinians, however, want him to reassess American policy in the hope that they'll get more favorable treatment.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who faces an uphill election contest of his own in February, responded to the final result of the U.S. presidential election by saying that "similar values and joint interests" have long characterized U.S.-Israeli relations.
javascript:openWindow('/interactive/world/europe/0009/profiles/content/barak/frameset.exclude.html','windowname','toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,status=no,menubar=no,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,width=510,height=400')
"I'm confident that President-elect Bush, whom I know and respect, will continue together with us in consolidating these ties," Barak said.
But Palestinian spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi said she expects the United States, under the Bush administration, to conduct "a real assessment of where they went wrong" in the Mideast peace process.
http://www.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/12/15/world.issues/link.ashrawi.jpg
Palestinians believe that America's credibility and interests in the region have been severely damaged because its approach to the peace process has been one-sided in favor of Israel, Ashrawi said.
While they expect U.S. support for Israel to continue, Ashrawi said Palestinians hope for greater understanding, and realization of their shared interests with Americans.
Mexico's Fox eager for meeting
Another nation hopeful for better relations with the United States is Mexico, which shares one of the world's longest borders -- and a troubled history -- with its neighbor to the north.
Mexico's government on Thursday officially called for closer ties and its new president, Vicente Fox, hopes to have a one-on-one meeting with Bush within the next several weeks at his ranch near the town of San Cristobal to discuss the three issues that dominate relations between the two countries: Immigration, drug trafficking and trade.
http://www.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/12/15/world.issues/link.fox.dc.cnn.jpg
Jorge Castaneda, Mexico's foreign minister, said Fox wants such a meeting "to establish a new era in U.S.-Mexico relations."
Fox also wants to expand trade between the United States and Mexico, and some observers believe that's likely to happen with Bush as president.
"I think in the case of a Republican administration the emphasis will be more on the topic of commerce and investment than the environment or labor issues," political analyst Reynaldo Ortega told CNN.
CNN Chief International Correspondent Christiane Amanpour in London, Jerusalem Bureau Chief Mike Hanna in Moscow, Correspondents Lisa Rose Weaver in Beijing and Jerrold Kessel in Jerusalem, and Mexico City Bureau Chief Harris Whitbeck contributed to this report, written by CNN.com Writer Tom A. Hughes.
http://www.cnn.com/CNN/anchors_reporters/amanpour.christiane.html
http://www.cnn.com/CNN/anchors_reporters/hanna.mike.html
http://www.cnn.com/CNN/anchors_reporters/kessel.jerrold.html
http://www.cnn.com/CNN/anchors_reporters/whitbeck.harris.html
---
Meeting the World
Washington Post
Friday, December 15, 2000 ; Page A40
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9113-2000Dec14.html
THE WORLD has been attentively watching the U.S. presidential contest during the past five weeks--at times with unease, at times with relish, but always with uncertainty. Now that a winner at last has been determined, America's allies and adversaries will rush to test the authority of a new president elected under such extraordinary circumstances. By responding clearly and firmly, Gov. George W. Bush could do much to build confidence and a mandate for his leadership, both abroad and at home.
First in the greeting line, quite possibly, will be Saddam Hussein. While Florida has been counting votes, Saddam Hussein has pushed to break down United Nations control of Iraqi oil exports, with the clear expectation that a U.S. government in transition will be unable to preserve this last large check on his power. The Israelis and Palestinians will both look to the new president for a way out of their latest conflict--or at least a tilt toward their side. The nations of Latin America hope an April Summit of the Americas will break the impasse on hemispheric free trade; the countries of Eastern Europe hope NATO will soon endorse another expansion of the alliance; China may test the new administration's commitment to democracy in Taiwan. And then there is Osama bin Laden, the Saudi terrorist who is emerging as the likely author of the bombing of the USS Cole.
Mr. Bush appears to understand the need for quick attention to foreign policy. He has already begun working with Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, respectively his likely secretary of state and national security adviser. During the recount he sent preliminary signals to the rival parties of the Middle East as well as a warning to terrorists like Osama bin Laden. He has met with Vicente Fox, the new president of Mexico. Further tactical moves may be necessary during the coming weeks--especially to counter Saddam Hussein--and will require close coordination between the incoming and outgoing administrations.
More broadly, Mr. Bush could usefully employ the transition to clarify the sometimes conflicting signals his campaign sent. Mr. Bush frequently has said, for example, that he intends to strengthen America's ties with its NATO allies and with Japan--bonds he maintains were neglected by the Clinton administration. But Mr. Bush has also stressed shifts in policy that the Europeans and Japanese find alarming, including withdrawal of U.S. troops from peacekeeping operations in the Balkans and abandonment of negotiated nuclear arms reductions with Russia and of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Mr. Bush has said he wants to pursue a missile defense for the United States more quickly and aggressively than President Clinton did, but he also has said he supports a more ambitious system that could take far longer to develop and deploy. He has advocated a full review of U.S. defense policy and procurement that his advisers say could lead to the most sweeping changes in weapons and deployment since the Truman administration; but in the campaign's closing weeks he and Vice President-elect Richard Cheney spoke more often about bolstering the current military force.
Some of this is the usual sifting of campaign rhetoric from the hard policy priorities of a new administration. But Mr. Bush also will face choices between the broadly internationalist policies embraced by the last Republican administration under his father and the more unilateralist or isolationist leanings of his party's right wing. Though his foreign policy and defense team is drawn almost entirely from the last Bush administration, Mr. Powell and Ms. Rice are notable for their conservatism about foreign diplomatic and military commitments. Caution, especially with regard to deployment of U.S. troops, merits respect. But if he is to maintain the global position of leadership that he inherits, Mr. Bush must soon make clear that the "distinctly American internationalism" of which he speaks will not mean a retreat from America's deep engagement abroad--whether with allies in Europe and elsewhere, potential adversaries such as Iraq and China, or in support of those, from Serbia to Burma to the Ivory Coast, who are fighting for democracy and human rights.
-------
Run to the Right, Not the Middle
New York Times
December 15, 2000
By GARY BAUER
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/15/opinion/15BAUE.html
ARLINGTON, Va. -- Now that George W. Bush has just prevailed over Al Gore in a long, costly, vitriolic struggle over the presidency, he is getting plenty of advice. Pundits, political consultants and Republican advisers are telling the president-elect that he must go slow, run to the middle, avoid controversial issues and share power. As is often the case when there is a Washington consensus - the advice is wrong.
Certainly, the new president should be agreeable whenever possible and try to rise above petty personality differences that poison Washington. But when it comes to the fundamental policy differences between the two parties - those cannot, nor should not, be swept under the rug.
It is always political suicide to forsake your base and crush its hopes and dreams. Mr. Bush will need the continued loyalty and passionate support of millions of traditional conservative voters to weather the inevitable political firestorms of the next four years. And conventional wisdom nothwithstanding, he could never move left enough for the liberals to be satisfied.
By taking the advice to do little and accomplish it slowly, he would find himself leading no one, building nothing and disappointing his best friends. It is a path destined to end in four years.
Of course Mr. Bush will have to seek the support of Democrats in a closely divided Congress. But the coalitions he should seek are not in some mythical "center." Instead, Mr. Bush should move boldly ahead on a conservative governing vision - the same one that he emphasized during the better moments of his campaign and that he touched on in his gracious acceptance speech on Wednesday night. On each initiative he will find significant numbers of Democrats willing to vote with him.
Even before taking office, Mr. Bush can send a strong message with his appointments. For example, he should name a pro-life attorney general who believes all our children should be protected by the law. Mr. Bush should also nominate Supreme Court justices who believe the same.
Once in office, Mr. Bush should immediately repeal a long list of executive orders President Clinton issued over eight years. These fiats have hurt economic growth, by overregulating small businesses, worsened our energy crises by stopping drilling for oil and natural gas, and promoted a radical social agenda including financing international family planning groups that provide abortions abroad. Will liberals object? Of course they will. But Jesse Jackson, Barney Frank and Ted Kennedy will never support him no matter what he does.
Next, Mr. Bush should send four bills to Capitol Hill: a tax cut that combines marginal rate tax relief with an easing of the marriage penalty and an increase in the child tax credit; an immediate ban on partial- birth abortions; an education reform bill with a strong voucher provision; a new budget that rebuilds the American military and speeds work on a missile defense system. These initiatives will rally the people who voted for him, and significant numbers of Democrats in Congress are likely to support them as well.
Finally, Mr. Bush can surprise his critics by proposing campaign finance reform. He should support a bill equally tough on the big union and big business soft money contributions that are corrupting our politics.
Liberal leaders and special interest groups will resist these actions, and pundits will criticize them. Yet sizable majorities of the American people will support Mr. Bush. More importantly, Mr. Bush will show the rest of the country that he is a man of his word and a man of action.
Gary Bauer, a domestic policy adviser to President Ronald Reagan, is chairman of the Campaign for Working Families.
---
Clinton, Winding Up Trip, Tells Developed Nations Not to Forget the World's Poor
New York Times
December 15, 2000
By MARC LACEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/15/world/15PREX.html
COVENTRY, England, Dec. 14 - Laying out some of the challenges that will face the world after he leaves office, President Clinton today wound up what may be his final overseas trip as president with a plea to developed countries not to forget the poor in this era of high technology and globalization.
"No generation has ever had the opportunity that all of us now have to build a global economy that leaves no one behind and, in the process, to create a new century of peace and prosperity in a world that is more constructively and truly independent," Mr. Clinton told several hundred people at the University of Warwick. The university has a special institute that specializes in global issues.
"It is a wonderful opportunity," Mr. Clinton said of the spread of trade, communications and computer technology throughout the globe. "It is also a profound responsibility."
Mr. Clinton, who was to fly back to Washington late tonight, spent the morning in London, where he and Hillary Rodham Clinton had tea, coffee and cookies for about 20 minutes with Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace.
Mr. Clinton, who has met the royal family before, joked to the queen that after he leaves office he wants a golf rematch with her second son, Prince Andrew, who trounced him when the two last hit the links.
Presidential aides are still mulling whether Mr. Clinton ought to make a trip to North Korea, but that visit grows more unlikely by the day as his term runs out. So this may have been the final trip beyond the United States borders by a president who has traveled more than any other. It was Mr. Clinton's seventh trip to Britain, where he has established a close bond with Prime Minister Tony Blair.
"Bill Clinton has been a true leader of the Western world," Mr. Blair said in introducing the president, not long after he telephoned congratulations to the next one, President-elect George W. Bush. The prime minister noted that Mr. Clinton had been "a friend and confidant to me and leaders around the world.
In his foreign policy speech today, Mr. Clinton urged wealthy countries to consider forgiving the debts of nations in the developing world and to ensure that the "digital divide" is reduced between countries connected to computers and those left behind in the computer age.
"It's fair to ask, I suppose, are computers really an answer for people who are starving or can't yet read?" Mr. Clinton asked. "Is e- commerce an answer for villages that don't even have electricity? Of course, I wouldn't say that.
"We have to begin with the basics. But there should not be a choice between Pentium and penicillin."
The president, who often touts rosy statistics showing prosperity spreading throughout the world, focused today on the many problems that will outlast his presidency. He said half the world's people are struggling to survive on less than $2 a day, that nearly one billion live in chronic hunger, that half the children in the poorest countries are not in school and almost a billion adults have never learned to read.
Mr. Clinton has made globalization a foreign policy mantra, pursuing a free-trade agenda resisted by many. That resistance, he said, does not point out flaws in globalization itself but in a thoughtless approach to breaking down barriers among nations.
"The great question before us is not whether globalization will proceed, but how," the president said. "And what is our responsibility in the developed world to try to shape this process so that it lifts people in all nations."
Mr. Clinton largely steered clear of many high-profile issues the world will face in the years to come: the spread of terrorism, the effects of a missile shield, the role of peacekeepers stationed throughout the globe. Today, he focused on matters that often fall below the radar screens of foreign ministries, like the dangers of climate change, the national security threat that AIDS presents, and the importance that education and school lunches can play in stabilizing a country.
White House aides said that the president's speech was aimed at leaders the world over, not at Mr. Clinton's successor, who comes to the job with modest credentials in foreign affairs.
"President Clinton made the transition from governor to world leader, and it will be up to President-elect Bush to make that same transition," said P. J. Crowley, the president's national security spokesman. "He will, because the president of the United States has a unique mantle as a world leader. I don't think anyone will question that the United States will stay engaged. The question is how do you handle the challenges we all face?"
---
WORLD LEADERS
Congratulations, and Some Skepticism, as Other Nations Size Up Bush
New York Times
December 15, 2000
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/15/politics/15REAC.html
ROME, Dec. 14 - World leaders raced today to congratulate George W. Bush on his victory, but commentators and even some elected officials openly wondered about the legitimacy of Mr. Bush's mandate, as well as his preparedness for leading the world's only superpower.
Britain provided a glaring example of the gulf between official diplomacy and tabloid skepticism around the world. Prime Minister Tony Blair, who was the first foreign leader to reach Mr. Bush by telephone today, spoke glowingly of the "special relationship" Britain would continue to enjoy with the United States under Mr. Bush's leadership. But The Mirror newspaper ran a picture of the globe on its front page with an arrow pointing to Britain, under the headline: "Congrats on becoming president . . . p.s. we are here."
With the election's outcome clear, policy makers around the world began focusing on how Mr. Bush would approach foreign affairs. There was some mockery of his inexperience, though little apparent alarm. But even the most confident assessments of Mr. Bush's handling of foreign affairs were based more on familiarity with his father, former President George Bush, and the advisers that the younger Mr. Bush had inherited, than on a strong reading of the president-elect himself.
"We believe that Bush Sr. will back his son with his long experience," Maged Abdel Fatah, an aide to President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, said. "Our experience with Bush Sr. is an excellent one and the way he handled all matters during his term was a perfect way, such as with the gulf war. So we think that Bush Jr. will be backed by a wealth of experience that will help him to put his hands on the substantial keys in the region."
Countries that had clashed with the Clinton administration, like Afghanistan, Malaysia, Yugoslavia and China, expressed hope that Mr. Bush would prove more amenable.
Over all, most countries agreed that Mr. Bush was likely to be more isolationist than his predecessor but would respect the United States' basic foreign policy commitments.
France's former president, Valéry Giscard D'Estaing, a conservative, wrote a front-page article in the newspaper Le Monde seeking to reassure Frenchmen that they had nothing to fear from a Bush presidency because of the competence of his foreign policy team, (he described Condoleezza Rice, who will be Mr. Bush's national security adviser, as brilliant). Prime Minister Lionel Jospin of France sent Mr. Bush a congratulatory telegram, but he was also one of the few world leaders to publicly express concern about the manner in which Mr. Bush squeaked into office, saying, "Uncertainty will always remain around this election."
Countries with more urgent business with Washington focused on their own futures.
Israelis and Palestinians dealt with the probability that Mr. Clinton's successor would be less personally engaged in their conflict. Prime Minister Ehud Barak of Israel, one of the few foreign leaders who has met Mr. Bush, congratulated him with warm words that carried an implicit plea, saying he was convinced that a Bush administration "would continue in its predecessor's path of assisting the peoples of the Middle East in their quest for peace."
Israeli fears that a Republican president, especially a former Texas oilman, would prove more sympathetic to the Arab world than a Democrat, were offset by other strategic concerns. Recalling the vote in Congress on the 1991 Persian Gulf war, a former Israeli ambassador noted that the Republicans were more likely to back a use of force in the region, and display a heavier hand against Iraq and Iran.
Palestinians, who complain that Mr. Clinton's personal attention has been overshadowed by what they view as his team's pro-Israel bias, expressed hope that Mr. Bush would emulate his father, whom they view as having been tougher on Israel. The Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat said it was "definite" good news that Mr. Bush had been elected.
In Japan, many commentators spoke highly of Mr. Bush's foreign policy team. But some officials privately expressed uncertainty.
"Everyone says that Japan prefers the Republicans," an official of Japan's Foreign Ministery said, "but we must remember that some of our most difficult recent relations with Washington took place under Republican presidents. The Bush team has talked about upgrading the relationship with Japan, but that could mean greater demands on Japan. We are not really sure what it means."
While they refrained from public comment during the election campaign, Chinese officials have privately expressed concern about Mr. Bush's support for building national missile defenses, which could neutralize China's small nuclear forces, and his strong expressions of support for Taiwan. At the same time, Chinese officials noted that they had seen other presidents, including Mr. Clinton, moderate their stance toward China after assuming office. And they too seem to expect the senior Mr. Bush to guide his son.
Bush family ties, even more remote ones, were highlighted in Mexico, where commentators made much of one of Mr. Bush's sisters-in-law being Mexican-American and of Mr. Bush's only foreign language being Spanish.
But those links irritated many in Canada who feared that Mr. Bush could favor Mexico over his other neighbor on the continent. Canadian newspapers saw significance in Mr. Bush calling Vicente Fox Quesada on Nov. 28 to congratulate him on his coming inauguration as Mexico's president, but not calling to congratulate Prime Minister Jean Chrétien of Canada, who had won election to a third term the day before.
Mainly, guesswork was widespread, as nations pondered how Mr. Bush's contested victory and his lack of foreign expertise could play out.
"Overseas, the price to be paid is not that the president's actions won't be respected," Jiri Pehe, an adviser to President Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic, said, "but Bush will be more defensive than necessary. He may feel he won't have enough legitimacy in the eyes of foreign partners and won't take such bold moves. That may be good, however, if it will limit the tendency toward isolationism. And his administration is likely to be less partisan than before."
In Africa, some analysts expressed a hope that Mr. Bush's lack of support from African-Americans in the election could prod him to pay greater attention to issues like debt relief for impoverished nations, despite the Republican Party's traditional preference for market-oriented, business-backed policies.
Franklin Sonn, a former South African ambassador to the United States, said, "I'm actually expecting that one of the first foreign policy initiatives that the president-elect will be making will be to Africa - exactly to dispel that notion and to build a strong link to the African- American community."
---
Conservatives Looking for Action
New York Times
December 15, 2000 Filed at 1:13 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/politics/AP-Bush-Conservatives.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President-elect Bush's first priority may be healing wounds and reuniting the country, but that's not the aim of conservatives who backed him. Having finally wrested the Oval Office from the Democrats, some finally see an opening for their agenda.
They're more interested in the ``conservative'' aspect of Bush than the ``compassionate.''
``The conservative base is driven now to make certain that the Clinton-Gore team is forever washed away from the halls of power,'' said Mark Levin, who was chief of staff to Attorney General Ed Meese in the Reagan administration.
Conservatives signed up early to help Bush oust Sen. John McCain for the GOP nomination. They went on to provide the base of his support in both the campaign and the postelection fight. Now, they're making their voices heard as Bush assembles his administration.
The attorney general's post is a top priority. Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating, Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore and defeated Missouri Sen. John Ashcroft head conservatives' list of candidates.
They're also pushing for one of their own at the helm of the departments of Health and Human Services, Interior, Education and Labor, and for appointments to the dozens of White House and sub-cabinet level positions that influence social and economic policy.
And they are looking for Bush to reverse controversial policies such as the Food and Drug Administration's approval of the pill that allows women to abort early pregnancies without surgery.
Some key conservatives already are raising warning flags over the suggestion that Bush might appoint Democrats or moderate Republicans to key positions as a way of bringing the country together.
Gary Bauer, among the most conservative of Bush's opponents in the primaries, said he's troubled by suggestions that Bush may name Pennsylvania Gov. Thomas J. Ridge as secretary of defense.
``He was very much a peacenik-type of congressman during the Reagan years,'' Bauer said of Ridge. ``He voted in favor of a nuclear freeze, against the Nicaraguan freedom fighters, against the strategic defense initiative.''
Bauer also warned that conservatives will insist that Bush appoint judges who are anti-abortion, despite Bush's campaign promise that he would not impose such a standard on judicial nominees.
``If he sends a judge up for confirmation that did not have a record of pro life, there would be an unbelievable firestorm in the Republican Party,'' Bauer said.
But at least one prominent voice on the right is not making such demands. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Bush must reach out to the middle and work with conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans, even if it means angering his conservative base.
``If he spends a lot of his time trying to appease the right at the expense of reaching out to the middle, he will destroy his administration,'' Gingrich said in an interview.
Gingrich, who led the GOP takeover of the House after 40 years of Democratic rule, said the biggest mistake he made as speaker was trying to satisfy the most conservative members of his party in the House.
``I was the most conservative speaker in modern times, and I tried to appease the 10 people who were unappeasable,'' he said. ``All it did was make them feel more important, more emboldened.''
Gingrich said Bush's image as a leader, and his success as president, will be enhanced if he has ''10 or 15 people on the right biting at his ankles while he reaches out to the country.''
Some Republicans argue that Bush will be able to satisfy his conservative base and reach out to the middle at the same time by focusing early on legislation with bipartisan support that has been blocked by President Clinton.
That includes repeal of the marriage tax and the estate tax, bankruptcy reform and a ban on so-called partial birth abortions, all of which have broad support among conservatives.
``People forget how much of the gridlock was Clinton and not Democrats in Congress -- Clinton holding out and carrying the water for the hard left in the Democratic Party,'' said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform.
Norquist said Bush could spend the first two years of his presidency enacting bipartisan initiatives that conservatives want without having to touch the more controversial issues.
But others argue that such policy initiatives alone won't placate conservatives if Bush ignores their demands for key appointments or places Democrats and moderate Republicans in sensitive positions.
``My unsolicited advice is that George Bush should seriously consider following in the footsteps of Ronald Reagan,'' said Levin, who is now president of the Landmark Legal Foundation. ``Reagan understood that personnel makes policy and that your appointments early on in an administration are going to determine how successful you are.''
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Bush Turns to Foreign Policy Experts
Associated Press
December 15, 2000 Filed at 6:53 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/politics/AP-Bush-Foreign-Tests.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON (AP) -- From Iraq to Russia, the Balkans to the Middle East, a troubled world waits to test President-elect Bush, whose inexperience in foreign affairs makes him heavily dependent on a veteran team of Washington troubleshooters.
Bush, eager to calm concerns and move beyond questions about the legitimacy of his election, is expected to name his top advisers quickly, beginning Saturday with Colin Powell as secretary of state.
About to lead the world's only superpower, Bush already has rattled allies and adversaries alike with promises to bring American troops home from the Balkans and build a national missile defense system. World capitals are looking for reassuring signs of U.S. leadership once Bush takes office Jan. 20.
``It's terribly important for a president to take charge of his foreign policy early on,'' said Lee Hamilton, the former Indiana congressman who was chairman of the House International Relations Committee.
``I think it may be especially true of Bush because there is this perception out there that he's kind of a hands-off president, delegates a lot,'' said Hamilton, head of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. ``I think he's got to let people know he's in charge, that he understands his leadership is the most important ingredient for his success.''
The names of Bush's foreign policy leaders are Washington's worst kept secret: Powell to lead the State Department and Condoleezza Rice to be the White House national security adviser. They are respected as skillful administrators with pragmatic views yet there are questions about both.
Powell, one-time chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has been criticized as too cautious in the Persian Gulf War, stopping short of a knockout blow that would have destroyed Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard and driven the Iraqi leader from power.
Doubts also have been raised about the so-called Powell doctrine that prescribes dealing with trouble by setting clear political goals and using overwhelming force to achieve victory. Critics say Powell's formula is an overreaction to the Vietnam war and sharply limits when the military can be used.
``I like a military man who's reluctant to use force,'' said Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del. ``But if the use of force can only occur with massive commitment of forces ... then I think that is a prescription for paralysis.''
Rice, a Russian specialist on the National Security Council under Bush's father, was the chief foreign policy adviser for the new president during his campaign. She calls herself a ``Europeanist,'' acknowledging, however, that she needs a stronger grasp on the rest of the world.
Bush's vice president, Dick Cheney, whose experience ranges from being a congressman and White House chief of staff to serving as secretary of defense during the Gulf War, is expected to provide a steadying hand for the administration. Some people say he will be, in effect, Bush's prime minister.
That idea is challenged by some Cheney watchers. ``I think Dick Cheney will know when to stop, that he will want to have real influence rather than an appearance of excessive power,'' said Dimitri Simes, president of the Washington-based Nixon Center for Peace and Security. ``Cheney is a very secure person. I don't think he will want constantly to remind people how important he is.''
With little in his background to guide him, Bush himself has to set the strategic direction of his foreign policy and determine what his priorities are. Powell and Rice and Cheney are ``very seasoned people and will give him solid advice,'' said Hamilton.
``The difficulty for a president is not when all of his advisers agree on a problem,'' Hamilton added. ``The tough part of being president is when your advisers disagree and you have to make the call.''
While quick to send congratulations to Austin, presidents and prime ministers around the globe are trying to size up Bush, who famously failed a pop quiz about the identity of world leaders and has shown little interest in exploring beyond U.S. borders.
Bush's foreign travels have been limited to three visits to Mexico, two trips to Israel, a three-day Thanksgiving visit in Rome with one of his daughters in 1998 and a six-week excursion to China with his parents in 1975 when his father was the U.S. envoy to Beijing. Now, Bush is on a crash course in international affairs, receiving a daily intelligence briefing from the CIA.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, leaving office on Jan. 20, said Bush should recognize new security threats, such as the spread of AIDS, environmental problems, terrorism and the security of nuclear weapons in Russia.
``It is not your father's foreign policy,'' Albright said, referring to the world order and global challenges defined by the Cold War when Bush's dad was president.
Simes said the world is witnessing ``the end of the post Cold War era when the United States was the sole superpower and could shape most international developments to our liking without paying prohibitive costs.
``You see a new, assertive Russia,'' he said. ``You see a China which questions the world order defined by the United States, particularly in the Pacific. You see the collapse of the peace process in the Middle East with many moderate Arab nations moving away from the United States. You can see a backlash against globalization, which is perceived to a large extent as an American-orchestrated project.
``None of this, in my opinion, is beyond management,'' he said, ``but they require more than a highly competent but piecemeal approach to individual developments.''
Biden said Bush's global philosophy is unclear but he appears to be an internationalist ``who doesn't want to withdraw from the world and wants to engage the world. He doesn't seem to be part of the far-right, sort of unilateralist-slash-neoisolationist.''
-------- us nuc waste
DOE To Probe Leak Re Yucca Mountain DOE, Industry Scam
Fri, 15 Dec 2000 04:23:46 -0500
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.sltrib.com/12142000/nation_w/53537.htm
WASHINGTON -- Energy Secretary Bill Richardson has directed his inspector general to investigate allegations that contractors compromised a scientific evaluation of whether Yucca Mountain in Nevada is a suitable site for nuclear waste disposal.
Richardson's directive came after a draft report about the Yucca site's suitability included a note from contractors saying it would help sell the controversial project to Congress.
Nevada lawmakers expressed outrage after learning about the note, and Richardson's move comes four days after Democratic Sen. Harry Reid called for a similar investigation.
Richardson said he wouldn't release the report or recommend a site for nuclear waste storage until after the investigation.
"I wish to reaffirm that the U.S. Energy Department's decision on the suitability of the Yucca site must -- and will -- be based solely on scientific evidence and not on what's best for the nuclear industry," Richardson said.
Reid called contractors biased and prejudiced. He welcomed Richardson's call for an investigation.
"There's no reason for him to be a cheerleader for the industry," Reid said.
"Richardson has always been a fair guy."
Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is the only site being studied by the federal government to entomb 77,000 tons of the nation's high-level radioactive waste.
Richardson's agency is studying the site's feasibility, but is prohibited by federal law from taking sides during the selection process.
http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20001214/2915928s.htm
UK, Dutch Experts Want Food Growing Areas Laced With Chernobyl Fallout Restricted For Up To 30 Years
Page 23A
Many people fear that more fallout from nuclear disaster is yet to come By Peter Shard Agence-France Presse
PARIS -- Among the most alarming statements in the lead up to the final shutdown of the Chernobyl nuclear plant came in an aside made by a manager at the site.
Valentin Kupny broke what many saw as a conspiracy of silence when he admitted that no one could guarantee that the 160 tons of radioactive material inside the ill-fated No. 4 reactor was stable.
Nearly a decade and a half and an estimated tens of thousands of deaths after the explosion on April 26, 1986, the last surviving reactor, No. 3, will be shut down on Friday.
An engineer will flick a switch on the orders of Ukraine President Leonid Kuchma, control rods will be inserted into the reactor and the huge turbines will fall silent.
The process will be eerily like the moment when the disaster happened -- albeit in a different reactor.
The accident occurred during a test shutdown of Reactor No. 4. A design fault caused a huge surge of power to course through the reactor, blowing the lid off and spewing radioactive dust.
The shutdown will take just moments, but the legacy of the explosion will endure for many years, with ongoing health, environmental and social consequences.
British and Dutch experts have suggested that food-growing areas badly hit by the fallout should be restricted for up to 30 years to allow residues of Caesium 137 in soil and water to dissipate.
Soil contaminated by the fallout is able to wreak genetic mutation in plants, according to Swiss and Ukrainian researchers.
Scientists planted identical crops of wheat in a heavily contaminated plot within the 19-mile exclusion zone around the plant and at a clean site just outside. In the space of one generation -- just 10 months -- the wheat grown in the contaminated soil had developed mutations. According to the findings, there is a risk that flawed or damaged genes grown in contaminated soil could be handed on to subsequent generations.
Further research by an Israeli group that has airlifted hundreds of Jewish children from regions devastated by the disaster shows that health risks remain high.
''This is the only disaster of its kind that actually gets worse with time rather than better,'' says Jay Litvin, medical liaison for Chabads Children of Chernobyl. ''It is the insidious nature of radiation. The fact that levels of radiation that still exist there are affecting the health of children today, even those born today, means people cannot be allowed to forget.''
Meanwhile, there are no signs that the exclusion zone around the plant will be lifted, and the job prospects for 5,500 employees who will be laid off when the plant closes on Friday look bleak. Farmland in parts of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus will be unusable.
In the soil and in the water tables of the areas surrounding the reactor, high levels of Caesium 137, Strontium 90 and Plutonium 139, 140 and 141 from radioactive fallout are concentrated in the topsoil to a depth of 6 inches.
There will be political fallout, as well. Ukrainians are concerned that the closure will make them more dependent on Russia for power.
Another problem is the increasingly frail ''sarcophagus,'' the concrete shell that stands between the world and an estimated 160 tons of radioactive material inside the broken reactor. Experts say 10% of the shell's surface is cracked and warn that the structure is in danger of collapse, an event that would trigger a new catastrophe.
The greatest concern here is with the continuing impact of the disaster on health.
Thyroid cancer in children, caused by radioactive fallout, has soared to epidemic proportions, while deaths among the 600,000 cleanup workers brought in from across the former Soviet Union are thought to be considerable.
However, there is no evidence to support claims there has been an increase in the incidence of genetic malformation within the immediate area or in Western Europe.
-------- MILITARY
-------- drug war
Workers Get Greater Drug Test Protection
New York Times
December 15, 2000
By LAURENCE ZUCKERMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/15/national/15AIR.html?pagewanted=all
The Transportation Department announced new rules yesterday to protect the rights of 8.5 million workers who undergo drug testing that the government makes mandatory as a safety measure. But critics, while welcoming the changes, said they did not go far enough.
The new rules were made public on the same day that the Department of Health and Human Services disclosed new evidence of testing laboratories' shortcomings that can mistakenly brand innocent workers drug abusers, ending their careers.
The most significant of the rules involve so-called validity testing, a relatively new procedure to determine whether a urine specimen is legitimate. Under current rules, transportation workers whose specimens are found to be invalid are assumed to be cheaters. Many are fired without any opportunity for an appeal.
The new rules extend to validity testing two safeguards that already protect a worker who actually tests positive for any of five illegal drugs: cocaine, heroin, amphetamines, marijuana and PCP. A medical review officer, hired by the employer, will have the right to cancel the result of a validity test upon finding a sound medical reason for a specimen's testing illegitimate. And workers will have the right to demand that a second sample of their specimen be tested at a laboratory different from the first.
The drug testing of millions of transportation workers - largely bus and truck drivers, airline flight crews and mechanics, and a variety of railroad workers - is required by the government in the name of public safety.
But serious questions about validity testing, which is now optional, at the employer's discretion, were raised in September after Delta Air Lines agreed to reinstate four flight attendants and a pilot whom it fired last year for failing validity tests. Delta had maintained that the tests were accurate, and the four flight attendants, though insisting that they had not tampered with their specimens, had been unable to challenge the airline's decision.
But after the pilot appealed the Federal Aviation Administration's revocation of his license, it was discovered that the laboratory that had performed the tests had not followed government testing standards and, in a subsequent cover-up of that failure, had falsified evidence.
The Health and Human Services Department, which supervises the validity testing laboratories, subsequently inspected all 66 of them to see if they were meeting the standards. The agency said yesterday that as a result of its review, it would instruct laboratories to cancel the results of tests failed by 250 to 300 workers. (It would not say whether the Delta workers were among them.)
That number "is telling us how broad the issue is," said Robert Morus, a Delta pilot who has taken the lead on the matter for the Air Line Pilots Association.
Most major airlines and railroads say they automatically fire employees who fail validity tests. But exactly how many people have lost their jobs since validity testing guidelines were first introduced by the government two years ago is not known.
Federal officials say validity testing is necessary to combat a growing number of people who try to beat drug tests by adulterating their samples, with products that range in nature from simple lemonade to items sold over the Web with a guarantee to mask drug use.
"We have to protect the integrity of the program," said Mary Bernstein, director of the Office of Drug and Alcohol Policy and Compliance at the Transportation Department. "We would not be doing what was necessary in terms of safety in the workplace if we did not have ways of addressing the problem" of cheating.
The Transportation Department does not have precise data indicating how many workers are cheating. But it cites numbers compiled by Quest Diagnostics, one of the country's biggest testing laboratories, which has said that roughly 2,000 of the 650,000 government-mandated specimens it tested last year showed evidence of tampering.
Yesterday unions, as well as lawyers representing fired workers, lauded the Transportation Department's new rules, but said they still did not do enough to protect workers. The Air Line Pilots Association said it would like to see workers gain the right to take the initiative in challenging test results with their employer, rather than depend on an employer-hired medical review officer.
The pilots' union and other critics also said the government was applying a faulty standard to determine which specimens are fraudulent.
According to that standard, a urine specimen that shows creatinine, a byproduct of muscle metabolism, to be at a level of 20 milligrams or less per deciliter is considered "dilute," while a sample with 5 milligrams or less per deciliter is considered "substituted," meaning it could not possibly have come directly from a human.
But some forensic toxicologists say a small but significant number of the 40 million workers subject to random drug tests in transportation and other industries each year could fall below the five-milligram threshold if they simply drink a lot of water before the test or have any of several disorders, including kidney disease, sickle cell anemia and diabetes.
Further, women are known to excrete less creatinine than men. There is also evidence that small people who do not eat meat are susceptible of falling below the threshold, particularly if they have consumed a great deal of water.
Yasuko Ishikawa, one of the four Delta flight attendants who lost their jobs, weighed 90 pounds, rarely ate meat and, on the day she was tested last year, drank about three quarts of water to avoid dehydration during a nine-hour flight from Japan. A few days later she was told that her sample had been "substituted," and within weeks, Delta had fired her for submitting a false specimen.
"I was just in total shock," said Ms. Ishikawa, who immigrated from Japan in 1991 and vehemently denies ever using drugs or altering her specimen. "I couldn't understand what was going on."
In February, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services, issued a summary of the research it relied on to set the standard. Critics say that only a handful of the 47 studies cited in the document are relevant to the issue of validity testing specifically rather than just drug testing generally, and they note that this handful involved just 18 subjects, only 3 of whom were women.
Robert L. Stephenson II, acting director of the substance abuse agency's division of workplace programs, maintains that the science is sound. Nevertheless, his office has begun a review of the standard, inviting public comment.
The Transportation Department said the new safeguards it announced yesterday would go into effect next month. It added that validity testing, which has been optional for transportation companies since 1998, would not become mandatory until the Health and Human Services Department finished the review of the standard next summer.
---
New Charges in Ecstasy Case Are Filed Against Gravano
New York Times
December 15, 2000
By ALAN FEUER
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/15/nyregion/15BULL.html
Already behind bars in Phoenix on narcotics charges, Salvatore Gravano, the Mafia hit man better known as Sammy the Bull, was named yesterday in a new complaint that accused him of buying thousands of tablets of the drug Ecstasy from associates of an Israeli organized crime gang.
Mr. Gravano has been an underworld legend ever since he served as the second-in-command of the Gambino crime family under John J. Gotti, the family's former boss. After Mr. Gravano's defection in 1991, his turncoat testimony helped convict nearly 40 mob figures, including Mr. Gotti, who was found guilty of racketeering and murder in 1992 and was sentenced to life in prison.
In February, Mr. Gravano was arrested in Arizona - along with his wife, his 24-year-old son, his 27-year- old daughter and 32 others - and accused of being involved in overseeing and financing an operation that the authorities said sold 20,000 to 25,000 tablets of Ecstasy each week in the Phoenix area.
At the time, the authorities said the ring's chief distributor was a 24- year-old man named Michael Papa, who was described as a founder of a white supremacist youth gang known as the Devil Dogs.
The new complaint, which was handed down in Federal District Court in Brooklyn yesterday, retraces much of the same ground that was covered in the Feburary charges. It took those charges one step further, however, by accusing Mr. Gravano, his son, Gerard, and Mr. Papa of buying some 40,000 Ecstasy pills from a New York drug gang that the government says was run by Ilan Zarger, an Israeli national with ties to the Israeli mob. In an intelligence report written by federal drug agents last year, Israeli organized-crime syndicates were named as the primary sources of Ecstasy in the United States.
"We caught an old dog trying to learn new tricks," said Raymond W. Kelly, the commissioner of the United States Customs Service, which took part in the case.
The complaint also provided additional details about Mr. Gravano's attempts to wrest control of the Ecstasy market in the Southwest. It mentioned, in particular, an incident at an Arizona nightclub called Pompei in which Gerard Gravano and Mr. Papa were said to have beaten up one of Mr. Zarger's dealers because they believed he was selling drugs on their turf.
After the assault, the complaint goes on, Mr. Zarger sent a bodyguard, known in the underworld as Macho, to Arizona to protect his dealer, who was described in court papers only as a man given to driving expensive cars and dressing in long, black leather coats. The complaint adds that Mr. Zarger was captured on videotape about the same time saying that his organization had "someone standing by to whack" Mr. Gravano, if it came to that.
Before such severe steps were taken, however, the dealer was summoned to Uncle Sal's, a restaurant run by the Gravano family in Arizona, federal prosecutors said. At the restaurant, they added, Mr. Gravano is said to have told the dealer: "I own Arizona. It's locked down. You can't sell pills here without going through me."
Next, the government said, Mr. Gravano demanded a fee for every pill the dealer sold in Arizona. It was an arrangement, prosecutors said, that the dealer eventually accepted in a slightly different form, agreeing to sell Ecstasy to Mr. Gravano at a discount of 25 cents per pill.
According to federal prosecutors, the drug ring the dealer worked for was the largest ever to have been based in New York City and was responsible for distributing nearly four million Ecstasy pills across the country between 1997 and this June. The prosecutors said that its leader, Mr. Zarger, was in turn supplied by a man named Jacob Orgad, who is believed to be a high-ranking member of the Israeli mob.
Mr. Zarger was arrested in July and charged with drug violations along with 15 others, several of whom the government said were members of yet another crime group known as the Brooklyn Terror Squad. This group, both prosecutors and their victims say, was made up of young men and women from Brooklyn who wreaked havoc in the city's nightclub scene by robbing and assaulting young people as they danced at raves or at local night spots.
Mr. Gravano, his son and Mr. Papa are expected to be returned to Brooklyn for an arraignment as early as next week, prosecutors said.
---
U.S. arrests 50 in Mexican drug ring probe
Washington Times
December 15, 2000
By Jerry Seper THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-20001215225858.htm
More than 50 suspects were arrested yesterday in an international narcotics investigation targeting a suspected Mexican drug operation that sent tons of cocaine and marijuana annually into the United States.
U.S. authorities, led by the Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI and the U.S. Customs Service, took the suspects into custody following raids in New York, Illinois, Ohio, Tennessee, Mississippi and Texas. Another 50 suspects are still being sought.
The State Department was offering a $2 million reward for the suspected kingpin, Osiel Cardenas-Guillen, and two of his top lieutenants, Adan Medrano and Juan Manual Garza-Rendon. Cardenas-Guillen has openly threatened U.S. drug agents and is known for violent purges of his own organization.
The arrests are part of an undercover investigation known as "Operation Impunity II," which began in October 1999. It is the third major probe by the DEA since 1997 of the Cardenas-Guillen ring, which operates out of Reynosa and Matamoros, Mexico.
DEA officials said the Cardenas-Guillen operation was put together from the remnants of two other drug rings formerly led by Amado Carrillo Fuentes and Juan Garcia Abrego.
Carrillo Fuentes, known as the "Lord of the Skies," was considered Mexico's No. 1 drug smuggler. He died in Mexico City in 1997 after plastic surgery in a failed attempt to alter his appearance. Garcia Abrego was extradited to the United States, tried and convicted.
Mexican authorities, who assisted in the undercover probe, were seeking suspects in that country on eight warrants issued by U.S. courts. Another warrant was sent to the Dominican Republic for police there to arrest a Dominican national.
The Mexican attorney general's office announced the arrest of three Colombians, Ruben Dario Nieto Benjumea, Gustavo Adolfo Londono Zapata and Elkin F. Cano Villa. Mexican authorities also seized several properties belonging to Cardenas-Guillen.
Cardenas-Guillen was indicted, along with seven associates, in the last several weeks in Brownsville, Texas, on charges of conspiracy to distribute drugs and for assaulting federal officers. The indictments were unsealed yesterday.
The assault charges, the DEA said, stem from a Nov. 9, 1999, incident when a DEA agent and an FBI agent were surrounded at midday on the street in Matamoros by more than a dozen men armed with AK-47 and AR-15 assault weapons and gold-plated .45-caliber pistols.
The DEA said Cardenas-Guillen stuck his head and a submachine gun into the agents' car and threatened to kill them. The agents, however, convinced him that their deaths would not be in his best interest.
"We are sending a clear and strong message that no one can threaten or harm a federal agent with impunity," said DEA Administrator Donnie R. Marshall. "Make no mistake, if you harm a special agent, we will spare no effort to ensure that you are brought to justice."
Before yesterday's raids, Operation Impunity II had netted 82 arrests, $10.8 million in cash, 9,000 pounds of marijuana and 5,266 kilograms of cocaine. Overall, the three operations produced 248 arrests and seized $36 million, 25,000 pounds of marijuana and 21,000 kilograms of cocaine.
"The rules of evidence force us to periodically take down parts of this operation, but the three operations show we're not stopping. We keep hitting them," said Joseph Keefe, who heads the DEA's special operations division. "We've affected them, and forced them into new alliances to keep functioning."
Attorney General Janet Reno said the success of Operation Impunity II was "largely the result of the outstanding coordination between federal, state and local law enforcement officials and prosecutors across the country."
The DEA said the Cardenas-Guillen gang smuggled cocaine from Colombia into this country hidden under tractor-trailer loads of carrots, cilantro and lettuce.
They said nearly 60 percent of each shipment was moved to New York and turned over to Colombian and Dominican distribution cells.
The other 40 percent was kept by the Mexican-led gang as payment for the smuggling operation and was shipped to their cells in Chicago, Houston, Memphis, Tenn., and Columbus, Ohio, for distribution by their own people.
-------- u.n.
U.N. Peacekeeping Mission to Congo Is Revived
New York Times
December 15, 2000
By BARBARA CROSSETTE
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/15/world/15NATI.html
UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 14 - A faltering advance mission preparing the way for a peacekeeping force in Congo was buoyed today when the Security Council lengthened its life and doubled the number of monitors.
Leonard She Okitundu, who was named Congo's foreign minister in a government shuffle last month, was in New York to speak to the Council. Mr. She Okitundu, a lawyer specializing in asylum and rights cases, welcomed the decision, which extends the life of the mission until June 15 and calls for 240 more military observers, for a total of 500.
He pledged that his government would not impede the troops. There have been many confrontations over the past year between the United Nations and the Congo government, led by President Laurent Kabila.
Until very recently, there had been scant hope in the Council that a full- fledged peacekeeping force could ever be sent to Congo, although a force of 5,537 was authorized nearly a year ago.
But meetings among African leaders, rebel commanders and nations with combatants in the region, the scene of Africa's widest war, have produced some new optimism.
"There is certainly a political will in the region to move forward," said Jean-David Levitte, the French ambassador to the United Nations and sponsor of the Council resolution, which was adopted unanimously. "But there is in the region a real difficulty to identify the way forward." Mr. Levitte, who toured Africa in May and met leaders with troops in the dispute, including President Kabila, said the new resolution was intended to point the way.
Rwanda, Uganda, Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe are all involved in the war. Zambia has been mediating. At a meeting Dec. 6 in Harare, Zimbabwe, all parties to the conflict except one rebel group adopted a "disengagement" plan that outlined a staged pullback of troops.
A meeting between the Security Council and regional leaders would follow, according to the plan. "If our partners from Africa are ready," Mr. Levitte said, United Nations troops can begin to be positioned, starting in two disputed towns, Kisangani and Mbandaka.
He added that eventually peacekeepers would have to be stationed on the border between Rwanda and Congo, "where the heart of the problem lies."
-------- u.s.
Final slap
December 15, 2000
Inside the Ring
Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
Notes from the Pentagon.
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inring-2000121521106.htm
The Clinton administration is preparing its parting shot at the U.S. military: shortchanging a promised pay raise for troops. With some soldiers, airmen, Marines and sailors living on food stamps, the new defense-authorization act signed by the president in October directs the Pentagon to give personnel a total pay increase of 4.2 percent - a 3.7 percent boost in pay and an additional 0.5 percent rise in other benefits. Well, the bean counters at the Office of Management and Budget and in the Pentagon's budget shop now are proposing a total 3.2 percent increase, we are told. The reason: the budget writers are demanding that each military service make up the 1 percent difference from their own budgets, which are already tight, by cutting funds for operations and maintenance or weapons programs. "This is their goodbye present," one unhappy official familiar with the budget plan. The stealth pay cut contradicts President Clinton's support for the pay boost made in a signing statement issued Oct. 30. Mr. Clinton said the increase would begin "to address the concern the Congress and I share with regard to service members."
Military votes
Rep. Bill Thomas, California Republican, is criticizing Senate Democrats for holding up his bill to allow polling places on domestic military bases. His efforts are attracting return fire from Democrats and some military people for his opposition each year to the Military Voting Rights Act inserted in the defense-authorization bill. Sponsored by Sen. Phil Gramm, Texas Republican, the act would prohibit states from withdrawing residency rights from service members away on orders. It would also reinforce a federal mandate to states to accept overseas military ballots. Mr. Thomas tells us it is not inconsistent for him to back his own military-voting bill, while opposing another. Said the congressman, "When you look at [Mr. Gramm's measure] you find it kind of interesting what they want out of federal law is for example, proposed rules on accepting absentee ballots. Every state already does that. . . . The vast majority in the House and Senate agree with me. What this would be is a federal intervention in elections that has never been done before." The Senate and House Armed Services committees plan hearings next year on the Pentagon's system of collecting and delivering absentee ballots overseas. In Florida, Democratic Party attorneys challenged scores of ballots on grounds they lacked a postmark, a requirement in some states for the ballot to count as a legal vote. The Pentagon later said many envelops miss getting stamped because of postage-free delivery. Defense Secretary William S. Cohen ordered the inspector general's office to review the entire process and make recommendations. "What we need to do is focus on just what are the mechanics for making sure our men and women in uniform get to vote and are ballots timely collected and put in the appropriate jurisdiction?" Rep. Steve Buyer, Indiana Republican and chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee on military personnel, sent colleagues a memo after investigating ballot handling in Florida. He said he determined that election boards threw out an unspecified number of absentee ballots for lack of a postmark, despite a superceding 1986 federal law that says the ballots did not need one. In fact, Mr. Buyer's research showed that, under one section of Florida administrative rules, ballots with either a postmark, or a signature and date, can be accepted by canvassing boards for a federal election. "Federal law does not require that overseas ballots be postmarked," Mr. Buyer said. "The Department of Defense regulations do require a postmark, but as is well known by anyone who has served in the military, it is not practical to expect all military and diplomatic mail to be postmarked."
The Bill Cohen show
The glittery $295,000 party thrown recently in Hollywood by Defense Secretary William S. Cohen and his wife, Janet, is raising concerns inside the Pentagon that the military is being misused by the Clinton administration for more than just peacekeeping. The word from some in the building is that Mrs. Cohen, a former television reporter, pushed for the party because she is angling to replace Motion Picture Association of America President Jack Valenti as the movie industry's top lobbyist sometime in the future. Pentagon officials tell us the party, held to generate support for the military among entertainers, is only one example. The latest worry is Mr. Cohen's decision to turn over the aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman, the only flattop currently deployed in the Mediterranean, to the jocular Fox Sports television broadcast team this weekend. "They have to shut down operations for three days, all for some TV show," said one official. He said putting the carrier out of action is causing some national-security concerns. Mr. Cohen decided earlier this year to overrule the Navy after the sea service balked at allowing a recreational vehicle show at the Naval Air Station in Brunswick, Maine. Mr. Cohen acted on an appeal from Maine Gov. Angus King, a personal friend of the defense secretary's. The Navy said no to the event under rules that prohibit holding nonmilitary events on bases. As for disrupting operations, the RV show clearly did just that. Aviators and support personnel had to drive three hours by car to the temporary base near Bangor, where a squadron of jets was relocated for the duration of the show. Maintenance crews were forced to fix planes without shelter, in one case repairing a jet engine in pouring rain.
Intercepts
• Publicists for HarperCollins spent last week making frantic telephone calls to defense reporters around town warning them about a manuscript they distributed. The book, by Time magazine reporter Douglas C. Waller, contained unspecified "errors." It then delivered a corrected manuscript on the book about the reporter's three months aboard a nuclear submarine. • The Army inspector general has stung the Army Corps of Engineers for doctoring data used to justify water projects on the Mississippi River. But congressional aides are predicting Army Secretary Louis Caldera will not capitalize on the Corps' vulnerability by exercising a series of reforms he proposed to rein in the agency's independence. The reason: Congressional aides have warned the Army that if the Corps' decision-making is put in the hands of Army political appointees, then Congress will cut off funds for the service's cherished 10-year transformation plan. "Transformation will go up in smoke," one senior military staffer told us."
• Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough are syndicated columnists. Mr. Gertz can be reached at 202/636-3274 or by e-mail at gertz@twtmail.com. Mr. Scarborough can be reached at 202/636-3208 or by e-mail at scarbo@twtmail.com.
----
Gen. Shelton sees China as growing threat to U.S.
December 15, 2000
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-2000121523714.htm
The Pentagon's top general warned yesterday that China may emerge as a Soviet-like superpower in the coming years.
"I am firmly convinced that we need to focus all elements of U.S. power and diplomacy on ensuring that China does not become the 21st-century version of the Soviet bear," said Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during a speech to the National Press Club.
In particular, the United States needs to convince China that resolving its differences with Taiwan peacefully "is the only way ahead."
China's government stated in a recent official report that the situation in the Taiwan Strait was "grim." The Communist government is building up its missile forces opposite the island and has also stepped up threatening rhetoric, calling for unification, through force if necessary.
Gen. Shelton said the combination of a capitalist-style economy and Communist political dictatorship is a potential threat to regional stability. He noted that it will not be easy for the United States to prevent China from becoming a new Soviet Union.
"China takes a distrustful view of the United States' intentions, as articulated in their recent defense white paper," he said. The government white paper characterized the United States as a global menace and threat to peace.
"They are aggressively modernizing their military forces, both conventional as well as nuclear. At the same time, they hope to maintain control of an expanding capitalist-like economy under a communist hierarchy that embraces centralized planning and centralized control.
"This situation is a contradiction that could threaten China's internal power, and consequently threaten stability throughout the region."
Gen. Shelton made no mention of the recent long-range missile test carried out by China during his visit to the country last month.
The flight test of the new DF-31 mobile missile was the second in the missile-development program and officials said a third flight test could take place in the next several weeks.
The four-star general, who will finish his term as Joint Chiefs chairman in September, said the next administration will need to boost defense spending by $60 billion to $100 billion to fix problems caused by underfunding during the Clinton administration, a depletion that has caused a "fraying" of the military.
The problem for defense planners is "plenty of strategy, not enough forces," Gen. Shelton said.
"And the wear and tear on our equipment is significant, leading to what has been termed as a fraying of our force," he said.
Recent instability in Haiti, Africa, Indonesia and Southwest Asia provide a window on the future international-security environment, Gen. Shelton said.
"I think we all realize it's murky, it's frustrating and it's increasingly dangerous," he said.
Asked if there will be any changes in the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy of permitting homosexuals to serve secretly in the ranks, Gen. Shelton said: "I think that the current policy strikes the right balance between the requirements for good law, order and discipline, and provides for opportunities for men and women to serve the nation, and I think from the policy standpoint, we've got it right."
Improvements can be made in implementing the policy, he noted.
---
Military votes must count
Washington Times
December 15, 2000
Samuel F. Wright
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-column-20001215183316.htm
The media and the Internet are crackling with anger about the Democrats' concerted challenge to military voting rights in Florida. This is not the first time that the Democrats have sought to overturn an election result by disenfranchising the brave young men and women who are away from home and prepared to lay down their lives in defense of our country.
In 1996, Texas Rural Legal Aid (TRLA) sought to overturn the election for the offices of sheriff and county commissioner of Val Verde County, Texas. The Democrats may have been emboldened to challenge military voting rights this year because they got away with it four years ago. If only Election Day votes were counted, Democrats won those two offices. When 800 military absentee ballots were counted, Republicans won. Using federal tax dollars (through the Legal Services Corporation), TRLA brought suit against the county and the successful candidates in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas. TRLA contended that the 800 military personnel were not "real residents" of the county.
TRLA also sent out with the approval of the Clinton-appointed judge, a 24-page written deposition. The deposition inquired into each voter's intentions about where to live after leaving the military. In finding a "likelihood of success on the merits" and enjoining the installation of the two Republican victors, Judge Fred F. Biery relied on the completed questionnaires as evidence. His discussion of one particular voter (an Air Force officer then stationed in Colorado) is particularly instructive. Responding to the deposition, the officer stated that he intended to return to Texas when he retired from the Air Force, but probably to Austin or San Antonio rather than Val Verde County. Judge Biery held that this officer did not have the right to vote in Val Verde County because he had no present intent to return to that county. See Casarez vs. Val Verde County, 957 F. Supp. 847, 860 (W.D. Tex. 1997).
Judge Biery, TRLA and the Democratic Party of Texas all insisted that this case concerned only where military personnel should vote, not whether. However, if Judge Biery's conception of the law was correct, this officer (and many others like him) would have no right to vote anywhere. This officer's situation is quite typical for career military personnel. During an active duty career of 20 years or more, the service member is likely to change his or her mind many times about where to live upon retirement.
Ever since the Texas lawsuit was filed in 1996, Sens. Phil Gramm, Kay Bailey Hutchison, the late Paul Coverdell and others have been pushing for federal legislation to secure military voting rights. In each of the last four years, the Senate (but not the House) has included the proposed "Military Voting Rights Act" as part of the Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Citing "states' rights" concerns, Rep. William M. Thomas, as chairman of the House Administration Committee, has refused to waive serial referral of the NDAA to his committee and refused to hold hearings in his committee.
The Founders clearly intended that national defense would be at the very core of the responsibility of the federal government, not the states. Our national government clearly has the authority and the responsibility to ensure that its military personnel are not disenfranchised by the circumstances of their service. Even the most ardent federalist should support federal legislation to ensure the effective enfranchisement of military personnel.
Recent results in Florida and elsewhere reaffirm that military personnel are among the most reliable supporters of the Republican Party. Election results also show that the two major parties are virtually equal in strength. We simply cannot afford to allow ill-considered philosophical compunctions to stand in the way of enfranchising our party's most reliable voters.
In a 1952 letter to Congress, President Harry Truman wrote: "About 2,500,000 men and women in the Armed Forces are of voting age at the present time. Many of those in uniform are serving overseas, or in parts of the country distant from their homes. They are unable to return to their states either to register or to vote. Yet these men and women, who are serving their country and in many cases risking their lives, deserve above all others to exercise the right to vote in this election year. At a time when these young people are defending our country and its free institutions, the least we at home can do is to make sure that they are able to enjoy the rights they are being asked to fight to preserve."
I suggest that Truman's words are as true today as they were in 1952, and that those words should be addressed to today's Congress. We need federal legislation protecting members of the armed forces and their families from challenges to their voting rights based on alleged non-residence, the lack of postmarks and other spurious grounds. With the help of President-elect George W. Bush and the 107th Congress, America's sons and daughters who serve in our armed forces will not have to wait another half-century to enjoy a basic civil right that the rest of us take for granted.
Samuel F. Wright is the military voting rights coordinator for the American Veterans and Defense Alliance. E-mail: wrightsam@msn.com.
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
Recount, Sue, Await Results. Sound Familiar?
New York Times
December 15, 2000
By AL BAKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/15/nyregion/15HEMP.html
GARDEN CITY, N.Y., Dec. 14 - There are no former secretaries of state, no dueling Supreme Courts, no hanging or dimpled chads.
But just when you thought the long national civics lesson in election law was over, there is the epochal battle for one of the three seats on the nonpartisan West Hempstead-Hempstead Gardens Water District's Board of Commissioners. With a three-vote margin, agitated claims and counterclaims about the need for recounts, and a court date next Monday, it is shaping up as an unlikely dinner theater reprise of the more familiar election drama that came to a finale Wednesday.
This time, a defender of the environment, Michael A. Uhl, who had never run for office before, is clinging to a 393-390 lead over Anthony Dignoti, a 30-year incumbent, for one of three water board seats. The board meets weekly to oversee operations in the water district and pays its members $80 per work day and provides health insurance.
Mr. Dignoti is seeking a recount, and has hired Peter A. Bee, a lawyer who happens to represent both the county's Republican administration in labor matters and the county's powerful Republican party committee, to argue his case.
"At this point, of course I contested it, I had to," Mr. Dignoti, 86, said today, explaining he was so upset by the campaign, which he said involved falsehoods, that he could not think straight. "I am absolutely clean as a whistle. I am clean as white milk."
Mr. Uhl, 42, the vice president of the West Hempstead Civic Association and a political novice, responded by hiring his own politically powerful lawyer, Steven R. Schlesinger, who also represents the county's Democratic Party committee. Mr. Uhl vowed to fight to the end.
This time, the lawyer for Mr. Uhl sounds a lot like Theodore B. Olson (who represented George W. Bush) while the lawyers for Mr. Dignoti sound a lot like David Boies (who represented Al Gore.)
"We won by three votes," said Mr. Schlesinger. "It was counted once on the night of the vote by the water district and once again at the board of the next day and we won both times."
Said Mr. Bee: "There are some interesting parallels to the presidential election. Once again it confirms that every vote counts."
Roy S. Mahon, a State Supreme Court justice, signed a temporary restraining order on Wednesday prohibiting Jack Easa, the water district's lawyer, or anyone else from the district from certifying the vote results with the clerk of the Town of Hempstead.
Under town law, vote tallies are due to the town within 24 hours. But Peter Fishbein, another of Mr. Dignoti's lawyers, said the order delays the final vote certification until the dispute is resolved. He said that with such a close election, the results from the three voting machines and 29 paper ballots (20 of which were thrown out because of voter registration and other problems) needed scrutiny.
But Mr. Schlesinger countered that in special-district races - like this one - the announcement of the vote by the district official in charge of the election is enough to seal Mr. Uhl's victory. Mr. Schlesinger said Mr. Uhl filed an oath of office with the Town of Hempstead today. He said the state attorney general was the only person who could contest the election once such an oath is filed.
"I am going to go in and say, `Tough noogies, we filed an oath and you have no right to contest,' " Mr. Schlesinger said.
Mr. Schlesinger, who, remember, represents the Democrats, added: "Anyone can file a lawsuit, but that doesn't mean you can win. Gore filed 86 lawsuits and he did not win."
According to both sides, three machines were used in a vote from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Tuesday. One machine was at the Washington Street School and two others were at the West Hempstead Library, said Frederick L. Kurz, who is the secretary to the Board of Water Commissioners and also happens to be Mr. Dignoti's son- in-law.
A count of the votes cast on lever- style voting machines that night showed Mr. Dignoti with a four-vote lead, 389 to 385. But 29 people filled out paper ballots after they showed up to vote but, for one reason or another, had problems with the voter registration records.
The next day, on Wednesday, 20 of those ballots were thrown out. Of the remaining nine ballots, eight were for Mr. Uhl, putting him ahead by three votes.
Mr. Uhl, who runs a limousine service and is registered as unaffiliated, spent much of his monthlong campaign criticizing Mr. Dignoti, a Republican, as not responsive to residents' water-quality concerns. A top issue, he said, is keeping pesticides and other contaminants out of the water, which comes from an underground aquifer. Contaminants were found in one of the district's 10 wells a decade ago.
Mr. Kurz said that in line with state and local health regulations, the contaminated well was shut down and has not been reopened. He also defended the current commissioners' tenure together, saying Mr. Dignoti and two others had reduced the water tax rates in the town for the past three years, overseen the installation of a new, $3.5 million filtration system and instituted computerized billing.
Lou Rantz and Emedio Torre, both longtime members of the board, were glad not to be in Mr. Dignoti's shoes today. But, Mr. Torre said, "a man has to do what a man has to do."
-------- genetics
Modified-Crop Studies Are Called Inconclusive
New York Times
December 15, 2000
By CAROL KAESUK YOON
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/15/science/14BIOT.html
Ever since genetically modified crops appeared, supporters and detractors of the plants have made competing claims about whether they are safe or harmful to the environment.
Tomorrow, in what some scientists say is the first comprehensive review of the published scientific data, researchers will report that simple conclusions cannot yet be drawn because the crucial studies have not yet been done.
Millions of acres of the crops have been planted in the United States, their way paved by studies conducted by industry and submitted to government regulators as evidence of safety but which typically were not published in peer-reviewed journals.
For this review, the researchers examined only studies that other scientists had determined were of high-enough quality to merit publication.
The researchers found that while genetically engineered crops hold potential for both risk and benefit, scientists still know little about the likelihood even of the environmental threats of greatest concern. Also, almost no studies have been published documenting ecological benefits.
The two authors of the study published in the journal Science are fellows sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world's largest nonprofit scientific federation.
In their study, in which they call for new research, the authors say current data indicate that assessing ecological risks is likely to be complex, with risks varying among crops, even among strains of a single crop, between environments and over time. Some risks, they say, may be so difficult and time-consuming to assess as to be effectively unknowable.
"We're a ways away from really having answers," said Dr. LaReesa Wolfenbarger, an ecologist who is doing her fellowship at the Environmental Protection Agency and is co-author of the study with Dr. Paul Phifer, a conservation biologist doing his fellowship at the State Department. The authors emphasized that they had conducted the study independently and did not speak for the government.
"Some of these questions are very elusive," Dr. Wolfenbarger said, "but that doesn't mean that we stop studying them or make sweeping generalizations that they don't exist."
Scientists on both sides of the debate called the review fair and accurate, though each side interpreted the findings differently.
"It's a pretty reasonable summary and pretty well balanced," said Dr. Robert Fraley, chief technical officer of the Monsanto Company.
Dr. Fraley played down the findings, however, saying that in several years of commercial use, no ecological problems had yet been shown to be caused by genetically engineered plants.
Dr. Jane Rissler, senior staff scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a group critical of the use of genetically modified crops, called the paper "very fair and clear."
Dr. Rissler said: "You come out of this with a strong sense that we don't know very much about the risks and the benefits. If we don't know, why are we doing this?"
A spokeswoman for the Department of Agriculture, which oversees regulation of genetically engineered plants, said scientists at the department were reviewing the study.
The researchers examined 35 peer-reviewed studies. They looked at risks including the production of "superweeds," the creation of new viral diseases and unintended harm to nonpest species, like monarch butterflies. They often found that while studies suggested a potential for risk, other studies presented conflicting results arguing against risk. In some cases, laboratory studies suggested risk, but no studies in the field were conducted to test if harm occurred.
And while some studies showed the potential for environmental benefits from these crops, the researchers found they fell short of documenting actual benefit.
For example, a Department of Agriculture study indicated a 1 percent decrease in the amount of pesticides used on corn, cotton and soybeans in 1998, as an apparent result of the adoption of genetically modified crops. Yet, Dr. Wolfenbarger said, it remains unknown whether this decrease in pesticides translated into any environmental benefit for wild species.
---
I'm Not Dead Yet:
Genetic Mutation That Lives Up to Its Name Is Found
New York Times
December 15, 2000
By GINA KOLATA
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/15/science/15AGIN.html?pagewanted=all
By slightly disabling a single gene, researchers report that they have doubled the life span of fruit flies. Scientists said the discovery opens a new arena in the fast-developing field that studies life extension.
The result, reported today in the journal Science, shows that flies with a mutation in a gene the scientists called INDY, for I'm Not Dead Yet, had average life spans of 71 days rather than the normal 37 days. Their maximum life spans also increased, to 110 days, from 70 days, an increase of 50 percent. And, the scientists report, the long-lived flies appeared as healthy and fit as normal flies, continuing to reproduce long after most flies without the mutation had died.
While it is not yet known how the genetic change prolongs life, the investigators, led by Dr. Stephen L. Helfand of the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington, say they know what the gene does - it is involved in metabolism. And they say that it looks like the change they elicited made it slightly more difficult for flies to use the calories in their food.
They suggest the gene alteration may hold a key to understanding earlier findings that yeast, flies, worms and rodents live far longer than expected if they are fed very little food. If they are right, the researchers said, people may one day obtain the life-prolonging benefits of caloric restriction by taking a drug to slow down the gene, thereby living longer without actually depriving themselves of food. Humans have the same gene, Dr. Helfand said.
Researchers who study life spans were intrigued. They emphasized that it is a long road between an observation in fruit flies and a drug that works in humans, but said that the discovery could point research in a new direction.
"I think it's terrific," said Dr. James R. Carey, a fruit fly demographer at the University of California at Davis. "They've known for 60 or 70 years that caloric restriction extends life spans, but no one has nailed down a mechanism. That's why this is really important." He said the discovery "lays the foundation for things that can come together down the road."
Others said that what amazed them was that a single gene could so profoundly affect the length of life. For nearly a century, scientists have been creating mutations in fruit flies and looking for such an effect, said Dr. Michael Rose, an evolutionary biologist and fruit fly researcher at the University of California at Irvine. It proved to be all but impossible.
"It has been very hard to find a mutation that abolishes aging," Dr. Rose said. "You can find mutations that abolish vision or coordination or courtship." But, he said, the only ways scientists found to extend flies' lives came with terrible trade-offs: either the flies had to starve or they could not have offspring. For example, one mutation, called grandchildless, created females with no ovaries, which made them unable to reproduce but let them live at least 50 percent longer than ordinary flies.
The closest anyone has come to creating a fly that could live longer than normal and still be healthy was a fly, called methuselah, discovered a few years ago by Dr. Seymour Benzer and his colleagues at the California Institute of Technology. The methuselah flies have an average life span that is 35 percent longer than normal. But no one knows the function of the gene that was mutated to create them.
When it comes to mammals, the only way anyone has found to extend their lives is to restrict their food, giving them about 40 percent fewer calories than they would eat if left to their own devices, Dr. Helfand noted. Then they live 30 percent longer than would be expected.
Working with yeast, Dr. Leonard Guarente of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently reported finding a gene that the yeast cells needed to allow caloric restriction to prolong life.
Dr. Helfand and his colleagues stumbled upon their long-lived flies by accident. They had been inserting genetic fragments at random in fly DNA to study disruptions in a different gene. This method creates thousands of flies with altered genes.
In their experiment, Dr. Helfand and his colleagues had a group of flies that they were using as a comparison group. These flies had the inserted genetic fragment, but the fragments were nowhere near the gene that the scientists were studying. Then something peculiar happened. The control flies were living much too long.
"I was finding it extremely irritating," Dr. Helfand said. "We had already pretty much prepared our paper and we just needed to know when these flies were going to die. They kept living on and on. At some point, it occurred to us that maybe something is happening here that we should be paying attention to."
By chance, the group also created a second line of flies that also lived on and on. They quickly looked to see what genes had been altered and discovered that, in both groups of flies, the same gene was slightly less efficient because a genetic fragment had interfered with its expression. "I said, `It can't be,' " Dr. Helfand said. Especially when it came to a discovery this exciting, he hated to think he found it by accident. "I would like this to be a clever screen we had set up, not just luck," he said.
The next question was, What does this gene do? The researchers discovered that it directs cells to make a protein that is in membranes and helps move nutrients into cells. The protein is concentrated in places where nutrients are absorbed and utilized. "It looks like it is important for generating energy and storing it," Dr. Helfand said. But why would slightly disabling the gene extend the life span? "What we think is happening - we haven't proven it - is that we inadvertently created the effect of caloric restriction genetically," Dr. Helfand said. Eventually, Dr. Helfand said, scientists might be able to create a drug to mimic the action of the altered gene.
If so, said Dr. Steven Austad, a zoologist at the University of Iowa who studies aging in rodents and birds, "this is the most exciting thing." He explained, "People have been trying to take the hundreds of effects of caloric restriction and trying to figure out what to look at." For example, he said, restricting calories decreases estrogen and testosterone production, it increases the levels of stress hormones, it increases the production of a class of stress-related proteins called heat shock proteins, and it slows the rate of cell turnover. The discovery of this single altered gene, Dr. Austad said, "gives us something quite specific that we can look at quite easily."
Dr. Judith Campisi, a researcher who studies aging at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, cautioned that the investigators have not yet proved that their genetic alteration mimics the mechanism that enables caloric restriction to extend life. But, she said, if it does, it suggests an interesting future.
After all, she said, few people can - or would even want to - starve themselves for their entire lives just to live longer. But, Dr. Campisi said, with the gene, "if it's working the way they think it's working, then here's a target for drug intervention." And, she added, "I think that's the most important thing about the work."
-------- spying
American Jailed as Spy in Moscow Is Freed on Putin's Orders;
U.S. Welcomes Gesture
New York Times
December 15, 2000
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/15/world/15SPY.html?pagewanted=all
MOSCOW, Dec. 14 - Edmond Pope, an American businessman and retired naval intelligence officer who had been convicted of espionage by a Russian court and sentenced to 20 years in prison, was pardoned today by President Vladimir V. Putin and was immediately flown out of Russia.
Mr. Putin said in his decree that he had granted the pardon because of Mr. Pope's health problems and because he wanted to preserve good relations with the United States.
Mr. Pope, 54, left Russia on a small chartered plane less than three hours after a prison warden read him the decision, ending his eight months of imprisonment.
The businessman, who was noticeably thinner and dressed in a greenish-brown jacket and sweater, was shown on Russian television with a faint smile as he received the news.
Mr. Pope, who has suffered from a rare form of bone cancer, flew to Germany, where he was examined at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center. From there he and his wife, Cheri, planned to continue to Grants Pass, Ore., where his mother, Elizabeth Pope, is caring for his ailing father.
"I have mixed feelings," Mr. Pope said just after his release in comments that were broadcast on television and translated into Russian. "I'm glad, but at the same time I'm sad that I may have caused harm to the relations between our countries."
The Clinton administration, which earlier had condemned the Russian court's decision, tonight applauded Mr. Putin for granting the pardon. In a written statement, Mr. Clinton called Mr. Pope's imprisonment unjustified.
It appeared from the manner in which the pardon was delivered - by authorities in Moscow - that Russia did not want Mr. Putin to announce Mr. Pope's release while in Cuba, where he flew on Wednesday night for a three-day official visit. They were apparently hesitant to see the Russian president reaching out to the United States while meeting with an old cold-war ally, Fidel Castro.
Mr. Pope, who had worked in part on projects related to the development of naval weapons at the Pennsylvania State University Applied Research Laboratory, was arrested in April for what Russian prosecutors said was spying. Mr. Pope, who owns TechSource Marine Industries in State College, Pa., and an associate were purchasing technical reports about a special rocket-propelled torpedo from Prof. Anatoly Babkin, the head of the rocket-engine department of Bauman State Technical University in Moscow.
Mr. Pope had argued that the contract he signed with Mr. Babkin stipulated that the reports would not contain any secret information.
Mr. Pope's lawyer indicated today in a telephone interview that the report might have included some classified information, but that Mr. Pope was not guilty of any crime because he was not aware he was receiving classified material.
In the market free-for-all that ensued after the fall of the Soviet Union, the definition of secret information blurred as laws changed, impoverished scientists began seeking new sources of income and the government tried to redefine the West.
That was complicated by layoffs in the American military, especially of highly trained officers with expertise overseas. Many of these people came to the countries they had studied with business projects, according to E. Wayne Merry, senior associate at the American Foreign Policy Council, in a letter he posted to a Russia- oriented news list on the Internet.
After arriving in Germany today, Mr. Pope, dressed in a hospital gown, waved a small American flag from a balcony overlooking a throng of reporters and television cameras. According to Russian television reports tonight from Germany, doctors said they expected that Mr. Pope would soon be ready to continue his flight to the United States.
Clearly, the months of imprisonment took a toll on Mr. Pope, who lost two teeth and about 25 pounds, news agencies quoted his wife as saying. Later in his confinement, he was moved to a six-bunk cell from a room for two prisoners. His lawyer said his roommates were heavy smokers and on occasion pilfered his food and once even took his medicine.
Mr. Pope's case has been a source of contention for Russia and the United States, which is still trying to define relations with President Putin, who was relatively unknown when he won the presidential election in March.
The pardon also coincided with George W. Bush's victory in the American presidential election, and some here said Mr. Putin's action would strike a positive note for future relations.
"This is a present for the new president," said Vladimir Lukin, a former Russian ambassador to the United States who now serves in the Russian Parliament. "I don't know whether Pope is a spy. I don't know the documents. But to pardon Pope in the current circumstances is a gesture in the right direction."
In Moscow today, the mood was unsympathetic, occasionally verging on hostile. In one call-in radio show, each question was more skeptical than the next. A woman from Moscow asked why Mr. Pope had traveled all the way to Russia on business if he was ill, while a young man said he did not think the issue even warranted a call-in show.
But this did not damp Mr. Pope's mood. Above all, he was just glad to be going home. Joking with a Russian television journalist after receiving his pardon, he dismissed a comparison to a movie-star spy.
"I'm no James Bond," he said, laughing. "I'm just a retired naval officer."
-------- terrorism
Yemen on Delicate Path in bin Laden Hunt
New York Times
December 15, 2000
By JOHN F. BURNS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/15/world/15YEME.html?pagewanted=all
SANA, Yemen, Dec. 14 - President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen said today that he would support American efforts to seize Osama bin Laden, the F.B.I's most wanted terrorism suspect, if Mr. bin Laden is found to have inspired or directed the Oct. 12 bombing of the destroyer Cole, which killed 17 American sailors, wounded 39 others and heavily damaged the ship.
While he criticized Mr. bin Laden's jihad, or Islamic holy war, against the American presence in the Arab world, Mr. Saleh, 58, a former army officer who has been in power 22 years, used an hourlong interview in the Yemeni capital to warn the Americans against repeating the 1998 cruise missile attack on Mr. bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan that came after the F.B.I. linked him to the truck bombings of two American embassies in East Africa.
To repeat the attack in retaliation for the Cole bombing would be a mistake, Mr. Saleh said, since it would be a case of a great power using disproportionate force against a far less formidable enemy. "Of course, if all the evidence has been gathered, and it proves that bin Laden was behind this attack, the United States has the right to arrest him and sentence him in a court," he said. "There's no question that he has done great harm to the interests of the United States."
But as for another military strike, Mr. Saleh said, "It's better to chase him down, using intelligence capabilities and security agreements with other countries." American efforts to track down Mr. bin Laden include a $5 million reward for his capture.
Although the Yemeni leader has said many times that Yemen was as much a victim of the Cole attack as the United States, since the bombing set back hopes of a stronger relationship between the two countries, Mr. Saleh's saying openly that he favored the arrest of Mr. bin Laden was bound to have a deep resonance in Yemen. For years, the Saleh government has worked to bridge divisions between pro-Western elements and a deeply rooted network of Islamic conservatives who broadly share Mr. bin Laden's aim of driving the United States and its military out of the Arabian peninsula.
In this dilemma, Mr. Saleh is far from alone among Arab leaders, but the Cole bombing brought to the fore one of the major fault lines in Yemeni society.
As one of the poorest of Arab nations, Yemen needs investment and other opportunities that could come through improved ties with the United States. At the same time, the country and its 18 million people have been something of a redoubt for Islamic militancy, and a ground swell of backing, especially among the young, for Mr. bin Laden. His name is scrawled on walls and plastered on magazine covers; tapes of his speeches sell in the bazaars, making him an icon that Arab leaders cannot ignore.
Mr. Saleh seemed at pains in the interview to strike a balance between too close an embrace of the United States and the watchful skepticism of Islamic militants.
Mr. Saleh, who came to power in the aftermath of a 1976 coup, has alternately impressed and frustrated Washington, both since he negotiated an agreement in 1998 for American ships to refuel in Aden's harbor, and in the weeks since the Oct. 12 bombing of the Cole.
He has assigned Yemeni security police to an investigation that has tracked down at least six suspects in the Cole bombing, but not as yet the Saudi-born man suspected of masterminding the plot, who has been linked to Mr. bin Laden's group, al Qaeda, which is suspected of international terrorism. Simultaneously, Mr. Saleh and his security forces have kept the Federal Bureau of Investigation task force in Yemen at arm's length, granting only limited access to interviews.
Today's meeting provided several reminders both of the depth of Islamic commitment among Yemenis and of Mr. Saleh's apparent ease with Americans in personal relations.
A muezzin's cry filtered over the compound's high walls, and Mr. Saleh sent his son, Kanan, 12, fluent in English and wearing jeans and a large football shirt, out to fetch more frankincense for a makbhara, or incense holder, that he swung back and forth as he pondered his replies.
At one point, Mr. Saleh emphatically dismissed Mr. bin Laden's concept of jihad, calling it an affront to Islamic beliefs.
"Bin Laden's call to jihad has no legitimacy whatsoever from the point of view of Sharia law," he said, referring to the legal codes of Islam.
"What he does is terrorism, and it's harming the interests of Arab and Islamic nations in their relations with Western countries. It has nothing to do with Islam at all."
From the outside, the presidential compound resembles an ancient Arab fort. Inside, past three large steel gates, American touches are everywhere.
In the ornate presidential office building, the three largest photographs, hanging on either side of a doorway into a reception room, are of Mr. Saleh with President Clinton and President Bush, and of the Yemeni leader at a spigot-turning ceremony for an American company, Yemen Hunt, that has pioneered oil development in the Yemeni desert.
On Wednesday, the president recounted, he called "a mutual friend" of his and George W. Bush's to ask the friend to pass on congratulations to the president-elect hours before Vice President Al Gore publicly conceded the election.
But Mr. Saleh did sharply criticize the United States, among other things for what he described as a failure to take adequate measures to protect the Cole. While refuting the State Department's characterization of Yemen in a report issued earlier this year as "a safe haven for terrorists," he sharply criticized the Navy for not taking more elaborate security measures to prevent the bombing.
"I believe the Americans should share a part of the responsibility, because they didn't ask Yemen to provide patrol boats to surround and protect the Cole, and they didn't use their own patrol boats to do it, either," he said.
A total of 24 ships had refueled in Aden before the bombing, and one of those, The Sullivans, had a narrow escape in January this year when another small boat loaded with explosives sank just after the would-be bombers launched it.
Asked if Yemeni and American investigators had enough evidence to prove that Mr. bin Laden was behind the bombing, Mr. Saleh answered obliquely, saying that the plotters were Arab Afghans, meaning Arab veterans of the struggle againt the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980's, and that the "main plotter" was Muhammad Omar al-Harazi, a man of Saudi and Yemeni parentage who was born in Mecca and fought in Afghanistan.
Mr. Harazi, whom the president described as "still at large," has long been sought by the F.B.I. in connection with the East Africa embassy bombings. He is said to have worked from a base in the United Arab Emirates, to have provided money, equipment and training for the Cole bombers. And Mr. Harazi is said to be a cousin of a man identified in a federal indictment as the man killed when he drove the truck bomb that devastated the American Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, in August 1998.
Yemeni officials investigating the Cole and embassy bombings, for which Mr. bin Laden has been indicted, say the relationship between Mr. Harazi and the truck bomber is the strongest clue that Mr. bin Laden may have been the ultimate controller of the Cole bombing.
F.B.I. access in the Cole investigation has improved drastically in recent weeks, after heavy American pressure and a "memorandum of understanding" signed three weeks ago that for the first time allowed F.B.I. agents into suspect interviews conducted by the Yemenis.
But some of the friction generated by the restrictions imposed in the inquiry's early stages, and the American anger that greeted them, has persisted. Today, Mr. Saleh emphatically rejected suggestions of a Yemeni cover-up, saying, "We cannot bargain over our sovereignty with anybody, but when there are things we can do, we'll do them."
In particular, the Yemeni leader seemed at pains to refute suggestions that senior Yemeni officials with links to Mr. bin Laden that go back to the mid-1980's, when he was putting together the first Arab Afghan fighting units, might have played a role in the bombing.
"There's no Yemeni official at a high level, a middle level or even a very low level who has been involved in any way in these terrorist actions that have harmed the image and reputation of Yemen," he said.
--
Fearing Terrorism, U.S. Keeps Consulates in Turkey Closed
New York Times
December 15, 2000
By DOUGLAS FRANTZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/15/world/15TURK.html
ISTANBUL, Dec. 14 - The United States consulates in Istanbul and the southern Turkish city of Adana will remain closed indefinitely because of fears of potential terrorist attacks, American officials said today.
While the officials said there had been no specific threats against the American posts in Turkey, a heightened state of concern led to the decision to keep the buildings closed. In addition, people working in satellite offices outside the embassy in Ankara, the capital, were moved inside the walled compound.
The State Department issued a warning on Oct. 18 that it had information that terrorists may have been planning attacks against American citizens and interests in the Persian Gulf, the Arabian peninsula and Turkey.
Americans in the region were advised to avoid crowds and demonstrations, maintain a low profile and vary routes and times for travel. Workers at consulates and embassies were also cautioned to be more observant and to monitor suspicious people and mail.
The advisory followed the Oct. 12 suicide bombing that killed 17 sailors on the American destroyer Cole while it was refueling in the port of Aden, Yemen.
"Are we more concerned right now than in October?" said an embassy official in Ankara. "Sure. We don't do this lightly."
There has been no order to evacuate American workers. Security officials are reviewing measures at the two consulates and assessing the potential threat daily, two American officials said.
The American consulate in Istanbul has long been a security concern. The 19th-century building is in a busy urban neighborhood, and several surrounding rooftops offer a potential vantage point for attackers. Plans are under way for a new consulate on the outskirts of the city.
Similarly, security officials determined that the three-person consulate in Adana and the American offices that are outside the embassy compound in Ankara are not secure.
American and British personnel at Incirlik air base in southern Turkey have been on heightened alert since the bombing of the Cole because of concerns about a terrorist attack. The air base is home to the fighters that patrol the no-flight zone over northern Iraq.
A Turkish newspaper, Milliyet, said this week that American officials were worried about possible links between the Turkish religious terror group Hizbullah and the exiled Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden.
Washington believes that Mr. bin Laden was behind the 1998 bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed more than 200 people, and he is suspected of being involved in the bombing of the Cole.
--
Yemen chief says role of bin Laden not clear
Washington Times
December 15, 2000
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-20001215213148.htm
SAN'A, Yemen - Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh said yesterday it was possible Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden was involved in the apparent suicide bombing of the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Cole in Aden in which 17 U.S. sailors were killed.
But he said investigations with six suspects in the Oct. 12 attack so far had not clearly identified who was behind the explosion that tore a big hole in the side of one of the most advanced U.S. warships.
"So far, we are not blaming a specific party in the Cole bombing. But the group which carried out the attack and those now under interrogation are elements who were in Afghanistan; therefore it is possible to link them with bin Laden," he said at the presidential palace.
---
Terrorism strategy criticized
Washington Times
December 15, 2000
By Stephen Dinan
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-20001215214428.htm
President-elect George W. Bush should create a national office to revamp and oversee a national strategy on terrorism, a panel studying the issue said yesterday in releasing its second report.
Virginia Gov. James S. Gilmore III, the panel's chairman, said the federal government has not done well on sharing information about possible terrorist threats with state and local agencies, or on plans for an attack's aftermath.
"We must begin with a vision -a clear national strategy that is synchronized, coherent and functional. You won't find such a thing as that in Washington right now," said the Republican while presenting the findings yesterday at the National Press Club in Northwest.
The panel proposed giving that task to a new office, designated the National Office for Combating Terrorism, which would set budget and policy priorities for terrorism and coordinate with federal, state and local agencies to design prevention and response plans.
The first report, released last year, said terrorist attacks in the United States are a likely eventuality, but said an attack using conventional weapons as in the World Trade Center or Oklahoma City bombings, on a larger scale, are more likely than a nuclear, biological or chemical weapons attack.
But the federal strategy is designed to address the threat from weapons of mass destruction, the panel concluded in this year's report. It also doesn't make use of experience and expertise from local and state police, fire departments and medical services.
Mr. Gilmore and other members of the Advisory Panel to Assess Domestic Response Capabilities for Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction didn't single out President Clinton for criticism, but they made it clear the administration lacks a plan.
The panel, which is congressionally chartered and supported by the Rand Corp., will release its third and final report next year. This year's report is available at Rand's Web site (The>www.rand.org).
The panel added that intelligence gathering should not mean spying on U.S. citizens or having the military lead the handling of terrorism inside the United States.
---
Pope expresses joy over prison release
Washington Times
December 15, 2000
By Melissa Eddy ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-200012152249.htm
LANDSTUHL, Germany - U.S. businessman Edmond Pope, pardoned by Russia after being convicted of espionage, flew to freedom in Germany yesterday and said: "It's great to be back in the real world."
Looking tired, Mr. Pope held an American flag and his wife tightly as he shouted to reporters from a balcony at the U.S. military's Landstuhl Regional Medical Center.
Mr. Pope, 54, the first American convicted of espionage in Russia in 40 years, arrived at Ramstein Air Base in Germany hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered him released from Moscow's Lefortovo Prison. Just last week, he had been sentenced to 20 years.
Since his April 3 arrest, he has steadfastly maintained his innocence on charges that he illegally obtained plans for a Russian navy torpedo, saying what he purchased was not secret because the technology already had been sold abroad. Mr. Pope sent a letter to Mr. Putin asking for clemency on the eve of his conviction, his wife said.
Denied visits with her husband since the Dec. 6 verdict, Cheri Pope went to the prison yesterday morning only hoping to see him, said Jennifer Bennett, spokeswoman for Rep. John E. Peterson, Pennsylvania Republican. But two hours later, she and her husband were leaving the country on a chartered plane.
The Russian Federal Security Service, the successor to the KGB, said Mr. Pope was given his personal belongings and a chance to ask questions about the pardon. He had none, the service said.
Mr. Pope was quoted by Russia's state-controlled ORT television as being concerned about the diplomatic implications of his ordeal. "On the one hand, I'm glad, on the other, I regret that it happened like this. I wouldn't want to damage Russian-American relations."
His release came hours after George W. Bush accepted victory in the presidential election; some experts suggested Russia made the move in the hopes of garnering the president-elect's favor.
A Putin spokesman told the Associated Press the Russian leader pardoned Mr. Pope for humanitarian reasons, and to preserve good relations with Washington. The pardon cited "the health condition of the convict and his personal appeal, and also . . . the high level of ties between the Russian Federation and the United States of America."
President Clinton, traveling in England, welcomed the release, saying, "it is important that humanitarian considerations prevailed in the end."
Mr. Pope - who has a rare form of bone cancer - will get a complete medical examination before heading home, Landstuhl commander Col. Elder Granger said.
Mr. Pope reportedly lost 25 pounds during his 253 days in jail, but gained some of the weight back after his wife and U.S. Embassy officials began bringing him food, said Mr. Peterson.
Landstuhl, about 85 miles southwest of Frankfurt, has become a way station for Americans in trouble since the end of the Cold War -from sailors injured in this year's terrorist attack on the USS Cole in Yemen to soldiers hurt in 1993 fighting in Somalia.
From the hospital, Mr. Pope called family and friends in Grants Pass, Ore., where his mother, Elizabeth Pope, is caring for his ailing father. His two grown sons and a business partner are also there, waiting for him to arrive, Mr. Bennett said.
Mr. Putin, who was on a state visit to Cuba at the time of Mr. Pope's release, had indicated last week that he would likely follow a recommendation from his pardons commission to grant clemency.
-------- activists
Dyspeptic D.C. demonstrations
Washington Times
December 15, 2000
Deborah Simmons
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-column-20001215182934.htm
Well, Washingtonians, here we are again, preparing for all sorts of ceremonial must-haves to inaugurate our new president and vice president. We've been here and done that so many times.
Maybe someone will propose we start rotating the inauguration. Perhaps establishing some kind of lottery, or have state capitals lobby for the honor. You know, the same way they lobby for the Olympics.
These suggestions should be taken very seriously because as intense as the postelection season is, I'm not sure Washingtonians even want to be around for what's in store come inauguration time.
Lots of ordinary folks plan to be here; Mr. Bush's and Mr. Cheney's close friends and family plan to be here, and dignitaries from around the globe plan to be here, too.
Such big to-dos always draw the high, the mighty and everyone in between, and when such affairs are held in the nation's capital, Washingtonians know to prepare for the expected and the unexpected.
But as I said, January 2001 will be different. That's because the Rev. Jesse Jackson, president and founder of the Rainbow/Push Coalition, is pitching plans, too.
Mr. Jackson has called for "massive nonviolent demonstrations" to be held in January. Not on Inauguration Day, mind you, but one month from today on the anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birth.
For those of you out of the loop that would be Jan. 15, a national holiday. Only two other Americans are so honored, and I'm certain I do not have to name them.
In case your eyes glossed over my earlier words allow me to repeat: Mr. Jackson has called for "massive nonviolent demonstrations." That's plural.
Mr. Jackson has called for these demonstrations to be held nationwide as part of his promised "civil rights explosion." Mr. Jackson is reacting in part to his pal Al Gore's loss in the race for the White House. Mr. Jackson wants the demonstrations to coincide with King's birthday and before Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney are sworn into office.
Can you imagine the turnout?
This is a Jesse Jackson event, and Jesse Jackson is old-school.
He is way too smart to call a million men to the National Mall or a million women to New York.
He is way too political to even propose that men and women venture off in separate ways, or that the demonstrations are a black thing or any singular thing.
Jesse Jackson swung the doors wide open.
Again, imagine the turnout.
In the name of civil rights and voting rights.
Human rights and abortion rights.
Statehood rights and the D.C. delegate's congressional rights.
Workers' rights, women's rights and gay rights.
And don't leave out the death penalty and racial profiling.
They will join hands in Atlanta, Chicago, Birmingham, Memphis, Philly and, most importantly, the District, in "honor" of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Mr. Jackson's proposed "nonviolent demonstrations" mean there will be no rest for the weary federal and local law-enforcement authorities who must marshal in great numbers on King's birthday and again for the Inaugural festivities.
Still, Mr. Jackson isn't the only one planning a massive protest. A group in New York called International Action Center is coordinating a protest, too. That group plans to "fill the streets of Washington with thousands of people."
Oh joy.
My head is dizzy.
I often cut class to hang out with Marion Barry and others in the "movement" as a teen-ager. I cried like a baby when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and was scared as all get out when white National Guardsmen stalked my neighborhood as if I had shot him myself outside the Lorraine Motel. I stood among the masses and alongside Adrienne T. Washington, another columnist for The Washington Times, and marched, wrote letters and pleaded with the powers that be that Martin Luther King Jr. deserved a national holiday. I did much of the same to help end Apartheid rule in South Africa.
Next month, when the masses hit my town I hope to be in someone else's. I hope by then to have convinced my husband, Rick, that we deserve a few days off in the peaceful Caribbean instead of the clamoring streets of Washington.
E-mail simmon@twtmail.com.
Deborah Simmons is an editorial writer and columnist for The Washington Times.
---
FBI agents protest Peltier clemency request
(Even the feds get into the act)
USA Today
12/15/00- Updated 12:35 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncsfri06.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - Retired and current FBI agents organized a march in front of the White House Friday to present a petition against presidential clemency for an American Indian activist convicted of killing two FBI agents.
Agents who requested time off to participate planned to walk two-by-two down Pennsylvania Avenue, and then present White House officials with a petition signed by 8,000 current and former officers. They are urging President Clinton to deny the clemency request of Leonard Peltier, rejecting Peltier's version of events that led to his conviction and dual consecutive life sentences 23 years ago.
The White House has declined comment on all questions about possible pardons. A White House spokesman, however, said in late November that Clinton would review pending requests for executive clemency before he leaves office in January, including that of Peltier.
FBI Director Louis Freeh wrote Clinton on Dec. 5 that commuting the life sentences of Peltier would ''signal disrespect'' for law enforcement and the public.
Attorney General Janet Reno, asked about the prospect of an FBI demonstration, said Thursday, ''I think we just have to see how it unfolds.'' She added: ''Everybody ought to be able to speak out about something that they care about deeply in a thoughtful, professional, dignified manner.''
Peltier's story has become well-known on Indian reservations across the country. FBI agents Ron Williams and Jack Koler were fired upon and killed while searching for robbery suspects on the Pine Ridge Indian reservation in South Dakota in June 1975.
Peltier, after fleeing to Canada and being extradited to the United States, was convicted and sentenced in 1977 for the killings, despite defense claims that evidence against him had been falsified.
Peltier's supporters argue that there is little evidence that Peltier fired the shots that killed the agents. They allege Peltier was targeted by the FBI because of his vocal support of reservation autonomy.
''We are very disappointed with the FBI response,'' Jennifer Harbury, an attorney for Peltier, said at a news conference Friday. ''We think it's inappropriate, and we think it's a sad day for democracy when our armed forces march through the streets to influence a decision for mercy and justice by a civilian president.''
Peltier, 56, is serving his terms at the U.S. Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kan. He has suffered from health problems in recent years.
In June, a parole examiner recommended that Peltier's sentences be continued until his next full parole hearing in 2008.
Clinton has the power to grant Peltier a full pardon, which would result in his release.
Harbury said she had hoped Reno and Freeh would call for further investigations in the case.
---
Protesters Lift Road Blockade in Southern Serbia
Yahoo News
World News
Friday December 15 2:03 PM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001215/wl/yugoslavia_presevo_dc_1.html
BELGRADE (Reuters) - Serbs demanding that ethnic Albanian guerrillas be expelled from a buffer zone bordering Kosovo ended a three-day blockade of a key road in a tense area of southern Serbia on Friday, Beta news agency reported.
The roadblock, set up on Wednesday near the town of Bujanovac, was lifted after Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Nebojsa Covic addressed the protesters.
He told them that the Serbian and Yugoslav governments -- formed after the downfall of former President Slobodan Milosevic (news - web sites) in October -- would hold a joint session in Bujanovac on Saturday to discuss the situation in the area.
The boundary area near Bujanovac saw an upsurge in ethnic Albanian guerrilla activity last month when four Serbian police died.
The guerrillas say they are fighting to protect local ethnic Albanians from harassment by Serbian police. Belgrade insists they are separatists intent on appending the Presevo Valley area of Serbia to ethnic Albanian-dominated Kosovo.
The protesters had also demanded that the road linking Bujanovac with the Kosovo town of Gnjilane be re-opened to all traffic. The road passes through territory where the guerrillas are believed to hold positions and Serbs do not dare to use it.
In addition, they called on Yugoslav authorities to make solving the situation in Kosovo itself their priority and demanded an urgent meeting with President Vojislav Kostunica (news - web sites).
Backers of Kostunica have accused Milosevic's Socialist Party of organizing the blockade, saying it was part of their campaign for a Serbian parliamentary election on December 23. The protesters have angrily denied the allegation.
One of the organizers of the blockade read out a letter from Kostunica to the protesters, saying the new authorities were doing everything in their power to resolve the situation through diplomacy rather than by force.
``There are many people willing to capitalize on the misery of others for their cheap political objectives. The terrorists are intimidating both the Serbs and the ethnic Albanians in this area,'' Kostunica's letter said.
``We expect the NATO (news - web sites) secretary-general to come up with concrete proposals on how the situation could be improved,'' it said. ``We mustn't make any hasty decisions, to avoid the sort of no-choice situation the former regime put us in so many times.''
The buffer zone was created as part of the deal last June which ended NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia. It governed the withdrawal of Yugoslav and Serb security forces from the province and the deployment of NATO-led peacekeepers in Kosovo.
According to the deal, no Yugoslav army soldiers or Serb special police are allowed inside the three-mile (five-km) wide buffer zone which runs along the Serbian side of the boundary.
---
Serbs enforce blockade near Kosovo border
Washington Times
December 15, 2000
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-20001215213148.htm
BUJANOVAC, Yugoslavia -Thousands of angry Serbs stood vigil at blockaded roads near the Kosovo border yesterday, demanding a meeting with Yugoslavia's president and the ouster of militant ethnic Albanians from the region.
Independence-minded Albanians took control of strategic points in the 3-mile-wide demilitarized zone that separates Kosovo from the rest of Serbia nearly a month ago. Pressure is rising on President Vojislav Kostunica to use force against the rebels.
Several thousand Serbs stayed through the night near parked trucks, garbage containers and burning tires on roads to Bujanovac. The protesters, who put up the blockades Wednesday, also shut down the rail line and main roads linking Serbia with Macedonia and Greece to the south.
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Police hold 39 after Greenpeace protest missile campaign at NATO
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
This Bulletin: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 2:50 ADS
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newslink/weekly/newsnat-15dec2000-4.htm
Thirty-nine Greenpeace activists were in police custody in Brussels on Thursday after protesting outside NATO headquarters against the proposed US National Missile Defence (NMD) system, the environmental group said.
They included four protesters who managed to slip into the closely-guarded NATO compound minutes before the start of a two-day meeting of NATO foreign ministers.
"They're going to be released around 6:30pm local time, after the meeting is over," Greenpeace spokesman Jon Walter said.
Dressed in white overalls, the demonstrators, who numbered 55 in total, according to Greenpeace, formed a human chain across the main gates of NATO headquarters.
With them was a truck bearing an inflated mock missile emblazoned with the words 'Star Wars', the nickname of the controversial US proposal to build a system to knock out missiles in outer space.
The protest coincided with the announcement that George W Bush will be the next US president. Mr Bush is seen as favouring an expanded version of the system that President Bill Clinton had been considering.
"Star Wars won't protect Americans from a nuclear attack," said Greenpeace disarmament campaigner William Peden.
"It will, in fact, increase this threat for everybody by driving countries such as China and Russia to enlarge their nuclear arsenals."
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