NUCLEAR
Anti-Nuclear Petition
Taipower faces penalties over Lungmen cancellation
Both of AEP's Cook units now running
China Tested Long - Range Missile Last Saturday
US DU Report
Uranium risk for British troops
Italy did not know depleted uranium arms used
NO LINK BETWEEN DEPLETED URANIUM, GULF WAR SYNDROME
US Mulls Sending Envoy to Pyongyang
Russian Parliament Slashes Benefit Limit for Chernobyl Cleaners
Tentative OK for Russian nuclear waste plan
Russia Risks Another Chernobyl
Russia tentatively OKs waste imports
Russians Back Plan for a Nuclear Waste Industry
2000's Top Stories: Election, Elain
Pentagon Awards Defense Contract
Hail to the Chief Tech-Heads
Nurescell Announces Management Changes
Metals recovery perilous: DOE
Work may have put plant workers at risk
Secret work was done at Paducah Plant employees were at risk
Wen Ho Lee Celebrates Birthday
Cracks in pipes found at S.C. nuclear power plant
Morgan County home to ZeTek, ORNL project
IAAP Burlington Health Study Website
Worker hit in face with chlorine gas
Hanford firm retains contract
For jobs left, Bush looks now to the right
Pressing Challenges Face Bush Team
Powell Will Face World of Challenges
COLUMN: Steve Sebelius Eliminate the middleman

MILITARY
Child warriors fight on front lines
Gunmen kill 10 people in Colombia
Bush faces hard choices in Colombia
Colombia Rebels Offer to Free 45 Hostages
Death toll in E. Timor may be 2,000
INDIA, PAKISTAN: KASHMIR UNCERTAINTY
U.S., British Planes Hit Iraq
Japan sues Mitsubishi Heavy
Albright: Deal with N. Korea possible
Pentagon Will Stop Importing Burmese Clothes for 1,400 PX's
Clinton urges science collaboration
Turner may pay shortfall in UN
Envoy: U.S. near payment deal to UN
Informal Deal Reached on Cutting U.S. Dues to U.N.
UN urges African border aid to end
UNITA rebels circumvent sanctions
Women's Charges to Be Heard Now in U.N.
U.N. Post Filled by American
U.N. Study of Diamonds-for-Arms Deals Focuses on Shadowy Trader
EU proposes deal on U.S. debt to U.N.
2 more suspected in USS Cole bomb
No Answers as Marines Investigate Air Crash
G.O.P. Split Slows Bush's Selection for Defense Post
Northrop - Litton Could Change the Industry
Northrop Grumman To Acquire Litton
Coats for Defense?
Conservatives want Coats for Defense chief
China tests DF-31 again

OTHER
Nuclear standoff in 'Thirteen Days' Chronicling missile crisis with JFK, RFK
CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS STRIKES TV-LIKE TONE
Religion in the News
Train Carrying Acid Derails in Philadelphia
Cinergy agrees to $1.4 bln settlement
Final federal plan to save salmon
Babbitt recommends new monuments
State pays $41 mln to create L.A. park
Surviving whales swim to sea
Clinton departs in regulation rush
Bush to name Whitman to EPA
Scuttle the Everglades Airport
Tentative Deal on Acid Rain Is Reached With Third Utility
State to Shrink Contested Road Project Near Crucial Reservoir
A conservative for EPA
World Bank OKs $122 mln loan to Russia
Hungry Afghans reach UN camps
World Bank, IMF exceed relief goals
U.S. antidumping law attacked
Group of Countries Protests U.S. Change in Dumping Law
NEWARK: OFFICERS ACQUITTED OF MOST CHARGES
Peru's ex-spy chief still hunted
Informer's Part in Terror Case Is Detailed

ACTIVISTS
Protesters plan inauguration turnout
Clinton to act on clemency requests
Report: Chinese activist jailed
HONG KONG: PROTEST CURBS

-------- NUCLEAR

Anti-Nuclear Petition

Fri, 22 Dec 2000 13:55:23 -0500
From: Vic Titious <jejonik@juno.com>

POLONIUM PEGS and Dioxin Dowels

As a side issue of the Nuclear story, to be used as evidence against the conflicts-of-interest within the US "regulatory" system...and to illustrate the level of official disregard for health and scientific integrity...it is useful to note that the typical manufactured, pesticide-drenched, dioxin-delivering, multi-ingredient US cigarette is contaminated with ionizing radiation.

Although some traces of radiation are naturally occurring, from soils, the potentially heavy liability area involves radioactive, mined phosphate fertilizers used on tobacco. Prof. Gofman has not only described the inevitable harms of this radiation in general (nothing that I've read specifically about typical cigarettes yet) but has also pointed out that when this radiation is in combination with dioxins, a by-product of man-made chlorine, we have something called The Promoter Effect whereby the dioxin Speeds Up the cell damage done by the rads.

This is all perfectly "legal" cigarette adulteration in the US. It is even ignored by officials who claim to be "concerned" about smoking and health but who, in actuality, may be more interested in blaming the [unpatented] tobacco plant for the widespread and virtually inevitable diseases caused by a product that may contain more untested, toxic and cancer-causing industrial elements than any other product.

The story of this radiation, said to be probable cause of most "smoking related" (not Radiation Related?) lung cancers, was no secret. One article was prominently published in no less than the Reader's Digest, March, 1986. Where did the concerns go? Well...only speculation but...it might be that the cig radiation story was initially raised to take the heat off of the HIGH levels of dioxin in cigarette smoke. Dioxin's not from the tobacco, of course, but in typical cigs from the chlorine-bleached paper, about a third of the hundreds of pesticides used on tobacco and from any number of the many hundreds of non-tobacco ingredients. But...it is likely that, as the chlorine industries (and investors and insurers) were getting this gift, the radiation industries might have gotten upset that people would apply negative information about rads in cigs to rads in other areas like power plants, x-rays and waste disposal...and nowadays, food irradiation. One guesses that word went out to lay off of BOTH dioxins and radiation. Since then, officials and the corporate media have informed us that the problem with "smoking" is ONLY about tobacco...although, try as you might, you are not likely to find ONE study anywhere of negative effects of unadulterated tobacco. The comparison of natural risks of plain tobacco to the inevitable dangers of a chemical and radiation contaminated cig, one guesses, would be an enormous indictment of not only the chemicals and rads but of the US officials who allowed and facilitated this mass poisoning for decades.

Added point: If anyone, through job or pollution, has health problems relating to industrial radiation (or other industrial toxins and carcinogens)...AND if they happen to smoke....how convenient that their illness can be unscientifically blamed on "tobacco" or "risky behavior".

There's no telling how much of the statistical evidence against industrial pollutants has been stolen from activists to be, instead, used in the liability-dodging "war on tobacco". - JJ

--------

Taipower faces penalties over Lungmen cancellation

Platts - Friday, December 22, 2000
Bonn (Nuclear News Flashes)--22Dec2000

Taiwan Power Co faces penalty payments of over $1-bil if Supreme Court justices do not rule by the end of January on the constitutionality of the government's decision to scrap the Lungmen ABWR project, the utility said.

The court yesterday heard oral arguments for and against shutting down the project, which is about 30% complete. At stake, Taipower officials claim, are contracts with the Taiwan industry, which give companies the right to compensation as a result of suspension of work after 90 days.

These clauses would apply at the end of January, assuming the court case is not yet decided. Taipower's contracts with foreign contractors, including ABWR vendor General Electric Co, have more generous provisions for project delays, allowing work to be suspended for as much as five months before contract terms may expire.

-------------

Both of AEP's Cook units now running

Washington (Nuclear New Flashes)--
22Dec2000

American Electric Power Co's (AEP) Cook-1 was reconnected to the grid yesterday, marking the first time in more than three years that both Cook-1 and Cook-2 have been on line.

Cook-2, which also was shut down in September 1997 to address questions about the operability of safety systems, restarted in June. Unit 1 was at 26% power this morning, according to NRC's plant status report.

-------- china

China Tested Long - Range Missile Last Saturday

Reuters
December 22, 2000 Filed at 6:13 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-china-m.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - China conducted another test of its intercontinental ballistic missile last weekend in a continuing effort to upgrade its force, a U.S. intelligence official said on Friday.

The test of the DF-31, first reported by The Washington Times, appeared successful, although the intelligence official said further analysis was needed.

``They have long stated that they were going to upgrade their ballistic missile force and they're doing it,'' the official said on condition of anonymity.

The latest test followed a Nov. 4 test of the missile that China has been developing since the late 1980s and that can reach 5,000 miles.

The November test was conducted while U.S. Army Gen. Henry Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was visiting China.

Shelton said last week the United States must focus on preventing China from becoming in the 21st century like the ''Soviet bear'' of the past.

-------- depleted uranium

US DU Report

Fri, 22 Dec 2000 11:00:04 -0000
http://www.oversight.ncr.gov/final_toc.htm
fwp_dawson@hotmail.com

Special Oversight Board for Department of Defense Investigations of Gulf War Chemical and Biological Incidents Final report on DU

-------

Uranium risk for British troops

ITN
12/22/00
http://itn.co.uk/news/20001222/world/08uranium.shtml

A dozen Italian soldiers who served in the Balkans have developed cancer and lawmakers have been pressing the government for answers.

Fears are growing that the health of British troops in Kosovo may have been put at risk by ammunition used in the conflict by Nato forces.

Italian Defence Minister Sergio Mattarella has ordered an investigation into cancer cases among national soldiers who served in Kosovo and Bosnia.

Italian and British troops were among the first to enter Kosovo as part of Nato's KFOR force.

There are fears the cancer cases are linked to ammunition containing depleted uranium used by US warplanes during the 78 day bombing campaign.

One Portuguese soldier has already died, and there are believed to be two more soldiers in Italy possibly suffering from uranium poisoning.

A dozen Italian soldiers who served in the Balkans have developed cancer and lawmakers have been pressing the government for answers.

The cases include three veterans of peacekeeping duty in Bosnia who died of leukaemia last year.

Another four soldiers involved in aircraft maintenance also died of cancer, the Milan daily Il Giornale has reported.

The Italian investigation is being headed by Antonio Intelisano, the military prosecutor.

A United Nations team in Kosovo is doing a similar study. Their report is expected early next year.

NATO has said that US warplanes operating in Kosovo fired armour-piercing rounds containing depleted uranium during last year's campaign.

There have already been warnings that the health of Gulf War veterans could be at risk from particles of depleted uranium.

Former US colonel, Doctor Asaf Durakavic told an international doctors' conference that he had found a "significant presence" of the particles in two-thirds of the 17 veterans he had tested.

---

Italy did not know depleted uranium arms used

Friday, December 22 9:43 PM SGT
http://sg.dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/world/article.html?s=singapore /headlines/001222/world/afp/Italy_did_not_know_depleted_uranium_arms_u sed_in_Bosnia__minister.html

ROME, Dec 22 (AFP) - The Italian government said on Friday it did not know that depleted uranium arms were used in Bosnia by NATO, just days after an inquiry was launched into why seven military personnel recently died of leukemia.

Parliamentary sources said Defence Minister Sergio Mattarella had affirmed that "10,800 depleted uranium projectiles were fired by American aircraft," on Bosnia between 1994 and 1995.

"I must express my bitterness that the competent international organisations have waited until now to answer our request for information that is important for the Bosnian community and members of the military," Mattarella said.

However NATO said on Friday that DU rounds were "fired from A-10 Thunderbolt aircraft, under international auspices," and that the fact had been known for several years.

A NATO official in Brussels added: "There is nothing secret about DU rounds being fired in Bosnia."

NATO denies that other munitions containing depleted uranium, such as bombs and shells, had been fired when US aircraft went into action over Bosnia in the last two years of its 1992-95 war.

Depleted uranium weapons are denser than conventional arms, which means they can penetrate heavy armour more easily. They were used on Iraq in 1990 and 1991 and during the air campaign against Belgrade last year.

According to the independent Italian Observatory for the Protection of the Armed Forces, seven military personnel who served in Bosnia and Kosovo have died and a dozen others are ill from exposure to radiation from depleted uranium weapons.

The defence ministry confirmed that 11 personnel had recently developed leukemia and that three of them had since died, but it said only five had taken part in Balkans "peace missions."

Mattarella, who has launched a scientific inquiry into the deaths, said all possible light would be shed on the matter and that there was no need for alarm.

He said no link had yet been established between the cases and depleted uranium weapons.

The defence ministry said between 30,000 and 40,000 Italian soldiers have served in the Balkans.

In Lisbon, the newspaper Publico -- citing a Lisbon cancer specialist -- reported on Friday that the death of a Portuguese soldier who served in Kosovo could be linked to NATO's use of depleted uranium weapons in the Balkans.

The Portuguese military has remained silent on the issue, and a military source questioned by Publico said medical examinations of the soldier, a 24-year-old corporel, had been inconclusive.

--------

NO LINK BETWEEN DEPLETED URANIUM, GULF WAR SYNDROME

Tara Thornton <duorganizer@miltoxproj.org>
December 22, 2000 (ENS)

WASHINGTON, DC, - The Defense Department has issued an updated report that concludes that any link between the U.S. military's use of depleted uranium and undiagnosed illnesses experienced by some veterans of the Gulf war is "unlikely." The conclusion of the Defense Department report is supported by a recent National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine (http://www.iom.edu/) review of scientific literature related to depleted uranium. The first battlefield use of depleted uranium in tank armor and armor piercing ammunition took place during the Gulf War.

The first interim report about depleted uranium was published in August 1998. This updated report reviews research conducted by both governmental and non-governmental agencies. It also includes the latest data available from a study the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is conducting on service members who had the greatest exposure to depleted uranium during the Gulf War. Since 1993, the VA has monitored 33 veterans who were injured in incidents involving depleted uranium. About half of this group still have depleted uranium metal fragments in their bodies. This update also refines previous Gulf War exposure assessments. The full text of the updated report may be viewed on the Web at http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/news/na_du_ii_19dec00.htm.

-------- korea

US Mulls Sending Envoy to Pyongyang

Associated Press
December 22, 2000 Filed at 3:12 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Albright-NKorea.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Clinton administration is weighing the possibility of dispatching an envoy to North Korea to clarify Pyongyang's readiness to shut down its missile program, according to a senior official.

The disclosure came after Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said in an interview Thursday with The Associated Press that there is ``a genuine possibility'' that Pyongyang will agree to such curbs.

President Clinton continues to weigh a visit to North Korea during his last month in office -- quite possibly to clinch a missile deal. Many senior Republicans on Capitol Hill oppose such a visit.

White House spokesman Jake Siewert said Clinton will make a judgment based on whether he thinks a trip would advance the process of curtailing Pyongyang's missile program.

Asked when a decision will be made, Siewert said, ``As soon as we can.''

According to an official who asked not to be identified, an interim trip to Pyongyang by Wendy Sherman, Albright's top aide on North Korea, is under consideration.

The White House raised the possibility of a Clinton visit to North Korea more than two months ago. His decision has been awaited by Korea-watchers with great anticipation.

At a State Department press Christmas party hosted by Albright on Wednesday night, Sherman showed up with a sign hanging from her neck that said: ``No decision yet.'' Another sign, hanging on her back, said, ``Don't ask, don't tell.''

Albright discussed the missile question at length with Chairman Kim Jong Il when she visited Pyongyang in October.

``What is out there is the genuine possibility of their limiting further their missile testing and further production and export of various technologies in exchange basically for our launching civilian satellites,'' Albright said Thursday.

North Korea has sold missiles and missile technology to Iran and Syria. If Pyongyang agrees to curtail such sales, the United States would be willing to provide assistance to the country's stricken economy.

If the U.S. steps in to launch North Korean civilian satellites, this would satisfy Pyongyang's stated goal, while easing U.S. fears about the country's military capabilities.

But senior Republican lawmakers and other analysts are concerned about the risk of technology transfer to North Korea if the United States agrees to launch satellites.

This concern was spelled out in a letter to Clinton last week from Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill, and the Senate and House chairmen of the committees on foreign affairs and intelligence.

The group also indicated opposition to a Clinton trip to North Korea.

``No one is more alarmed about the North Korean missile program than we,'' the letter said. ``But any hurried or ill-considered deal with North Korea could be worse than no solution at all.''

President-elect Bush has said that since Clinton is in charge until Jan. 20, any decision on travel to North Korea is entirely up to him. Administration officials have briefed members of the Bush team on the North Korean situation and said they received no advice from them on whether Clinton should make the trip.

-------- russia

Russian Parliament Slashes Benefit Limit for Chernobyl Cleaners

Russia Today
Dec 22, 2000
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=234150

MOSCOW -- (Agence France Presse) Russia's lower house of parliament, the Duma, voted on Thursday to slash by half the limit on benefits that can be paid to people who took part in clean up operations after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

The amendment was passed by 387 votes to five with three abstentions and was a compromise between the government's position and that demanded by the workers, Piotr Rogonov, a member of the Duma's labor and social policy commission said.

Thousands of people were exposed to heavy radiation when they were rushed to the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine in April 1986 to help clean up after one of the nuclear reactors exploded, spreading radioactivity across eastern Europe.

Rogonov said nearly 50,000 people were being paid benefits.

They will now receive between 1,000 and 10,000 rubles (40 and 400 euros, 35 and 350 dollars) a month and money will be paid to their families when they die. Under the old legislation, some of them were receiving 20,000 rubles per month.

The government wanted to set the limit at 5,000 rubles and end payments to families after death.

In October, about 100 people walked about 200 kilometers (120 miles) in a protest march against the plan, abandoning medals they had received for taking part in the dangerous clean-up.

The Chernobyl disaster was the world's worst civilian nuclear accident.

The plant was shut down permanently on December 15, an operation which could cost from three to five billion dollars, according to the deputy speaker of the Ukraine's parliament.

Officially, 31 people died from exposure to radiation, but unofficial estimates put the indirect death toll at between 15,000 and 30,000.

---

Tentative OK for Russian nuclear waste plan

Seattle Times
Nation & World : Friday, December 22, 2000
By Andrew Kramer The Associated Press
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis/web/vortex/display?slug=nuke22&date=20001222

MOSCOW -- Lawmakers yesterday tentatively approved a law allowing Russia to import spent nuclear-fuel rods for reprocessing, a plan that could bring the country $20 billion - and 21,000 tons of nuclear waste.

The Russian Atomic Energy Ministry said the money, which Russia would earn over 10 years, could be used to clean up past radioactive spills in Russia.

The proposal has been in the works for years. It is fiercely opposed by environmental groups, who say it amounts to selling downtrodden Russia as the world's nuclear-waste dump.

The Duma overwhelmingly passed the law on the first reading, but it must clear two more readings, pass the parliament's upper chamber and be signed by President Vladimir Putin before it takes effect.

Proponents said Russia could earn much-needed foreign income by taking advantage of the country's Cold War-era nuclear facilities.

"We'll get financing and won't disgracefully beg the International Monetary Fund for money as we do now," Atomic Energy Minister Yevgeny Adamov said.

The environmental group Greenpeace said the promise to use profits to clean up past nuclear disasters was a public-relations ploy.

The ministry just wants "to get Western money for an expansion of the Russian nuclear industry, whose disregard for safety and the environment is starkly demonstrated" by past mistakes, a statement from Greenpeace said yesterday.

The program foresees a market in Europe and Asia by offering a temporary solution to the problem of spent fuel rods piling up at civilian-nuclear reactors.

Nuclear-power stations worldwide currently have about 200,000 tons of waste in temporary storage.

For a fee, small shipments would be sent to Russia's Mayak facility in the central Ural Mountains.

The recycling process extracts useable nuclear material from the spent nuclear rods while reducing their potential to be used in weapons, the Russian Nuclear Ministry has said.

Under current law, waste left over after reprocessing must be returned to the country of origin. The new measure would allow Russia to keep the waste.

France and Britain are currently the only countries operating commercial-reprocessing plants.

Both Russian and foreign environmental groups object to the Russian ministry's plan, saying Russia should treat its own nuclear waste before receiving more.

A 1992 law forbids importing nuclear materials from foreign countries other than former East Bloc nations with existing contracts. Russia now treats spent fuel rods from Ukraine, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Hungary under a system established during Soviet times.

----

Russia Risks Another Chernobyl

International Herald Tribune
Friday, December 22, 2000
Cristina Chuen and Elena Sokova
http://www.iht.com/articles/5088.htm

MONTEREY, California Is the world ready for a self-regulating nuclear industry in Russia, just a short time after the Chernobyl power plant was finally shut down? The Ministry of Atomic Energy thinks so and is promoting a bill before the Parliament that may soon emasculate Russia's independent nuclear regulatory agency.

The bill would transfer authority over licensing and safety inspections from the Federal Inspectorate for Nuclear and Radiation Safety, known in Russia by its acronym GAN, to the ministry, known as Minatom - a throwback to the Chernobyl era.

The creation of a nuclear regulatory agency was a singular achievement of the budding Russian democracy in the early 1990s. It was also a result of a serious re-evaluation of Russia's nuclear programs after the 1986 Chernobyl accident. The 1994 International Nuclear Safety Convention, which Russia has signed, requires parties to separate operation and regulatory activities.

But, Minatom soon chafed under the new regulations, and began to lobby against GAN's "intrusive" inspections and exacting licensing procedures. First, GAN lost its jurisdiction over Russia's nuclear navy. In 1996, the inspectorate was required to make its annual reports secret. This summer Minatom pushed through a government decree eliminating GAN's right to license any military-related nuclear activities.

Now Minatom is trying to eliminate GAN's right to license and perform safety inspections in the civilian sector. If Minatom succeeds, GAN would be left without any effective regulatory tools. Although the minister of atomic energy, Yevgeni Adamov, claims that the licensing change is merely a question of streamlining and that his ministry is not trying to destroy the nuclear regulatory body, the chairman of GAN, Yuri Vishnevsky, says that one should "not believe a word Adamov says."

Mr. Vishnevsky knows what he is talking about: Last year, GAN attempted to shut down two plutonium reactors producing electricity near Tomsk, Siberia, because they were unsafe. Instead of fixing the problems, Minatom, with government collusion, kept the reactors running.

Today, Minatom is on the verge of a massive expansion of its operations, especially in nuclear energy production. Minatom is bringing new power reactors on line, reconstituting divisions that were privatized under reforms, promoting profitable deals like the sale of nuclear power reactors to Iran, and planning to make money by importing spent nuclear fuel.

Furthermore, Minatom has been fighting to consolidate its profit-making enterprises, which currently subsidize activities like nuclear dismantlement, safety and security, into a single corporation. In Soviet times, when the atomic industry monitored itself, it did not have to worry about costs in a state-run economy. Its new focus on profits sharply reduces the incentive for Minatom to maintain safety standards and stop cutting corners.

Another reason why Minatom wants to effectively shut down GAN is that in just two years, 12 of Russia's 29 power reactors will reach the end of their service lives, including several old Chernobyl-type reactors. Upgrades can be costly. Minatom hopes to fix the reactors at one third of the cost that GAN thinks is required to ensure their safe operation.

To proceed with its plan, Minatom needs to remove the safety watchdog from the scene. Mr. Vishnevsky said Minatom officials had told him it would be cheaper to buy legislators than to pay for the upgrades.

In addition, safety improvements continue to be needed at other nuclear installations. According to Mr. Vishnevsky, many of Russia's 109 research reactors are in dire need of safety upgrades. Russia also has to deal with more than 400 radioactive waste storage sites holding 389 million cubic meters of liquid radioactive waste and nearly 50,000 cubic meters of solid radioactive waste. Can Minatom be trusted to seek out safety problems and fix them appropriately?

Except for GAN itself and the rather weak Russian environmental movement, there is no one to challenge Minatom's plans, particularly since the government of President Vladimir Putin eliminated the State Environmental Committee earlier this year. Recently, a public drive to hold a referendum on Minatom's spent nuclear fuel import plans was halted when the Central Electoral Commission invalidated enough signatures to bury the plebiscite.

The plan to hamstring GAN is being pushed through the legislature with the help of the chairman of the Duma environmental committee, who is the brother of a Minatom deputy minister. The government also supports the changes. No wonder GAN has asked Western regulatory agencies for their support. Foreign countries should insist that no assistance money be spent in the civilian sector without independent inspections.

Unless the international community mobilizes, Minatom will soon be able to oversee itself: This closely resembles the situation when Chernobyl exploded. It is not too late yet to reverse the highly dangerous course of events. Can the world afford to let the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy monitor itself once again? As the Russians say, this is like having a wolf guard the sheep.

The writers are research associates at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in the Monterey Institute of International Studies. They contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.

---

Russia tentatively OKs waste imports

Infobeat
December 22, 2000
By ANDREW KRAMER Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405489369

MOSCOW (AP) - Russia's Atomic Energy Ministry on Thursday won preliminary approval of its dream of earning as much as $20 billion by importing other countries' nuclear waste for processing _ up to 21,000 tons of it over the next decade.

Environmentalists say it will turn Russia into the world's nuclear dump.

The State Duma, or lower house of parliament, on Thursday approved by 319-38 the proposal to bring spent nuclear fuel rods to Russia. It must clear two more readings, pass the upper chamber and be signed by President Vladimir Putin to become law.

Proponents stressed that Russia should take advantage of its Cold War-era nuclear and scientific facilities, that it could make up to $20 billion over 10 years, and that the money could help clean up radiation spills in Russia.

``We'll get financing and won't disgracefully beg the International Monetary Fund for money as we do now,'' Atomic Energy Minister Yevgeny Adamov said.

Russian and foreign environmental groups said Russia should treat its own nuclear waste before importing more radioactive material.

The environmental group Greenpeace described the promise to use profits for cleanup as a public relations ploy.

``We see this as a disaster for the Russian people,'' Greenpeace spokesman Jon Walter said. ``It will create another Chernobyl generation, whose lives will be cut short by radioactive contamination.'' Chernobyl was the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster in neighboring Ukraine.

The Atomic Energy ministry wants to get Western funds to expand the Russian nuclear industry, ``whose disregard for safety and the environment is starkly demonstrated'' by past mistakes, Greenpeace said in a statement.

The program to import waste foresees a market in Europe and Asia for the service, which would solve temporarily the problem of spent fuel rods piling up at civilian nuclear reactors.

Nuclear power stations around the world have about 200,000 tons of waste in temporary storage.

For a fee, spent fuel would be sent by armored train to Russia's Mayak facility near Chelyabinsk in the Ural Mountains for reprocessing.

The recycling process extracts useable nuclear material from the spent rods while reducing their potential to be used in weapons, the Nuclear Ministry has said.

Mayak has been the site of several accidents, including a 1957 waste facility explosion that contaminated 9,200 square miles. The region has been called the most radioactive place on the planet because of Soviet-era nuclear waste dumping into lakes and rivers.

France and Britain are the only countries now operating commercial reprocessing plants.

A 1992 law forbids importing nuclear materials from countries other than former East Bloc nations with existing contracts. Russia now imports spent fuel rods from Ukraine, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Hungary for reprocessing, a system established during Soviet times.

---

Russians Back Plan for a Nuclear Waste Industry

New York Times
December 22, 2000
By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/22/world/22RUSS.html

MOSCOW, Dec. 21 - Russian lawmakers strongly backed government plans today to earn billions of dollars by treating the world's nuclear waste, provoking sharp criticism from ecologists.

The State Duma, or lower house of Parliament, approved by a vote of 319 to 38 the first reading of an amendment to a 1991 environmental law that prohibits importing nuclear waste for reprocessing or disposal.

Authorities say the amendment would let Russia sign contracts with China, Germany, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and Taiwan, earning as much as $21 billion over 10 years.

"For 10 to 15 years we can make money instead of going with a begging bowl to the I.M.F., which we have done up to now to our shame," the atomic energy minister, Yevgeny Adamov, told Parliament before the vote.

But the environmental group Greenpeace, which campaigned against the plan, warned that the law would turn Russia into a dumping ground.

"We're concerned that this will turn Russia into the world's first nuclear waste dump and that some of the sites that are being proposed are highly contaminated" already, John Walter, a researcher for Greenpeace, said in Amsterdam.

"There are a lot of people in the surrounding regions whose health has been seriously affected by this contamination. There are a lot of birth defects, there are high rates of cancer and all those sorts of associated health problems," he added.

"This is only going to get worse if Russia now decides to try and make a quick buck by hoarding other countries' nuclear waste and spent nuclear fuel. They can't handle their own waste, let alone the rest of the world's," Mr. Walter said.

But Mr. Adamov - who criticized Ukraine last week for closing the Chernobyl nuclear power station, insisting it was perfectly safe - denied that there were any ecological risks.

"The development of a strong energy sector in Russia will not lead to the stockpiling of radioactive nuclear waste," he said.

The Atomic Energy Ministry argues that the funds generated by treating nuclear waste from abroad would allow it to upgrade its own nuclear waste storage facilities, clean up contaminated land and expand a reprocessing plant in the Urals.

---

2000's Top Stories: Election, Elain

Associated Press
December 22, 2000 Filed at 12:11 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-YE-Top-10-Stories.html
http://usatoday.com/news/ndsfri03.htm

America's protracted election, the tug-of-war over Elian Gonzalez and the terrorist bombing of the USS Cole ranked as the top news stories of 2000, according to The Associated Press annual survey of its members.

No. 1 was no contest: George W. Bush's nail-biting triumph in Florida in an extraordinary presidential race resolved by the nation's highest court five weeks after Election Day. The story received a first-place ranking from 281 of the 312 AP newspaper and broadcast members who took part in the news cooperative's survey.

AP members also turned to Florida for the No. 2 story: The bitter custody battle with political overtones that centered on whether young Elian Gonzalez, rescued from the sea while fleeing Cuba with his mother, should stay with relatives in Miami or be returned to his father.

Following in the rankings were the attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 sailors, soaring oil prices that sent prices at the pump sharply upward, and the recall of more than 6 million Firestone tires.

AP subscribers outside the United States offered a different take on the year's news.

Fifty overseas subscribers, in a separate poll, also chose the U.S. presidential battle as the top story. But they ranked the ouster of Yugoslavia's Slobodan Milosevic second, followed by Israeli-Palestinian violence. Next were the Aug. 12 disaster aboard the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk and the historic summit between leaders of the two Koreas.

U.S. editors ranked Milosevic's toppling No. 9, the Middle East conflict No. 11, and the Russian sub tragedy No. 12. They did not place the Koreas summit among the top 20 stories -- ranking it lower than the 2000 Olympic Games and Tiger Woods' three Grand Slam wins.

This was the 65th year that the AP polled its members. A first-place vote gave a story 10 points, a second-place vote nine points, and so on. The top story last year was President Clinton's impeachment trial.

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

Pentagon Awards Defense Contract

Associated Press
December 22, 2000 Filed at 6:10 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Missile-Defense.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon announced a multibillion-dollar contract with the Boeing Co. on Friday to keep work going into the next administration on a national missile defense system.

Although no decision has been made whether the United States will deploy such a system, President Clinton said this year that testing and development should continue until the next administration makes a decision.

The contract is valued $6 billion for work from January 2001 through September 2007, and if additional work is required past that it could be worth up to $13 billion.

President-elect Bush has said he supports building an anti-missile shield to protect the United States.

``This will ensure that the Bush administration has the flexibility to structure the program to meet its requirements,'' said a Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Col. Rick Lehner.

The initial contract for Boeing expires in April 2001, and enough money remained only for two more tests, Lehner said.

``We don't want to have an interruption in the test program,'' he said.

Clinton said Sept. 1 that he was putting off deployment in part because of doubts about the technical feasibility of a system to shoot down enemy missiles.

Pentagon brass believe an effective defense against ballistic missile attack on the United States can be built, but they've had limited success with five tests done so far.

In two of three interception tests, prototype interceptor rockets failed to hit their target in space.

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Hail to the Chief Tech-Heads

Yahoo News
Sunday October 22, 12:22 am Eastern Time
TheStandard.com
By Michael Beschloss
http://biz.yahoo.com/st/001022/19246.html

Americans learn almost at their mother's knee about John Kennedy's passion for the moon-landing program and Franklin Roosevelt's deep involvement in the development of the atomic bomb. From such tales, you might imagine most American presidents as technologists-in-chief; sleeves rolled up, crouching over tables and blueprints with the inventors of the telegraph, the electric light or the computer, asking how government could help.

Indeed, presidents have done much to influence some of America's greatest technological breakthroughs: the transcontinental railroad, the atomic bomb, interstate highways, men on the moon, the Internet.

But throughout American history, such achievements have been more the exception than the rule. In the absence of war, economic crisis or an exceptionally visionary and effective executive, presidential influence on technological advancement has been marginal.

Although Thomas Jefferson was famously inventive, intrigued by science and worried about industrialization, he did little more to support technology during his presidency than correspond with Robert Fulton about the steamboat and Eli Whitney about the cotton gin. In the 1870s, when Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, President Rutherford Hayes provided nothing more than a White House ceremony as workers linked a phone connection from his mansion to the Treasury.

In contrast, Abraham Lincoln was enamored of technology; he was the first president to hold a patent, received in 1849 for a method he devised to buoy sailing vessels over shoals using inflated cylinders. During the Civil War, he established the National Academy of Sciences to "investigate, experiment and report upon any subject of science or art." And he oversaw the transformations in armaments, transportation and battlefield medicine required to defeat the South.

But Lincoln's greatest contribution to America's technological growth may be that he was the "driving force" behind the transcontinental railroad, as Stephen Ambrose writes in Nothing Like It in the World. The one-time railroad lawyer championed "internal improvements" - the great infrastructure challenges of his time - such as canals, roads and trains. As president, Lincoln helped decide the great cross-country project's route, financing, even the gauge of the tracks - 4 feet, 8-1/2 inches. It is probably no coincidence that the man who fought to bind a fractured union politically also sought to do so physically.

Still it was not until the 20th century, after decades of generally weak and peripheral presidents, that Lincoln's successors grew beyond their passive role in technological change.

The great departure was heralded by, of all people, Herbert Hoover. As secretary of commerce under Presidents Harding and Coolidge in the 1920s, Hoover sought increased private-public cooperation to hasten technological innovation in factories and farms.

But it was Franklin Roosevelt who was the first president to fully exercise his executive powers to advance U.S. technology interests. Like Lincoln, Roosevelt exercised those powers in the face of war.

In 1940, with the Nazis and imperial Japanese looming, he warned the Pan-American Scientific Congress that "great achievements of science and even of art can be used in one way or another to destroy as well as to create. ... If death is desired, science can do that. If a full rich and useful life is sought, science can do that also."

Roosevelt - in some cases almost singlehandedly - orchestrated the production of the ships, planes, guns, bombs and more esoteric inventions like radar and atomic weapons that would ultimately bring an Allied victory.

He also established a National Defense Research Committee, which included the presidents of Harvard and MIT. The panel used government money to explore the possibilities of atomic fission. In 1941, during a secret briefing just before Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt ordered members full-speed ahead: If in six months the project was making serious progress, he would throw any industrial and technological resources at his command behind crash production of an atomic bomb.

To preserve secrecy, FDR kept direct control of what became the Manhattan Project. He returned reports from his science adviser, Vannevar Bush, without making copies for White House files. To his private secretary, Grace Tully, the president said, "I can't tell you what this is, Grace, but if it works, and pray God it does, it will save many American lives."

The Cold War enshrined the notion that presidents must be experts in technology, which might sometimes make the difference between victory and defeat.

Dwight Eisenhower, who felt that the innovative Higgins landing craft won D-Day, knew what a crucial edge new developments in intelligence gathering, arms and transportation could bring to armies and navies.

In November 1954, a half-dozen members of Ike's national security establishment asked him to authorize $35 million for a spy plane developed by the "Skunk Works" - Lockheed's secret projects operation. The plane was to fly covertly over the Soviet Union, photographing tanks, airplanes and missile sites.

Knowing that crossing Soviet territory was tantamount to an act of war, the president insisted on approving every flight. He tinkered with routes and interrogated his men on the chances that Soviet technology had progressed enough to detect and down an American plane - as the Russians finally did on May Day 1960, when Francis Gary Powers fell into their hands.

Ike was also the president who demanded construction of the interstate highway system. As supreme commander during World War II, while studying reconnaissance photographs of Hitler's autobahns, Eisenhower mused how far behind the United States was in responding to the needs of the automobile that Americans themselves invented.

The interstate highway system became the largest public works project in history. After steering it through Congress as an essential measure for national defense, Ike was proud of it, but later regretted he had not been enough of a visionary. To get the program passed, his congressional leaders appeased members with large urban constituencies by offering disproportionate funds for construction in the cities.

By 1960, Eisenhower complained that he had "never anticipated" that so many interstate routes would cross highly populated city neighborhoods and that so little money would be spent on rapid transit. It was "very wasteful," he groused, "to have an average of just one man per $3,000 car driving into the central area and taking all the space required to park the car." But by then it was too late.

In his acceptance speech at the Los Angeles Coliseum in 1960, John Kennedy touted his New Frontier as a means of exploring "uncharted areas" of "science and space." But after his election, JFK refused NASA pleas for a $20 billion program (in 1961 dollars) to land on the moon by 1970. He worried it would unbalance the budget and upend the existing space program then neatly divided among scientific, communications, meteorological, military and other purposes. He also feared the possibility that astronauts might die in space - and tarnish his presidency.

Nevertheless, in April 1961, stunned by the first Soviet-manned space flight and his humiliating failed attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro at the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy revived the plan. He wanted to rally national support for himself and give the impression that the United States had seized the initiative back from Moscow. Republicans were horrified by the expense, but JFK managed to convince most of them (not Ike, who thought it "a stunt") that the program was essential to win the Cold War.

Kennedy quickly saw that the moon program presented a public relations bonanza. He flew to Cape Canaveral to quiz scientists on future missions, hectoring them to move faster. He monitored each flight and basked in the reflected glow of each returning hero.

Kennedy's moon-landing program shows how altered a presidential decision can look when viewed from different horizons. Today it seems questionable whether this was the best way to spend a king's ransom in the 1960s. But 500 years from now, earthlings may view the moon landing as the most important American achievement of the 20th century.

Beyond their Cold War role of overseeing (usually in secret) technological developments such as those in satellites, nuclear weapons, planes and missiles, later presidents dabbled only sporadically in technology.

In 1964, nervous about the popularity of the VW Beetle, Lyndon Johnson asked his defense secretary, Robert McNamara, former president of Ford Motor, to feel out the Big Three automakers in Detroit about patriotically combining to build a competitive American small car. They were unenthusiastic.

LBJ also secretly authorized planning for a Cold War communications system that - anticipated by almost no one - would lead, in 1989, to the World Wide Web.

If any president deserves to seize the title of father of the Internet - however accidentally - it may well be Johnson.

Richard Nixon denounced Congress when it refused to fund a supersonic transport plane. Jimmy Carter covertly authorized development of stealth aircraft, then, under attack by Ronald Reagan in the 1980 campaign as soft on defense, allowed aides to leak the secret to the press.

Possibly the most fateful presidential intervention in technological development since FDR and the Manhattan Project was Ronald Reagan's demand for a space-based strategic defense initiative. Had anyone been president in the early 1980s other than Reagan, with his memories of Flash Gordon and his genuine desire to abolish nuclear arsenals, it is almost certain SDI never would have been considered. Some former Soviet officials argue if Reagan hadn't threatened Mikhail Gorbachev with the prospect of bankrupting Soviet society in an effort to build a competitive strategic defense, the Soviet leadership might not have been so eager to make a fire-sale deal to end the Cold War. Such is the power of vaporware.

Both of this year's presidential candidates have watched the link between presidents and technology from a front-row seat. Al Gore's father, as a Tennessee senator, led the fight to finance Eisenhower's highway system. George W. Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush, was one of the Republican senators who denounced Kennedy's moon-landing program, warning the price tag would "unleash the forces of inflation."

With the campaign racing to a climax, we are about to witness the first inauguration of a new president in 72 years that does not fall under the cloud of economic crises and wars that compelled earlier presidents to be great technologists-in-chief. Out of habit, the next president may be tempted to emulate Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Kennedy or Reagan.

But, in an era of relative peace and unparalleled prosperity, welding himself to great private-sector initiatives may not be the most helpful thing a president can do.

The unique powers of the presidency will always be needed at crucial moments to ensure fairness, national security and technological explorations not driven solely by the profit motive. Presidents can sometimes spot those moments more acutely than anyone else. But in their absence, the best contribution the next president can make to the telephones, televisions and Internets of the future might well be to do what most of our presidents have done throughout American history: Stay on the sidelines and cheer.

Michael Beschloss has written six award-winning books about American presidents, including Taking Charge, the first volume in a trilogy about the Lyndon Johnson tapes.

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

Nurescell Announces Management Changes

Yahoo News
Friday December 22, 9:26 am Eastern Time
Press Release
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/001222/ca_nuresce.html

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 22, 2000--Several changes within the senior management of Nurescell Inc. (OTCBB:NUSL - news) have recently occurred.

In an effort to further strengthen management as the company proceeds into the production and marketing phase of Nurescell's activities, Adrian Joseph has resigned as chief executive officer of the company and will serve in the newly created position of chief scientific advisor.

This new position will permit Joseph to concentrate on scientific activities in Europe and Russia working with Nurescell AG, the German affiliate of the company. His scientific and technical expertise will remain available to Nurescell. Additionally, Sharon Nitka has resigned her position as chief financial officer.

John Longenecker has been named the new CEO and president of Nurescell and will continue to serve as a director of the company. Longenecker significantly strengthens the executive management team through his many years of experience in the nuclear sector. Longenecker brings significant government and commercial nuclear industry experience to the company.

Longenecker is also the president of Longenecker & Associates, a management consulting firm within the high-technology and energy- related industries. Prior to the formation of Longenecker & Associates in 1989, Longenecker was chairman of General Atomic International Services Corp., a company which provided services and products to nuclear power stations.

From 1983 to 1987, Longenecker served in the Reagan administration as the deputy assistant secretary responsible for management of the U.S. uranium enrichment business within the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), and prior thereto worked in the U.S. nuclear reactor development program as the director of Breeder Demonstration Projects for the DOE.

Longenecker was appointed by President Bush in 1992 to serve as the first CEO of the U.S. Enrichment Corp. Longenecker received both his bachelor of science and master of science degrees from Pennsylvania State University and has served as a member of that institution's Industrial Professional Advisory Council.

Longenecker has appeared before the U.S. Congress on numerous occasions, and has presented papers in various national and international forums including the Uranium Institute in London, the Japanese Atomic Industrial Forum, the United States Atomic Industrial Forum, the U.S. Council for Energy Awareness, the American Nuclear Society, the European Nuclear Society, the Canadian Nuclear Society, the World Nuclear Fuel Conference, the Institute of Nuclear Materials Management and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Longenecker is a member of the Nuclear Energy Institute and has served as chairman of the USCEA Uranium Enrichment Task Force. Longenecker is a member of Tau Beta Pi Honorary Engineering Society and the American Nuclear Society.

James Samuelson has resigned his duties as president and will assume the positions of chief financial officer, vice president of operations and remain a director of the company. Samuelson brings significant experience in the international financial markets to the company. Samuelson also serves as vice president and chief financial officer of Advanced Technology Industries Inc. (OTCBB:AVDI - news).

Prior to this position Samuelson served as a vice president in the investment banking groups of two European based financial groups. Samuelson earned both his bachelor of science and master of business administration degrees from Creighton University.

The board of directors would like to recognize the contributions of Joseph to the company since its formation. Joseph's scientific background played an instrumental part in the development of Nurescell's proprietary radiation shielding technology and maneuvering the company to its present position.

The current management appointments will allow Nurescell to transition from research and development to marketing of its product. The company looks forward to its continued cooperation with Joseph as he assumes the role of chief scientific advisor.

William Wilson, chairman of the board remarked: ``The board of directors of Nurescell is extremely fortunate to be able to name these very experienced and capable people to their new positions in the company. We now look forward to a challenging and productive future for the company.

``With the completion of the newly formed affiliate company in Germany, known as Nurescell AG, we have begun the testing and certification process with required governmental agencies and institutes of Nurescell material in Europe and anticipate that this will result in sales of our products in the Russian and European marketplace that would not otherwise be available to the company. We remain enthusiastic about the future of Nurescell Inc. and Nurescell AG.''

In accordance with the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, Nurescell Inc. notes that statements in this news release that look forward in time (which includes everything other than historical information) involve risks and uncertainties that may affect its actual results of operations. The following important factors, among others (including those discussed in Nurescell Inc.'s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission) could cause actual results to differ materially from those set forth in the forward-looking statements: the availability of funding for current and future operations; the acceptance of our product in the marketplace; and the characteristics and pricing of our product as compared with competing products. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this news release. Nurescell Inc. undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

-------- kentucky

Metals recovery perilous: DOE
Paducah workers during the Cold War may have been exposed to five airborne hazards.

From: magnu96196@aol.com
Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2000 07:40:33 EST
By Joe Walker jwalker@paducahsun.com--270.575.8650
http://www.paducahsun.com/cgi-bin/view.cgi?/200012/22+02ZJ_news.html+20001222+news

Two new Department of Energy reports say workers potentially were exposed to airborne hazards while recovering metals, notably gold and silver, at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion plant during the Cold War years. Five materials - the metals beryllium, cobalt, lead and tantalum, and the radionuclide tritium - may have caused health and environmental hazards, according to the reports, issued Thursday. The materials were used mainly in processing weapons components as part of plant work for outside firms and government agencies.

The work, which took place from 1952 to 1986, included recovering precious metals from damaged and retired nuclear weapons; fabrication of moon landing parts for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; making research nuclear reactor components; and assembling electronics and parts for missile systems. Other work involved the recovery and recycling of metal from weapons casing and electronics, and the destruction of classified parts for security reasons.

The report says DOE's Office of Environment, Safety and Health, which oversees an ongoing worker health study, should review the information to see if more action is needed. DOE officials said additional steps could include asking that new worker compensation laws - which cover beryllium and radiation sickness - be expanded for lead and other exposures.

Other recommendations:

--The former torching, machining and melting of lead, and the machining and crushing of beryllium and beryllium-copper alloy, should be evaluated further.

--More review of burial practices is needed because of the plant's burial of neutron generators containing tritium, beryllium-contaminated materials, and the volume of beryllium and other materials from the weapons program. That data will provide better information about buried materials and containers before excavation. Don Seaborg, DOE's Paducah site manager, said there are no plans to dig in the classified burial yard where most of the materials are stored. The site is scheduled for cleanup in 2009.

--Work-for-others program records should be centralized, indexed and cross-checked with other facilities to validate and quantify hazards identified.

--Information in the reports should be provided to regulators and interested citizens to make them aware of past work at the plant. Dale Jackson, director of uranium management for DOE's Oak Ridge, Tenn., operations, including Paducah, said sampling shows current workers are not at risk because of the Cold War work.

Highlights of the reports:

--Metals processed were gold, silver, steel, nickel, aluminum, copper, monel (a copper-nickel alloy) and cobalt. A smelter and two sweat furnaces were used, and an induction furnace was added in 1976 to process metals with higher melting points. The smelter was used to destroy the classified aspect of parts used to enrich uranium at the plant, and to recover nickel from production parts removed from enrichment plants at Paducah, Ohio and Tennessee. As late as 1986, some radioactive materials were shipped to the Paducah plant for smelter processing. Radioactively contaminated materials from the plant were processed with the same equipment.

--Many of the materials formerly handled by Paducah plant workers are known today to be hazardous and require protection. In the early days of the plant, those hazards were not as well-known. When smelting started, equipment was not generally used to protect workers from vapors and particulates during furnace operation and slag cleaning. Later, as hazards were better understood, health and safety controls were specified.

--Available records show 2,800 to 5,300 pounds of gold were recovered and shipped from the plant from 1964 to 1985 in contaminated areas of a cleaning building and a smelter.

"The worst-case use of gold would have been through pharmaceutical injection in arthritic patients. If this material were used for this purpose, it would have resulted in an exposure of about 30 millirem, or 10 percent of annual natural background (radiation). But this exposure scenario is extremely unlikely." DOE officials said in interviews that there is no evidence such injections really took place.

--About 7,650 pounds of silver were reclaimed by reprocessing classified X-ray film from 1966 to 1974. The film was incinerated and the ash smelted into silver bars in a foundry. Cross-contamination could have occurred during processing, but there is no evidence of the potential for dangerous levels of contamination.

--Lead was recycled with weapons parts. The only records available said 258,990 pounds of shredded lead were produced and sold. The lead had slight potential for cross-contamination during processing. In the mid '60s through late '70s, Paducah was asked to fabricate X-ray lead shield doors poured in two sections, each with 26,000 pounds of lead. Also, lead was scavenged from abandoned Kentucky Ordnance Works facilities near the plant by using torches to cut and extract lead.

--Much of the outside work was done in the plant machine shop, a state-of-the-art facility during the Cold War. Workers were at greatest risk in the melting and machining of lead, and the machining of beryllium, and beryllium-copper compounds. Beryllium hazards were partly recognized, but records and workers' memory show no clear evidence that recommended protective measures like controlled ventilation and respirators were used.

--About 17 million pounds of "clean" nickel, recovered by smelting into ingots, were sold. Samples showed low levels of contamination of technetium-99 and plutonium - radioactive substances contained in uranium recycled from nuclear fuel - but "these levels would have had no public health consequence." Nearly 20 million pounds of contaminated nickel were cast and remain in a plant scrap yard.

--Roughly 4.5 million pounds of aluminum were smelted into ingots from 1970 to 1986. Records before 1984 could not be found. Samples showed low levels of plutonium and two other radionuclides. Although the aluminum was not a general public health threat, "the potential to exceed annual radiation-protection standards for the public might possibly have existed at foundries (outside the plant) where this aluminum was remelted."

--Scrap steel was segregated into contaminated and clean areas, but no documents were found, and clean areas sometimes were contaminated. Excess clean steel was sold, and contaminated steel may have been sold. Steel known to be contaminated was routinely placed in a scrap yard and not sold. About 26.7 million pounds of contaminated steel scrap were generated. Smelting was cut short because of process problems, and the ingots remain with contaminated scrap.

----------

Work may have put plant workers at risk
Investigators haven't fully evaluated risks, officials say

Louisville Courier-Journal
Friday, December 22, 2000
By JAMES MALONE, The Courier-Journal
http://www.courier-journal.com/localnews/2000/0012/22/ky_uran.html

PADUCAH, Ky. -- Thirty years of secret, "outside" government work at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant exposed workers to cobalt, toxic beryllium and other harmful materials, the U.S. Energy Department said yesterday.

Officials said there was no evidence the workers were harmed but conceded that investigators have not fully evaluated the risks from the jobs, many of which were done in support of U.S. military installations and the CIA.

The Energy Department released 90 pages of documents and exhibits, marking the culmination of a year-long probe into work that went on at the plant from 1958 to 1988, including building parts for the Apollo space program, recycling atomic bombs and "work activity" for the CIA.

Allegations in a 1999 lawsuit led to the investigation. Yesterday, the Energy Department said the public and current plant workers had not been put at risk, but that exposure of former workers to beryllium and lead needed more study.

"There is no perceived current hazard to the work force," said J. Dale Jackson, the Energy Department's manager of uranium operations at its Oak Ridge, Tenn., office. Officials said former workers concerned about exposure to the materials could contact the medical surveillance program to arrange a screening by calling (888) 241-1199.

Starting in the late 1950s, as the urgency to develop atomic weapons waned, the government sought work from other federal agencies to keep its highly trained technicians and machinists at Paducah on the job. A brochure was even printed offering the plant's services.

Much of the work was classified. Workers melted and crushed tons of atomic weapons, built electronic parts of the Lunar Lander and huge lead doors for NASA, and machined nose cones for missiles and other rocket components.

The work was so secret that wives have said husbands could not tell them what they were doing.

The released documents did not specify how many workers were exposed to such things as toxic metals and radioactivity from old bombs. But the report said it appeared that there were few safeguards to protect them.

Among other things, the report noted that radioactive nickel ingots were "sold into commerce," and some bars of recycled silver and gold could not be accounted for.

The report contained the first government acknowledgement that radioactive nuclear weapon materials, and not just their shells, were brought into the plant, along with beryllium and large amounts of lead.

The documents marked the government's fullest disclosure to date of the nature and scope of its program to salvage precious metals from dismantled equipment.

The papers point out that investigators could not account for all of the metals, including three gold bars shipped to a plant at Oak Ridge in 1981.

Energy Department officials said yesterday that the disposition of the gold "was a matter of national security" and declined to elaborate.

Paducah also produced some 102 silver bars worth about a third of a million dollars, but records for 21 of the bars could not be found. Much of the silver was reclaimed from burned photographs and film.

"No procurement records could be produced to indicate the quantity of silver sold nor the selling procedure," the report said.

Gold was dissolved from bomb components, melted into bars and sold tothe Treasury Department. After the United States abandoned gold-backed currency in the late 1970s, then plant operator Union Carbide began selling gold commercially. The report concludes that up to 5,300 pounds of gold, worth about $2.4 million at today's prices, was recovered at the plant.

Many of the men who worked in smelter operations to melt and dissolve gold initially worked in their street clothes, and "the constant use of a respirator could not be confirmed," the report said.

Investigators still have been unable to determine how much and in what form beryllium metal was used at Paducah. Workers reported crushing bomb casings and parts that were known to contain a beryllium alloy. One retiree reported machining the toxic metal.

"Records do not show clear evidence that recommended protective measures such as controlled ventilation or respirators were used," the report said.

During the course of the year-long probe -- the team assembled its first draft in July -- investigators said they were hampered by incomplete or missing records.

They discovered that voluminous files from a key smelter facility had been put into drums "for disposal as low-level hazardous waste." A search of 23 drums identified as containing "paper and trash" revealed that six contained numerous photographs, files, logbooks, operational records and engineering drawings for the smelter.

The records proved to be "historically useful," Jackson said.

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Secret work was done at Paducah Plant employees were at risk

December 22, 2000, in the Herald-Leader
By Dylan T. Lovan ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.kentuckyconnect.com/heraldleader/news/122200/statedocs/22paducahplant.htm
http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/whatsnew.htm</A>

Secret work was done at Paducah Plant employees were at risk LOUISVILLE A Department of Energy report concluded Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant employees were exposed to potentially hazardous conditions from top secret work performed for outside government agencies.

The study released yesterday by DOE examined the plant's secret ``Work for Others,'' program, conducted from the early 1950s to 1986. Under the program, agencies like NASA, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Department of Defense borrowed Paducah manpower to conduct classified tasks. The report's findings came largely from classified nuclear weapons documents and interviews with former workers.

For 50 years the DOE-owned plant enriched uranium for nuclear weapons and power plants. In 1999 three employees filed a whistleblower lawsuit alleging that contamination and conditions were much worse than had been disclosed by former operators.

The plant has contaminated soil, water, and plant and animal life on and around the facility. A cleanup is under way.

The top-secret work detailed in the report included recovery of precious metals from retired and damaged nuclear weapons, assembly of lunar landing parts for NASA and electronic parts for missile systems.

Employees often worked with lead, beryllium and cobalt, and the use of protective clothing and masks wasn't always enforced, said Dale Jackson, director of the Uranium Management Division at Oak Ridge.

-------- new mexico

Wen Ho Lee Celebrates Birthday

Associated Press
December 22, 2000 Filed at 2:10 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Scientist-Secrets.html

FOSTER CITY, Calif. (AP) -- A year after turning 60 in solitary confinement, Wen Ho Lee celebrated his 61st birthday basking in freedom and surrounded by those who supported him during his months in the vortex of a spy scandal.

``Today, I don't remember all the difficult time of the last year,'' a smiling Lee said Thursday in a brief statement to reporters.

His daughter Alberta sat beside him, her eyes welling with tears. Asked which moments had been hardest for her in the past 12 months, she paused for a while. ``There were a lot of moments,'' she said finally. ``Probably visiting him in jail was the hardest.''

Lee, a former nuclear scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, was indicted Dec. 10, 1999, on 59 criminal counts that he mishandled nuclear weapons secrets. He spent nine months in solitary confinement in a New Mexico jail.

Lee was never charged him with espionage, and he has sworn he never passed secrets to any unauthorized person.

He was freed Sept. 13, when he pleaded guilty to one count of illegally downloading restricted data to an unsecure tape. Fifty-eight counts were dropped.

Lee is writing a book and also has filed a civil lawsuit against the government alleging that his privacy was violated by a smear campaign.

-------- south carolina

Cracks in pipes found at S.C. nuclear power plant

Associated Press
Friday, December 22, 2000
http://www.accessatlanta.com/partners/ajc/epaper/editions/friday/local_news_ a3245faf15e871400020.html

Columbia, S.C. --- More tiny cracks have been found in pipes that carry contaminated water through a Fairfield County nuclear power plant, but officials say the problem should not delay restarting its V.C. Sumner plant next month as scheduled.

It would take three years for any newly discovered cracks to grow big enough to cause concern, according to a report by South Carolina Electric & Gas Co., presented to federal regulators Wednesday.

''We're still anticipating starting up in the first or second week of January,'' said Steve Byrne, vice president of nuclear operations for SCE&G.

The company plans to examine the cracks in 2003 to see if they have grown, Byrne said.

The plant has been closed since October, when inspectors found a major pipe leaking boric acid near the power station's radioactive core. Regulators say the leaking pipe did not pose a threat to the public because the plant has adequate containment areas and controls.

The discovery of the cracks prompted further testing last month that uncovered additional cracks along weld seams on other pipes, the company said Wednesday. Seven possible cracks were found on a section of pipe repaired since October. Eleven others are on other pipes, according to the company's report.

The cause of the cracks is unclear. SCE&G officials say the initial crack could have come from an outdated weld repair technique.

Nuclear safety advocates say the crack discovered in October could have led to a pipe break that would have required the plant to rely on emergency systems to keep the reactor cool.

Some of the possible cracks discovered last month were on pipes that carry water from a reactor core.

Federal regulators, nuclear safety advocates and atomic power executives have been watching the Sumner plant closely. Cracks could indicate similar problems in plants across the country. A 27-inch crack was found in October.

Investigators also are reviewing the type of testing done to examine the safety of pipes.

-------- tennessee

Morgan County home to ZeTek, ORNL project

Fri, 22 Dec 2000 16:36:35 EST
http://www.oakridger.com/

ZeTek Power Corp. will soon be using technology licensed from the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory and setting up shop in East Tennessee.

ZeTek, a subsidiary of the United Kingdom-based ZeTek Power, is a leading manufacturer of fuel cells and expects to employ 150 people within two years at the former Advance Transformer plant in Morgan County, according to an ORNL press release.

Production of fuel cells, which are relatively simple devices that combine oxygen and hydrogen to produce electricity, could begin early next year.

In the press release, Tommy Kilby, Morgan County executive, said, "Morgan County is proud to be the site selected by ZeTek Power. The partnerships created among Morgan County, ZeTek and ORNL will be good for the workforce not only in Morgan County, but the entire region."

This marks the first location of a company in the region as a direct result of technology developed by ORNL since UT-Battelle took over management.

Over the next few years, Oak Ridge could become home to ZeTek research and development, systems integration and corporate offices.

At the heart of ZeTek's alkaline fuel cell system will be two ORNL technologies. One removes carbon dioxide from the fuel (hydrogen from natural gas, propane and other readily available gases) and from air. This technology avoids the release of carbon dioxide into the environment.

The other technology is a method for manufacturing the carbon elements (used in the electrical swing adsorption) through a slurry molding process.

ORNL and ZeTek officials believe the time is perfect for this zero emission technology, which has a variety of uses, ranging from propulsion systems for vehicles and boats to stationary power generators.

"Initially, we expect to target the power generation industry, where fuel cells can help replace power generation from fossil fuels, which is less environmentally friendly," stated Nick Abson, chairman and chief executive officer of ZeTek.

"Within the next 16 months, we expect to show that this technology is competitive with gas-fired generation of electricity."

ORNL's Carbon Fiber Composite Molecular Sieve is one of the technologies that enable the ZeTek alkaline fuel cell system to be robust and inexpensive to operate.

The novel activated carbon was developed as a result of ORNL's long history of carbon research.

The other ORNL technology that ZeTek will use is called electrical swing adsorption and involves passing an electric current through the carbon fiber base material to rid it of the carbon dioxide captured from the fuel or oxidant.

While there are several kinds of fuel cells, ZeTek has opted to produce alkaline fuel cells because they offer several advantages over the others. The alkaline fuel cell operates at the relatively low temperature of 70 degrees Celsius and takes advantage of well-established technology developed for the European space program.

It also uses materials that are lower in cost than what are required for other fuel cell technologies.

ORNL's Carbon Fiber Composite Molecular Sieve and electrical swing adsorption technologies will allow ZeTek to simplify and improve the operation of its fuel cell system.

The Carbon Fiber Molecular Sieve and electrical swing adsorption allow ZeTek to replace a non-regenerative chemical scrubbing system that made its fuel cell less versatile.

ZeTek will have a non-exclusive license to manufacture Carbon Fiber Composite Molecular Sieve systems and an exclusive license to use them in alkaline fuel cell systems.

The technology was developed by Rod Judkins, director of ORNL's Fossil Energy Program, and Tim Burchell, both members of the Metals and Ceramics Division.

Others involved in developing the technology were Charlie Weaver and Bill Chilcoat, both retired from ORNL.

---

IAAP Burlington Health Study Website

To: doewatch@egroups.com
From: magnu96196@aol.com
Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2000 12:31:22 EST

The website for the Burlington study has been launched.
http://www.public-health.uiowa.edu/baecps/index.html
It will be updated frequently. Regards, Bill Field

---

Worker hit in face with chlorine gas

Knoxville News
December 22, 2000
State and local briefs
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/20631.shtml

An Oliver Springs employee changing a cylinder of chlorine gas at a water-treatment plant Thursday was blasted in the face with the potentially lethal gas.

Franklin Maurice Parton, 62, was rushed to Methodist Medical Center of Oak Ridge, where he was listed in stable condition in the intensive-care unit.

Chlorine gas irritates the eyes, nose and mouth and can damage the lungs to the point that pneumonia-like symptoms set in.

Oliver Springs Mayor Gary Stinnett, who also serves with the town's volunteer fire department, said the 11:15 a.m. incident occurred when Parton removed a supposedly expended cylinder of gas used in water treatment.

As Parton disconnected the 150-pound metal cylinder, chlorine gas spewed from the nozzle.

A man accompanying Parton helped him from the water-treatment plant on Highway 61 between Oliver Springs and Clinton. Parton was taken by ambulance to the hospital as the area was closed off, Stinnett said.

The treatment plant was closed for about two hours, Stinnett said, until the Oak Ridge Fire Department's hazardous-materials team sealed the cylinder. The incident did not cause a disruption in water service, Stinnett said.

DOE detects source of fluorine leak

The U.S. Department of Energy said Thursday that workers had discovered a "pinhole-sized leak" in piping that apparently released fluorine gas and caused last week's emergency situation at the Oak Ridge K-25 plant.

DOE spokesman Steven Wyatt said the leak was found near the ceiling in Building K-1302 at a point where two half-inch pipes lead to an old fluorine storage tank. Workers discovered the leak during environmental monitoring at the site Wednesday afternoon, Wyatt said. "They noticed the telltale odor of fluorine and saw about a 10-inch stream of gas coming from the leak," Wyatt said.

The DOE spokesman said plans are under way to solve the problem by removing that section of pipe and "the small amount of residual fluorine in the system that remained after a previous cleanup effort."

Officials are still trying to determine why the gas leaked sporadically.

-------- washington

Hanford firm retains contract
Federal officials extend their pact with Fluor Hanford, which manages the site

Oregon Live
Friday, December 22, 2000
By Linda Ashton of The Associated Press
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/news/oregonian/00/12/nw_61fluor22.frame

YAKIMA -- The U.S. Department of Energy is extending for six years its contract with Fluor Hanford, which has managed the Hanford Nuclear Reservation since October 1996.

The $3.8 billion contract carries with it the opportunity for Fluor to earn about $168 million in performance-based fees, said Keith Klein, the Department of Energy's Hanford manager.

"We come to this conclusion following a very tough but productive year," Klein said in a teleconference from Richland, Wash., on Thursday.

"We've seen Fluor demonstrate improved ability to make progress, especially with the timely movement of spent nuclear fuel from the K Basins.

"We're impressed with Fluor's willingness to make changes, aggressively attack problems and, in the final analysis, perform."

Last year, the Department of Energy fined Fluor $330,000 -- the biggest fine issued by the department -- for violating safety rules in the K Basins project, one of Hanford's top priority radiation cleanup efforts, which for years was delayed by technical difficulties and cost overruns.

But by December 1999, the department said Fluor had corrected the problems satisfactorily.

This month, Fluor began moving 2,300 tons of spent nuclear fuel from the aging, leaky basins, which are old reactor cooling pools 400 yards from the Columbia River. The corroded fuel rods are being prepared for interim storage and moved to the central part of the 560-square-mile reservation.

"We're very pleased that the DOE has given us the opportunity to continue what we've started here at Hanford," said Ron Hanson, president and chief executive officer for Fluor Hanford.

"We've had a very good year in clearly achieving significant cleanup results. This agreement gives us the opportunity to keep momentum going well into the future."

This year, Fluor earned nearly $20 million in performance-based fees.

Klein said the new contract was a two-way street, with the Energy Department agreeing to make changes as well, such as trying to eliminate cumbersome requirements and processes.

The contract calls for multiyear planning and goals, rather than an annual approach, which has been more typical of Hanford projects.

The K Basins work will continue to be a top priority with all the fuel supposed to be removed by July 2004 and other radioactive debris, sludge and water cleaned out by 2006.

"There will be progress payments associated with that, depending on how much fuel they move," Klein said. "The final fee will depend on whether they're able to achieve the ultimate end and at what cost to taxpayers."

There are other specific goals in the contract for retrieving transuranic waste, which is typically contaminated clothing, tools and debris; decommissioning buildings; stabilizing plutonium for safer storage; deactivating the Plutonium Finishing Plant; and treating and disposing of other waste.

"The work . . . is hard, it's dangerous, and it requires a great deal of management and craft skill," Klein said.

-------- us nuc politics

For jobs left, Bush looks now to the right
Conservatives are in line for three cabinet posts and the party leadership. His earlier picks had worried some.

Philadelphia Inquirer
Friday, December 22, 2000
By Ron Hutcheson INQUIRER WASHINGTON BUREAU
http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/2000/12/22/national/TRANSITION22.htm

AUSTIN, TEXAS - Even as President-elect George W. Bush prepares to name Gov. Whitman, a leading Republican moderate, to the Environmental Protection Agency today , he is looking at conservative elected officials for other high-profile jobs.

Republican strategists and aides said Bush had settled on Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Thompson said yesterday that he had not yet accepted the offer. Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating is considered the leading contender for attorney general.

Bush also is said to have settled on conservative Virginia Gov. James S. Gilmore to head the Republican National Committee.

In tapping the nation's pool of Republican governors for his coming round of appointments, Bush is reaching out to fellow government executives, many of whom were the first to line up behind his presidential candidacy and with whom he shares a political kinship.

Gilmore, Thompson and Keating also have strong conservative backing, and their selection would help offset conservative disappointment over some of Bush's other recent announcements.

So far, Bush has stayed away from ideological purists for top cabinet posts, opting for pragmatic managers who have experience reaching across party lines, such as Colin Powell for secretary of state and Paul O'Neill for treasury.

But some conservative leaders are becoming anxious and want to be able to sign off on some key appointments, particularly attorney general and the secretaries of the Education and Health and Human Services Departments.

Conservatives count on the attorney general to help Bush judge candidates for the federal bench. At the Education Department, they want someone who will promote vouchers so public school students can attend private school if they choose. The HHS secretary sets the tone on critical social and health issues such as abortion, research funding and welfare.

Whitman has been an outspoken supporter of abortion rights and gun control during her two terms as governor. Conservative leaders said Bush averted a potential revolt by selecting her for the EPA, an agency with no jurisdiction over abortion or other social issues.

"Conservatives would have been beside themselves had he appointed her to HHS," said David Keene of the American Conservative Union.

Keene said Bush aides had assured conservatives that Thompson would be selected for HHS, the agency with the clearest line of authority over issues important to social conservatives. Thompson has been a leading advocate of programs designed to prod welfare recipients into the workforce.

"He's conservative. He's strong. His major identification is as sort of the father of welfare reform," Keene said. "And he's pro-life."

Thompson acknowledged his job offer yesterday, telling Wisconsin reporters that he intends to deliver his answer next week after mulling it over during a vacation in Mexico. He said he was "having a difficult time" deciding, and sent mixed signals by saying that while the HHS job was the one Bush wanted him to fill, transportation secretary is "the one I would like to be able to do."

A Republican familiar with Bush's thinking said Bush also appeared ready to name former Indiana Sen. Dan Coats to head the Defense Department. That would please conservatives, too.

"We had been assured last week that it was going to be Dan Coats," Keene said. "Having given people that assurance, if they pull back, there's going to be some real disappointment."

Keating emerged as the top choice for attorney general on Wednesday when Montana Gov. Marc Racicot withdrew from consideration. The Oklahoma governor is in Bosnia at the moment.

Keating is another conservative favorite because of his solid antiabortion record and his efforts to promote strong marriages. As a former FBI agent and a former federal prosecutor, Keating also has obvious credentials for the top Justice Department job.

The latest round of speculation over Bush's picks came as the president-elect resigned as Texas governor to prepare for his move to the White House. Lt. Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican and a Bush ally, was sworn in to succeed him.

"There's only one thing that would cause me to leave early, and that's to become your president," Bush said in his resignation speech at the Texas Capitol. He grew misty-eyed as he offered his farewell.

"It's an emotional moment, to leave a job I love for a state I love," he told reporters as he left the Capitol. "Even though I'm changing addresses, Texas will always be home."

Looking ahead to his new job, Bush outlined his education agenda in separate meetings with a bipartisan congressional delegation and more than 30 Hispanic leaders from across the country.

Rep. George Miller, a liberal Democrat from California, praised Bush's efforts to reach out to lawmakers from both parties. The congressional delegation consisted of 19 members of House and Senate committees with jurisdiction over education issues.

"He spoke very forcefully about his commitment to education," Miller said. "It was a great one to break the ice."

Bush acknowledged that he faces plenty of skepticism about some of his proposals, starting with his plan to let some poor students use federal tax dollars for private school tuition.

On another topic, Bush and his aides took issue with assertions that he is damaging the nation's economy by expressing concerns about signs of a slowdown. White House officials have complained that Bush's comments can become a self-fulfilling prophecy by undermining investor confidence.

"I have said there are some warning signs on the horizon," Bush said. "I think people are going to find out when I am standing as president, I will be a realist."

In Washington, Vice President-elect Dick Cheney said on the same topic that he and Bush were merely reflecting reality. Cheney, who is overseeing the transition, took time out yesterday to meet with his former rival, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D., Conn.), Al Gore's running mate. Both Cheney and Lieberman described the encounter as cordial and pledged to work together.

Also yesterday, the Bush transition team announced that Stephen Hadley, a campaign adviser and nuclear arms specialist, would become Bush's deputy national security adviser. An international lawyer, Hadley is considered an expert on nuclear strategy and missile defense policy.

Hadley was an assistant defense secretary under Cheney during the administration of Bush's father. In Ronald Reagan's administration, he served on the Tower Commission to investigate money diverted to fund the Nicaragua contras from arms sales to Iran. Hadley also worked in the National Security Council under President Gerald Ford.

Hadley is a strong advocate to build a missile defense program and revisit arms control issues with the Russians. Robert Manning, senior fellow on the Council of Foreign Relations, said the choice reveals "clearly the direction Gov. Bush wants to go" with missile defense and nuclear strategy.

Ron Hutcheson's e-mail address is rhutcheson@krwashington.com
Sumana Chatterjee of the Inquirer Washington Bureau contributed to this article.

---

Pressing Challenges Face Bush Team

Associated Press
December 22, 2000 Filed at 1:27 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/politics/AP-Bush-Pressing-Problems.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Time waits for no one, not even the president-elect of the United States.

After the jubilant backslapping and what-it-all-means punditry, the next administration has little time for the transition from campaign promises to earnest governance.

When George W. Bush takes office in January, the new leader of the world's most powerful nation inherits a country at peace and still in a record-long economic expansion.

The president-elect also will face immediately a daunting series of pressing problems that will include the Middle East, North Korea and Iraq if President Clinton can't pull off a foreign affairs miracle or two in his last month. This plus signs that an engineered ``soft landing'' economic slowdown might be a good deal harder than Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan expected.

Bush's front-burner agenda is filling up rapidly.

Clinton's sponsorship this week of Middle East negotiations might color how Bush responds to continuing Palestinian-Israeli violence. A Clinton trip to North Korea, still a possibility, could lead to talks to end that country's missile program just as Bush is entering the White House.

Clinton's two-term investment in trying to broker peace in the Middle East, even through the waning days of his administration, will be a tough act to follow. ``It's going to be a new game,'' said Samuel Lewis, U.S. ambassador to Israel from 1977 to 1987, who believes Clinton if anything has been too involved.

Bush not only will grapple with an extraordinary rise in anti-American sentiment in that region but also a renewed threat from Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, the man who plagued the administration of Bush's father and sparked the Persian Gulf War, said Geoffrey Kemp, a former top Middle East aide to President Reagan.

``Saddam is getting stronger every day,'' Kemp said.

World-shaking events cannot always be predicted, of course, and Bush might be tested by adversaries the likes of expatriate suspected Saudi terror kingpin Osama bin Laden. He also faces questions on whether to keep troops in the Balkan countries, how to respond to tensions between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan and what can be done about Iran's nuclear potential.

One of the biggest must-do issues facing Bush at noon Jan. 20 will be preparation of a budget within weeks of taking office. By law, the deadline for presenting Congress a new budget to consider for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1 is the first Monday in February, Feb. 5.

What to do with federal surpluses -- one of the hottest topics on the presidential campaign trail -- is the big question on Capitol Hill. The Congressional Budget Office projects a $4.6 trillion surplus from 2001 through 2010.

Of that, $2.4 trillion is from Social Security, which both parties agree should be set aside for debt reduction and Social Security. The remaining $2.2 trillion is the battleground between Republicans' tax relief and Democrats' programs.

Many GOP leaders say it would be a mistake for Bush to attempt an immediate push for his entire 10-year, $1.3 trillion tax cut plan, given the 50-50 party split in the incoming Senate and the difficulty under any circumstances of maneuvering tax bills through Congress.

While the economy is humming along -- with unemployment at a three-decade low of 3.9 percent and most economists believing the expansion will not dip all the way into recession -- threats on the horizon include a stock market that has been volatile and a huge run-up in energy prices that could get worse if the winter is particularly cold.

On taking office Bush could face an immediate energy crisis and be forced to decide whether to tap the new home heating oil reserve set up in the Northeast if supplies tighten. If oil supplies remain tight, another immediate challenge might be how to persuade OPEC to boost production.

Bush will have an immediate opportunity to remake the Federal Reserve and have a major impact the nation's interest rate policies and bank regulation. While Chairman Greenspan's term runs until June 2004, three other seats on the Fed's seven-member board are open.

During the first half of 2001, the next secretary of defense will create the administration's Pentagon blueprint, stepping at once into a top-to-bottom review of military priorities required by Congress every four years.

``You have a defense strategy that is too ambitious for the kind of resources we have to put into defense,'' said Andrew Krepinevich, director of the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. ``This is going to put a lot of hard choices on the table very early for the administration.''

--------

Powell Will Face World of Challenges

Yahoo News
December 22 09:39 PM EST
By David Ruppe ABCNEWS.com
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/abc/20001222/wl/powell_will_face_world_of_challenges_1.html

Bush's designated secretary of state, Colin Powell, will face a host of difficult foreign policy-related challenges right after he takes office.

As President-elect George W. Bush's designated secretary of state, Colin Powell will face a world of foreign policy-related challenges as soon as his appointment is confirmed.

Among the thicket of complex issues is the question of whether to build a national missile defense system opposed by some of America's closest allies and how to deal with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

Many involve tensions between Bush's campaign promises, pressures from leading Republicans in Congress, opposition from Democrats, and the need to balance the United States' many and sometimes conflicting interests abroad.

With Bush lacking diplomatic experience, Powell, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and adviser to three American presidents, seems certain to play the lead role in formulating U.S. foreign policy.

Here are some of the pressing issues Powell will face:

Missile Defense

The question of whether to begin building a national missile defense system is one that could cause friction not just with Republicans and Democrats in Congress, but also with Russia, China and some of America's closest allies.

Russia and China have been adamantly opposed to the proposed system, saying it would dilute the deterrent effect of their nuclear arsenals. Russian leaders have warned the system currently planned could scuttle much-needed arms control cooperation with the United States. Beijing warns it would build more missiles if the system is implemented.

Many of America's closest allies also oppose building the system, which would require termination of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty between the Soviet Union (now Russia) and the United States. Powell could find himself expending a good deal of political capital to keep relations good with Russia and China and to win allied support of the program.

Bush has said if the United States couldn't convince Russia to amend the ABM Treaty, then he was prepared to cancel it.

The issue could well confront Powell right after the new administration begins. Bush has vowed to build the system and the Pentagon says it needs to start some construction in Alaska this spring to meet a goal of having the system ready by 2005, at which time North Korea may have the capability to strike the United States with a ballistic missile.

President Clinton delayed the construction decision this year after two of three tests of the system failed to knock a mock warhead out of the sky.

Critics of the program, including many Democrats, have argued construction should only begin after tests have proved the system will actually work. The previous botched tests a doubts about the technology have prompted some scientists to say the estimated $30 billion system will never work.

Iraq

Saddam Hussein could become a major headache for the Bush administration.

Powell also must consider what to do about the 8-year-old economic sanctions against Iraq, which have failed to compel the country's leadership to allow confirmation it has given up its weapons of mass destruction.

Russia, France and some states in the Middle East have been clamoring for the sanctions to be relaxed or lifted, and for the United States and Britain to discontinue their occasional, retaliatory bombing while maintaining "no-fly zones" over northern and southern Iraq.

The Clinton administration has been criticized in the press because the sanctions and the bombings have not removed Saddam from power or compelled him to allow U.N. inspections of suspected weapons.

Saddam also has been able to earn money by smuggling oil while the general economy and quality of life in Iraq deteriorates. The United States says he has been robbing his people of food, medical and other aid provided by other countries.

When Powell accepted the nomination as secretary of state, he expressed new confidence in the potential effectiveness of sanctions.

"I think it is possible to re-energize those sanctions, and to continue to contain him, and then confront him should that become necessary again," he said. "And I will make the case in every opportunity I get that we"re not doing this to hurt the Iraqi people," he said.

As chairman of the Joint Chiefs during the Gulf War, Powell played a key role in orchestrating the U.S. operations to drive the Iraqi forces out of Kuwait and compel them to surrender.

Bush has said he would not ease sanctions or negotiate, would aid opposition groups, and would support military action to combat a threat of weapons of mass destruction.

Keeping Peace in the Balkans

The Bush administration will likely face the question: At what point should American troops come home from Bosnia and Kosovo?

During the campaign, Bush criticized the Clinton administration's use of troops for "peacekeeping" and "nation-building" missions and said he favored pulling U.S. troops out of the Balkans.

In his second debate with Vice President Al Gore in October, Bush said he would "very much like to get our troops out" of the Balkans and would work with the European allies "to convince them to put troops on the ground."

The idea of Americans pulling out of the Balkans has alarmed the European allies who, in fact, shoulder most of the burden in the region and rely on the Americans for symbolic importance, as well as their significant material contribution.

Powell has said he would talk with the allies before any such move was made. "We're not cutting and running," he told a reporter. "We're going to make a careful assessment of it in consultation with our allies, and then make some judgments after that assessment is completed."

Powell is known as an opponent of the use of American military force, except in limited circumstances. When force is used, Powell, a veteran of the protracted Vietnam conflict, thinks it should be overwhelming and quick.

The Middle East

Will the retired general try to play the strong, often-frustrating peacemaking role between the Israelis and Palestinians attempted by the Clinton administration?

Right after Bush takes office, Israel will be holding special elections. The violence between Israeli forces and Palestinian demonstrators shows no sign of abating and the man who has been the main negotiator for the United States, Dennis Ross, is leaving.

From the outset, Powell will be in crisis mode on this issue. If the peace talks cannot be revived under Bush, U.S. relations with a number of Arab governments sympathetic to the Palestinians could sour.

The administration may also consider whether to continue to contain Iran or to reach out to it. President Mohammad Khatami appears open to some kind of rapprochement with the United States. But he struggles for power with hard-line Islamists and the government is believed to be developing both weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them.

What to Do With China?

Republicans for years have criticized the Clinton administration policy of "engaging" China, arguing too many carrots and not enough sticks were used.

ut the Bush administration could risk harming economic and arms control cooperation with China by pressing forward with a national missile defense, arming Taiwan with more advanced weapons, and more strongly criticizing or perhaps punishing Beijing for its human rights, arms proliferation and Taiwan policies.

The next White House will face firm pressure this spring from lobbyists and congressional Republicans who want the United States to sell Taiwan more advanced weaponry, such as Aegis destroyers and diesel submarines. Such deals were rejected this year by the Clinton administration. A decision on a package of weapons is usually made each April.

Sales of such weaponry, urged by many congressional Republicans as a counter to China's growing military might, could possibly provoke Chinese aggression toward Taiwan, as Beijing has threatened.

Bush has said the United States should help Taiwan defend itself in the event of a Chinese invasion, but has not been specific about what equipment he would allow.

U.S. companies argue China is an important market for them. But congressional Republicans may pressure the Bush administration to prevent U.S. companies from selling China supercomputers and advanced machine tools and from buying Chinese satellite-launching services, because of national security concerns.

Congress may also urge the new administration to punish Russia more severely for proliferating military equipment and technology to Iran.

Colombia

The Bush administration will also come in at a time when the United States is getting increasingly involved in the conflicts between the Colombian military and rebel guerillas and narco-producers and -traffickers. Concerns have been raised that America could be drawn in to Colombia's conflict, like it was into the Vietnam War.

The United States for months has been providing new military equipment, training and better intelligence tools to help Colombian military forces better combat the drug traffickers. And two U.S.-trained Colombian battalions reportedly are preparing the in coming weeks to launch an offensive.

Bush said during the campaign he generally supports the $1.6 billion initiative, which also found bipartisan support in Congress last summer. But if the offensive fails, the administration may need to reconsider the strategy, perhaps committing more American military aid or reducing it.

Many of the U.S. officials closely involved in the policy have announced their intention of leaving government, including Undersecretary of State Thomas R. Pickering and the White House drug policy chief, Barry R. McCaffrey. And none of Bush's current top advisers has significant Latin American or anti-drug experience.

State Department Security

The State Department has been plagued by security problems in recent years. It was discovered last year that a Russian spy had placed a bug in a supposedly secure conference room in the main building. And a laptop computer containing classified information disappeared and apparently was never recovered.

Since the incidents, the press has been permitted more limited access to department officials.

With Powell in charge, the rules could become stricter.

-------- us nuc waste

COLUMN: Steve Sebelius Eliminate the middleman

Fri, 22 Dec 2000 08:18:32 -0800
Las Vegas Review-Journal
http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2000/Dec-21-Thu-2000/opinion/15081122.html

Before the weak-kneed former U.S. Sen. J. Bennett Johnston, D-La., decided Wednesday against becoming secretary of energy under President-elect George W. Bush, the incoming administration had a good thing going.

Not that anyone can blame Johnston, the author of the original 1987 "Screw Nevada" bill that designated Yucca Mountain as the site for the nation's nuclear waste. After all, Johnston did receive a call from U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, who told his old friend that he would do everything he could to oppose the nomination. And no one wants to be on the other end of the phone when Ruthless Reid makes a promise like that.

Johnston, who while in the Senate carried enough water for the nuclear power industry to fill Lake Mead, is still toiling for radioactive interests as a private lobbyist in Washington, D.C. Plus, Johnston is a Democrat, the perfect person to appoint to a Cabinet post, allowing Bush to appear bipartisan.

It would have made things so perfect! Put the nuclear industry in charge of the Energy Department, thus eliminating the middleman, and reach across the aisle at the same time. (Bush is, after all, a uniter, not a divider.)

Oh, darn that wuss Johnston. Now who is Bush going to appoint?

Well, there's always Tom Kuhn, of Potomac, Md., one of the Pioneers, the group of eerily Soviet-titled moneymen whose members each agreed to raise at least $100,000 for Bush. Kuhn is head of the Edison Electric Institute, another nuclear power industry lobby. He'd do just as good a job as Johnston, probably, and he doesn't have the nasty "Screw Nevada" moniker that still follows Johnston to this day.

Just think! Bush could eliminate the middleman and repay some of his biggest donors at the same time! (Kuhn is the Pioneer who reminded his nuclear industry donors to include their secret industry tracking number on their checks, so that the Bush campaign would know how much they've done for his campaign.)

And why is that important? Well, Bush has been known to back nuclear projects, so long as some of his donors are involved. That's what happened with the low-level nuclear waste dump that a company called Waste Control Specialists is trying to build in Texas. Company owner Harold Simmons donated more than $90,000 to Bush when he ran for governor of Texas, and ponied up $1,000 to his presidential bid.

Let's not forget, the government promised to take nuclear waste off the industry's hands in 1998. But thanks to the intervention of people like Reid, U.S. Sen. Richard Bryan, U.S. Reps. Jim Gibbons and Shelley Berkley, and former U.S. Rep. (and future U.S. Sen.) John Ensign, the government hasn't been able to keep its word. As a result, the nuclear industry is as hot as a spent plutonium fuel rod before it's submerged in a cooling pool. Bush, though, means to keep that promise, just as soon as science determines Yucca is suitable.

(Speaking of science, a controversial memo from Yucca contractor TRW that surfaced recently suggests that -- shocker! -- the government's primary interest may not be science after all, but rather disposing in a cost-effective and politically feasible manner of the tons of radioactive waste piling up around the nation. Nevada's congressional delegation is using the memo to suggest that all the Department of Energy's work surrounding Yucca Mountain is tainted.)

Ironically, Johnston in his statement backing away from the energy post, thanked U.S. Sens. John Breaux, D-La., and Pete Domenici, R-N.M, for their support. It was Domenici, recall, who said on the floor of the U.S. Senate in July that, should Bush become president, there would be an interim nuclear waste dump within six to eight months.

Well, President-elect Bush, the clock is ticking. And while some Nevada Republicans have their doubts, the rest of us suspect that the Official Bush Administration Nuclear Waste Policy has but two words: Screw Nevada.

Steve Sebelius is a Review-Journal political columnist. His column runs Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at 383-0283 or by e-mail at Steve_Sebelius@lasvegas.com.

-------- MILITARY

-------- colombia

Child warriors fight on front lines

Infobeat
December 22, 2000
By MARGARITA MARTINEZ Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405489390

BUCARAMANGA, Colombia (AP) - John Fredy knows how to fire an AK-47 assault rifle, dig trenches and guard kidnap victims. But the short, skinny 13-year-old with big ears and a penetrating stare, a deserter from Colombia's largest leftist guerrilla band, cannot read or write his name.

Freezing, disoriented and on the brink of starvation, he was part of guerrilla column that was surrounded by government troops in late November as it traversed a high Andean plateau near this northern city. In lopsided fighting, at least 51 of the 360 guerrillas have died and 95 others have surrendered during a nearly monthlong assault from the troops.

Generals are calling it the army's greatest victory in nearly four decades of battle with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. But the episode has also exposed a sad and sinister side of this South American country's 36-year civil war: the growing use of children in combat.

It is a worldwide phenomenon. An estimated 300,000 children under the age of 18 are participating as guerrillas or government soldiers in armed conflicts in Africa, Asia and Latin America, according to the U.S.-based monitoring group Human Rights Watch.

Children from poor villagers are impressionable and easy to recruit, prized as efficient and remorseless killers. They are frequently forced to commit atrocities or sent as cannon fodder ahead of older troops, experts say.

Before the latest fighting in Colombia, some 6,000 minors were believed to belong to guerrilla factions and rival right-wing paramilitary groups here _ constituting about a fifth of the country's nearly 30,000 irregular fighters. The army only recruits soldiers who are 18 or older.

But after witnessing the fresh faces of dozens of boys and girls captured in the clashes _ not to mention the bodies of 34 youths killed in the combat _ experts fear they may have underestimated the problem.

``Either the proportion of children in the troops is far above our previous estimates or, even worse, it could mean that they are increasingly putting the children out on the front lines of the war,'' said Carel Rooy, UNICEF's chief officer in Colombia.

In interviews Tuesday at a government-supported halfway house outside Bucaramanga, captured guerrillas told how their dreams of glamor and glory in the FARC gave way to hardship and disillusionment.

A 14-year-old boy who gave only his last name, Carvajal, said he'd been lured by the swashbuckling image guerrillas had in his poor hometown in southern Meta province, a longtime FARC bastion.

``I saw the rifles they carried, and the four-by-four vehicles they drove around in, and I thought that was great, but I was kidding myself,'' he said. ``They don't pay you and they never let you see your family. You are a slave.'' Carvajal said he was recruited two years ago in Mesetas, one of five southern townships in a demilitarized zone that Colombian President Andres Pastrana ceded to the FARC in November 1998 as an incentive to start peace talks. Of the 16 boys and six girls interviewed here, more than half said they had been recruited in the zone.

Most said they joined voluntarily, but several claimed they were pressed into service. One, a 16-year-old from an Indian tribe in eastern Vichada province, said guerrillas stopped a car he was riding in with his uncle, tied him up and dragged him away, saying, ``he's a big boy now.''

According to the captured rebels, their unit left the DMZ in September on a long and grueling trek to reinforce guerrilla troops in the north. They were told to expect fighting but given little preparation. One boy said his marksmanship training consisted of firing five live rounds. When federal troops attacked after detecting the rebels crossing a cold and barren plateau nearly 10,000 feet above sea level, discipline broke down and desperation took over.

``We had gone five days without anything to eat, and we decided to escape,'' said John Fredy, who fled with two older guerrillas, both 14. ``We didn't want to turn ourselves over (to the army), we wanted to escape and make it to the city.''

But the pressure from troops backed by helicopter gunships was too great, and on Dec. 10 the three stumbled upon an army patrol and surrendered. The army had been dropping leaflets from the air promising that deserters would not be killed.

At the halfway house, John Fredy and other former members of his unit have been given food, clothing and shelter. They are also beginning psychological treatment aimed at breaking their warrior mentality.

``They are trained to kill,'' Juan Manuel Urrutia, director of the federal government's social service agency, said this week. ``Now we must train them to love.''

---

Gunmen kill 10 people in Colombia

Infobeat
December 22, 2000
http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=d6se1lc490mrf

SANTANDER DE QUILICHAO, Colombia (AP) - Gunmen wearing camouflage uniforms and carrying a hit list entered a village in southwestern Colombia on Thursday and killed 10 people. Witnesses told reporters they believed the killers were members of a right-wing paramilitary squad. Four of the victims were in a billiard hall when they were summoned by the gunmen and then shot execution style. Five others were killed elsewhere in San Pedro, a community of 25 families located 200 miles southwest of the capital, Bogota. Three other people were wounded, including a woman who died while being taken to the nearby town of Santander de Quilachao. Civilians are increasingly being caught in the middle of this South American nation's 36-year war. On Nov. 24, gunmen opened fire in a bar in Santander de Quilachao, killing 12 people. Police are investigating reports the killers belonged to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Colombia's main leftist rebel group.

---

Bush faces hard choices in Colombia

Infobeat
December 22, 2000
By KEN GUGGENHEIM Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405489472

WASHINGTON (AP) - Some Republicans do not like the way it has been handled. Some Democrats worry about human rights. European support has been lackluster. Latin American nations are wary. The $1.3 billion Colombian anti-drug aid package that the Bush administration will inherit is under fire from all sides. President-elect Bush has supported the plan but the question is what direction his administration will take it.

Will it continue the Clinton administration policy of providing military aid only to fight drugs? Will it blur the distinction between fighting drugs and fighting leftist guerrillas?

Or will all the criticism directed at the package push Colombia _ the third largest recipient of U.S. aid _ further down on a foreign policy agenda dominated by the Middle East, Russia and other concerns.

``I think there's very little evidence that the Bush team is really focused on Colombia so far,'' said Michael Shifter, a Colombia expert at the Inter-American Dialogue. ``I think what's likely to happen is what happened under Clinton, which is that you don't focus on it unless you have to.''

Though the $1.3 billion package is already approved, Clinton administration officials have said Colombia will need years of additional funding.

Colombia's ambassador, Luis Moreno, said in an interview that his country will need about $500 million to $600 million per year for at least three or four years.

The U.S. aid has been promoted as part of a $7.5 billion Colombian plan to stabilize the violence-ridden country. The U.S. contribution is largely military aid to help Colombia fight leftist guerrillas who partly finance their insurgency by protecting coca growers and cocaine laboratories.

Yet just months after the package was approved with strong bipartisan support, it has fallen under strong criticism.

Two powerful Republicans, Reps. Benjamin Gilman of New York and Dan Burton of Indiana, have insisted that more aid should go to Colombian National Police instead of the military. They and other Republicans have criticized U.S. efforts as slow and ineffective.

Some Democrats have been skeptical that the aid will reduce drug production, fear the package will draw the United States into Colombia's guerrilla conflict and help a military linked to human rights atrocities.

European countries are contributing less for social programs than had been expected. Latin American leaders repeatedly have raised concerns that U.S. military aid will only widen Colombia's conflict.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government's two top advocates of the Colombian aid package _ Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering and White House drug policy director Barry McCaffrey _ are both leaving with President Clinton.

The aid is designed to help Colombia, the world's largest producer of cocaine, cut illegal drug production in half in six years.

Bush expressed support for the Colombian aid in an Aug. 25 speech in Miami, saying, ``This money should help build up the capabilities of Colombia's armed forces.

``Our aid will help the Colombian government protect its people, fight the drug trade, halt the momentum of the guerillas and bring about a sensible and peaceful resolution to this conflict,'' Bush said.

Like Clinton, Bush said he opposed using U.S. troops in battle there.

The Clinton administration has stressed that military aid will be used strictly for fighting guerrillas linked to the drug trade and not to help Colombia in its civil war. Some Republicans say it is naive to separate the drug fight from the overall Colombian conflict.

``We cannot continue to make a false distinction between counterinsurgency and counternarcotics efforts,'' Robert Zoellick, the Bush campaign's top Latin American adviser, told the Council on Foreign Relations in October, according to a summary released by the council.

If Colombian President Andres Pastrana becomes frustrated with the peace process, Bush may agree to a request for help in training overall Colombian forces, said Myles Frechette, a Bush supporter who was ambassador to Colombia during the Clinton administration.

``None of this is going to be easy, but it's easier for a George W. Bush than it is for an Al Gore,'' he said.

Bernard Aronson, assistant secretary of state for Inter-American Affairs in Bush's father's administration, said he believes the new administration may be more skeptical about the Colombian peace process and take a harder line toward guerrillas, but would try to develop a policy both Democrats and Republicans could support.

``I think it would be very important for the new administration to re-establish the bipartisan nature of the policy,'' he said.

---

Colombia Rebels Offer to Free 45 Hostages

New York Times
December 22, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/22/world/22COLO.html

BOGOTÁ, Colombia, Dec. 21 - Colombia's second-largest leftist guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army, announced today that over the next few days it would release 45 soldiers and police officers who have been held hostage since their capture in combat in rebel-controlled areas.

Government officials said some of the captives have been held for about two years.

The announcement, made from Cuba, where the rebel group has been negotiating with the Colombian government, was seen as a good-will gesture for Christmas that could further peace talks.

No demands were made in return for the hostages' release.

The government has been negotiating with Colombia's larger rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, to secure the release of sick or wounded hostages among the 500 soldiers and police officers under its control.

President Andrés Pastrana welcomed the ELN rebels' peace gesture, but urged it and the FARC to cease all kidnapping.

-------- east timor

Death toll in E. Timor may be 2,000

Infobeat
Friday, December 22, 2000
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405489261

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) - Pro-Indonesian militias may have killed up to 2,000 people in violence last year following East Timor's vote for independence from Indonesia, a U.N. investigator said Thursday.

``They're still finding people,'' James Dunn, a member of a U.N. team investigating the militia killings, told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio. ``My investigation suggests quite a few people were killed in the mountains and their bodies were probably taken away by relatives and buried privately and they've said nothing about them because they didn't want them disturbed.''

Dunn also said he had evidence that some bodies had been dumped at sea.

Authorities have previously estimated that about 1,000 people were killed in an orgy of violence by the militias and their Indonesian army backers after the Aug. 30, 1999, independence referendum.

``My investigations suggest that we don't really know and that in fact the figure could be twice that number,'' Dunn said. ``A lot of the killings outside the capital haven't been thoroughly investigated.''

Dunn, a former Australian diplomat who served in the East Timorese capital, Dili, said more evidence would come out when refugees in camps in neighboring West Timor return home.

-------- india/pakistan

INDIA, PAKISTAN: KASHMIR UNCERTAINTY

New York Times
December 22, 2000
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/22/world/22BRIE.html?pagewanted=all

After an exchange of peaceful gestures on Kashmir, India and Pakistan have now expressed doubts about each other's sincerity. Pakistan said India's mention of talks was too vague to justify optimism. India said it had seen no evidence that Pakistan was really withdrawing troops. Barry Bearak (NYT)

-------- iraq

U.S., British Planes Hit Iraq

Associated Press
December 22, 2000 Filed at 4:25 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq-US.html

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- U.S. and British warplanes struck targets in southern Iraq on Friday, and Baghdad said the attack killed one person and injured two others.

The U.S. Central Command headquarters said in a statement that the warplanes, patrolling the no-fly zone in southern Iraq, attacked a radar system and anti-aircraft sites with precision-guided weapons.

The command, based in Tampa, Fla., had no report of casualties and still was assessing the damage. ``We go to great lengths to avoid injuries,'' said Maj. Jeff Blau at MacDill Air Force Base.

An Iraqi military spokesman said the warplanes struck ``civil and service installations in the provinces of Basra and Nasiriya, resulting in the killing of one civilian and the injury of two others,'' according to the Iraqi News Agency.

``Our heroic (anti-aircraft) missile units confronted the enemy warplanes, forcing them to leave our skies for Saudi Arabia and Kuwait,'' the unidentified spokesman said. The report did not say where the casualties occurred.

Basra is 340 miles south of Baghdad and Nasiriya is 248 miles south of the capital.

The U.S. Central Command said the sites ``were targeted to further degrade Iraq's ability to jeopardize coalition pilots and aircraft.''

U.S. and British jets have been patrolling no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq in a program designed to protect Kurdish and Shiite groups against government forces. Baghdad has been challenging the planes since late 1998, saying the zones violate its sovereignty and international law.

-------- japan

Japan sues Mitsubishi Heavy

Infobeat
December 22, 2000
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405495098

TOKYO (AP) - Japan's Defense Agency filed a lawsuit Friday against Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, demanding the company pay nearly $11 million in compensation for a helicopter accident during a military exercise.

The government's legal action stems from the accident in June of 1996, when the SH60J search-and-rescue helicopter burst into flames at a U.S. military base in Hawaii.

It occurred during a joint military exercise as a rotor suddenly broke off from the helicopter, injuring eight passengers. No one died.

An agency investigation concluded in July of 1999 that the accident was caused by faulty metal parts connecting the helicopter's main rotor to a shaft and asked Mitsubishi Heavy for compensation. The company, however, refused, said agency spokesman Isao Oseto.

Calls to Mitsubishi Heavy were not answered late Friday.

The agency has purchased 65 SH60J helicopters, manufactured by Mitsubishi, under licensing from U.S. helicopter giant Sikorsky. All of them were inspected after the 1996 accident and no other problems were found, Oseto said.

-------- korea

Albright: Deal with N. Korea possible

Infobeat
December 22, 2000
By GEORGE GEDDA Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405488797

WASHINGTON (AP) - There is a "genuine possibility" that North Korea will agree to limit its production and export of missiles and missile technology, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told The Associated Press Thursday.

President Clinton continues to weigh a visit to North Korea during his last month in office _ quite possibly to clinch a deal. Many senior Republicans on Capitol Hill oppose such a visit.

White House spokesman Jake Siewert said Clinton will make a judgment based on whether he thinks a trip would advance the process of curtailing Pyongyang's missile program.

Asked when a decision will be made, Siewert said, ``As soon as we can.''

According to an official who asked not to be identified, an interim trip to Pyongyang by Wendy Sherman, Albright's top aide to North Korea, is under consideration.

The White House raised the possibility of a Clinton visit to North Korea more than two months ago. His decision has been awaited by Korea-watchers with great anticipation.

At a State Department press Christmas party hosted by Albright Wednesday night, Sherman showed up with a sign hanging from her neck that said: ``No decision yet.'' Another sign, hanging on her back, said, ``Don't ask, don't tell.''

In an interview with the AP, Albright said she discussed the missile question at length with Chairman Kim Jong Il when she visited Pyongyang in October.

``What is out there is the genuine possibility of their limiting further their missile testing and further production and export of various technologies in exchange basically for our launching civilian satellites,'' she said.

If the U.S. steps in to launch North Korean civilian satellites, this would satisfy Pyongyang's stated goal, while easing U.S. fears about the country's military capabilities.

But senior Republican lawmakers and other analysts are concerned about the risk of technology transfer to North Korea if the United States agrees to launch satellites.

This concern was spelled out in a letter to Clinton last week from Senate Majority leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill, and the Senate and House chairmen of the committees on foreign affairs and intelligence.

The group also indicated opposition to a Clinton trip to North Korea.

``No one is more alarmed about the North Korean missile program than we,'' the letter said. ``But any hurried or ill-considered deal with North Korea could be worse than no solution at all.''

President-elect Bush has said that since Clinton is in charge until Jan. 20, any decision on travel to North Korea is entirely up to him. Administration officials have briefed members of the Bush team on the North Korean situation and said they received no advice from them on whether Clinton should make the trip.

-------- myanmar

Pentagon Will Stop Importing Burmese Clothes for 1,400 PX's

New York Times
December 22, 2000
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/22/world/22BURM.html

The Pentagon announced yesterday that a Defense Department agency that runs 1,400 stores at military installations will stop importing clothing from Myanmar.

Pentagon officials announced this policy change after it was reported that the agency, the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, had imported $138,290 in clothing from Myanmar despite a ban by the Clinton administration on investing in that country.

"They have ceased to do business with Burma," a spokesman for the Pentagon, Maj. Tim Blair, said, using Myanmar's former name.

In 1997, President Clinton barred all new investment in Myanmar in the hope that such economic sanctions would weaken the junta in Yangon and help bring democracy. United States law does not prohibit imports from Myanmar, although Washington has frequently urged companies not to do business with the country.

Human rights groups, labor rights organizations and several members of Congress praised the Pentagon decision to halt the imports, saying it is important that the Defense Department procurement policies not be seen as helping prop up the Myanmar dictatorship.

"This is a clear victory for democracy," said Charles Kernaghan, executive director of the National Labor Committee, a group in New York that seeks to pressure overseas factories to upgrade working conditions. "We're all very pleased that the U.S. military did not delay in in doing the right thing, in dropping its purchases from Burma."

In 1988, Myanmar's military refused to recognize the election victory by the opposition party and its leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Prize winner who has been under house arrest for six of the last 11 years. Two weeks ago, Mr. Clinton awarded her the highest civilian honor of the United States, the Medal of Freedom.

The information about the clothing, first reported in The New York Times, caught the administration off guard, causing one foreign policy official to say, "One hand of the administration did not know what the other hand was doing." That official said the purchases violated the spirit of the sanctions.

This week, 14 members of Congress sent a letter to the General Accounting Office, urging it to investigate the purchasing practices of the Army and Air Force Exchange Service and the conditions in the overseas factories it uses. With $7.3 billion in revenues last year, the exchange service, a nonprofit arm of the Pentagon, is one of the nation's largest retailers.

A spokesman for the service, Fred Bluhm, did not return calls yesterday. On Monday, he defended the purchases from Myanmar, saying new investments there are banned, but not imports from the country.

-------- space

Clinton urges science collaboration

Infobeat
December 22, 2000
By PAUL RECER AP Science Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405488685

WASHINGTON (AP)- President Clinton said the United States can build international good will by including other nations in major science projects and by helping other countries control ``brain drain,'' the migration to America of trained scientists.

Clinton, in an interview with the journal Science, said that by working scientifically with other countries, the United States can overcome a growing resentment some feel toward America because of its success and power.

``I think I would advise my successor to fund as much international collaboration (in science) as possible,'' Clinton said in an interview appearing Friday.

He noted that the effort to sequence the human genome involved several other countries. Clinton said he was careful to include representatives of those nations at White House ceremonies marking completion of the sequencing work.

Clinton called the International Space Station, which includes contributions from 16 nations, ``very, very important.''

Some international criticism of the United States, he said, is inevitable and he urged ``humility.''

``I think we do have to try to wear our power lightly, and also with some humility,'' the president said, noting that ``nothing lasts forever.''

Clinton said he worried about the fact that many trained scientists are leaving other nations to work in the United States.

``I think there needs to be a way for us to try to share both the scientific and the economic benefits of our enormous infrastructure with the rest of the world,'' said Clinton.

``I'd like to see America used as sort of a global lab, with the ability to send our folks back out and to send ... people who come here back out,'' he said.

On another subject, Clinton said that he held down the budget of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration during his administration in order to force economies on the space agency.

``I think NASA, when I took office, needed to show that it knew how to economize and could be managed better,'' said Clinton. He suggested that under administrator Daniel Goldin, ``NASA has proved that it can do more with less.

``I would like to see their budget increase now, because I think they have proven, after years and years of flat budgets, that they have squeezed a lot of blood out of this turnip.''

NASA's fiscal year 2001 budget was increased to more than $14 billion, compared to $13.6 billion the previous year.

Asked about NASA's two failures last year of spacecraft sent to Mars, Clinton said such problems should be expected.

``They're out there fooling around with Mars,'' said Clinton. ``You're going to have some disasters. If you want something with a 100 percent success rate, you've got to be involved in something aside from space exploration.''

Clinton said that ``the important thing is that ... NASA people responded in an honest, upfront way to their difficulties with the two Mars probes that didn't work so well.''

In 1999, two robot spacecraft, the $125 million Mars Climate Orbiter and the $165 million Polar Lander, were lost as they separately approached Mars.

After he leaves the White House, Clinton said he wants to remain active in two areas of science: the global environment and public health.

``I'm particularly personally interested in the breakdown of public health systems in so many countries, and how it disables them from dealing with things like the AIDS epidemic and other problems,'' he said.

Science is an influential international general science journal headquartered in Washington and published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

-------- u.n.

Turner may pay shortfall in UN

Infobeat
Friday, December 22, 2000
By NICOLE WINFIELD Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405496569

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The United Nations reached an agreement Friday to reduce the U.S. share of the U.N. budget after media mogul Ted Turner offered to pay for a $34 million shortfall the cut created, diplomats said.

Japan and Russia also offered to help mitigate the costs that otherwise would have to be swallowed by 18 developing countries because of the U.S. reduction - gestures diplomats said helped seal the deal.

``It's a good result, an excellent result for everybody, especially for the U.N.,'' French Ambassador Jean-David Levitte said Friday.

The arrangement would allow the United States to reduce its share of the U.N. administrative budget from the current 25 percent to 22 percent. The United States would also see a reduction in its share of the peacekeeping budget from the current 31 percent to around 27 percent, Levitte said.

He said some details remained to be worked out Friday, but he expected no difficulties.

President Clinton and senior administration officials had lobbied the other 188 U.N. members hard to accept a cut in the American share. Congress had demanded the reduction as part of a package of conditions to pay off its arrears to the United Nations. After recent payments, those arrears stand at around $1.3 billion.

Wealthy European Union nations had refused to increase their payments to make up for the reduction. That meant countries such as Brazil, South Korea and Singapore - among other developing nations that have seen a slight improvement in their economies in recent years - would be left to pick up much of the slack. Many objected.

Key to the deal was Turner's offer to pay the $34 million shortfall that the reduction in the U.S. share of the regular budget would create for 2001.

While subsequent years aren't addressed by Turner's offer, the $34 million filled a gap, since many governments who could shoulder the U.S. burden in coming years have already approved their 2001 budgets.

``The first year, 2001, will be a very good year for the EU as well as for everybody because of Ted Turner,'' Levitte said. ``He will help us a lot.''

A Turner official confirmed the gift, which would be paid to the United Nations via the State Department.

Turner, the billionaire founder of Cable News Network and a Time Warner vice chairman, made international headlines in 1997 when he announced a $1 billion gift to the United Nations over 10 years.

Since then, the United Nations Foundation he established to disburse the money has made grants to various U.N. agencies, particularly for population programs.

Under the deal reached after a week of negotiations, the 15-member European Union agreed to pay a slight increase in its bill - $2 million - to help less well-off nations in the transition to higher payments.

``The EU would help to finance the transition for the countries like Brazil, Colombia and a few others, which will have a big jump,'' Levitte said.

The EU also got an agreement it had sought for many years: a revamping of the system of billing countries for peacekeeping costs that more closely reflects their ability to pay.

Congress has tied payment of a major chunk of the U.S. back debt - $926 million - to a streamlining of the U.N. bureaucracy.

---

Envoy: U.S. near payment deal to UN

Infobeat
Friday, December 22, 2000
By NICOLE WINFIELD Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405489301

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Media mogul Ted Turner is offering to give the United Nations $34 million to break a budget impasse between the United States and 188 other countries, sources close to the deal said Thursday.

Turner, who stunned the United Nations with a $1 billion gift three years ago, approached the Clinton administration recently with his new offer, the sources said. If accepted by U.N. members, the offer could help resolve a dispute over U.S. payments to the organization that has had U.N. negotiators wrangling for months.

The United States currently pays 25 percent of the U.N. administrative budget and says its share should be reduced to 22 percent. But that would leave other countries to make up the shortfall, and many have objected.

Now Turner has offered to pay the $34 million shortfall for 2001, sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The years after that aren't addressed by his offer, though, and it wasn't immediately clear if the gesture would be enough to persuade 188 reluctant countries to accept the U.S. demands for a permanent cut in America's share of the U.N. bills. U.S. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke has had a hard time persuading countries to make up the U.S. shortfall, particularly for next year, since many governments have already approved their 2001 budgets.

The United States planned to announce the Turner offer to diplomats in the early hours of negotiations Friday, the last official day of budget talks in the U.N. General Assembly.

Turner, the billionaire founder of Cable News Network and a Time Warner vice chairman, made international headlines in 1997 when he announced his $1 billion gift to the United Nations over 10 years. Since then, the United Nations Foundation he established to disburse the money has made grants to various U.N. agencies, particularly for population programs.

Calls placed after business hours Thursday to Turner's publicist in Atlanta and the Washington headquarters of the foundation were not immediately returned.

His offer comes as the United States is making a last-ditch effort to clinch a deal for a package of reforms on how much money it gives to the United Nations each year.

The United States owes the United Nations $1.8 billion in back dues, but Congress has tied payment of a major chunk of that money _ $926 million _ to the reforms. Specifically, the United States is looking for the reduction in its share of the U.N. administrative budget and a cut in the U.S. contribution to U.N. peacekeeping operations from 31 percent to 25 percent.

While the Turner offer addresses a key issue in the negotiations, it does not answer a host of other outstanding problems ambassadors have been haggling over in around-the-clock negotiations this week.

``We've either got to score a touchdown or lose,'' Holbrooke said in an interview Thursday detailing the excruciating negotiations.

U.S. officials have suggested that there was room to compromise on the reduction for the peacekeeping demand, but not on the administrative budget demand, and foreign diplomats have suggested that that might be an acceptable compromise.

On Thursday, French Ambassador Jean-David Levitte stressed a European Union proposal that any agreement to reduce the U.S. bill be accompanied by conditions to ensure the United States pays back its full $1.8 billion in arrears.

Many U.N. members fear Washington will get a deal and then renege on future payments. The EU conditions would force Washington to pay off all of its outstanding arrears or risk having its administrative bill shoot back up to 25 percent again in three years.

U.S. officials said the EU proposal is unacceptable.

---

Informal Deal Reached on Cutting U.S. Dues to U.N.

New York Times
December 22, 2000 Filed at 4:16 p.m. ET
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/world/un-usa-budget.html

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 22 (Reuters) - The United Nations reached a deal on Friday to cut American dues to the world body after media magnate Ted Turner offered $34 million to help Washington break the political impasse.

The 189-member General Assembly is expected to approve the accord on its $1 billion annual regular administrative budget and $3 billion peacekeeping budget late on Friday after final details are completed following marathon overnight talks.

Declaring himself ``extremely pleased,'' U.S. ambassador Richard Holbrooke told reporters: ``This is a tremendous achievement for the United Nations.''

British Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock said Turner's contribution was crucial in ``lubricating the first year'' of the deal. ``Clearly the United Nations has recognized Turner as a government,'' he joked.

Russia helped also by offering to pay more than its assessed contribution, which is based on each nation's ability to pay -- except for the United States. Greenstock said most countries finally agreed that the American share of the budget should be reduced so that one nation did not totally dominate the world body.

The United States currently owes the world body more than $1.5 billion, having given itself a unilateral deduction in payments over the last few years.

The new arrangements would cut the U.S. share of the U.N. administrative budget from 25 percent to 22 percent, as Congress demanded. Washington's share of the peacekeeping budget would fall from 30 percent to about 26-27 percent, a bit higher than Congress mandated.

Holbrooke now has to lobby conservative Republicans in Congress, such as Senator Foreign Relations Committee chairman, Jesse Helms, an outspoke critic of the United Nations, to approve the deal.

Turner, the founder of CNN television, will be paying $34 million to the U.S. State Department so the Clinton administration could break its political deadlock with Congress and the 188 other countries at the United Nations.

The funds were to help make up the gap in the administrative budget next year caused by the U.S. cuts. Many nations, such as Russia, South Korea, Brazil, Chile, Iran, Czech Republic, Poland, Thailand and Singapore will be allowed to stagger their respective increases over three years.

Turner startled the United Nations three years ago with a $1 billion gift for humanitarian projects. Holbrooke said Turner offered him the money six week go during a discussion over the U.N. crisis.

``With his characteristic vision and energy, he said if the $34 million difference that this amounts to is the make or break, 'I will contribute that money on a one-time basis.''' Holbrooke told reporters.

The United Nations does not allow individuals to pay a government's debt. But Washington permits gifts earmarked for special purposes, with the approval of Congress.

Diplomats privately, however, commented that while the Turner contribution was an ingenious idea it was embarrassing for an individual to bail out the world's richest nation.

Congress had refused to pay most of the debt Washington owes to the United Nations until the rate of U.S. payments was cut. The resolution now before the General Assembly contains a non-binding provision for Washington to clean up its arrears over the next three years.

Under a bill Helms sponsored in the U.S. Congress, which President Bill Clinton signed, Washington refused to remit funds earmarked for the world body until U.S. rates were cut.

More than $72 million, the second of three payments that could total $926 million, can be paid to the United Nations next year by Congress because of the U.S. payment cuts.

``For the United Nations, this is something very considerable because we have had a real problem in terms of U.S.-U.N. relations over the last six years,'' Greenstock said.

Japan, now paying some 20.5 percent of the budget, is to get a rate decrease to just under 20 percent, diplomats said. With an economy less than half the size of the United States, negotiators said the Japanese parliament would not swallow Tokyo paying nearly the same rate as Washington.

Britain also gets a 10 percent increase because its economy had increased during the years under consideration

Holbrooke, who for nine months has been caught between a hostile Congress and nations angry at the U.S. debt, wants to settle the controversy before President Clinton leaves office in mid-January. The new administration of President-elect George W. Bush is known to want the issue out of the way soon.

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UN urges African border aid to end

Infobeat
December 22, 2000
By EDITH M. LEDERER Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405489069

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Strongly condemning recent rebel incursions into Guinea, the U.N. Security Council on Thursday urged all countries, but especially Liberia, to stop providing military support to rebel groups that are destabilizing the borders between Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.

Guinea's government has accused Liberia and Sierra Leonean rebels of responsibility for the cross-border attacks, and maintains that some of the 130,000 Liberian refugees and 330,000 Sierra Leoneans in the country are helping in the attacks.

In a meeting Saturday in Mali, 16 West African heads of state agreed to deploy troops along the borders between Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia in a bid to prevent the entire region from sliding into instability. There was no agreement on size and the force likely will take at least a month to deploy.

Secretary-General Lansana Kouyate of the regional group, known as ECOWAS, said it would have ``a mandate which will allow it to impose peace.''

The Security Council called for the agreement to be implemented fully and without delay.

A statement read by council president Sergey Lavrov of Russia at a formal meeting asked Secretary-General Kofi Annan to consider what support the international community and the United Nations could provide to ECOWAS to ensure security on the border.

It backed appeals by the West African leaders for an urgent meeting of the heads of state of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone under the auspices of ECOWAS and the Organization of African Unity.

``The Security Council expresses its deep concern over the fate of all those who continue to live in a state of insecurity, especially the local populations and the tens of thousands of refugees and displaced persons,'' the statement said.

The council on Wednesday circulated a report by a U.N.-appointed panel which investigated the link between the trade in arms and diamonds in Sierra Leone.

The five-member panel said it had evidence that Liberian President Charles Taylor was involved in illegal diamond and arms trafficking with Sierra Leone's rebels, which has fueled the country's nine-year civil war. It called for an embargo on all diamonds from Liberia until it demonstrates that it is no longer involved in trafficking gems and arms. Taylor denied involvement in smuggling.

Sierra Leone's U.N. Ambassador Ibrahim Kamara on Thursday read a statement from the government which appealed to the council ``to give serious consideration to the panel's report as soon as possible.''

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UNITA rebels circumvent sanctions

Infobeat
December 22, 2000
By NICOLE WINFIELD Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405489079

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Angola's UNITA rebels have managed to circumvent U.N. sanctions through a network of arms traffickers, friendly African governments and diamond smugglers who use tax havens to get their gems to market, a U.N. report said Thursday.

The report by a U.N.-appointed panel detailed for the first time the critical role played by air transport companies in the sanctions-busting enterprise, allegedly bringing the rebels the weapons they need to make war via third countries.

The 63-page paper is a follow-up to a groundbreaking expose in March that accused the presidents of Burkina Faso and Togo of accepting ``blood diamonds'' from UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi in exchange for illegal arms and fuel shipments.

Thursday's report doesn't name those presidents, but does refer to the complicity of their authorities in allowing UNITA representatives to do deals.

``What we are saying in the report is that the things that happen inside those countries cannot happen without the consent or complicity of some authorities in those countries,'' the panel's chairman, former Chilean Ambassador Juan Larrain, told a press conference.

Burkina Faso and Togo have denied they violated the sanctions, but have instituted new measures to ensure that no UNITA members operate in their countries.

UNITA's second-in-command, Paulo Lukamba Gato, blasted the U.N. report as ``twisted,'' saying it was based on testimony by prisoners of war and UNITA defectors.

The U.N. Security Council imposed an arms and fuel embargo on UNITA in 1993, a year before the United Nations brokered a peace agreement between the two sides that first went to war after independence from Portugal in 1975.

In 1998, six months before the war resumed, the council expanded the measures to include a ban on rebel diamond exports, which are estimated to have supplied UNITA with up to $4 billion since 1992.

The report found that as a result of new attention to the flouted diamond ban and a government offensive launched in September 1999, UNITA no longer is able to wage war the way it did two years ago. Arms and fuel shipments are greatly reduced, and UNITA has lost control of key diamond-mining areas.

But the report cautions against complacency and notes that UNITA still has a valuable stockpile of diamonds, a cadre of loyal dealers, and appears to be concentrating its mining efforts at three of the highest-value areas in Angola.

The report charged that a vast international operation allowed the rebels to circumvent the sanctions through the help of Victor Bout, a 33-year-old Tajik who emerged as an alleged key supplier to UNITA of weapons from Bulgaria in the late 1990s through his air transport company, Air Cess.

The document cites reports from the U.N. mission in Angola that Air Cess planes landed ``fairly frequently'' in UNITA territory between 1997 and 1999.

Efforts to reach Bout, who uses at least five different aliases, at his home in the United Arab Emirates were not immediately successful Thursday.

Lukamba Gato of UNITA said he had no knowledge of Bout or his air freight company. He acknowledged that UNITA was still selling diamonds on the international black market. ``Why shouldn't we? We have to defend ourselves,'' he said in a satellite telephone interview from Angola with The Associated Press bureau in Lisbon, Portugal.

The report documents loopholes that have allowed UNITA leaders to continue operating in European capitals. It recommends a host of new measures countries should consider adopting, including tightening customs controls at tax havens so ``blood diamonds'' don't pass through, improving checks on end-user certificates for weapons exports, and improving regulations on air companies that transport guns.

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Women's Charges to Be Heard Now in U.N.

New York Times
December 22, 2000
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/22/world/22WOME.html

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 21 (Reuters) - Women can for the first time complain directly to the United Nations about discrimination, sexual exploitation and other violations of a 1981 international treaty, a United Nations spokesman said today.

The 1981 United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women bars abuses against women. But it did not allow women to bring grievances directly to the United Nations. Last year, the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women initiated an addendum to the treaty that would make it possible for women, individually or in groups, to submit complaints about violations or abuses.

On Friday, the protocol will come into force because more than 10 countries have ratified it, said the spokesman, Fred Eckhard. Thirteen countries have ratified the protocol and 62 have signed it. The United States is the only industrialized country that has not ratified the original 1981 treaty.

The protocol, approved by the General Assembly earlier this year, would allow women to bypass their governments and have the commission investigate their complaints.

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U.N. Post Filled by American

New York Times
December 22, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/22/world/22APPO.html

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 21 - An American expert on counterterrorism has been appointed to a top job in United Nations peacekeeping just as the organization is beginning to deal with larger peacekeeping operations.

The expert, Michael Sheehan, is now the Clinton administration's deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of International Organizations and also Washington's ambassador at large for counterterrorism. Among his recent tasks has been negotiating with the Taliban over their support for Islamic militants in Afghanistan.

Mr. Sheehan, a former United States Army officer, will move to the United Nations on Jan. 2 to become assistant secretary general for logistics, management and mine-action services, a spokesman for Secretary General Kofi Annan said today.

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U.N. Study of Diamonds-for-Arms Deals Focuses on Shadowy Trader

New York Times
December 22, 2000
By BARBARA CROSSETTE
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/22/world/22DIAM.html

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 21 - The second of two reports to the Security Council this week on links between illegally sold diamonds and arms for guerrillas in Africa has brought into focus a shadowy trader with many names, nationalities, air companies and bases. The experts call him Victor B.

The story of Victor B - born Victor Anatolyevich Bout in Tajikistan in 1967, according a panel of experts reporting today on Angola - is the story of a new generation of international smugglers who run syndicates that have allowed rebel armies to evade United Nations sanctions, sometimes with the help of corrupt officials or government leaders who give them safe havens.

The report is a follow-up to an initial study of the Angola "conflict diamonds" trade this year commissioned by the Council under the direction of Canada. The new study adds considerable detail but also pulls back from accusations that the presidents of Burkina Faso and Togo were directly implicated in the illegal trade. But it does find those two countries still involved in the activities of the Unita rebel movement of Angola. The researchers fault lax certification that allows forgeries or false documentation to be attached to weapons orders. Smugglers reportedly use the orders to persuade suppliers in countries as far afield as Romania and Bulgaria to sell arms that should not, under United Nations restrictions, be going to Unita.

Ukraine, once also under suspicion, told the experts that it never accepted such documents.

"It takes an internationally organized network of individuals, well funded, well connected and well versed in brokering and logistics, with the ability to move illicit cargo around the world without raising the suspicions of law enforcement," the report said. "The organization headed, or at least to all appearances, outwardly controlled by an Eastern European, Victor Bout, is such an organization."

Mr. Bout, who has at least five or more aliases, according to the six- month survey of the Angola panel, also figured in a report this week that studied the illegal diamond trade from Sierra Leone. In Angola, the Unita army continues to fuel a prolonged war with diamonds, although the guerrillas have suffered severe setbacks in recent years.

In Sierra Leone, the Revolutionary United Front, whose hallmark is amputation, has paid for its war of atrocities with diamonds also, many of them passing through Liberia, whose flag of convenience Mr. Bout uses in his complex network of air companies, the new report said.

South Africa says Mr. Bout appears to have at least five passports, among them two from Russia and one from Ukraine. After moving from place to place to escape attention by vigilant governments, he apparently settled in Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, the Angola panel found. From there, the experts said, Mr. Bout may have links with more than 12 trading companies around Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Africa.

The panel used Mr. Bout's case to demonstrate the complex organizational strength of contemporary smugglers and the lack of effective international agreements or practices to curb them.

The panel, which studied front organizations for Unita abroad, especially in Europe, also looked at reports that Angolan diamonds might be moving through new operations in Uganda and Rwanda - which both governments deny - or be hidden in legitimate diamond supplies sold in traditional centers like Kimberly, South Africa.

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EU proposes deal on U.S. debt to U.N.

Washington Times
December 22, 2000
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-20001222215038.htm

NEW YORK - The European Union has proposed that the United States, which owes the United Nations more than $1.5 billion, get a cut in its dues payments if it cleans up arrears within three years, France said yesterday.

Racing against the clock, the U.N. General Assembly's finance committee is trying to restructure contributions for 189 nations to both the $1 billion annual U.N. administrative budget as well as a fluctuating peacekeeping budget, expected to be more than $3 billion a year.

French Ambassador Jean-David Levitte, whose country is the current EU president, said the 15-nation alliance agreed to lower U.S. regular budget dues from 25 percent to 22 percent and peacekeeping from 30 percent to about 26 percent or 27 percent.

De Beers offers help in 'blood diamond' fight

JOHANNESBURG - World diamond giant De Beers said yesterday it is willing to allow its specialists to work for the United Nations to bolster the fight against "blood diamonds."

The offer followed a U.N. report on Wednesday that said the South African firm had to "accept some responsibility" for the trade in illicit diamonds that has fanned brutal African wars from Angola and Sierra Leone to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

"We are prepared to make De Beers experts at the disposal of the U.N. particularly to help in the strengthening of a global certification scheme," De Beers spokesman Andy Lamont told Reuters.

Sanctions end run by UNITA charged

NEW YORK - Rebels with the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) have managed to circumvent U.N. sanctions through a network of arms traffickers, friendly African governments and diamond smugglers who use tax havens to get their gems to market, a U.N. report said yesterday.

The report by a U.N.-appointed panel detailed for the first time the critical role played by air transport companies in the sanctions-busting enterprise, reportedly bringing the rebels the weapons they need to make war via third countries.

The 63-page paper is a follow-up to a groundbreaking expose in March that accused the presidents of Burkina Faso and Togo of accepting "blood diamonds" from UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi in exchange for illegal arms and fuel shipments.

-------- u.s.

2 more suspected in USS Cole bomb

Infobeat
December 22, 2000
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405495999

SAN'A, Yemen (AP) - Yemen is likely to put at least two more people on trial for the bombing of the USS Cole, bringing the number of accused to eight, Western diplomats say.

The two - both Yemeni - are believed to belong to the militant group Jihad, which includes many Arabs who fought Soviet troops in Afghanistan during the 1980s, the diplomats told The Associated Press on Thursday on condition of anonymity.

Yemeni authorities have accused Jihad members of taking part in the attack on the USS Cole on Oct. 12 when a small boat laden with explosives drew alongside the destroyer in Aden port. Two suicide bombers detonated the explosives, killing 17 U.S. sailors and wounding 39 others.

Previously, Yemen's prime minister said up to six Yemenis - all of whom are in custody and are suspected of belonging to an international terrorist network - would stand trial next month in the Cole bombing.

The first indication of more defendants came Thursday when the Yemeni military newspaper, September 26, quoted an Interior Ministry source as saying the authorities had never said there were only six suspects, but that the files of six suspects had been processed.

The diplomats said that Yemeni officials had accepted a U.S. demand to delay the trial and reopen the interrogation of suspects and others, including witnesses, in order to seek more information on who was behind the attack.

Yemeni sources close to the investigation said the reopening was agreed with the United States recently.

The sources said the authorities were looking for three more suspects, including Mohammed Omar al-Harazi, a major player who is still at large. He is a Saudi citizen born to a Yemeni family in the northwest Haraz mountains.

It is not known if the three are in Yemen. The Yemeni sources said they might have gone to Afghanistan via Pakistan.

The sources said Yemen has asked Pakistan for information about the bombing suspects and a Yemeni security delegation will go to Islamabad later this month.

---

No Answers as Marines Investigate Air Crash

New York Times
December 22, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/22/national/22OSPR.html

WASHINGTON, Dec. 21 - The Marine Corps ruled out several possible causes today for the Dec. 11 crash of an MV-22 Osprey aircraft in North Carolina, including fuel shortage. The investigation continues.

In a statement, the corps said an initial review of information extracted from the aircraft's flight data recorder showed that the Osprey had experienced a "hydraulic malfunction" related to the flight controls. The statement added, however, that the magnitude of this problem was unclear and might not have been instrumental in bringing down the aircraft.

All four marines aboard the Osprey were killed in the crash, the second fatal Osprey crash this year. The Marines have grounded the other eight Ospreys in the fleet pending a review of the program.

The corps said today that it had determined more details about the crash.

The tilt-rotor Osprey, which takes off and lands like a helicopter and cruises like an airplane, was making its fourth practice approach to the Marine air station at New River, N.C., and was planning to make a full-stop landing, when the crew declared an emergency and the aircraft crashed in a wooded area at 7:25 p.m.

The Marines Corps statement said there was no evidence to indicate the crash was caused by lack of fuel, contamination of the fuel supply, an in-flight fire, spatial disorientation among the crew or an electrical malfunction.

"There are still numerous other possible factors remaining to be considered, and investigators will continue their efforts to determine the cause of this tragic accident," the statement said.

The Osprey is built by the Boeing Company and Bell Helicopter Textron, a division of Textron Inc. The Marines had hoped to get the go- ahead to begin full-scale production this month, but that decision has been put off indefinitely in light of the crash.

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CHOOSING A CABINET
G.O.P. Split Slows Bush's Selection for Defense Post

New York Times
December 22, 2000
By ERIC SCHMITT and JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/22/politics/22DEFE.html?pagewanted=all

WASHINGTON, Dec. 21 - President-elect George W. Bush has delayed his choice for secretary of defense because he is not entirely satisfied with the two principal candidates and has broadened his search, Republican officials said today.

Mr. Bush's second thoughts have intensified a spirited debate between backers for the two main candidates up until now: former Senator Daniel R. Coats of Indiana, a favorite of Senate Republican leaders, and Paul D. Wolfowitz, a former Pentagon official who has the support of influential Republican foreign policy experts.

Earlier this week, Mr. Bush appeared to be leaning heavily toward Mr. Coats, a Republican who served on the Senate Armed Services Committee from 1989 to 1998. Mr. Coats has strong backing from the Senate majority leader, Trent Lott, as well as from many conservative groups.

Mr. Coats first came to national prominence in 1993 when he led the Republican opposition to President Clinton's plan to allow gays to serve openly in the armed forces.

Supporters of Mr. Wolfowitz made an aggressive effort to promote their man this week, also raising questions about Mr. Coats's fitness for the job.

Mr. Wolfowitz, an assistant secretary of state for Asia in the Reagan administration, has close ties to Mr. Bush, having served as one of his main foreign policy tutors during the presidential campaign.

He also served as the top foreign policy adviser to Vice President- elect Dick Cheney, who is running the transition, when Mr. Cheney was defense secretary in the administration of Mr. Bush's father.

Advisers to Mr. Bush said Mr. Coats did not quite meet Mr. Bush's expectations during a meeting in Washington on Monday. Had the session gone well, he might have announced his selection of Mr. Coats within a few days, the advisers said.

But Mr. Bush's silence has signaled to those advisers that he is still searching for the ideal candidate.

One leading Republican national security expert with ties to the Bush campaign said: "The question the Bush camp was now asking was, `Is Dan Coats the first guy to come to mind for defense secretary?' He appeals to conservatives, and to Trent Lott. But when you start to analyze what you need in that chair, with defense in need of some work, is he the right guy?"

Mr. Coats did not return phone calls tonight.

The advisers said Mr. Bush was also not persuaded that Mr. Wolfowitz, now the dean of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, was capable of managing the sprawling and often-unruly Pentagon bureaucracy.

"Paul is a thinker, not an organizer," said the senior Republican national security expert, who is an admirer of Mr. Wolfowitz.

The advisers said Mr. Bush had not ruled out either man and in fact was still weighing the different strengths that each would bring to the job. But they said he agonizing over the decision and wanted to look at other candidates. One person mentioned was Donald B. Rice, the secretary of the Air Force during the Persian Gulf war. Mr. Cheney was the defense secretary at that time.

Mr. Rice, who is chairman of a bio- technology company in California, declined to comment on whether he had been contacted by Mr. Bush's transition team.

"It's always flattering to think you could be considered for such a job," Mr. Rice said today, "but it's not something I'm looking for."

Another dark horse candidate could be Richard Armitage, a former senior Pentagon official under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush. But most Republicans say they think it more likely that Mr. Armitage will be offered the No. 2 position.

Mr. Bush's transition period has been remarkably smooth up until now, given the abbreviated time he has had to piece together an administration. As of today, he has filled 5 of 14 cabinet posts, and accomplished that with very little controversy.

Mr. Bush has scheduled two announcements on Friday, and prominent Republicans said that he would announce his choice of two governors to top jobs: Gov. Christie Whitman of New Jersey as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and Gov. Tommy G. Thompson of Wisconsin as secretary of health and human services. Governor Thompson has also expressed a desire to be secretary of transportation.

A fight over Mr. Coats may cause problems for Mr. Bush among conservative groups who enthusiastically support Mr. Coats because he consistently voted for higher defense spending and against abortion during his 18 years in the House and Senate. Mr. Coats, 57, retired from the Senate in 1998 and became a Washington lobbyist.

"Putting Coats out there and then cutting him off would make conservatives very unhappy," said David Keene, president of the American Conservative Union.

The effort to fill another cabinet post, that of attorney general, ran into intense opposition from conservatives, many Republicans said. Gov. Marc Racicot of Montana had been under consideration as attorney general. But in a conference call this week, several conservatives raised doubts about Governor Racicot's conservative credentials.

Many conservatives have been promoting Gov. Frank Keating of Oklahoma for the job, and some of the opposition to Mr. Racicot came from Keating supporters, according to people who were briefed about the conference call.

Late Wednesday, Mr. Racicot's spokesman issued a statement saying that he had withdrawn his name for the job because of family considerations.

In an interview on CNN today, Mr. Racicot said that he had been unaware of any opposition from conservative leaders, and he insisted again that his decision not to seek a post in the cabinet was based solely on the needs of his family.

"I have some obligations in that respect that I think are a matter of first priority, that I need to address now," he said, adding that Mr. Bush had made no mention of conservative criticism during their meeting this week.

A prominent Republican said tonight that the name of former Senator John C. Danforth, a Missouri Republican, was also being circulated for attorney general. He said the nomination of Senator Danforth, who had a moderate voting record in the Senate, would anger many Republican supporters of Mr. Keating, who is considered far more conservative on many issues.

The rejection of Mr. Coats could also upset many leading Senate Republicans, particularly Mr. Lott, who is a friend of the former senator from Indiana. Mr. Lott has repeatedly urged Mr. Bush to pick Mr. Coats, most recently at a meeting with Mr. Bush on Monday, an adviser to Mr. Lott said.

Senate Republicans insisted today that they still thought Mr. Coats was on track to become the next defense secretary. Senator James M. Inhofe, a conservative Republican from Oklahoma and a member of the Armed Services Committee, said that Mr. Coats's appointment was "a done deal."

"I'm not concerned at all," Mr. Inhofe said, praising Mr. Coats as "the most studious man I know."

But other Republicans who favor Mr. Wolfowitz suggested that the amiable Mr. Coats might be no match either for the four-star generals inside the Pentagon or the strong- willed foreign policy advisers around Mr. Bush, particularly Gen. Colin L. Powell, Mr. Bush's choice for secretary of state. "Coats is a very nice man, but he's not a barn-burner," said a Republican senator on the Armed Services Committee. "You've got to get some guy who can go toe to toe with the secretary of state, and it's going to be hard to go toe to toe with Colin Powell."

Mr. Powell had supported Gov. Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania for the defense secretary job, while Mr. Cheney was said to support either Mr. Coats or Mr. Wolfowitz.

But an aide to Mr. Powell said the retired general had removed himself from the debate over the Pentagon job and was not attempting to block Mr. Coats. "General Powell is not involved in the selection process," said Bill Smullen, a spokesman for General Powell. "This is something the president-elect and vice president-elect will do in their own way."

While Mr. Wolfowitz is widely acknowledged as a creative, intellectual dynamo, some in the Bush camp express concern that he is not a strong manager. Compounding Mr. Bush's problems is the question of what to do with Mr. Wolfowitz if he does not get the top Pentagon post. Mr. Wolfowitz has reportedly turned down the job of director of central intelligence, in part because he feels he is ill-suited for a job that does not involve direct policymaking.

Some advisers to Mr. Bush feel the president-elect owes Mr. Wolfowitz a major position because of his work during the campaign and his service in past Republican administrations.

But Mr. Coats has his own network of supporters within the Bush camp. Mr. Cheney's top Congressional aide, David J. Gribbin, was Mr. Coats's chief of staff in the Senate. And Mr. Bush's top speechwriter, Michael Gerson, was also a speechwriter for Mr. Coats.

---

Northrop - Litton Could Change the Industry

Reuters
December 22, 2000 Filed at 2:55 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/business-arms-litton-.html

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Northrop Grumman Corp.'sproposed deal to buy shipbuilder Litton Industries Inc.could start a second, smaller wave of consolidation in the defense industry as sector leaders pick up lower-tier players or pick off pieces of their rivals.

Approval of the $3.8 billion Northrop-Litton combination could be a green light for leaders who emerged from the 1990s consolidation to renew their strategy of growth through acquisition.

``This raises far reaching questions about the consolidation of the defense industry,'' said Loren Thompson, chief operating officer of Lexington Institute, a research and defense consulting firm. ``As a consequence, we are headed toward a second wave of consolidation and realignment.''

But any such a realignment would focus on smaller companies whose businesses could bolster industry leaders but not further cramp competition, industry stock analysts predicted.

Already, there are few major players left. Of the top 20 defense contractors on the scene in 1990, only six now remain as independent companies. The others have either been bought up or combined.

Northrop Grumman itself is the result of that consolidation and it was another Northrop proposal, to combine with Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT.N), that brought deal-making in the industry to a screeching halt.

SO UNIQUE, IT MAY NOT BE REPEATED

The businesses of Northrop, the nation's fifth-largest defense contractor, and Litton, the seventh-largest, do not overlap much. Northrop specializes in high-tech weapons systems and Litton builds non-nuclear ships for the Navy.

That has left analysts, lawyers and shareholders expecting a stamp of approval from the Pentagon and Justice Department under the incoming Bush administration.

Shares of Litton jumped 24 percent and hit a new year high on Friday, a day after the deal was announced. The stock was up $15-1/4 at $77-7/8 in early afternoon trading. Northrop shares fell $7-7/16, or 9 percent, to $74-1/2.

``I don't see anything here that couldn't be cured with relatively modest adjustments,'' said William Kovacic, a George Washington University law professor who specializes in antitrust and defense contracting issues in Washington.

Such adjustments could include spinning off a specific capability or committing to provide others with ''non-discriminatory'' access to such capabilities, he said. One such area could involve cloud-penetrating infrared sensors made by both companies.

But the Pentagon, keen to maintain a strong defense industrial base, is likely to welcome the merger as a way of making sure that Northrop remains a strong competitor to the three biggest defense contractors, Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Raytheon, Kovacic said.

``This truly ensures that they will stay in the big leagues,'' he said.

BITS AND PIECES

``Northrop was a bit smaller than the other guys,'' said Cai Von Rumohr, stock analyst at SG Cowen. ``They could buy Litton and start to get a little closer with comparability with the top three guys, so this one just makes sense.''

But marriages like the rejected Lockheed-Northrop combination and Litton's move to buy both Newport News Shipbuilding Inc. (NNS.N) and Avondale Shipbuilding will not resurface, analysts said.

New defense deals are likely to come in the form of unit acquisitions and spin-offs, industry watchers said.

Rockwell International Corp. (ROK.N) and its Rockwell Collins avionics and communications unit have been among the businesses seen as likely targets. In early December, Rockwell said it planned to spin Collins off to shareholders as a separate company. That division makes both concerns attractive targets, stock analysts said.

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Northrop Grumman To Acquire Litton

Associated Press
December 22, 2000 Filed at 1:11 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Northrop-Grumman-Litton.html
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405495175

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- One of the nation's largest defense contractors -- building everything from airplanes to Navy destroyers -- could be formed if a merger between Northrop Grumman Corp. and Litton Industries Inc. is approved.

Northrop said Thursday it will buy Litton for $3.8 billion in cash. The comany will also assume $1.3 billion in Litton debt.

Company leaders are optimistic they'll get approval for the deal, saying it could be consummated by the first quarter of 2001.

The combined companies will create products for virtually every branch of the U.S. military, including destroyers, planes and electronics.

Under the deal, Northrop Grumman will pay $80 per Litton common share. Shares of Litton soared 24 percent, or $15 a share, to $77.63 in midday trading Friday on the New York Stock Exchange. Northrop Grumman shares slumped 8.6 percent, or $7.06 a share, to $74.88.

If approved by regulators, the combined company will have $15 billion in revenues in 2001, growing to $18 billion by 2003, the companies estimated.

The combined company would have approximately 79,000 employees, although Northrop Grumman chairman and chief executive officer Kent Kresa said there would be some layoffs, particularly as the companies consolidate their headquarters.

Northrop Grumman makes weapons systems, including radar and navigation systems. Litton Industries builds non-nuclear ships for the Navy and provides advanced information technology for commercial and defense customers. Both companies are based in Los Angeles.

The companies said they expect to save more than $250 million over the next few years as a result of the deal, including $100 million in the first year following the transaction.

``Some of it is in people reduction, particularly at the headquarters,'' Kresa said. ``This is a growing corporation. We have need for people. I can't speak to layoffs. We would hope there are good people who are flexible and can move into other areas.''

The companies said they expect the transaction to close sometime in the first quarter.

Company executives said informal talks had been ongoing for years, but that the two firms signed a confidentiality agreement and pursued a deal in earnest in June.

``We were in control of the process to examine our strategic alternatives,'' Michael R. Brown, Litton's chairman and chief executive officer, said. ``It was our election to accept an overture by Kent, 'We should get together and talk.' But at anytime, we both had the opportunity to walk.''

Following the close, Litton will be operated for six months as a wholly owned subsidiary. Ronald D. Sugar, currently Litton's president and chief operating officer, will become Northrop Grumman's corporate vice president and president and chief executive officer of the new Litton subsidiary, the companies said.

After six months, Kresa said decisions will be made on how to more fully integrate the two operations.

Brown said he plans to retire.

The companies said they do not expect any regulatory problems. A proposed purchase of Northrop Grumman by Lockheed Martin in 1998 was scrapped because of government opposition.

``We feel there is virtually no overlap here, where there was great concern in the Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman merger,'' Kresa said. ``We think this will not be a problem.''

Kresa said his company briefed Pentagon officials on the proposal Thursday afternoon and would be ready to supply the government with data supporting the acquisition after the new year.

``We believe the case can be made,'' Kresa said. ``The data is not complex. We've done this many times.''

One problem might come from a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman's Logicon division, which is based in Herndon, Va., and provides information technology services.

Logicon generates about $2 billion in annual revenue, some of it from a program reviewing systems on Navy ships manufactured by Litton. Kresa said the subsidiary accounts for ``tens of millions'' of Logicon's revenue.

``There might be a conflict of interest being both the reviewer and the builder,'' Kresa said.

He said he hoped the Navy would allow the company to enact procedures to avoid a conflict. But if the Navy requires the company to sell the subsidiary, it would.

The deal was praised by analysts.

``It's a really nice fit,'' said Thomas Meagher, an analyst with BB&T Capital Markets.

Meagher said Northrop Grumman is paying 1.2 times Litton's revenue, which is at the high side for such deals.

``The fact they chose to pay 1.2 times revenue recognizes the size of Litton and the increased mass it gives them,'' he said.

---

Coats for Defense?

Washington Times
EDITORIAL • December 22, 2000
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-house-20001222192411.htm

In a party struggling to find its identity between Bush and Reagan Republicans, the neoconservatives, the moderate conservatives and the hard-line conservatives, former Sen. Dan Coats is in a category of his own. It's no wonder then that President-elect George W. Bush is eyeing him for secretary of defense. He has managed to be consistent, principled and experienced while also acting as a bridge-builder to key players on the other side of the aisle.

He and Sen. Joe Lieberman co-authored a proposal, passed in 1996, to require the Pentagon to do a strategic housecleaning and update U.S. military capacity from a defense ready to fight Cold War enemies to a force prepared to defend against new threats in the information and technology age. In essence, he began preparing then for what he might be asked to do every day for the next four years - identify new threats to the armed forces in the 21st century and decide how to deal with them.

In 1997, he and Mr. Lieberman worked together on questions pertaining to the National Missile Defense system (NMD), such as how to fund an up to $2 billion shortfall in research and development. As Mr. Bush has put his support behind the development of NMD, he is right to consider someone who has already been involved in answering hard questions surrounding the system. Research and development of NMD will ward off threats posed by nuclear states such as China, Russia and potentially Iran and benefit NATO allies which could be protected by the system.

Mr. Coats also has experience in planning for international allied defense capabilities. He has questioned Secretary of Defense Cohen on the readiness of Eastern European military structures to fit NATO standards and how to establish a process for members to be included in NATO. He has considered the financial costs of NATO military readiness, a subject which will be important as the administration streamlines U.S. involvement in NATO missions and works in cooperation with the European rapid reaction force. The defense secretary will play a crucial role in defining the relationship between the European force and NATO.

A former Army man himself, Mr. Coats has fought for military reform and served on the Senate Armed Services Committee for a decade. He also served on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee. His strong relationship to Vice President-elect Dick Cheney could make the transition even more seamless, should Mr. Bush second his running mate's choice for defense secretary. In Mr. Coats, the new administration would not only have a man with a vision for the full potential of American defense, but one who has already spent years preparing for the job.

---

Conservatives want Coats for Defense chief

Washington Times
December 22, 2000
By Rowan Scarborough THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-20001222225545.htm

Conservatives expressed frustration yesterday that President-elect George W. Bush has not named former Sen. Daniel R. Coats as defense secretary, saying a snub would alienate the social-conservative wing of the Republican Party that helped to elect Mr. Bush.

Republican sources say some conservatives have telephoned Vice President-elect and transition chief Richard B. Cheney and that Mr. Cheney is noncommittal except to say Mr. Coats is still a front-runner among several candidates.

The sources said the nomination appears to be a battle between Mr. Coats, a former Republican senator from Indiana and a staunch social conservative, and Paul Wolfowitz, a top Pentagon policy-maker in the administration of Mr. Bush's father. An announcement on who will be the new defense secretary is not expected until next week.

The transition is also said to have looked at several high-powered industrialists. The Bush team considered FedEx founder Frederick Smith for the job. But a company spokeswoman said Mr. Smith, a Marine Corps aviator in Vietnam and fraternity brother of Mr. Bush's at Yale, is not interested in the position.

Mr. Coats, who served on the Armed Services Committee, has been interviewed by Mr. Bush. He is backed by leading conservative Republican senators, such as Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi, James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma and Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania.

Republican sources said Mr. Coats has been caught up in a power struggle pitting him against Mr. Wolfowitz, who is backed by Richard Armitage, a Reagan administration Pentagon official who advised the president-elect during the campaign.

Mr. Coats is endorsed by social conservatives, who hope he will reverse what they view as eight years of "social experimentation" at the Pentagon by Clinton appointees. Mr. Coats opposes abortion and open homosexuality in the military and has reservations about mixing men and women during recruit training.

"Conservatives are getting greatly concerned about Bush's Cabinet selections, and Coats is one they want," a senior Republican congressional aide said. "There is clearly an internal struggle. Mr. Bush has to understand he can't push his agenda without conservatives."

Mr. Coats' candidacy may be the victim of an internal debate between conservatives and centrists within the Bush team. Mr. Coats had a conservative voting record during 17 years as a House member and senator.

But most Republican sources discounted the theory that Mr. Coats is too conservative for the president-elect. They note that on key issues, such as retaining the ban on open homosexuals in the military and upgrading combat readiness, the two are ideological soul mates.

Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett, Maryland Republican and member of the House Armed Services Committee, said he supports Mr. Coats.

"I think he is going to support the social issues I think are important," said Mr. Bartlett, who opposes homosexuals in the military and putting women on Navy subma-rines. "The military is not a laboratory for social experimentation."

Asked what would happen if Mr. Bush bowed to ongoing objections to Mr. Coats from homosexual and feminist groups, Mr. Bartlett said, "I would hope not. That would not send the right message to his base, would it?"

Attacks on Mr. Coats from liberal groups continued yesterday as Americans for Democratic Action put out a statement with the headline, "Coats's lifetime voting record: conservative, not compassionate." The ADA's statement accused Mr. Coats of a "consistently reactionary voting pattern."

Said Elaine Donnelly, head of the conservative Center for Military Readiness, "If Bush yields to that, or is perceived to be yielding to that, it would really be disheartening for the military who voted in great numbers for Bush."

Mr. Coats received support yesterday from a Democrat, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut.

"I don't agree with Dan Coats on everything," said the former vice-presidential candidate. "We have pretty big disagreements on some issues. But on . . . the most important issue for our defense, as I see it, which is defense transformation, keeping us strong in the world . . . I think Dan Coats would be a superb choice."

Some conservatives expressed dismay that Mr. Bush has picked two-thirds of his national security team -Colin Powell as secretary of state and Condoleezza Rice as national security adviser -but so far has left the top Pentagon post unfilled.

"So far they haven't done [a choice of] a prominent conservative that both the social and economic parts of the party are united behind," a House Armed Services Committee aide said. "They should have announced it very soon after the secretary of state announcement."

Mr. Cheney is said to admire both Mr. Coats and Mr. Wolfowitz, who served in the Pentagon when Mr. Cheney was defense secretary.

---

China tests DF-31 again

December 22, 2000
Inside the Ring
Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
Notes from the Pentagon.
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inring-2000122221435.htm

China last week carried out the second flight test in two months of a new road-mobile missile, the DF-31. The successive tests show Beijing's program to field mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles is speeding up.

"They are continuing work apace" on the DF-31, said an intelligence official, who noted that analysis of the test is not complete, but that initial results show it was "successful."

The missile blasted off from the Wuzhai Space and Missile Center and flew westward inside China, landing in a remote area. The flight was tracked by U.S. intelligence ships, aircraft and spacecraft.

Defense analysts say it was unusual for the Chinese to conduct missile-flight tests so close in time.

In the past, China's missile tests were spaced over many months. Until the two most recent tests, China had not tested the new missile since August 1999. That test was formally announced, but the last two were not made public.

The Saturday flight test came two days after a speech by Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Henry H. Shelton. He warned that China is aggressively building its military and could emerge as a 21st-century version of the Soviet Union.

The single warhead DF-31 is China's state-of-the-art long-range ballistic missile. It has a maximum range of about 5,000 miles - enough to hit targets in Alaska, Hawaii and the western United States.

China also is developing a longer-range, 8,000-mile version known as the DF-41 and is building a new class of ballistic-missile submarines.

The DF-31 is the first Chinese strategic system to incorporate U.S. missile and warhead technology obtained covertly from the United States through espionage and other technology-acquisition efforts, according to U.S. intelligence officials.

China last tested the DF-31 in early November as Gen. Shelton was making his first trip to China. The timing was viewed by many defense analysts as a political signal of China's growing nuclear prowess.

During the Nov. 3-5 visit, Gen. Shelton observed Chinese war games in the southern province of Nanjing. The live-fire exercises pitted People's Liberation Army troops, tanks and aircraft against a "blue team" of opposing forces modeled on U.S. military forces.

"There was no question who they were against," Gen. Shelton told us. The general said he was told by his hosts that "all the maneuvers were yours."

Spring offensive

Congressional budgeteers are beginning to discuss a springtime Pentagon supplemental bill that would shore up combat readiness. It would give President-elect George W. Bush his first chance to fulfill a campaign promise and bolster the armed forces with a stroke of the pen.

Right now, aides are discussing a $5 billion to $10 billion package. It would fund $1.7 billion in new health care initiatives, bump up operations and maintenance (O&M) accounts and provide more weapons-buying dollars.

"We're going to do it. Hopefully, we can keep the bill from exploding," said one aide, noting Congress' penchant to lard any supplemental measure with home-state projects.

The Navy and Air Force privately have told congressional staffers they each need $1.2 billion more in O&M funds. The Army will also likely submit a bill.

Then there's the USS Cole. The destroyer, ripped apart by a terrorist bomb, was first thought to need $150 million in repairs. But a closer look found extensive damage to its phased-array radar. New estimate: $300 million.

Chappie's son

The transition team of President-elect George W. Bush is eyeing Maj. Gen. Daniel James III, adjutant general of the Texas National Guard, for a senior post in Washington, perhaps as secretary of the Air Force.

Mr. Bush appointed Gen. James in 1995 as head of the state's Air and Army National Guard. They reportedly enjoy a warm relationship and Bush aides have let it be known there will be a top Washington job for the 55-year-old officer if he is interested.

Gen. James spent 10 years on Air Force active duty, flying F-4 observer jets in Vietnam. As an Air Guard officer, he flew the F-16 Falcon.

Gen. James is the son of the late Air Force Gen. Daniel "Chappie" James, who flew combat missions in three wars and was the military's first black four-star general.

Gen. James, creating time between his official duties and a dental appointment, told us in an interview last week that he would be honored to be considered for a Bush administration job. Service secretary jobs are typically filled weeks after a president-elect names his defense secretary.

"That would be quite an honor," Gen. James said, when told he was being studied as a possible Air Force secretary. "However, I believe there are a lot of strong candidates out there. I have been honored to be part of the Bush team here in Texas."

"I'd have to talk to my three-star, my wife, and see what she had to say about it. . . . I've never considered working in an administration at that level and I'm flattered that someone would think I have the credentials to do that."

In his five years as an adjutant general, Gen. James said he has been a "change agent," modernizing and making more professional a much-criticized Guard operation in Texas.

As for Mr. Bush, a former Air Guard fighter pilot, the general said, "We have a good relationship. I'm comfortable with him and I think he's comfortable with me."

GOP sources said Rep. Tillie Fowler, Florida Republican, is a leading candidate for either Navy or Army secretary. Mrs. Fowler, who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, honored a term-limit pledge and did not seek re-election after eight years in Congress.

Sources say her spot might be determined by whether former Navy and Dallas Cowboy quarterback Roger Staubach accepts a Bush offer to be secretary of the Navy.

Pentagon express

President-elect George W. Bush's transition folks have bandied about the name of Frederick W. Smith as the president-elect's defense secretary. It's unlikely, but the idea is intriguing.

Mr. Smith is founder of FedEx, a pioneer in overnight package delivery and one of the country's most successful companies. He is also an ex-Marine Corps officer who flew helicopters in Vietnam. FedEx's political action committee, largely through donations from Mr. Smith's pockets, has donated millions of dollars to political candidates, most of them Republicans in recent years.

And, he's a friend of the president-elect. They were fraternity brothers at Yale in the 1960s.

One source said the transition team sent feelers to FedEx headquarters in Memphis, Tenn., and got a negative response.

Mr. Smith's spokeswoman, Shirley Clark, said Mr. Smith does not want a Cabinet position.

"He would be honored to be considered for a Cabinet position. However, he is completely focused on the growth and success of FedEx and has a passion for continuing to lead one of the premier companies of the world," she said.

Still, the possibility is intriguing. What better person to streamline the Pentagon and carry out Mr. Bush's vision of a futuristic, high-tech force 10 years from now?

Vice President-elect Richard B. Cheney, a former defense secretary, and Secretary of State-designee Colin Powell could handle heavy policy questions. Mr. Smith would have time to do something long overdue: deliver new weapons systems "when it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight."

If Dan Coats, former Indiana senator and member of the Armed Services Committee, finally gets the nod, people close to the transition say he would not be a good fit with Richard Armitage. Mr. Armitage is a Bush defense adviser who was thought to be the next deputy defense secretary. He may be assigned a senior spot at the State Department, reunited with his good friend Colin Powell.

• Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough are syndicated columnists. Gertz can be reached at 202/636-3274 or by e-mail at gertz@twtmail.com.Scarborough can be reached at 202/636-3208 or by e-mail at scarbo@twtmail.com.

-------- OTHER

Nuclear standoff in 'Thirteen Days' Chronicling missile crisis with JFK, RFK

MSNBC
12/22/00
By Christy Lemire ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.msnbc.com/news/505427.asp?cp1=1

Dec. 22 - "Thirteen Days" is about a precarious moment in American history: the Cuban missile crisis. This is a subject that would seem to merit the utmost respect and solemnity. But it takes about a half hour of screen time before viewers can finally become engrossed in the story of that brief period in October 1962 when the United States and the Soviet Union teetered on the edge of nuclear war.

Kevin Costner, as Kenny O'Donnell, special assistant to President Kennedy, unwittingly sets the tone of the film - and undermines its drama - with his atrocious New England accent.

IT'S EMBARRASSING - and, frankly, disheartening - that the film, which runs an overlong 135 minutes, is such a disappointment.

In the opening scene, Kevin Costner, as Kenny O'Donnell, special assistant to President Kennedy, unwittingly sets the tone of the film - and undermines its drama - with his atrocious New England accent.

"This is your report cahd?!" he says, scolding one of his sons at the breakfast table. "I'm talkin' tah you lay-tah!"

Based on the book "The Kennedy Tapes - Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis," the film offers a glimpse into the negotiations that took place, and how the nation's leaders - and the nation itself - were tested.

NO-NONSENSE APPROACH

Director Roger Donaldson, who worked with Costner on "No Way Out," takes a no-nonsense approach, using O'Donnell's inside perspective to guide the audience through the crisis.

The film gets the look of the period right: government officials dressed in business suits sit around enormous conference tables, barking at each other and chain-smoking.

Donaldson also captures the inherent tension well. Surveillance missions over Cuba are thunderous and particularly well done, as is the confrontation between Adlai Stevenson and the Soviet ambassador at the United Nations.

But an overbearing score and some over-the-top performances give "Thirteen Days" the melodramatic feel of a made-for-TV movie. (William Devane starred as the president in the 1974 TV movie "The Missiles of October.")

PERFORMANCES HOLD UP

Bruce Greenwood bears little resemblance to JFK, but he at least gets the accent right and exudes a quiet, presidential strength. Steven Culp is nearly dead-on as Robert Kennedy, although we gain little insight into his reputation for being cunning and ruthless.

Dylan Baker stands out as Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, especially during the standoff between U.S. and Soviet ships during the naval quarantine of Cuba.

To his credit, and although his name appears above the title, Costner actually serves in a supporting role. He is the conduit through which we witness the action, not the one in action.

SOURCE: MSNBC and news services

One minor gripe: At the start of each new day, the date appears at the bottom of the screen - Wednesday, Oct. 17, etc. But we don't know how far along we are in the crisis. Since the film's title is "Thirteen Days," wouldn't it help to know which day we're on?

---

CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS STRIKES TV-LIKE TONE

New York Post
Friday, December 22,2000
By LOU LUMENICK
http://www.nypost.com/12222000/entertainment/37321.htm

THIRTEEN DAYS Tense retelling of the Cuban Missile Crisis, as seen through the eyes of a JFK aide played by Kevin Costner. Basically a very good TV movie. Running time: 145 minutes. Rated: PG-13 (moderate profanity, brief violence). At the Empire, the Lincoln Square, the Loews Village, others.

OUR national crisis over this year's election was small chads indeed compared to a heart-stopping two-week period in 1962, when we teetered on the brink of a nuclear showdown with Russia.

"Thirteen Days" is a highly competent docudrama portraying the Cuban Missile Crisis, precipitated when American surveillance planes discovered that Russian nuclear missiles capable of reaching 80 percent of the United States were being installed in Cuba.

Most advisers to President John F. Kennedy (well-played by Bruce Greenwood) - especially military brass still licking their wounds from the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion - urged immediate air strikes to take out the missile sites, followed by widespread attacks and an invasion.

But JFK's brother Robert (an uncanny impersonation by Steven Culp), the attorney general, and his top aide Kenneth O'Donnell (Kevin Costner) wondered if a sneak attack wouldn't be seen in the court of world opinion as the equivalent of Japan's strike on Pearl Harbor.

As tensions steadily mounted, the Kennedys instead employed a risky naval embargo (the movie's best sequence) and desperate back-door negotiations with Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev.

It's still as gripping a story as it was in 1973, when this real-life "Armageddon" inspired an acclaimed TV-movie called "The Missiles of October."

"Thirteen Days," which plays like a very good TV movie (it's quite talky and there's not much action), bends the facts by building up the role of O'Donnell, played by Costner with an annoying Boston accent in what's nonetheless one of his most effective performances in recent years.

When O'Donnell pressures a reconnaissance pilot (played by JFK's real-life nephew, Christopher Lawford) to lie to his Pentagon bosses and hide the fact he was shot at during a run over Cuba, credited screenwriter David Self pushes credulity to the limit.

The scene where O'Donnell gives dovish U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson (the superb Michael Fairman) a locker-room talk before confronting Russia with his famous "Hell Freezes Over" speech is also fairly risible, if undeniably entertaining.

Short on visual flair and starpower, "Thirteen Days" is not the definitive story of the Cuban missile crisis, but it's an engrossing historical lesson nonetheless.

---

Religion in the News

Associated Press
December 22, 2000 Filed at 12:02 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Religion-in-the-News.html?pagewanted=all

While others are relaxing over the Christmas holiday, 1,000-plus employees of a vast arena near Chicago's O'Hare Airport will be standing by in case of a last-minute telephone summons to report to work early the next morning. The reason: 20,000 Muslims will gather for a festival at the arena, and nobody will know until the night before whether it will happen Dec. 26 or 27 -- all because of religious tradition.

``It's kind of a hassle,'' acknowledges Maureen Dieball of the Donald Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, Ill., site of the biggest such festival ever organized by Chicago-area Muslims.

The Eid al-Fitr, or Feast of Fast Breaking, is a community gathering that combines prayer with elements of Thanksgiving (banqueting) and Christmas (gift-giving).

One of two obligatory festivals established by the Prophet Muhammad, the Eid celebrates the end of Ramadan, the holy month when adult believers renew their devotion to God and abstain from food and drink from sunrise to sunset.

That much is certain; what's always a last-minute affair is fixing the Eid date.

``The world laughs at Muslims. We cannot make a reliable calendar,'' laments a commentator on the www.ummah.net Web site.

North American Muslim leaders are determined to eventually change that and fit the needs of modern life, applying science to ancient tradition. They made progress toward that goal at a summit meeting last month.

The date of the Eid is based on Hadith, authoritative traditions about Muhammad's practices. The prophet taught that the Eid comes the morning after the end of Ramadan has been confirmed by nighttime sighting of the new moon. The crescent eventually became a universal symbol of Islam.

Muslims traditionally follow that literally and recognize only actual visual sightings rather than astronomical calculations, so the date is not known in advance. To take the current North American example, the invisible new moon begins Dec. 25; so, Muslims will watch the skies that night, but astronomers say the crescent won't be visible till the evening of Dec. 26, putting the Eid the morning of Dec. 27.

Under the circumstances, the Rosemont convention center has been most helpful, says Irfan Kareem, an attorney on the board of the regional Council of Islamic Organizations. ``We presented our dilemma to them and they allowed us to keep both days and charge only for one,'' he says.

Normally a 2-for-1 deal would be impossible but ``it's a dead time'' for convention business, Dieball explains. ``This is a first for us.''

In future years the Eid could conflict with other events, since Islam follows a strict lunar calendar and the Eid date shifts backward about 11 days per year by reckoning of the customary calendar.

The North American Eid reform has occurred in two stages. The first challenge was getting immigrant Muslims to celebrate together on the same date rather than the dates set by their home countries. ``Some thought they should go with an overseas country like Saudi Arabia, so we have tried to create some standardization,'' says Sayyid M. Syeed, secretary general of the Islamic Society of North America, the continent's largest organization of mosques and Muslim organizations, based in Plainfield, Ind.

Each country should follow its own sightings and set its own date, according to the Islamic Shura Council of North America, an alliance of orthodox Muslim leaders, and the Fiqh Council of North America, a supreme court on religious law.

Islamic organizations launched a joint effort in 1988 to have all North American mosques follow a uniform date, and the system largely took hold by the mid-1990s. Believers are now encouraged to report their moon sightings to a single telephone hotline operated by the Islamic Society. Once Islamic jurists and scientists agree on an authentic sighting, mosques are alerted by Web postings, e-mails and phone calls that the Eid will come the following morning.

The second stage is promoted by Khalid Shaukat, the Islamic Society's scientific consultant. Shaukat, an astronomer and research physicist with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, operates the www.moonsighting.com Web site to inform believers about the Muslim calendar. He thinks North American Muslims should use astronomical calculations to set dates well in advance, the way Jews and Christians do. He predicts this innovation will take hold within a decade and eventually spread worldwide.

Some traditionalists also insist that the only proper sightings are done with the naked eye rather than telescopes because that's how Muhammad did it. Shaukat argues that Muhammad used the best method available in his day but Islam is open to modern advances, whether telescopes or astronomical predictions.

At an Islamic Society conference last month, Shaukat joined religious authorities in agreeing that ``in North America, a predetermined Islamic calendar is necessary to allow more people to schedule days off with their schools and businesses. This is not an Islamic country and many can't afford to schedule two days off.''

``It is our hope that this continuous effort will help ease the tensions that have haunted the Muslim community in the past,'' the group declared.

``The actual sighting will no longer be a requirement,'' Syeed predicts.

The conference agreed, however, that the strictly astronomical new moon cannot be the criterion, because it is invisible. Rather, Muslims should calculate in advance when the first crescent will actually become visible.

For the immediate future, devout Muslims will live with uncertainty. ``Of course it does create practical problems,'' says Illinois attorney Kareem. But he finds ``a marked change'' in sensitivity by employers and public schools to believers' scheduling difficulties in recent years.

``In virtually all cases, the authorities are extremely accommodating.''

-------- chemicals

Train Carrying Acid Derails in Philadelphia

New York Times
December 22, 2000
National News Briefs
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/22/national/22NATI.html

PHILADELPHIA, Dec. 21 (AP) - Several cars of a CSX train carrying sulfuric acid derailed early today, leaking acid into the Schuylkill River and blocking a busy road for several hours.

The 12 cars on the 39-car train traveling from Canada to Maryland derailed about 1:30 a.m. Two cars leaked sulfuric acid onto Kelly Drive, a road used by many commuters traveling into the city, and the adjacent river. The road was closed for several hours.

The fire commissioner, Harold Hairston, said that there was no harm to drinking water but that some fish might be affected.

-------- environment

Cinergy agrees to $1.4 bln settlement

Infobeat
Friday, December 22, 2000
By H. JOSEF HEBERT Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405488481

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Clinton administration and a major electric utility, Cinergy Corp., on Thursday agreed on a $1.4 billion settlement of a lawsuit over alleged illegal pollution from its coal-burning power plants, the administration announced.

It is the largest such settlement ever reached under the Clean Air Act.

The settlement is part of a four-year investigation by the Environmental Protection Agency involving more than a half dozen of the country's largest electric utility companies.

The EPA alleges that the utilities failed to install required pollution-control equipment in some of their older coal-fired power plants in violation of federal law. The utilities have denied any such violations.

The settlement includes an $8.5 million fine, but most of the estimated $1.4 billion will be spent on environmental improvements at Cinergy plants.

Cinergy, based in Cincinnati, Ohio, admitted no wrongdoing.

Cinergy chairman James Rogers said the agreement ``allows us to gain certainty regarding any future operations and reduce emissions. ... The projects are in line with the environmental requirements that we believe our plants are expected to face over the next 15 years.''

Two other power companies, targeted by the EPA investigation, previously had reached similar settlements, each agreeing to make environmental improvements worth about $1 billion.

Some of the utilities, including the Ohio-based American Electric Power Co., have vowed to fight the EPA charges, claiming that plant changes cited by EPA investigators amount to legal maintenance improvements.

The settlement by Cinergy involved 10 coal-burning power plants operated by PSI Energy in Indiana and Cincinnati Gas & Electric Co., in Ohio. Cinergy also provides electricity in Kentucky, but those plants were not part of the enforcement action.

The settlement also calls on Cinergy to perform $21.5 million on ``environmental projects,'' said the EPA.

But Sylvia Lowrance, EPA's deputy assistant administrator for enforcement, said most of the $1.4 billion involves expenditures the company has agreed to make for capital improvements at the plants in Ohio and Indiana.

Cinergy also has agreed to install permanent emission control equipment ``to meet stringent pollution limits and implement a series of interim measures to curtail emissions from the plants, she said. The company said that under the settlement a number of coal-fired boilers would be either shut down or converted to natural gas.

``This is the largest enforcement settlement ever reached by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under the Clean Air Act,'' said EPA Administrator Carol Browner, who called it the Clinton administration's ``last action to provide cleaner air for all Americans.''

Two utilities _ Tampa Electric Power in Florida, and Dominion Virginia Power _ earlier reached similar settlements with the EPA as a result of the investigation of the utility industry begun in 1996.

``We're still in discussion with a number of companies,'' said Lowrance in a telephone interview.

The Justice Department, acting on behalf of the EPA, has filed lawsuits, alleging violations of the Clean Air Act, by plants belonging to American Electric Power, FirstEnergy, Illinois Power, Southern Indiana Gas & Electric Co., and the Southern Company. A separately an administrative action has been taken against the government-owned Tennessee Valley Authority, over a similar complaint.

All of the actions stem from allegations that the utilities have made improper improvements at some of their old coal-fired power plants, most of which dot the Ohio Valley and parts of the Midwest, without getting proper pollution permits required by the Clean Air Act.

In the case of Cinergy, the lawsuit claimed that the two operating companies in Ohio and Indiana over the 15 years have ``undertaken at least 38 substantial modifications'' that increased the amount of pollution coming from the plants ``without taking steps to minimize these increased emissions.''

The agreement in principle was signed by Cinergy and government officials Thursday afternoon with a formal consent decree to be filed in the court in Indianapolis on Friday, according to the EPA and Justice Department.

The two previous settlements each were $1 billion or more.

The Tampa Electric Co., settled for $1 billion, most of it money to be spent on environmental improvements. Dominion Virginia Power reached a settlement estimated to be worth $1.2 billion, most of also to be spent to reduce emissions at its plants.

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Final federal plan to save salmon

Infobeat December 22, 2000
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405492608

(AP) - The final plan, which was released Thursday, calls for federally owned hydroelectric dams to be operated to minimize harm to salmon during migrations to the ocean and spawning beds, as well as habitat improvements, hatchery operations and fishing policy changes.

Removing four hydroelectric dams on the lower Snake River in eastern Washington has been a lightning-rod issue in Pacific Northwest and national politics.

President-elect Bush said during his campaign that the dams should not be breached. Vice President Al Gore had said the issue needed more scientific study.

Removing the dams, which were built in the 1970s, would cut federal hydroelectric production in the Northwest by 4 percent and wipe out barge service between the Columbia and Lewiston, Idaho. It also would lower reservoirs used for irrigation.

American Indian tribes and environmentalists want to remove the dams to return the river to a more natural condition. The federal plan calls for studies to evaluate the species' recovery before removal is reconsidered.

``Breaching those dams remains an option if the recovery efforts don't meet strict performance standards included in the strategy,'' Donna Darm, acting Northwest regional administrator of the National Marine Fisheries Service, said from Portland. ``We believe this plan has the best chance of recovering the fish.''

A dozen different runs of salmon in the Columbia Basin are listed as threatened or endangered species. Numbers of steelhead and upper Columbia spring chinook have dramatically diminished in recent years.

Brig. Gen. Carl Strock, division engineer for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, warned that if Congress fails to fully fund the plan, breaching the four lower Snake River dams in eastern Washington ``may turn out to be the only thing we can do.'' The earliest a move could be made to breach dams would be five to seven years.

The plans are estimated to cost up to $190 million a year on top of the $252 million a year the Bonneville Power Administration already uses on salmon recovery. It was unclear how much of the increase would come from Congress and home much from BPA.

Four Indian tribes that have treaty rights to fish for salmon may sue the federal government to force more definitive action to save salmon, said Charles Hudson, spokesman for the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission.

While happy the plans represented a quicker path to deciding if dam removal is necessary, environmentalists questioned the scientific basis for not immediately embracing breaching, and said they were doubtful that President-elect Bush and Congress would follow through with funding.

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Babbitt recommends new monuments

Infobeat
December 22, 2000
By MATT KELLEY Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405494869

WASHINGTON (AP) - A grassy plain in California, two coral reef areas in the Virgin Islands and landmarks of the Lewis and Clark expedition in Montana would become national monuments under recommendations Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt sent to President Clinton Friday.

Monument designations would give greater protection to the five areas, which are already owned by the federal government. The new protections would likely include bans or restrictions on vehicle use and prohibitions on mining and oil drilling.

President Clinton has created 11 national monuments and expanded two, using a 1906 law to bring new restrictions to millions of acres, mostly in the West. Critics _ including President-elect Bush _ call Clinton's actions unnecessary and unilateral, though they acknowledge that overturning a monument designation in Congress is highly unlikely.

Babbitt's action Friday does not ensure that the areas will be given monument status, though Clinton has not turned down any Babbitt monument recommendation so far. Friday's recommendations also do not include areas in Arizona and New Mexico which Babbitt has said also deserve to be monuments.

The proposed national monuments include:

_ Upper Missouri River Breaks, 377,000 acres along 149 miles of the river in north-central Montana. The sparsely populated area is largely the same as it was when Lewis and Clark came through in 1805, making the first non-Indian sighting of bighorn sheep.

_ Pompeys Pillar, a 150-foot sandstone outcropping along the Yellowstone River east of Billings, Mont. Capt. William Clark of the Lewis and Clark expedition carved his name in the pillar in 1805, leaving the only remaining archaeological evidence of the journey. Clark named the feature after his nickname for the young son of their Shoshone interpreter, Sacagawea.

_ Carrizo Plain, 204,000 acres of rolling grasslands between San Luis Obispo and Bakersfield, Calif. The area is home to wildlife including several endangered species, several American Indian sacred sites and a portion of the San Andreas Fault.

_ Virgin Islands Coral Reef, a nearly 13,000-acre area offshore of St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The area includes ``all the elements of a Caribbean tropical marine ecosystem,'' the Interior Department said, including mangroves, sea grass beds and coral reefs.

_ An expansion of the Buck Island Reef National Monument in the Virgin Islands, which was first created in 1961. The expansion area includes 18,000 offshore acres of coral reefs, including unusual ``haystacks'' of elkhorn coral.

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State pays $41 mln to create L.A. park

Infobeat
December 22, 2000
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405494071

LOS ANGELES (AP) - In what officials call the most expensive urban open space acquisition in California history, the state and county have agreed to pay $41.1 million for a parcel of land slated to become part of a major city park.

Officials hailed the acquisition of the 68-acre parcel near Los Angeles International Airport as a sign of a shifting focus in environmental policymaking toward preserving open space in urban areas. The purchase was announced Thursday.

``We used to buy parks way out in the boondocks,'' said Stanley Young, a spokesman for the Resources Agency of California. ``This is a major change in philosophy and strategy.''

It has not been determined what type of park will be designed for the site. Much of the area of big, brown hills was historically used as oil fields, so large swaths of unpaved land remain.

The purchase literally stopped bulldozers that were grading the property for an upscale, 241-unit housing development. The state paid $36.5 million, drawn mostly from the Proposition 12 parks bond voters approved in March, with the rest coming from the county.

Esther Feldman, president of Community Conservancy International and the main organizer of the movement to preserve the hills, said the purchase was a major coup despite the high price.

``There's a million people in a three-mile radius, including one of the largest African American communities in the state,'' she said. ``This is really the crossroads of Los Angeles.''

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Surviving whales swim to sea

Infobeat
December 22, 2000
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405495555

INVERCARGILL, New Zealand (AP) - A pod of 45 pilot whales was swimming out into open sea late Friday, giving hope to rescuers who spent a frantic day shepherding the whales away from a beach where 22 others had gotten stranded and died.

The surviving whales were swimming six miles from Maori Beach on Friday night, conservation officials said. They planned a dawn flight Saturday to check beaches and bays in case the survivors turn around during the night.

The saga on remote Stewart Island began Thursday, when dozens of conservationists and volunteers rushed to Maori Beach after two British walkers reported a mass stranding of whales.

The army of rescuers worked for 30 hours in rain, hail and cold water to comfort and refloat the beached whales. At high tide late Friday morning they were able to help the mammals find their way back into the deeper water. They then began shepherding the whales away from the beach, said Greg Lind of the Department of Conservation.

``We put a lot of pressure on the pod to get it away from the beach. We herded them for more than six hours, and at times they were agitated and distressed,'' he said.

Only in the late afternoon did the whales' behavior change.

``They moved northwest up the coastline to a point well clear of the beaches, so we let them go,'' Lind said.

The whales were continuing to head away from the stranding site at nightfall.

The 22 carcasses on the beach, each of which weighed about a ton, would be left to rot away, Lind said. The remote location made it impossible to bury or otherwise dispose of the dead whales.

Conservation staff said there was no history of whales beaching themselves on Maori Beach. Two years ago, 288 whales died after beaching themselves at isolated Doughboy Bay on Stewart Island's southeast coast.

It's not clear why whales beach themselves, but mass beachings occur every year.

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Clinton departs in regulation rush

Infobeat
Friday, December 22, 2000
By H. JOSEF HEBERT Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405488629

WASHINGTON (AP) - Departing with a flurry of activity, the Clinton administration is rushing out a stream of regulations _ roping off millions of acres of federal land from developers, requiring less polluting trucks, protecting miners with black lung disease, and other actions.

The latest came Thursday as the White House and Environmental Protection Agency made public new requirements intended to cut pollution from heavy-duty trucks and buses by more than 90 percent over the next decade. Refiners also are directed to produce virtually sulfur-free diesel fuel.

President Clinton is determined to fashion a legacy of major initiatives in areas of public health, the environment and worker rights, administration officials say.

Business groups already are preparing for a counterattack. They hope that Congress, the courts and the incoming, more business-friendly Bush administration will soften some of the still unfinished rules and possibly roll back others.

``What Clinton is trying to do is put the next administration into a regulatory straight jacket,'' said Bill Kovacs, vice president for environment and regulatory affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. ``Once these regulations are in effect, it's very difficult to change them.''

The regulatory rush before a change of administrations ``is not all that unusual'' especially for Democrats, who are traditionally more active in crafting a social agenda, says Pietro Nivola, an expert in regulatory politics at the Brookings Institution.

He noted there was a flurry of such activity at the close of the Carter administration 20 years ago, although GOP administrations have generally been less active as they leave office.

The White House plays down the significance of the late regulations, saying every president wants to close unfinished business as his administration winds down. Many rules were in the works for months, even years in some cases, officials say.

``There's been ample time for the public to weigh in, for interest groups to weigh in,'' White House press secretary Jake Siewert said.

The flow of major rules, regulations, standards and executive orders _ a ``midnight binge'' of rulemaking, according to some GOP lawmakers _ have been eye-catching. Among the areas affected:

_diesel fuel and truck pollution.
_privacy of health records.
_labeling standards for organically grown foods.
_coal miners' ability to get benefits for black lung disease.
_pollution from cattle and pig feedlots.
_mercury pollution from power plants.
_protection of Hawaiian coral reefs.
_protections for employees against repetitive-stress injuries.
_tighter environmental rules for the hard-rock mining industry.

The president is not finished, administration officials acknowledge.

Expected early in 2001 is a new requirement to banning the building of roads on nearly 60 million acres of federal forests. Also, the EPA is preparing regulations tightening arsenic levels in water, lead levels in soil, and wetlands protection.

Like the diesel fuel requirements, the expected restrictions on large, pristine areas of federal forests is meeting sharp resistance in Congress.

With energy prices high, GOP lawmakers have characterized the diesel rule and forest road ban as a threat to future energy supplies. Such claims are scoffed at as untrue by environmentalists.

The forest road restrictions ``may have severe implications for the future of production of natural gas,'' Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, argued recently, hinting at the likely arguments to be made in the next Congress.

Although time is running out, Clinton is not done using his executive authority to protect more public land under the 1906 Antiquities Act. He used that power in 1996 to set aside 1.7 million acres of the Grand Staircase-Escalante Nation.

Among the federal lands expected to gain monument status _ and the special protection with it _ is a 150-mile stretch of grasslands along the upper Missouri River known as the Missouri Breaks.

Clinton also has come under pressure from environmentalists to assure permanent protection of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska from oil development.

Interest in declaring the refuge's oil-rich coastal plan a federal monument took on added weight after President-elect Bush made drilling for oil in the reserve a key part of his proposed energy plan.

The arctic reserve is now protected against oil drilling, but lawmakers could enact legislation allowing development.

While Clinton ``was looking at the issue,'' it is not under active consideration, spokesman Siewert said.

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Bush to name Whitman to EPA

Infobeat
Friday, December 22, 2000
By RON FOURNIER AP Political Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405488361

WASHINGTON (AP) - New Jersey Gov. Christie Whitman, a moderate Republican and avid outdoorswoman, has accepted President-elect Bush's offer to head the Environmental Protection Agency, officials close to both politicians said Thursday. Fellow GOP governor Tommy Thompson hopes to follow her into the Bush administration.

Bush, who resigned as Texas governor Thursday, will announce Whitman's nomination Friday _ along with several other appointments, officials said.

The development came as senior Republicans in Washington and Wisconsin said Thompson accepted Bush's offer in a Thursday morning telephone call to be Health and Human Services secretary. They said the announcement would be made next week.

However, two senior Bush advisers said the Texan had not quite closed the deal with Thompson, though the nation's longest serving governor was almost certain to get the job. Thompson himself sent mixed signals.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity.

A third GOP governor, James Gilmore of Virginia, was selected by Bush to head the Republican National Committee. The announcement was expected Friday.

Bush was still mulling over several other top spots.

Lisa Graham Keegan, Arizona superintendent of public schools, met Thursday with Bush's transition team to talk about the education secretary spot. Keegan, a vocal supporter of Bush primary opponent Sen. John McCain, ``felt like it was a good meeting,'' said spokeswoman Patricia Likens.

She left under the impression she would not receive word of Bush's choice until after Christmas, Likens said.

Even as rumors of the Bush telephone call circulated, Thompson told reporters in Wisconsin that the HHS Cabinet job is the one Bush would like him to fill, while transportation secretary is ``the one I would like to be able to do.'' He said he had not decided whether to take the HHS job.

``The president really wants me, and he thinks I can do a good job for him and for the country,'' Thompson, 59, said in an interview in Madison. ``The con, of course, is that I love you people. I love Wisconsin.''

Officials in Bush's camp said they were perplexed, even angered, over Thompson's remarks and said their boss would not be pleased with the public musings.

GOP sources close to Thompson said he was humbled by Bush's offer, excited about running HHS and had no intention of lobbying for any other job. They said his remarks were the result of an awkward attempt to explain his mixed emotions about leaving Wisconsin.

Whitman, 54, is in her second term as New Jersey's governor. Her term expires in January 2002.

She notified state GOP senate president Donald DiFrancesco that she would be in Austin, Texas, Friday for a personnel announcement with Bush. DiFrancesco is next in line of succession.

An abortion-rights supporter, Whitman would be sheltered at the EPA from social issues that galvanize Bush's conservative base. Thompson, on the other hand, is an opponent of abortion and would be welcomed by conservatives at an agency where social issues are critical.

Environmentalists view Whitman's selection with skepticism, though she championed open-space preservation in the nation's most densely developed state and refused to abandon an unpopular auto emission test designed to reduce air pollution.

Critics say that in the name of attracting business, she compromised water pollution protections and cut spending for state offices that prosecute environmental abuses by industry.

It was not known whether Bush would elevate the EPA to Cabinet status.

Bush hoped to make several appointments Friday, but aides cautioned that he would need another week or two to complete work on his Cabinet.

He has already filled two of the four biggest jobs: secretary of state went to retired Gen. Colin Powell and business executive Paul O'Neill is his secretary of treasury nominee. Bush's top choice for attorney general, Montana Gov. Marc Racicot, said Wednesday he did not want the job.

Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating, a former FBI agent and Justice Department official, is a favorite of conservatives and many Washington Republicans, but not necessarily Bush. Other candidates remain, including Missouri Sen. John Ashcroft who was defeated in November by Gov. Mel Carnahan shortly after Carnahan had died.

It was possible, but not likely, that Bush could settle on an attorney general nominee this week, aides said.

Former Sen. Dan Coats, R-Ind., long considered a sure-bet for defense secretary, remains a leading candidate but Bush has told advisers he needs more time to consider his options. He was not expected to decide this week.

On another front, Republican consultant Rich Bond, a longtime ally of the Bush family, emerged as a candidate for Labor secretary. U.S. Rep. Jim Talent of Missouri, who lost a bid to become governor, said he's a candidate, too.

Bush advisers say Thompson is a natural fit for the health and human services spot with his reputation for being innovative in areas such as health care and welfare reform.

Wisconsin was at the forefront of welfare reform under Thompson's administration _ it was the first state to apply and receive approval from the federal government for its work-based welfare reform proposal.

More than 64,000 families have left Wisconsin's welfare rolls since 1993, although critics say that doesn't guarantee they are getting the education they need or earning wages above the poverty level.

In taking over health and human services, Thompson would succeed Donna Shalala, who once worked for him as the University of Wisconsin chancellor.

The two have clashed over changes to the nation's transplant system proposed by HHS, which would break down geographical barriers governing how organs are distributed. The state sued HHS over the proposals, but a federal judge threw out the case last month.

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Scuttle the Everglades Airport

New York Times
December 22, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/22/opinion/22FRI3.html

President Clinton's efforts to rescue Florida's Everglades will rank among his finest accomplishments in the field of conservation. But there is one more gift he can make to the troubled South Florida ecosystem before he leaves office, and that is to kill a misguided, seven-year-old plan to allow Miami- Dade County to build a major commercial airport on the site of the old Homestead Air Force Base. Such an airport is not only unnecessary but would pose an unacceptable ecological threat to two national parks - the Everglades, which is a few miles from the base's western edge, and Biscayne National Park, only two miles to the east.

The airport project began with the best of intentions. In 1992, Hurricane Andrew left Miami- Dade County's economy in ruins. The next year, with encouragement from the White House, the Air Force offered to turn Homestead over to the county in order to promote development. Local leaders settled on a development group dominated by influential Cuban-Americans with close ties to the Democratic Party. The developers, in turn, proposed an international airport with office buildings, warehouses and hotels. But subsequent studies showed that the project would be an environmental disaster. Among other dangers, runoff would threaten the waters and fish of Biscayne Bay, and large-scale development would deplete the aquifers on which the Everglades depends for fresh water.

The project is opposed by Carol Browner, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and Bruce Babbitt, the interior secretary. Polls show that local residents oppose it as well. There are alternative plans on Mr. Clinton's desk for modest, mixed-use development at the site. He should transfer the base to the Interior Department, with instructions that it not be released for development until everyone agrees on a plan that is fully compatible with the needs of an ecosystem that is under enough stress as it is.

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Tentative Deal on Acid Rain Is Reached With Third Utility

New York Times
December 22, 2000
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/22/science/22EMIT.html

Pressing ahead with landmark litigation to curb pollutants that contribute to acid rain in the Northeast, state and federal officials said last night that they had reached a tentative settlement with a third utility to cut emissions from power plants significantly.

Under the agreement, which would be the largest of three settlements in a case involving several companies, the Cinergy Corporation of Cincinnati will spend at least $1.4 billion in the next 12 years to cut sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides emissions from its 10 coal-burning plants in Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky.

Carol Browner, the administrator of the federal Environmental Protection Agency, which had sued the company, said last night that the Cinergy settlement was the largest reached under the Clean Air Act. The total surpasses the $1.2 billion sum negotiated a month ago with a Virginia utility that had also been sued - by the State of New York, with the E.P.A.'s cooperation - over its power plant emissions.

The E.P.A. also reached a settlement this year with a Tampa utility. The agency has sued nine companies with nearly 100 power plants in a four-year effort to go after utilities whose coal-powered generators spew tons of pollutants.

Those emissions, carried east by prevailing winds, are widely tied to acid rain that has scarred mountainous areas like the Adirondacks and Catskills with "dead lakes" and dying forests, and added to smog and asthma problems in several cities.

"Cleaner air, fewer premature deaths, fewer respiratory illnesses, fewer bronchitis cases," Ms. Browner said in interview, explaining the ramifications of the settlement, reached with the participation of the attorneys general of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. "We are thrilled."

New York's attorney general, Eliot L. Spitzer, who in September 1999 sued, or served notice of imminent legal action on, several out-of-state utilities said, "We could not be happier."

Under the agreement, Cinergy admits no wrongdoing but must pay $8.5 million in civil penalties to the federal government. The company must also finance environmental projects valued at $21.5 million.

Cinergy agreed to cut its sulfur dioxide emissions, a key component in acid rain, by 409,000 tons annually, and nitrogen oxides, a culprit in smog, by 101,000 tons per year.

It will install smokestack scrubbers and other equipment at its plants and convert the fuel source at three plants to natural gas from coal within the next 12 years.

"We have pursued a settlement because it is preferable to spending years in time-consuming and wasteful litigation and is consistent with our environmental leadership position," James E. Rogers, the chairman, president and chief executive of Cinergy, said in a statement.

Cinergy, one of the nation's largest energy companies, operates the Cincinnati Gas and Electric Company and PSI Energy Inc., which have more than 1.4 million electric customers and 478,000 gas customers.

Some environmentalists said the fact that the companies have settled knowing that a new presidential administration is imminent - with a new E.P.A. administrator who many expect will be New Jersey's governor, Christie Whitman - demonstrates the strength of the cases.

Governor Whitman in a statement last night praised the settlement as "one step forward in what will be a decades-long process."

The agency says the companies made major modifications to expand or extend the life of older coal-burning plants without installing the proper pollution controls. The companies have said that the modifications were related to maintenance.

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State to Shrink Contested Road Project Near Crucial Reservoir

New York Times
December 22, 2000
By ROBERT WORTH
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/22/nyregion/22RESE.html

New York State is planning to scale back a highway expansion project adjacent to the Kensico Reservoir under an agreement that addresses concerns about the project's impact on New York City's drinking water, state transportation officials said yesterday.

The agreement is expected to lessen the impact of the road-expansion project on the reservoir, which is three miles north of White Plains in Westchester County. The reservoir is a conduit for 90 percent of New York City's water as it flows from larger reservoirs farther north.

State officials say the agreement, which has the legally enforceable status of a contract, outlines a modest expansion of roads and interchanges close to the reservoir.

The deal includes virtually all of the conditions proposed earlier this year by environmental groups, said Eric A. Goldstein, a lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council. Those conditions were endorsed by the New York City comptroller, Alan G. Hevesi; the federal Environmental Protection Agency; Senators Charles E. Schumer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan; and 11 representatives in the House.

Gov. George E. Pataki said, "This agreement ensures that we have traffic safety, but that we do so in a way that guarantees environmental protection."

Mr. Goldstein, the lead negotiator of the agreement for the environmental coalition, said Governor Pataki deserved credit for having altered the course of the original highway plan. "What was planned as an ecosystem-altering superhighway on the very edge of the region's most important reservoir has been scaled down to a rehab project with safety improvements," he said.

The Kensico, about 30 miles north of New York City, has become a major concern for environmental officials responsible for protecting the city's water because it is surrounded by increasingly crowded suburbs and the Westchester County Airport.

But in supporting the road project, local officials and the State Transportation Department cited growing traffic and accidents on the roads that border and cross the eastern portion of the reservoir. Although the area is still largely rural, the roads serve large corporate parks built by I.B.M. and other corporations in North Castle, a nearby town.

The Transportation Department released the road proposal in 1997, seeking to expand portions of Route 120 heading north on the east side of the reservoir; to reconstruct much of the overlap of Routes 120 and 22 with wider intersections and a new bridge over the reservoir; and to build expanded interchanges at Exits 2 and 3 of Interstate 684, on the east side of the reservoir.

Mr. Hevesi and a number of environmental groups sharply protested the proposal. They warned that the project could jeopardize the city's $1 billion plan, signed earlier that year, to safeguard the quality of the water in the city's reservoirs and to avert a threatened federal order to build a $6 billion filtration plant.

Environmental groups said broadening the roads would have sent more polluted road runoff into the water, and could have spurred more development in the area, further threatening the reservoir.

Earlier this year, state transportation officials proposed a modified version of the project, including a more limited road expansion.

But environmentalists, joined by Mr. Hevesi, the E.P.A. and the 13 members of Congress, opposed that plan and endorsed an alternative drawn up by the Natural Resources Defense Council with the help of 20 other private environmental groups.

The essentials of that alternative plan have now been adopted in the final agreement, Mr. Goldstein said. The plan allows for modest expansion of certain sections of the roads and interchanges, but reduces the amount of wetlands lost and allows no net increase of paved surfaces. It also requires a public process to create storm-water runoff features that will minimize pollution.

John A. Lombardi, the town supervisor of North Castle, said he had not seen the details of the plan but was disappointed that the state agency had agreed to scale down its plans to expand Route 120.

"I am concerned about the environment, but I am concerned about the amount of traffic on this road, and concerned about the fact that it is only going to get worse," he said.

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A conservative for EPA

Washington Times
EDITORIAL • December 22, 2000
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-house-20001222192823.htm

In a book on her days as Virginia's secretary of Natural Resources, Becky Norton Dunlop describes a long-running fight she had with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over testing of automobile emissions in the state. The feds wanted separate testing and repair operations that would force Virginia drivers through a handful of government-run testing facilities - setting up the possibility that they would face long waiting lines before being sent back to private garages for the needed repairs. Backed by then-Gov. George Allen, Mrs. Dunlop won the battle, sparing Virginians a useless, annual ordeal.

The battle over emissions testing in Virginia came to mind upon reading of the Rev. Jerry Falwell's comments on the prospect of New Jersey Gov. Christie Todd Whitman's serving in a Bush Cabinet. According to an interview in The Washington Post, Mr. Falwell had warned President-elect Bush that her past support of abortion rights should disqualify her from judgeships or from Cabinet posts with heavy responsibility for social policy. She would have zero voice on social policy at EPA, Mr. Falwell said, in something of a backhanded endorsement.

But the head of EPA isn't a token position. As Fred Smith, head of the Competitive Enterprise Institute told this newspaper's Ralph Hallow Wednesday, "Population control groups and the environmental establishment are essentially the same group. The EPA is the most powerful economic policy job in Washington because regulation is the preferred tool of government intervention today. [Mrs.] Whitman is part of the Northeast liberal establishment - Republicans and Democrats - who go with the 'green tide' of environmental and regulation zealots."

Consider the power of an agency that can ram through 11th-hour regulations, as EPA is doing now, ratcheting down exhaust emission standards for heavy-duty highway engines and vehicles and setting new low-sulfur standards for highway diesel fuel. Nominally the regulation is about improved health; reducing pollutants is supposed to help everybody, particularly asthmatics and others with respiratory ailments, breathe a little easier. But the vast majority of Americans already lives in areas that meet federal clean-air standards. Why jack up the cost of trucking - and therefore the cost of consumer goods - or the cost of public transportation - when there is no corresponding health benefit for that majority?

Unfortunately regulators like current EPA head Carol Browner aren't accountable to the public for misguided policies, in part because the costs are dispersed through higher prices for goods and services. They don't have to ask permission from Congress to do it because they can usually find some high-minded statute - the Clean Whatever Act - with language that a friendly judge can interpret as permission. It takes a committed appointee to hold the line on the "green tide." That commitment, not political patronage for persons of controversial "social" views, should be the standard by which President-elect Bush picks the next head of EPA and other regulatory agencies.

-------- imf / world bank

World Bank OKs $122 mln loan to Russia

Infobeat
December 22, 2000
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405496656

MOSCOW (AP) - The World Bank has approved a $122.5 million loan to Russia to improve water supplies and waste treatment in medium-sized cities, a spokeswoman for the bank said Friday.

The credit will be used to replace water mains and make other repairs in 14 Russian cities with a population of less than 500,000, said Marina Vasilieva, a spokeswoman for the Moscow office of the World Bank.

The bank's board of directors approved the loan Thursday in Washington. The loan for water system upgrades may lead to other credit to improve municipal services in Russia, Vasilieva said.

After a decade of economic decline, municipal services in many Russian cities barely function. It is not uncommon for kitchen faucets to gush brown, rust-contaminated water for a few minutes before flowing clean, and garbage collection from trash bins is sometimes delayed for weeks.

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Hungry Afghans reach UN camps

Infobeat
December 22, 2000
By KATHY GANNON Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405495458

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - Thousands of hungry Afghans, driven from their homes by the region's worst drought in 30 years, are arriving at U.N. food camps in western Afghanistan, the United Nations said Friday.

Over six days, 4,600 people arrived at one of six U.N. food camps in the western province of Herat, according to a U.N. statement issued in neighboring Pakistan. The five other camps are already full and their conditions are miserable because of poor response to a request for aid from the international community, the statement said.

Thousands of other refugees are likely to pour in as Afghanistan's bitter winter progresses.

``The drought currently affecting Afghanistan has put at risk the lives of about 300,000 in the western region,'' the U.N. statement said.

The warning comes just three days after the U.N. Security Council voted to impose sweeping new sanctions on Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia. The sanctions are intended to press for the extradition of Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden and the closure of alleged terrorist camps in the country.

Fearing a violent backlash, the United Nations evacuated all international workers. But while Afghans have expressed anger at the new sanctions, there has been no violence.

It's not clear when the U.N. workers will be returning to Afghanistan. Erick de Mul, chief coordinator for humanitarian aid, said earlier he hoped they could return within days.

The U.N. resolution calls for an arms embargo against the Taliban, bans international travel by Taliban officials, closes Taliban offices outside the country and further restricts international flights.

While the sanctions were meant to target only the Taliban rulers and not the impoverished people of Afghanistan, both U.N. and non-U.N. humanitarian workers say the measures will isolate Afghanistan further - and that they couldn't have come at a worse time.

The World Food Program previously warned that as many as 1 million Afghans face the possibility of starvation this winter because of the drought, which has destroyed three-quarters of the country's crops and about half the livestock.

In the beleaguered capital, Kabul, ordinary Afghans say the threat of sanctions has further weakened the currency, causing the price of basic foods to rise. Kabul's 1 million residents are largely dependent on international aid to survive.

A Taliban ban on poppy production, the country's only cash crop, also has badly hurt ordinary farmers. Many of the Afghans trying to get to Pakistan say they have been forced off their farms because the Taliban won't let them grow poppies, from which opium is produced and heroin manufactured.

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World Bank, IMF exceed relief goals

Infobeat
December 22, 2000
By HARRY DUNPHY Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405496718

WASHINGTON (AP) - The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund said Friday they exceeded the goal set by the major industrialized nations to get 20 of the world's poorest countries into a special debt relief program by year's end.

In a joint statement, World Bank President James Wolfensohn and IMF Managing Director Horst Koehler said these efforts ``will lift some $34 billion in debt service obligations of 22 countries, 18 of them in Africa'' over the coming years. Four countries are in Latin America.

Wolfensohn and Koehler said once the 22 nations provide the IMF and the bank with poverty reduction strategies and develop economic reform programs, they will become eligible to receive the full benefits of debt relief.

This should amount to a reduction of about half of their foreign debt burdens, rising to two-thirds once government and commercial lenders fulfill their own debt pledges.

Started by the two institutions in 1996, the Heavily Indebted Poor Country initiative had been criticized by the major industrialized nations as too slow, putting up too many economic hurdles before a country could qualify.

The United States and the six other G-7 nations called last year for the program to be speeded up and set a goal of 20 countries by the end of 2000.

Both lending institutions and the industrialized nations came under pressure to accelerate the program from a diverse group called Jubilee 2000, which included religious leaders, rock stars and international relief organizations dedicated to securing debt relief to coincide with the new millennium.

Jubilee 2000, however, has complained that 16 of the 22 countries would still be spending more on debt payments than on health.

With debt relief approved for these countries, Wolfensohn and Koehler said in their statement that ``the beneficiary countries must continue with their economic, social and governance reforms.''

But they said the international community also had to help by raising foreign aid to internationally agreed levels and opening their markets to exports from poor countries.

``There cannot be a good future for the rich nations if the poor nations don't share prosperity,'' Wolfensohn and Koehler said.

The boards of the two lending organizations were putting the final touches Friday on programs for the African nations of Rwanda and Guinea.

They also announced that the Indian Ocean island nation of Madagascar was the latest country to qualify, receiving $800 million in debt relief and becoming the 20th nation to join the HIPC program. Rwanda and Guinea were expected to get $500 million each.

Nicaragua and Malawi were approved on Thursday as the two institutions' boards raced to complete their work before the holiday break.

The bank and the IMF said Nicaragua's debt burden would be reduced by $3.3 billion, ``the largest debt relief package yet committed under the HIPC initiative.''

``The impact of HIPC assistance is substantial and will help Nicaragua build on its strong reconstruction efforts after Hurricane Mitch toward a stable long term development strategy,'' the bank said.

Malawi also qualified for debt relief and will see its burden cut by $643 million.

Barring any problems with Friday's approval process, the final list will include: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Niger, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia in Africa; Bolivia, Guyana, Honduras and Nicaragua in Latin America.

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U.S. antidumping law attacked

Infobeat
December 22, 2000
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405495269

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - The European Union, Japan and seven other big countries joined forces Friday to attack a U.S. measure that gives duties collected in antidumping cases to U.S. companies in the affected industries.

In what they called an ``unprecedented joint action,'' the nations said they have asked for formal World Trade Organization consultations with Washington seeking repeal of the new law.

The law ``isn't a U.S.-EU problem but a U.S.-rest of the world problem,'' said EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy in a statement.

He said they wanted to ``send a very clear signal to the U.S. on the need to repeal legislation that so clearly flies in the face of the letter and spirit of WTO law.''

The measure would allow money raised from duties collected on foreign steel imports sold at below fair market prices to be used to subsidize American steel companies.

Despite signing the bill into law in October, President Clinton expressed reservations and called on Congress to amend the subsidy provision.

The Clinton administration said the legislation would not protect U.S. consumers or steel companies properly.

The provision's sponsor, Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W. Va., has argued that the purpose of antidumping laws is not to raise general tax revenues, but to aid domestic industry hurt by illegal trade practices of foreign competitors.

He estimated U.S. companies would have collected $39 million had the provision been in effect in 1999. One possible beneficiary is Weirton Steel Corp., a West Virginia steelmaker that has complained of unfair pricing by Brazilian, Japanese and Russian companies.

Signing on to the complaint with the EU and Japan were Australia, Brazil, Chile, India, Indonesia, South Korea and Thailand.

----

Group of Countries Protests U.S. Change in Dumping Law

New York Times
December 22, 2000
By ELIZABETH OLSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/22/business/22TRAD.html

GENEVA, Dec. 21 - A group of countries led by Japan and the European Union filed a joint complaint with the World Trade Organization today against a new American law that would award the proceeds of anti-dumping sanctions to the affected industry.

The countries challenged an amendment passed by Congress last month that changes the anti-dumping law barring the sale on American markets of foreign goods at prices below their cost of production.

The current law, which has been invoked by the embattled American steel industry against foreign imports, allows the United States government to impose tariffs against such below-the-market products.

The amendment, sponsored by Senator Robert Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, would divert the tariff revenues from the Treasury and award them to the complaining industry. The amount involved could range from $40 million to $200 million a year, but it is uncertain because heavily taxed imports are less likely to be sold on the American markets, which would drive down any tariff income from them.

However, Japan, which has tangled with the United States over steel imports, and the European Union maintain that the tariff awards amount to giving complaining American industry a subsidy, which is barred by global free trade rules.

The Byrd amendment, championed by the lawmaker to protect his state's steel manufacturers, was attached to a farm spending bill that passed Congress just before the election. President Clinton signed it into law, but urged lawmakers to repeal it.

United States trading partners have complained that the law encourages American companies to make claims of dumping because they would receive a double reward - less competition from imports and income from increased tariffs.

American trade officials had no immediate comment on the complaint, which will lead to a review by a W.T.O. dispute-resolution panel if agreement is not reached in 60 days.

Of the nine countries signing the complaint, most have been subject to duties on steel. In addition to Japan and the European Union, which have been fined by American trade officials for selling steel at prices lower than production costs, they are Australia, Brazil, Chile, India, Indonesia, Thailand and South Korea.

A few weeks ago, the European Union said it wanted W.T.O. consultations with the United States to negotiate import restrictions on steel wire rod and welded line pipe that the Clinton administration had imposed earlier this year. South Korea had already brought a complaint against the same measure.

Last month, the European Union began the dispute-resolution process over Washington's refusal to lift countervailing duties on European steel makers. Also in November, the W.T.O. panel issued a preliminary ruling against American anti-dumping duties on Korean stainless steel imports. It will issue a decision early next year on American anti-dumping duties imposed on Japanese hot- rolled steel.

-------- police

NEWARK: OFFICERS ACQUITTED OF MOST CHARGES

New York Times
December 22, 2000
Metro Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/22/nyregion/22MBRF.html

NEW JERSEY
Two Newark police officers, accused of beating a suspect and planting marijuana on him, have been acquitted of assault and official misconduct charges. But the jury, in its ruling Wednesday, found one of the officers, Agostinho Morais, guilty of false swearing, for signing a complaint charging the suspect with intent to distribute marijuana within 1,000 feet of a school. Officer Morais's lawyer said he would appeal the conviction. (NYT)

-------- spying

Peru's ex-spy chief still hunted

Infobeat
December 22, 2000
By MONTE HAYES Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405489418

LIMA, Peru (AP) - Barely a day goes by without some new report of the whereabouts of Peru's former spymaster, sometimes with convincing detail, often not.

Vladimiro Montesinos is on the run from the law, skipping by yacht and small plane through Central America and the Caribbean. The latest report has him in Venezuela, where he is said to have undergone plastic surgery to alter his hawklike features.

The last time boat captain Fidencio Anton Paiva saw Montesinos in late November, he didn't have the aura of a dangerous man.

By the end of his three-week high seas escape from Peru to Costa Rica aboard a 60-foot yacht, the 54-year-old Montesinos was seasick, depressed, popping pills and complaining of low blood pressure, Paiva says.

``He seemed desperate. He had lost weight. He looked forlorn. He wasn't strong like when he left Lima,'' Paiva recounted in videotaped testimony this week to a commission investigating Montesinos' criminal activities as ousted President Alberto Fujimori's closest adviser.

Despite his shaky sea legs, Montesinos achieved a spectacular escape from Peru on Oct. 29 that reinforced his cloak-and-dagger image.

The ease with which he appears to move across the Americas has provided Peruvians with a new topic of conversation these days _ the latest ``Montesinos sighting.''

Using fake passports and identities and calling on important friends for help, Montesinos so far has had no problem in eluding an international manhunt.

``The possibilities of capturing him are not good because he has a network of influence and money, he has information and he has a strategy,'' said police Col. Benedicto Jimenez, who headed a special unit that spent two years tracking down and capturing Abimael Guzman, the leader of Peru's Shining Path insurgency.

``We don't know how a cornered rat may react,'' Jimenez warned. ``He must be very hurt at this moment with everything that has happened, feeling pursued, persecuted. He has passed from being all-powerful to a mere delinquent.''

Rumors as to Montesinos' whereabouts have swirled since he returned to Peru in late October after a failed asylum bid in Panama.

Until three army officers who accompanied him on his escape came forth with testimony to Congress last week, most people thought he was still in Peru, shielded by his allies in the armed forces.

A videotape released on Sept. 14 of Montesinos apparently bribing a congressman led to the scandal that ended Fujimori's 10-year authoritarian rule. Fujimori, now in self-imposed exile in Japan, was declared morally unfit for the presidency by Congress on Nov. 21.

Montesinos is wanted on charges ranging from money-laundering and influence-peddling to directing death squads. The president of the congressional commission investigating him estimates his ill-gotten gains at $800 million.

He vanished after he returned from Panama on Oct. 23, and Fujimori personally led a manhunt for him reminiscent of a Keystone Cop chase scene.

Montesinos began his flight to avoid prison by slipping out of the port of Callao before dawn on Oct. 29, accompanied by an attractive young woman. His two-mast sailboat joined a fleet of some 20 yachts headed to Ecuador for a regatta, but veered off toward the Galapagos Islands 600 miles out in the Pacific, sailing for almost seven days before reaching Isabela, one of the most remote islands in the group.

From there he set sail north to Costa Rica's Coco Island, a national park 350 miles off the mainland with no immigration office and few officials to spot them.

On Coco Island, Montesinos used a satellite phone he carried with him to contact a Venezuelan friend to send a sail boat that would rendezvous with the yacht at sea, according to the army officers who traveled with him.

Montesinos abandoned the yacht ``Karisma'' on Nov. 21, switching to the smaller boat to land on the Costa Rican mainland, according to Costa Rican Security Minister Rogelio Ramos.

Montesinos' photo was identified by local officials, he said.

Ramos said Montesinos boarded a small plane a day later that took him to Aruba, about 20 miles off the coast of northwestern Venezuela. He used a false Venezuelan passport bearing the name Manuel Antonio Rodriguez Perez.

In Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, the director of a private clinic confirmed Wednesday that a man with the same name underwent plastic surgery on Dec. 13 and left the clinic two days later. He said the doctor who performed the surgery had photos of the patient but had gone on an extended vacation.

Venezuela's Foreign Minister Jose Vicente Rangel released a statement Thursday saying Peru's government had not contacted his ministry for help in finding Montesinos but that he was willing to do so.

Rangel said no record has been found of anyone entering Venezuela under the name Manuel Antonio Rodriguez Perez or Vladimiro Montesinos, and that Venezuela would ``immediately'' deport Montesinos to Peru if he were found.

Jimenez said that although Peruvians are fascinated with his disappearing act, it's not a work of spy fiction for Montesinos.

``He must be worried about keeping alive and not being killed,'' he said. ``He knows that if he is caught, the probability he will be taken back alive is slim. He knows too much.''

-------- terrorism

Informer's Part in Terror Case Is Detailed

New York Times
December 22, 2000
By BENJAMIN WEISER
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/22/nyregion/22TERR.html?pagewanted=all

When four men go on trial in 12 days in New York on charges they conspired with Osama bin Laden in the deadly bombings of two United States Embassies in East Africa in 1998, one of the government's central witnesses could be a former American Army sergeant who pleaded guilty in October to assisting in the terrorist conspiracy.

The former sergeant, Ali A. Mohamed, served in one of the Army's most sensitive units at Fort Bragg, N.C., in the 1980's. In 1993, five years before the embassy attacks, he began talking to the F.B.I. about Mr. bin Laden and his role.

Now, newly released summaries of Mr. Mohamed's interviews with the authorities and later testimony before a federal grand jury in New York provide the most detailed look yet at the insider's account he gave of Mr. bin Laden and of Islamic terrorism overseas and in New York.

In 1993, he was talking to the authorities about Mr. bin Laden, for example, and he described his own association with Muslim radicals in New York, including some who were later convicted of terrorism in the city. In 1997, he told the F.B.I. about networks of terrorists, known as "sleepers," who lie low for years but do not need to be told what to do.

"Mohamed implied that trained terrorists don't order their people to blow things up," an F.B.I. document said. "Terrorists are trained and then they act."

After the embassy bombings in August 1998, Mr. Mohamed appeared before the grand jury and described how he had helped relocate Mr. bin Laden and his operation in the early 1990's from Pakistan to Sudan.

"He has his own personal jet - we brought it," Mr. Mohamed said. "Tough part: how to take him from Peshawar to Karachi" in Pakistan, he added, a transcript shows.

"It's 1,000 miles away in very hard terrain. How to disguise him? How to get him outside the country?"

The four defendants in the trial, which is scheduled to begin on Jan. 3, are charged with joining a global terrorism conspiracy led by Mr. bin Laden, which included the bombings on Aug. 7, 1998, of the United States Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The blasts killed more than 200 people and injured thousands.

When Mr. Mohamed, a former Egyptian intelligence officer who obtained American citizenship, pleaded guilty in October, he told Judge Leonard B. Sand of Federal District Court in Manhattan that he was sent by Mr. bin Laden to photograph potential bomb targets in Nairobi in 1993.

When he later showed Mr. bin Laden a picture of the embassy, Mr. bin Laden pointed to where a suicide bomber could drive a truck, he said.

The government has not yet said whether Mr. Mohamed will be called to testify, and it is not certain whether his plea agreement, which remains secret, includes any such deal.

If he does appear, it seems his interviews with the F.B.I. could offer the defense much fodder as they seek to attack his credibility and motives. The four defendants are Wadih El- Hage, Mohamed Rashed Daoud al- 'Owhali, Mohammed Saddiq Odeh and Khalfan Khamis Mohamed.

"We don't discuss trial strategy prior to any trial," said Herbert Hadad, a spokesman for the United States attorney in Manhattan, Mary Jo White. An F.B.I. spokesman and one of Mr. Mohamed's lawyers would not comment.

But the 15 pages of excerpts of F.B.I. interviews, along with snippets of grand jury testimony and other records released this week, support earlier indications that in the past decade, while he was working for Mr. bin Laden, Mr. Mohamed and the F.B.I. engaged in a delicate dance.

Mr. Mohamed appeared to be offering a mixture of truth and lies about Mr. bin Laden, perhaps in an attempt to bolster his credibility with the authorities while keeping them from learning about Mr. bin Laden's actual intentions.

The F.B.I. and the federal prosecutors, at the same time, seem to have kept Mr. Mohamed in a tight embrace, perhaps in hopes that by tracking Mr. Mohamed, they could better monitor Mr. bin Laden as they delved into his activities.

The Mohamed summaries were made public this week in United States District Court in Manhattan, several months after The New York Times had requested that documents filed under court secrecy orders be reviewed and released.

In his 1997 interview with the government, Mr. Mohamed indicated that a deadly attack on American soldiers in Somalia in 1993 was carried out by "bin Laden group members," the F.B.I. report says. The document is a summary of Mr. Mohamed's comments, not a transcript.

Mr. Mohamed also contended he "personally aborted" two large- scale terrorist operations in the United States, which he did not identify.

He said he was angry, though, that prosecutors had placed him on a list of potential co-conspirators prepared in advance of the 1995 trial of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and other defendants, who were convicted in a plot to blow up landmarks in New York City. He said that if in the future "he learned of other terrorist attacks, he would not stop them."

He also said that when he went to Sudan, to help Mr. bin Laden set up security at his house after an unsuccessful assassination attempt, he moved into Mr. bin Laden's house.

"He denied ever working for any of bin Laden's companies," the F.B.I. report says. "His only other comment on this topic was, `I did not have to work.' "

As for the fight against terrorism, Mr. Mohamed said, "U.S. authorities use profiles for terrorists that are invalid."

"He knows, for example, that there are hundreds of `sleepers' or `submarines' in place who don't fit neatly into the terrorist profile," the F.B.I. report said.

The report says Mr. Mohamed indicated that "these individuals don't wear the traditional beards and they don't pray at the mosques." Mr. Mohamed added that even though he no longer frequented his mosque, "he wanted those present to know that he wasn't a sleeper."

-------- activists

Protesters plan inauguration turnout

Infobeat
Friday, December 22, 2000
By DAVID HO Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405488434

WASHINGTON (AP) - Demonstrators who shut down a global trade meeting in Seattle last year and brawled with police at the Republican National Convention plan to show up in force for President-elect Bush's inauguration next month.

Organizers insist the protests, for a variety of causes, will be orderly and peaceful and that any violence will be the fault of police.

``George Bush will not go one block down Pennsylvania Avenue without being confronted with signs and banners and other creatively done messages of the movement that says `No' to the death penalty, `No' to racism, `No' to voter disenfranchisement,'' Brian Becker, co-director of the International Action Center, said at a news conference Thursday.

``If there is violence that day, it will be because _ as we've witnessed at so many demonstrations in the past year _ the police decided to engage in violent behavior against demonstrators,'' he said. No civil disobedience has been planned, he said.

The issues motivating the protesters range from abortion to abolition of the Electoral College. Veterans of a growing movement against corporate globalization from the Seattle protest will be joined by environmental activists, people opposed to U.S. involvement in Latin America and those who oppose Bush's contested victory.

Becker said his group requested permits six weeks ago from the District of Columbia police to allow hundreds to gather at locations in front of the Justice Department, around the Capitol and along the inaugural route. Their permits have not yet been granted.

District police would not say whether the permits would be approved. The Presidential Inaugural Committee and the Bush transition office had no comment.

Adam Eidinger, protest coordinator for the Justice Action Movement and a demonstrator at both national political conventions this summer, said police agreed to meet with demonstrators early next week to discuss how to avoid confrontations that have marked other recent protests.

Many of the demonstrations had been planned well before the contested presidential election, organizers said, but the recent events in Florida galvanized their movements.

``Because of the outcome of the election, I think the protests will be much larger,'' said Eidinger. His group, a coalition of organizations including those who protested at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in Washington in April, plans to have small groups of people throughout the crowd at the inauguration holding anti-Bush signs.

Questioning the legitimacy of Bush's presidency after the contested election and the Florida recount, many of the signs and posters being prepared read ``Hail to the Thief.''

``However you look at this inauguration, you will see demonstrators,'' Eidinger said. ``If police attempt to keep people out of the inauguration, they're going to have to screen every single person that attends.''

------

Clinton to act on clemency requests

Infobeat
December 22, 2000
By DEB RIECHMANN Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405495940

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Clinton was making decisions on Friday about granting clemency to some of the scores of convicted Americans seeking presidential pardons or lighter punishment.

Among those seeking intervention are a Wall Street financier, an American Indian activist convicted of killing two FBI agents and a longtime Clinton friend and supporter convicted of trying to influence a former member of Clinton's cabinet.

``There are a number of different cases where there are mandatory minimums (sentences) that have been unduly harsh and there may be one or two cases like that today, particularly in cases where the person was involved in nonviolent drug conviction,'' White House press secretary Jake Siewert said Friday.

He said the president was expected to make more clemency announcements before Jan. 20.

Asked on Thursday whether convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard was on the list, Siewert replied: ``I wouldn't expect anything new on that.'' The administration has been reviewing Israel's request that Pollard be released. The former civilian analyst for the U.S. Navy was convicted of espionage in 1985 for giving Israel tens of thousands of top-secret documents. He was sentenced to life in prison.

Earlier this week, a coalition of 675 clergy asked Clinton to commute sentences of nonviolent drug offenders. In a letter, the group asked the president to grant clemency and release on supervised parole those federal prisoners who have served at least five years for low-level, nonviolent involvement in drug cases.

``To find some of those drug offenders who deserve to be released, Clinton should appeal to the more than 600 federal trial judges, asking each to name at least one defendant whom he or she was required by mandatory sentencing laws to sentence to a term he or she thought was unjust _ the kind of cases that the judges lost sleep over,'' said Chap Thevenot, coalition coordinator.

Among others who have asked Clinton for clemency:

_Leonard Peltier, convicted of killing FBI agents Ron Williams and Jack Koler who were searching for robbery suspects on the Pine Ridge Indian reservation in South Dakota in June 1975. He was convicted and sentenced in 1977. The defense contended that evidence against him was falsified.

_Susan McDougal, a former real estate business partner of the Clintons who was sentenced in 1996 and released from prison in 1998. She was convicted of four felonies related to a fraudulent $300,000 federally backed loan that she and her husband, failed savings and loan owner James McDougal, never repaid. About $30,000 of the loan was used as a down payment on property briefly placed in the name of Whitewater Development, the Arkansas real estate venture of the Clintons and McDougals.

_Michael Milken, who made billions for himself and others in the 1980s junk bond business, was convicted of securities fraud, served 22 months of a 10-year sentence and paid over $1 billion in fines, restitution and legal settlements. Milken's pardon request is backed by one of Clinton's original benefactors, California supermarket mogul Ron Burkle.

_Archie Schaffer III, a Tyson Foods executive convicted under a 1907 law of trying to influence agricultural policy by arranging for then-Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy to attend a Tyson birthday party in Arkansas in 1993.

------

Report: Chinese activist jailed

Infobeat
Friday, December 22, 2000
By CHARLES HUTZLER Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/IBFrontEnd.woa/wa/fullStory?article=405495512

BEIJING (AP) - Chinese prison authorities have kept a jailed labor-rights campaigner in solitary confinement for more than three months, apparently for refusing to recant his activism, a rights group said Friday.

The punishment has left Zhang Shanguang weak and muddleheaded but still stubbornly defiant two years into a 10-year jail term, New York-based Human Rights in China said. It said Zhang was already ill before being placed in solitary confinement.

Officials at Yuanjiang prison in the southern Hunan province recently refused to let Zhang's wife and nephew visit him and gave no explanation, said the group, which did not name its sources. It said Zhang was being punished for appealing his conviction, resisting demands that he work overtime and refusing to reform.

Human Rights in China did not say what kind of work Zhang was supposed to perform, and his wife did not answer telephoned queries. Chinese prisons often require inmates to work in factories, sometimes making goods under contract for companies that export the products.

Zhang has campaigned for labor rights for more than a decade. He organized an independent union in Hunan while democracy demonstrations swept Beijing and dozens of other cities in 1989. After the army crushed the Tiananmen Square protests, Zhang was sentenced to seven years in prison.

He resumed his activism after his release, trying to set up an organization to protect the rights of laid-off workers. He was arrested again in July 1998, and five months later was convicted of providing intelligence to foreigners. His crime: telling U.S.-based Radio Free Asia about a protest by 70 or 80 farmers.

China's communist government has frequently resorted to harassment of political dissidents and their families. Once imprisoned, dissidents often face abusive treatment intended to break their will.

When Zhang's wife last visited the prison, she agreed that he would undergo ``reform'' - a euphemism for recanting - in return for medical treatment. But the rights group said that when Zhang was sent for treatment he refused to submit and was returned to solitary confinement.

Zhang has suffered for years from tuberculosis and Meniere's syndrome, an ear disease that causes nausea and dizziness, it said.

Human Rights in China also reported that a former official who became a democracy campaigner has been denied proper food and medical treatment in prison.

Officials at Liangxiang prison in Beijing this week refused to allow Liu Jing to see her brother, Fang Jue, the rights group said. Liu has complained for two months that Fang, unlike other prisoners, was not allowed to buy extra food and has repeatedly suffered from food poisoning and other intestinal disorders.

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HONG KONG: PROTEST CURBS

New York Times
December 22, 2000
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/22/world/22BRIE.html?pagewanted=all

ASIA
The legislature affirmed curbs on protests and other types of public assembly. Pro-democracy leaders had wanted to amend the law, but the government said Hong Kong must regulate protests, particularly as next year's World Trade Organization host. Mark Landler (NYT)

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