------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Turner Pledges $250 Million to Ease Global Nuclear Threat
Conflicting research on radiation in Kosovo
WHO Finds No Increase in Kosovo Leukemia - U.N.
U.N. Finds Radioactivity in Kosovo
U.N. Reports Finding Radioactivity
Yugoslav Uranium Said Dangerous
Yugoslavs Try To Cut Radiation Fears
Furor Grows in Europe on Depleted Uranium
MoD knew of ammo risks for 10 years
Some link Balkan deaths to uranium fired by U.S.
Seoul to Make Its Case for 'Sunshine' Policy
Putin Dismisses Deploying Nukes
Lott Outlines GOP Priorities
Clinton-Ordered Study Makes Case for Ratifying Test Ban Pact
Bankruptcy May Provide Refuge for Calif.
Biographical Sketches of Bush Picks

MILITARY
Convict too thin, white to be safe in prison

OTHER
Clinton forest action lauded, jeered
G.O.P. to Press for Unraveling of Clinton Acts
Documentary Examines NSA Role

ACTIVISTS
New Window on Tiananmen Square Crackdown
Activist Loses Web Initiative Bid


-------- NUCLEAR

Turner Pledges $250 Million to Ease Global Nuclear Threat

Washington Post
Saturday, January 6, 2001; Page A09
By Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25728-2001Jan5.html

Media billionaire Ted Turner and former senator Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) will establish a $250 million, nonprofit organization to work to reduce the global threat from nuclear arms and other weapons of mass destruction, a spokeswoman for Turner said yesterday.

Turner, the CNN founder and Time Warner vice chairman who previously pledged to donate $1 billion to the United Nations, has promised to provide $50 million a year for five years to bankroll the new organization.

Nunn, who was chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee before retiring in 1996, will co-chair the group. It instantly will become one of the richest organizations in the world devoted primarily to reducing the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

Turner and Nunn will announce the organization's name and describe its goals at a news conference Monday. It is expected to fund research, hold conferences, publish literature, support grass-roots lobbying and provide grants to like-minded groups.

When Turner disclosed last July that he was considering work in this field, he said his goals would be to stem the proliferation of nuclear weapons, improve the security of nuclear stockpiles in other countries, reduce the chances of intentional or accidental use of nuclear weapons, and build trust among nations to encourage progress in arms reduction.

"In the post-Cold War era, the nuclear threat has become, in many ways, more complex and dangerous," Turner said at the time. "If we are to reduce the nuclear threat, we need to raise public awareness and inspire leadership and cooperation around the world," he added.

Last month, Turner offered about $35 million to the State Department to help the United States secure international approval of a permanent reduction in Washington's dues to the United Nations. The deal could clear the way for the United States to pay off its debt to the organization, which totals about $1.3 billion, according to the U.N. secretariat.

In 1997, Turner established the $1 billion United Nations Foundation, funded in 10 yearly installments of $100 million in Time Warner stock. The foundation gives grants and supports U.N. projects in such fields as health, education and child care.

Nunn, a partner in the law firm of King & Spalding, directed a study for Turner last year that assessed what impact a private, nonprofit group could have on weapons proliferation. He will serve as chief executive officer of the new entity.

Charles B. Curtis, a deputy energy secretary in the Clinton administration, will be chief operating officer. The board of trustees will include retired Air Force Gen. Eugene E. Habiger, former head of the Strategic Command and current director of security for the Energy Department.

-------- depleted uranium

Conflicting research on radiation in Kosovo

CNN
January 6, 2001 Web posted at: 2:40 PM EST (1940 GMT)
file:///E|/0news/news.010106/010106cnn.conflicting research on radiation in.html

UNITED NATIONS -- Evidence of radioactivity at eight Kosovo sites bombed with NATO depleted nuclear ammunition has been found by a United Nations' team.

The results from 11 tests released on Friday in a preliminary report for the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) add weight to concerns that the NATO weapons could have caused illness among peacekeeping troops.

NATO has come under pressure from several European governments over so-called "Balkans Syndrome" after six Italian soldiers who served in Kosovo and Bosnia died of leukaemia.

A separate survey carried out by an Italian military watchdog, the National Observatory for the Protection of Military Personnel, revealed on Saturday that its research had found a link between the use of depleted uranium and the death of its six soldiers.

Sergeant Domenico Leggiero, head of the military interest group, was quoted as saying by AGI news agency that the deaths could be "officially linked to the Balkan situation."

Two other deaths were being investigated, he added.

NATO said Italian requests for information on the situation would be examined by the North Atlantic Council next Tuesday.

But a U.N. spokeswoman said on Saturday that World Health Organisation (WHO) officials had said they had found no increase in leukaemia cases in Kosovo after talking to doctors about possible "Balkans Syndrome."

The findings were not part of a scientific survey, relying on officials asking doctors to provide information about leukaemia cases from 1997 to 2000.

U.N. spokeswoman Susan Manuel said: "After consultations with nuclear and health experts, international health professionals in Kosovo determined the potential public health hazards related to depleted uranium exposure were not high."

The U.S. Defense Department said it had no plans to suspend use of the tank-piercing shells but would co-operate with any NATO study into mystery illnesses.

The discovery of radioactivity at the sites tested by the U.N. was the first results of testing still underway at laboratories in Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, Britain and Austria by UNEP.

"The final results will only be known when the UNEP report is published in 2001, but there is enough preliminary evidence to call for precautions when dealing with used depleted uranium or with sites where such ammunition might be present," spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

A U.N. report in May had warned that much of Kosovo's water could be so contaminated as to be unfit to drink, and that a clean-up of the province could cost billions of dollars.

It warned U.N. staff not to approach any target that might have been hit by a depleted uranium weapon.

The 11 sites tested by the UNEP team were among 112 in Kosovo hit by weapons containing depleted uranium according to a NATO map.

The UNEP report also recommended that health checks be carried out on residents of the immediate area.

Chorus of concern

Russia added its voice to a growing chorus of European concern over the weapons, which includes France, Italy, Norway, Germany, Portugal and Greece, saying it was in favour of international investigations into the issue.

Moscow has sent 3,000 peacekeepers to Kosovo but fiercely opposed NATO's 1999 bombing campaign to drive Serb forces out of Kosovo.

Russian peacekeepers are also deployed in Bosnia, where U.S. warplanes used depleted uranium weapons against Serbian armour in the mid-1990s.

France confirmed on Thursday that four of its soldiers had contracted leukaemia after working in the Balkans.

In Athens, about 500 protesters marched to demand the return of Greek troops from Bosnia and Kosovo due to the health concerns.

Britain said it had no evidence NATO's use of the munitions adversely affected British peacekeepers in the Balkans and had no plans to screen soldiers who served in Kosovo and Bosnia.

Turkey and Yugoslavia found no cases of radiation exposure among their troops, and the International Committee of the Red Cross disclosed that tests on over 30 staff deployed during the 1999 Kosovo war showed no traces of depleted uranium.

U.S. attack jets fired some 31,000 rounds of depleted uranium ammunition against Serbian targets during NATO's 1999 campaign to drive the Yugoslav army out of Kosovo.

Some 10,000 rounds were also fired in neighbouring Bosnia in 1994-5.

---

WHO Finds No Increase in Kosovo Leukemia - U.N.

Yahoo News
World News
Saturday January 6 10:32 AM ET

By Beth Potter
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010106/wl/balkans_syndrome_dc_3.html
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/science/science-balkans-syndr.html
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-balkans.html

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (Reuters) - World Health Organization (news - web sites) (WHO) officials said they had found no increase in leukemia cases in Kosovo after talking to doctors about possible ``Balkans syndrome,'' a U.N. spokeswoman said on Saturday.

But WHO stressed the findings were not part of a scientific survey. Officials had simply asked doctors to provide information about leukemia cases from 1997 to 2000, United Nations (news - web sites) spokeswoman Susan Manuel told Reuters.

``The initial survey showed the incidence of leukemia in Kosovo has not increased, in fact there was a slight decrease in leukemia in the year 2000 as compared with 1997 and 1998,'' a U.N. statement said.

``After consultations with nuclear and health experts, international health professionals in Kosovo determined the potential public health hazards related to depleted uranium exposure were not high.

``They decided to devote their major efforts to rebuilding the Kosovo health system, launching a vaccination program and implementing other urgently-needed public health projects,'' it said.

Manuel said the assessment would continue over the next week.

NATO (news - web sites) has come under increasing pressure from several European countries over claims depleted uranium used in its weapons had caused death or illness among Balkan peacekeepers -- the so-called ``Balkan Syndrome.''

The statement said the WHO and U.N Mission in Kosovo had been aware of depleted uranium in Kosovo since NATO's bombing campaign last year, aimed at halting the repression by Serbian security forces of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority.

International peacekeepers were deployed in the province after Serbian forces withdrew.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) says the ammunition, which it also used in bombing campaigns against Serb forces in Bosnia in 1994-5, posed a ``negligible hazard.''

Several European countries and European Commission (news - web sites) President Romano Prodi have demanded more details.

Moderate Kosovo leader Ibrahim Rugova said on Friday he feared the row over alleged ``Balkan Syndrome'' could put pressure on international peacekeeping troops to withdraw from the province.

---

U.N. Finds Radioactivity in Kosovo

Associated Press
January 6, 2001 Filed at 5:17 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-UN-Depleted-Uranium.html

GENEVA - U.N. scientists who visited 11 sites struck by NATO munitions in Kosovo say they found signs of radioactivity at eight of them -- the latest evidence in a growing debate about the dangers of depleted uranium, a material used in some NATO weapons.

The 11 sites that the U.N. Environment Program visited were among 112 identified by NATO as having been targeted by ordnance containing depleted uranium during the 1999 Kosovo bombardment. UNEP collected soil, water and vegetation samples and also conducted tests on buildings and destroyed vehicles.

UNEP said it found that some soil was ``slightly contaminated'' and was trying to determine whether there were any health or environmental risks.

``At eight sites, the team found either slightly higher amounts of Beta-radiation immediately at or around the holes left by depleted uranium ammunition, or pieces and remnants of ammunition, such as sabots and penetrators,'' Pekka Haavisto, the chairman of the assessment team, said in a statement Friday.

UNEP said it expects to have the results of its analysis of the depleted uranium samples by early March.

``It was surprising to find remnants of depleted uranium ammunition just lying on the ground, 1 1/2 years after the conflict. Also, the ground directly beneath the ammunition was slightly contaminated,'' Haavisto said. ``For this reason, we paid special attention to the risks that uranium toxicity might pose to the ground waters around the sites.''

The agency has advised that precautions be taken when handling ammunition found at the sites where depleted uranium was used.

A heavy metal with low levels of radioactivity, depleted uranium is used in ammunition to penetrate tanks and other armor. Some scientists believe the dust created when rounds hit targets may be harmful, but studies of Gulf War troops have found no proof it caused diseases.

The controversy in Europe over NATO's use of depleted uranium in Bosnia in 1994-95 and later in Kosovo flared in December after Italy's Defense Minister Sergio Mattarella announced an investigation of 30 cases of illness involving soldiers who served in the region, 12 of whom developed cancer. Five have died of leukemia.

Most recently, NATO member Denmark's military health authorities announced that one Danish veteran of Kosovo is being treated for leukemia. They declined to release any other information. Denmark's top military authority Surgeon Gen. Hans-Michael Jelsdorf said Friday he would consider an investigation after a meeting at the NATO headquarters in Brussels on Jan. 15.

Spain, Portugal, Greece, Finland, Belgium, Turkey, Russia, Bulgaria, Czech Republic and the European Union have said they would screen troops and check radiation levels where their peacekeepers are serving.

The Pentagon said this week that regular health checks have revealed no problems with leukemia and other illnesses among U.S. troops who served in the Balkans.

---

U.N. Reports Finding Radioactivity at Sampled Sites in Kosovo Struck by NATO Munitions

New York Times
January 6, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/06/world/06NATO.html

UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 5 - The United Nations announced today that it had found evidence of radioactivity at 8 of 11 sites tested in Kosovo that were struck by NATO ammunition with depleted uranium.

The discovery from the sampling of sites was a preliminary finding that the United Nations Environmental Program reached at laboratories in Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, Britain and Austria.

"There is enough preliminary evidence to call for precautions when dealing with used depleted uranium, or with sites where such ammunition might be present," said a spokesman for the United Nations, Stéphane Dujarric.

NATO has come under pressure from several European governments over claims that depleted uranium in NATO weapons caused death or illness among peacekeeping troops in Kosovo.

The matter came under the spotlight after reports that six Italian soldiers who served in the former Yugoslavia had developed leukemia and died after exposure to spent ammunition.

Depleted uranium is used in the tips of missiles, shells and bullets to increase their ability to penetrate armor and can be pulverized on impact into a toxic radioactive dust, military experts say.

The German daily Taz reported today that United Nations tests had found that some parts of the eight sites were "considerably contaminated." Its report was a summation of an article set for publication on Saturday.

Uranium dust and unexploded munitions had been discovered, Taz said, adding that it had obtained a copy of an interim report from the United Nations agency dated Dec. 29.

A United Nations report in May had warned that much of Kosovo's water could be so contaminated as to be unfit to drink, and that a cleanup of the province could cost billions of dollars. It warned staff members not to approach any target that might have been hit by a depleted uranium weapon.

American attack jets fired 31,000 rounds of depleted uranium ammunition against Serbian targets during NATO's 1999 campaign to drive the Yugoslav Army out of Kosovo. About 10,000 rounds were also fired in Bosnia in 1994-95.

The 11 sites tested were among 112 in Kosovo hit by weapons containing depleted uranium, according to a NATO map. The United Nations Environmental Program considers the 11 sites tested representative of all 112 and wants them all cordoned off, the German paper said.

The report also recommended that health checks be carried out on residents of the immediate area.

Mr. Dujarric said the United Nations team had taken 340 samples of soil, water and vegetation at the 11 sites for analysis.

"Special attention is also being paid to the risks that uranium toxicity might pose to the ground water around the sites," he said.

---

Yugoslav Uranium Said Dangerous

Associated Press
January 6, 2001 Filed at 2:49 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Depleted-Uranium.html

VINCA, Yugoslavia (AP) -- Snezana Pavlovic's gloved hand opens a jar filled with a soil sample from just outside of Kosovo. Immediately, the Geiger counter in her other hand bleeps, throbbing faster and faster.

Pavlovic is among the top Yugoslav scientists convinced that the dirt offers proof that NATO contaminated Kosovo with toxic levels of depleted uranium during its bombing campaign in 1999 -- no matter what the Pentagon may say.

``Just because people can't see it and it's difficult to detect doesn't mean the depleted uranium is not a killer,'' Pavlovic said.

Yugoslav authorities have charged that the NATO alliance contaminated large swaths of southwestern Kosovo during the 78-day bombing campaign. Their data was widely dismissed, however, because it was seen as part of a concerted propaganda effort by former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's regime.

Now a new, pro-democracy government is in place, and state scientists and Yugoslav army experts are eager to present their data once more. Hoping to show legitimate science backs their claims, they opened the country's sole nuclear laboratory for a rare tour Friday.

NATO admits it targeted Yugoslav army positions in the bombing campaign last year using ammunition containing depleted uranium, an extremely dense metal used against armored vehicles because of its high penetrating power. But the United States, which used the ammunition in the Gulf War as well, has denied any link between illnesses and exposure to depleted uranium.

Depleted uranium, the spent fuel of nuclear reactors, is 40 percent less radioactive than uranium in its natural state.

Its use came under renewed scrutiny in recent days, after Italy noted about 30 cases of serious illness involving soldiers who served in missions in Kosovo or Bosnia. Twelve of them developed cancer, and five have died. Four French soldiers who served in the Balkans are being treated for leukemia.

A number of European nations have begun screening Balkan veterans.

Scientists at the Vinca nuclear laboratory, five miles from Belgrade, say the examination is long overdue. Since the first days of NATO's 1999 bombing, Pavlovic's team has been busy testing samples at the institute, a sealed-off and guarded compound of a dozen buildings spread over several acres.

Many medical experts are skeptical that the depleted uranium caused cancer and other illnesses reported by veterans. They say depleted uranium vaporizes instantly and a person would have to be very close to an explosion and be there within seconds to be affected. But others argue that not all the depleted uranium vaporizes immediately and radioactive derivatives can linger in the air for months.

The head of a U.N. environmental task force said Friday that remnants of ordnance containing depleted uranium are littering the ground in Kosovo.

``It was surprising to find remnants of DU (depleted uranium) ammunition just lying on the ground,'' nearly 1 1/2 years after NATO's bombing campaign, said Pekka Haavisto, head of the U.N. Environment Program's depleted uranium assessment team.

In November, the team of U.N. scientists toured 11 sites in Kosovo targeted by ammunition containing depleted uranium. They collected hundreds of water, soil and vegetation samples.

At eight of those sites, team members found slightly higher levels of radiation, or pieces of ammunition, Haavisto said. Five of the sites visited were in the Italian-patrolled sector of the province, while six were in the German-patrolled sector.

The uranium now is concentrated along a belt of land stretching from just outside of Kosovo's southwestern city of Prizren, along a route connecting the towns of Djakovica and Decani to the north.

The metal will filter into ground water and ultimately move into the food chain, said Col. Milan Zaric, a Yugoslav military expert on radioactivity.

Zaric points out that while withdrawing from Kosovo, Yugoslav troops left behind tanks and armored vehicles destroyed by NATO ammunition containing depleted uranium. Ethnic Albanian children posed for cameras amid leftover ordnance.

``Because NATO used this ammunition, it has a moral duty to clean up the sites in the peace mission that followed the war, however costly such a procedure is,'' Pavlovic says.

--------

Yugoslavs Try To Cut Radiation Fears

Yahoo News
World News
Saturday January 6 1:48 PM ET
By KATARINA KRATOVAC, Associated Press Writer
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010106/wl/depleted_uranium_4.html

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) - Amid a health scare triggered by NATO (news - web sites)'s use of depleted uranium in the Balkans, Yugoslav officials tried Saturday to allay fears the substance could be harmful to residents, while other countries urged sick soldiers who served in the region to be screened for radiation exposure.

U.N. scientists who visited 11 areas struck by NATO munitions in Kosovo confirmed Friday they found signs of radioactivity at eight of the sites. Depleted uranium, which increases penetration of ammunition, carries two threats - radiation and chemical poisoning.

The U.N. Environment Program collected soil, water and vegetation samples and conducted tests on buildings and destroyed vehicles. Some of the soil was ``slightly contaminated,'' UNEP said, adding that it was still trying to determine whether there were any health or environmental risks.

``There is no danger of radiation unless a person finds himself on the very spot hit with the depleted uranium or holds such ammunition in his bare hands,'' said Jovan Djukanovic, a Serbian government spokesman in the town of Bujanovac, one of the sites targeted by ammunition containing depleted uranium.

He said contaminated locations in southern Serbia had been sealed off.

Dr. Erik Schouten, head of the World Health Organization (news - web sites) in southern Serbia, also sought to calm fears heightened by local media coverage.

The headline, ``NATO was worse than Chernobyl,'' ran Saturday in the popular Vecernje Novosti Yugoslav newspaper.

Schouten said that based on preliminary tests of leukemia patients in Kosovo, ``We cannot conclude that the number of leukemia cases is increasing.'' However, he said the assessment was not complete and more results were expected next week.

So far, there is no conclusive link between the uranium and sick soldiers.

Portugal has urged soldiers who had served in the Balkans and were exhibiting certain symptoms to report for radiation screening. Italy, Poland and Spain are also conducting tests on troops who had served, or were still serving, in the region.

One of four Portuguese soldiers whose illnesses are being investigated, Rui Miguel Alpanhao, told private television station TVI on Friday that he was diagnosed with leukemia in October, about a year after returning from the Balkans.

Spanish newspapers, meanwhile, reported that seven Spanish soldiers and a civilian volunteer who served in the Balkans had developed cancer and two of them died.

The victims were identified as a 22-year-old man who served in Kosovo this year and a military driver who served in the Bosnian city of Mostar several years ago and developed kidney cancer after returning to Spain. His age was not released.

In Germany, meanwhile, the Defense Ministry said Saturday there was no evidence a soldier who served in Mostar from August to November 1997 was sick because of the depleted uranium. Still, the ministry will investigate further.

The ministry said given that 50,000 soldiers had served in the Balkans, there was a statistical chance of six or seven soldiers contacting leukemia, and that there was no evidence of more than the average number of illnesses.

Concerns over the depleted uranium were raised in December, after Italy announced an investigation of 30 cases of illness involving soldiers who served in the region, 12 of whom developed cancer. Five have died of leukemia.

Yugoslav experts say the depleted uranium will remain in the soil for billions of years, filter into ground water and ultimately move into the food chain.

--------

Furor Grows in Europe on Depleted Uranium
UN Finds Radiation at 8 Sites in Balkans Left by U.S. Weapons

International Herald Tribune
Saturday, January 6, 2001
Marlise Simons New York Times Service
http://www.iht.com/cgi-bin/generic.cgi?template=articleprint.tmplh&ArticleId=6536

PARIS A furor continued to spread across Europe on Friday about the noxious and even fatal effects that depleted uranium fallout may have had on NATO peacekeepers on the ground in Bosnia and Kosovo.

Environmentalists and scientists called on NATO to clean up the low level uranium, which was dispersed by U.S. weapons over large areas of Bosnia and Kosovo, because they say the radioactive and toxic material poses health risks to nature and human health.

"We found some radiation in the middle of villages where children were playing and there were cows grazing in contaminated areas," said Pekka Haavisto, chairman of a United Nations team that concluded a two-week mission to the area to assess the impact of uranium tipped weapons.

The scientists found low-level radiation at 8 of the 11 sites sampled, Mr. Haavisto said.

"We were surprised to find this a year and a half later," Mr. Haavisto said, noting how easily the material apparently spread around. "People had collected radioactive shards as souvenirs, and there were cows grazing in contaminated areas, which means the contaminated stuff can get into the milk."

Mr. Haavisto, who is also the former environment minister of Finland, said that while the radiation was low-level, as expected, the debris should be removed.

"We are recommending that until the cleanup starts, contaminated areas should be clearly marked and fenced off."

The study by the international team is due in two months.

But the European Union has now ordered a formal inquiry into whether there is a link between toxic fallout from the weapons and the recent cancer deaths of soldiers who have returned from the Balkans.

Nearly a dozen soldiers, most of them young men, have died recently of leukemia. A number of others have contracted the disease.

Other former peacekeepers have complained about a range of symptoms - such as chronic fatigue and hair loss - that in the United Stated have been associated with so-called Gulf War syndrome and which in European are now widely described as "Balkan syndrome."

Tens of thousands of European soldiers who participated in Balkan peacekeeping operations have already undergone medical screening in France, Belgium and Canada.

But as the debate over the possible contamination of soldiers has become more furious, governments across Europe have had little choice but to commit themselves to investigations.

This week, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Finland, Greece and Bulgaria announced that they too would screen all their Balkan veterans.

At issue is the uranium that is left over after its most active components have been removed, mostly to use as nuclear fuel. Because of its hard and dense properties, so-called depleted uranium is found useful in making powerful shells that can penetrate tanks and concrete.

Depleted-uranium ammunition was first used in the Gulf War, when U.S.forces fired large quantities into Iran and Kuwait. U.S. bombers also dropped depleted-uranium ordnance in Kosovo and Bosnia.

Final Test Results Awaited

The discovery of radioactivity at the sites was a preliminary finding of testing still under way at laboratories in Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, Britain and Austria by the UN Environmental Program, news agencies reported Friday, quoting a UN spokesman.

"The final results will only be known when the UNEP report is published in 2001, but there is enough preliminary evidence to call for precautions when dealing with used depleted uranium or with sites where such ammunition might be present," said the spokesman, Stephane Dujarric.

The UN field mission in November visited 11 of the 112 sites identified by NATO as having been targeted by ordnance containing depleted uranium during the bombardment of Kosovo. The UN team collected soil, water and vegetation samples and also conducted tests on buildings and destroyed vehicles.

"For this reason, we paid special attention to the risks that uranium toxicity might pose to the ground waters around the sites," Mr. Dujarric added.

Klaus Toepfer, the environmental program's executive director, said, "UNEP's aim is to determine whether the use of depleted uranium during the conflict may pose health or environmental risks - either now or in the future."

The UN said it also was planning a field mission to Serbia and Montenegro.

Italy launched an investigation last week into a possible link between depleted uranium munitions and about 30 cases of serious illness involving soldiers who served in missions Kosovo and earlier in Bosnia, 12 of whom developed cancer. Five of the soldiers have died of leukemia.

And France said that four French soldiers who served in the Balkans during the bombing campaign were being treated for leukemia.

The UN said five of the sites it analyzed were in the sector patrolled by Italian soldiers, while the other six were in the German zone.

News reports said Friday that the first German soldier possibly stricken because of time served in the Balkans had been identified.

The Bild newspaper, in an article to be published Saturday, said that a 25-year old soldier who had served in Mostar in Bosnia between August and November 1997 had fallen ill with leukemia the following January.

---

MoD knew of ammo risks for 10 years

By Michael Smith, Defence Correspondent and Christian Jennings in Pristina, 6 January 2001
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000118613908976&rtmo=r9SEartX&atmo=9999

THE Ministry of Defence admitted last night that it had known for 10 years that there were health risks from the depleted uranium ammunition used during the Gulf war and the conflicts in Bosnia and Kosovo.

Politicians and representatives of soldiers around Europe called yesterday for investigations into what they claim to be links between use of the radioactive metal and illness, including leukaemia. Despite a number of British soldiers who served in the Balkans appearing to have symptoms similar to those of the so-called Gulf war syndrome, the MoD insisted that there was no cause for concern.

The admission that defence chiefs were aware that there were risks involved in the use of depleted uranium came after the Telegraph obtained a copy of regulations issued to German troops in Kosovo warning of a potential long-term hazard.

The document told soldiers not to approach any locations or equipment which had been hit with depleted uranium (DU) ammunition "except for life-saving purposes and/or measures indispensable to the mission accomplishment".

Ammunition or other contaminated material should not be touched. "It must be assumed that not only the interior but also the surrounding area of an armoured vehicle destroyed by DU ammunition is contaminated. There is a potential health hazard in the form of DU exposure stemming from ammunition parts and destroyed DU-contaminated vehicles. Long-term hazards may also result from drinking water and soil contamination."

Both Nato and the EU have launched investigations into the effects of depleted uranium amid concern over a number of suspicious deaths and illnesses among soldiers from France, Italy, Belgium, Holland and Portugal after their return from the Balkans.

Gen Carlo Cabagiosu, the Italian commander of Kfor, the Nato-backed force which polices Kosovo, admitted yesterday that it was still not known whether there was a link to depleted uranium. Gen Cabagiosu said: "There has been a lot of scientific research to establish a direct link between this and soldiers with cancer. But the statistics have to be examined to see if this has to be taken seriously."

The MoD said it was waiting for the results of a United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) investigation in Kosovo and an independent study by the Royal Society which is due to report in the summer. An MoD spokesman said: "At present we see no cause for concern. From everything we know about depleted uranium, we have no reason to believe there is any significant risk to UK personnel."

There were no plans to screen British troops who had served in the Balkans, he added. "Obviously if anyone comes up with any new evidence that suggests there is cause for concern then we will look at it again." Asked about the German regulations, the spokesman said that the MoD had issued similar instructions to its troops in Bosnia and Kosovo. He said: "That is just a sensible precaution. Our understanding of the levels of radioactivity is that they are so low that they pose only minimal risk to health."

However, the Berlin-based Tageszeitung says today that an interim report by the UNEP team showed much higher levels of radioactivity than expected in areas where depleted uranium was used. Tageszeitung says that the UNEP team had made an urgent call for all 112 sites to be closed off after finding considerable concentrations of uranium dust in eight of a sample study of 12 bomb craters.

The National Gulf War Veterans and Families Association said that a number of former soldiers who had served in the Balkans had come forward exhibiting similar symptoms to those reported among sufferers from Gulf War Syndrome. Shaun Rusling, the association's chairman, attacked the MoD for describing the debate over the use of depleted uranium as "a red herring".

He has written to John Spellar, the Armed Forces minister, demanding an explanation. Mr Rusling asked Mr Spellar if an MoD alert over the dangers of depleted uranium was also a red herring. The warning, signalled to the HQ British Forces in Riyadh on Feb 25, 1991, pointed out likely health risks.

It said: "Two potential health risks from DU oxide dusts exist. First. Irradiation from alpha particles. Levels are extremely low but ingestion and inhalation should be avoided. Second. Heavy metal oxide, treat as for exposure to lead oxides."

The MoD signal warned that troops operating in areas where depleted uranium was present should wear gas masks and nuclear, biological and chemical protection suits. Mr Spellar admitted last November, in a written answer to a question from Tam Dalyell MP, that a number of British troops who might be exposed to depleted uranium, including the tank crews firing the ammunition, were not warned.

The MoD says British tanks fired fewer than 100 depleted uranium rounds during the Gulf War compared to the 860,000 fired by US troops and aircraft. British troops are not thought to have used depleted uranium rounds in the Balkans but US aircraft fired 10,800 rounds in Bosnia and about 31,000 during the Kosovo conflict.

---

Some link Balkan deaths to uranium fired by U.S.
7 Italian soldiers are among those struck down by cancer

Philadelphia Inquirer
Saturday, January 6, 2001
By Daniel Rubin
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/2001/01/06/front_page/URANIUM06.htm

ROME - Salvatore Vacca came home from Bosnia a gray, sweating shadow of the amiable soldier his mother knew. He had shed 30 pounds. His heart raced. The skin between his fingers and toes was wet and raw.

That was in April 1999. By September, the corporal in the elite Sassari Brigader was dead of leukemia at 23. "We never had an explanation," said his mother, Pepina, a homemaker in Sardinia. "We never received any calls from the army or the government."

Now she has her suspicions, as do the families of six other Italians who died of cancer after serving in the former Yugoslavia. They suspect "Balkans Syndrome," an echo of "Gulf War Syndrome," the mysterious set of ills afflicting some U.S. veterans of that conflict.

In Italy, newspapers are pointing fingers at depleted uranium, the tank-busting heavy metal that U.S. jets fired more than 40,000 times in Bosnia and Kosovo. Inhaled particles of depleted uranium dust are suspected of causing disease.

With one Portuguese and two Dutch veterans of the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia also dead, and four French and five Belgian soldiers also diagnosed with cancer, the European Union on Thursday announced it would begin an inquiry. At least five countries are testing soldiers, and Italy has asked NATO to stop using the 30mm projectiles.

NATO and U.S. officials say no serious study has ever linked the radioactive material to cancer, although they invite more research. Since 1993, Melissa McDiarmid, a University of Maryland professor of medicine, has cared for 63 gulf war veterans exposed to depleted uranium, including 15 soldiers still imbedded with uranium fragments. None has cancer.

"I would say these cancers and leukemias in these folks are likely from something else," said the professor, whose research is being conducted for the Department of Veterans Affairs in Baltimore.

The Italian press has not mentioned McDiarmid's work and each day trumpets new cases. As many as 15 other soldiers are reported to be suffering from cancer. With parliamentary elections around the corner, many politicians and veterans groups have blasted NATO, the United States, and their own government for failing to protect soldiers.

"When you deal with radiation, people get paranoid," said NATO spokesman Francois Le Blevennec, who noted that the ammunition had never been declared illegal by any war convention or proved to be carcinogenic. To ease Italian concerns, NATO will pull records of every sortie flown with depleted uranium missiles. NATO has acknowledged that fighter jets fired 31,000 rounds in Kosovo during the 1999 war and 10,800 rounds in Bosnia during 1994 and 1995, principally at Serbian tank positions around Sarajevo.

EU Commission president Romano Prodi, an Italian, told a local radio station that the munitions should be abolished if they put troops at risk. Prodi pledged to contact the Serbian and Bosnian governments to learn more about any environmental damage.

Depleted uranium is the waste product of the process to make enriched uranium for nuclear energy. Because of its density - nearly twice as high as lead - it can easily penetrate armored equipment. Upon impact it generates an intense heat, and the "splash" of dust and particles can travel as far as 25 miles on the wind, according to a NATO pamphlet.

A U.S. General Accounting Office report in March concluded that while more study was needed, there were no links to date between low-level radioactive material and cancer or kidney ailments. Depleted uranium is about 40 percent less radioactive than natural uranium found in soil and rocks, according to the pamphlet, which advised soldiers to take precautions. A U.N. environmental team has sampled soil and rock from 11 sites bombed in Kosovo and announced yesterday the presence of radioactivity; the preliminary results did not show how much.

McDiarmid said that while depleted uranium was not known to be carcinogenic, there was a serious question as to whether it was a chemical hazard. Since 1993, some gulf war veterans exposed to depleted uranium particles during "friendly fire" - when U.S. vehicles were accidentally struck by U.S. munitions - had performed lower than expected on problem-solving tests, and there was evidence that it affected reproductive health, according to the GAO report.

Because the material contaminates the soil and drinking water, an Italian physicist who serves in parliament as a member of the Green Party said the weapon should be banned.

"Apart from its mutant effects on flora and fauna, there is the reality that it remains radioactive for 24,000 years," said Massimo Scalia, a University of Rome professor who presides over the parliamentary commission on nuclear waste.

Italian officials have taken fire from veterans groups for not adequately preparing the Italian military to deal with depleted uranium.

Falco Accame, a Socialist Party member of parliament, said the government did not distribute U.N. technical publications that explained depleted uranium's hazards until Nov. 22, 1999, nearly eight months after the Kosovo bombing began.

"Often, as we say in Italy, what the left hand does, the right one does not know," said Accame, a former navy captain who formed a group in 1993 to help the families of sick military personnel.

Accame said Italian soldiers were left to work in the Balkans without gloves and masks - something Salvatore Vacca had complained about to his mother. Accame has followed the stories and medical histories of sick soldiers through stacks of photocopied documents that spread over two tables in his Rome living room.

The first case is that of Capt. Giuseppe Benetti, 34, who repaired bombed railroad tracks in Bosnia in 1996. Next came Vacca, then Andrea Antonacci, a Florentine who died of leukemia in December 1999 after having served in Sarajevo. Marco Riccardi, 27, of the Alpines Taurinense Brigade, died of a tumor in October. The next month, Salvatore Carbonaro, a 24-year-old from Sicily, and Rinaldo Colombo, a 31-year-old military policeman, died of melanoma. In December, Gigi D'Alessio, 51, a Roman Red Cross volunteer who worked in Bosnia in 1996, died of leukemia.

The Italian press has been asking whether vaccines given to soldiers may have weakened their immune systems, and has questioned whether soldiers were made to handle toxic chemicals such as benzene without proper equipment or training.

More than a year after her son died, Pepina Vacca's grief has hardened into anger. "If they knew something, they should have protected our children," she said. "They are never going to bring my son back to me. I was the happiest mother of a perfect family, and now... The truth must come to light."

-------- egypt

Egypt terms use of nuclear weapons as war crime

Arabic News
Egypt, Politics,
1/6/2001
http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/010106/2001010625.html

To use nuclear weapons is to commit a "war crime" as defined by the basic declaration of the International Criminal Court (ICC) signed so far by 139 countries, including Egypt.

This came as part of the explanatory notes which Egypt submitted while signing a document on ICC basic system in the second week of December, which was adopted by 27 nations so far.

Assistant Foreign Minister for Multilateral Relations Soliman Awad on Friday said that Egypt asserted in its ICC explanatory notes that its stance, pertaining to nuclear weapons, fell in line with its conviction that Israel's nuclear programme, which did not meet the International Atomic Energy (IAEA) guarantee system, and its refusal to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) were causing a dangerous national security imbalance in the whole Mideast region.

The latest media reports, referring to an Israeli reservations on an article in the ICC basic system, dealing with settlements and the malpractice by occupying countries against occupied nations, are not true, Awad said that the system did not allow for reservations, but only for explanatory notes which do not have the legal authority of reservations.

"Explanatory notes did not conflict with the court's basic system or rob it of its context and objectives," he noted.

"Egypt has lodged another explanatory note on retaining the right to pursue perpetrators of war crimes, or those responsible for crimes committed against humanity, before the ICC is put into effect," Awad added.

-------- korea

Seoul to Make Its Case for 'Sunshine' Policy
Kim Dae Jung Wants Bush Team's Support

International Herald Tribune
Saturday, January 6, 2001
Don Kirk
International Herald Tribune
http://www.iht.com/articles/6498.htm

SEOUL President Kim Dae Jung said Friday that he expected to go to Washington soon after President-elect George W. Bush is inaugurated for a summit meeting in which he will try to win the new administration's support for his "sunshine" policy of reconciliation with North Korea.

Mr. Kim, in an interview Friday with the International Herald Tribune, said he would bear a message stressing the importance of Seoul's alliance with Washington but made plain his government's urgent desire to persuade the incoming Bush team not to veer from President Bill Clinton's policy of complete support for South Korea's objectives vis-à vis the North.

While the South Korean president expressed no overt fear of a sudden shift in U.S. policy, other South Korean officials have indicated their dismay over the possibility that the Bush administration may anger the North by adopting a tough line on its military buildup and missile production.

South Korean officials seem especially worried that Mr. Bush's choice of defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, may upset North Korea by insisting on a Theater Missile Defense program, known as TMD.

Acknowledging that the transition in Washington might be difficult, Mr. Kim argued that the position of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, had changed significantly since the two leaders met in Pyongyang in June in the first summit meeting in the history of the two Koreas.

Kim Dae Jung cited the fact that Kim Jong Il had accepted the need for U.S. troops to remain on the peninsula as the most important evidence of the sincerity of the North's desire to improve relations with Washington. At the same time, the South Korean president said his government would ask the North to stop producing long-range missiles - a key point of U.S. policy.

Mr. Kim, speaking at the Blue House, the center of power here, called for continuity in U.S. policy toward the North amid rising concerns that it may change as the new administration insists that the North show tangible signs of relaxing its military threat against South Korea.

China and Russia, North Korea's allies in the Korean War, have opposed any TMD program.

Last year Mr. Clinton said he would leave the final decision to his successor after the costly failure of a missile interceptor test. Mr. Rumsfeld, who served as defense secretary under President Gerald Ford, has been a strong advocate of Theater Missile Defense.

Japan, wary of North Korean intentions since the North test-fired a missile over Japanese territory in 1998, has begun to develop its own missile defense system with U.S. cooperation on research.

Mr. Kim himself carefully avoided commenting on the U.S. position regarding the TMD program except to observe cryptically that the Clinton administration had never briefed him on the topic. Nor did he leave any doubt that he wants to know much more about it.

He would adopt his own position, he said, after he has gone to the United States and been fully briefed by Mr. Bush. The remark was seen as indicating that Theater Missile Defense might become a key point in a Kim-Bush summit meeting and that Mr. Kim might attempt to persuade Mr. Bush that such a program is not a good idea.

Mr. Kim seemed anxious to convince Washington of the need to abide by the pattern, firmly established during the Clinton administration, of trilateral cooperation into relation to the North among the governments of South Korea, Japan and the United States.

The inference was that attempts to deviate from that policy by TMD or other programs would jeopardize the groundwork laid by former Defense Secretary William Perry, who conducted a lengthy review of policy toward the North in 1999. Mr. Perry's review said Washington should "establish more normal diplomatic relations" with Pyongyang while supporting South Korea's "policy of engagement and peaceful coexistence."

For the record, top South Korean officials, led by Mr. Kim, said they expected the United States to continue to follow that policy despite Mr. Rumsfeld's appointment and criticism by U.S. conservatives. Mr. Kim, however, appears to face the most severe opposition to his policies in his own country.

Lee Hoi Chang, leader of the Grand National Party, which holds the most seats in the National Assembly, said in a separate interview that he saw TMD as "a threat to North Korea" that would "make useless North Korea's big weapons."

A former prime minister whom Mr. Kim narrowly defeated in the 1997 presidential election, Mr. Lee predicted "a tug-of war between North Korea and the United States if the United States adopts a missile defense system" but questioned whether North Korea had softened its hard line in any case.

"North Korea may be smiling now," he said, "but elimination of threats of war have not changed."

At least, Mr. Lee said, the new U.S. administration would "make very clear the need for reciprocity" - that is, clear concessions on the part of the North in exchange for aid and investment.

The South Korean foreign minister, Lee Joung Binn, also interviewed by the IHT, acknowledged that "some are voicing concern over the possibility of changes in close cooperation" between Seoul and Washington but did not expect "any significant shift away from the basic line" of the previous U.S. administration.

The Clinton administration, he said, had gone far in curbing the North's nuclear ambitions as well as its missile program. "The North Korean nuclear program has been kept frozen under the Geneva framework agreement," the foreign minister said. The agreement, reached at Geneva in 1994, requires the North not to work on producing nuclear weapons-grade material while the United States and its allies cooperate in building twin nuclear reactors capable of meeting the North's energy needs.

North Korean policy, Mr. Lee said, enlarging on Mr. Kim's remarks, was "based on close trilateral cooperation" between the United States, South Korea and Japan. "We wish to strengthen trilateral cooperation," he added.

Mr. Lee said he hoped to visit Washington next month in pursuit of a Bush Kim meeting, possibly as early as March. Mr. Kim, when he called Mr. Bush after he emerged last month as the belated winner of the U.S. presidential election, said he hoped to meet him soon.

Mr. Kim said his government would maintain its partnership with the United States and Japan until completing the process of reconciliation on the Korean Peninsula. He denied, however, harboring any illusions about reunifying the two Koreas. That would not happen, he said, for another 10 or 20 years.

-------- russia

Putin Dismisses Deploying Nukes

Associated Press
January 6, 2001 Filed at 4:09 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-Nuclear.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- President Vladimir Putin on Saturday dismissed reports that Russia may have deployed nuclear weapons in a Russian enclave sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania, news media said.

The reports first appeared in The Washington Times on Wednesday. Later, senior U.S. administration officials told The Associated Press there had been indications of possible nuclear weapons movement to a naval base in Kaliningrad, the home of Russia's Baltic Fleet.

``It's rubbish,'' Putin was quoted as saying in response to a question on the reports posed by a German journalist as he accompanied German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder on a walk through Red Square.

Also Saturday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said on state-run RTR television that ``there were no such weapons at naval facilities, including naval, ground and air force ones, and no such weapons have been delivered there.''

Some observers have suggested that deploying nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad would be a tactic for NATO to withdraw all nuclear weapons from Europe. Poland joined the Western alliance in 1999 and Lithuania, like the other former Soviet Baltic republics Latvia and Estonia, is eager to join.

Russia has opposed NATO's expansion and objected bitterly to the possibility of the Baltic states joining.

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

Lott Outlines GOP Priorities

Associated Press
January 6, 2001 Filed at 11:06 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Lott-GOP-Agenda.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Echoing the campaign themes of President-elect Bush, Senate Republican leader Trent Lott on Saturday outlined education, national defense and tax relief as priorities for Republicans in the new Congress.

``These are three action items which this new Congress -- working in concert with our new president -- will take to broaden individual opportunity, promote personal prosperity and foster security for all Americans,'' Lott said in the GOP's weekly radio address.

First, he said, Republicans want to ensure that every child has a chance to learn, and to make schools accountable to parents. ``And if their children are not learning, we will provide parents the opportunity to do something about it,'' he said.

Bush supports a plan to strip federal funds from the worst-performing schools and make the money available to parents for private education or tutoring, commonly known as voucher programs.

Second, Lott said, military readiness should include a missile defense system to protect the United States from nuclear attack. Training of military personnel also should be increased, he said.

An across-the-board tax cut to help continue growth in the economy also is a priority for Republicans, Lott said in his third point. However, he did not mention the size it should be.

Bush has a 10-year, $1.3 trillion tax relief proposal that includes gradual across-the-board income tax cuts, though Democrats have argued the plan is too large.

Lott also took a shot at President Clinton, blaming him by implication for rising heating costs this winter.

``With our new president, who understands the priority of an energy policy, we have a real hope that the winter of our cold, costly discontent will not be repeated,'' he said.

--------

Clinton-Ordered Study Makes Case for Ratifying Test Ban Pact

International Herald Tribune
Saturday, January 6, 2001
Michael R. Gordon New York Times Service
http://www.iht.com/cgi-bin/generic.cgi?template=articleprint.tmplh&ArticleId=6526

A former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who conducted a comprehensive study of the nuclear test ban treaty at the request of President Bill Clinton has concluded that the United States must ratify it in order to mount an effective campaign against the spread of nuclear weapons.

The assessment by General John Shalikashvili, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs from 1993 to 1997, is part of a last-ditch attempt by Mr. Clinton to build support for the treaty, which Senate Republicans rejected in 1999 and on which President elect George W. Bush's own top aides have been in sharp disagreement.

The Shalikashvili report outlines measures intended to assuage critics of the treaty, including increased spending on verification, greater efforts to maintain the U.S. nuclear arsenal and a joint review by the Senate and administration every 10 years to determine if the treaty is still in U.S. interests.

Mr. Bush assailed the treaty as unverifiable and unenforceable during the campaign, but he has also promised to continue the Clinton administration's moratorium on nuclear testing for the time being.

And some Republican lawmakers have suggested they might reconsider their votes against the accord if the treaty is modified or accompanied by new safeguards and if the new Republican administration supports it.

Mr. Bush's advisers have been deeply divided on the merits of a test ban. Like most top military men, General Colin Powell, the secretary of state-designate, backed the treaty after he retired as chairman of the Joint Chiefs in 1993, even urging India to sign the accord during a trip there.

"The treaty is necessary for the safety and reliability of the world because it will reduce the threat of nuclear weapon attacks," Mr. Powell said at the time.

But Donald Rumsfeld, the conservative defense secretary-designate, has heatedly opposed the treaty, saying it would preclude the United States from developing new generations of nuclear weapons.

"By weakening confidence in existing U.S. weapons designs, and by inhibiting the development of new designs to respond to a changing world, the CTBT, in my view, would have begun a slow erosion of U.S. and allied confidence in our stockpile," Mr. Rumsfeld has said, using the abbreviation for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, as the agreement is formally known.

Mr. Bush's aides declined to comment Thursday on General Shalikashvili's assessment, which was to be presented Friday to Mr. Clinton.

But it comes at a sensitive juncture in the arms control debate. With Mr. Bush's vow to develop an anti-missile defense and uncertainty over Washington's position on nuclear testing, there is considerable concern in allied capitals that the broader framework of arms control may be in jeopardy.

If Mr. Bush proceeds with the anti-missile defense, despite the allies' concerns, he could find himself under pressure to make some gestures on the testing issue, some arms-control supporters say, to ease that opposition, particularly in Europe.

The nuclear test ban treaty was rejected by the Senate in October 1999 by a vote of 51 to 48, a decisive setback for the Clinton administration given the constitutional requirement that treaties be approved by a two-thirds vote.

Mr. Clinton responded by proclaiming the United States' intention to observe a self-imposed moratorium on nuclear testing and by asking General Shalikashvili to meet with Senate critics, nuclear arms designers and other experts to see if it was possible to work out a way to win eventual approval by the Senate. The retired general was assisted by James Goodby, a senior arms-control official in Republican and Democratic administrations.

The test ban treaty was completed in 1996. By December, it had been signed by 160 countries and ratified by 69. But the treaty cannot take effect until it has been approved by the United States and 43 other nations that have nuclear research or power reactors.

Of these, Britain, France and Russia have signed and ratified the accord. China has signed the agreement, but has yet to ratify it.

India and Pakistan, which have engaged in a nuclear arms race in South Asia, have not signed. Nor has North Korea.

General Shalikashvili and other recent military leaders have argued that U.S. ratification is essential to persuade other nations to accept the treaty and strengthen other measures to curtail the spread of nuclear arms, like the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty under which non-nuclear states forgo the right to develop nuclear weapons.

"The view of the chairman and the chiefs has been that while there are risks with this treaty, as with most treaties, the advantages in helping the fight against proliferation outweigh the disadvantages," General Shalikashvili said in a telephone interview.

Given his harsh criticism of the treaty during the campaign and the passions the treaty has stirred up in Washington, Mr. Bush may be tempted to let the treaty languish unratified. But General Shalikashvili asserted in his report that postponing U.S. approval of the accord could be risky.

His assessment turns on several key points. The former military chief argues that the United States has a military stake in instituting a formal ban on testing to slow the nuclear arms race.

Stopping China from conducting nuclear tests, he said, would prevent Beijing from fielding a new generation of mobile, multiple-warhead missiles. More generally, he argued, it is in the Pentagon's interest to discourage other nations from developing tactical nuclear weapons that could be used as a counterweight to the United States' huge advantage in non-nuclear arms.

"Any activities that erode the firebreak between nuclear and conventional weapons or that encourage the use of nuclear weapons for purposes that are not strategic and deterrent in nature would undermine the advantage that we derive from overwhelming conventional superiority," he wrote.

Addressing worries about verification, General Shalikashvili argued that the kind of low-level clandestine nuclear tests that Russia or China might try to carry out would be of little use in developing militarily decisive weapons.

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

Bankruptcy May Provide Refuge for Calif.

Reuters
January 6, 2001 Filed at 10:34 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/business-california-b.html?pagewanted=all

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - As California's two largest utilities struggle to survive a storm set off by skyrocketing wholesale power prices, their best option may be to seek refuge in the protection offered by U.S. bankruptcy laws, legal experts say.

``I think (filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection) is actually a pretty good step. It provides a forum where all of the competing concerns can be evaluated,'' said Kenneth Klee, an acting law professor at the University of California in Los Angeles.

``The negatives are that is certainly a political black eye and not something managers like to do, but it makes it easier to share the pain with bondholders and stockholders of the utility,'' said Klee, who is also a partner with Los Angeles law firm Klee, Touchin, Bogdanoff and Stern LLP.

Two utilities, Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas and Electric, have run up a total of about $12 billion in costs buying power that they cannot pass on to consumers under terms of the state's electricity deregulation legislation.

The burden has driven them to the brink of bankruptcy. Southern California Edison, a unit of Edison International (EIX.N) has around 11 million customers while Pacific Gas and Electric, a subsidiary of PG&E Corp (PCG.N), has 13 million.

California Treasurer Phil Angelides on Friday launched a rescue plan, proposing creating a new state authority able to issue up to $10 billion in bonds to help the nation's most populous state pay for operating power plants and distributing electricity.

``The idea of the state proposing a rescue package seems very viable and gives hope, but I just don't think these companies can survive without bankruptcy protection,'' cautioned Josefina McEvoy, bankruptcy partner at the Los Angeles law firm of Markowitz & Fernandez.

Klee said the advantages of Chapter 11 include not having to pay interest on any bonds issued before the filing. It would also make it easier to borrow more funds as any money lent after the filing has a prior claim on assets. But it could be a slow and expensive process. Klee said it could take two to three years for the utilities to emerge from Chapter 11 and McEvoy estimated legal fees could reach $100 million.

BLACKOUTS?

Wholesale power prices in California started soaring in late spring as supplies struggled to keep pace with surging demand linked to a buoyant economy.

California's acute power problems are rooted in the fact that no significant new plants were built during the last decade, partly because of uncertainty over deregulation of the state's electricity industry.

The power shortage almost triggered rolling blackouts across the state last year, but each time they were narrowly averted. Some fear bankruptcy would pose a serious new blackout threat, but lawyers viewed that as unlikely.

``I think (the threat) is very slim. Politicians will step up and provide the credit enhancements necessary (to avoid blackouts),'' Klee said.

McEvoy noted that bankruptcy judges would be concerned with the public interest and the fact that blackouts could drive up crime and result in economic losses for some companies.

``I would be inclined to say a bankruptcy judge would enjoin the companies from interrupting service to customers,'' she said. ''The judge could also compel generators to continue to provide power to the utilities.''

Customers, however, would feel the pain of higher bills. ``It is safe to say going forward the consumer is going to have to pay the cost of power,'' Klee said.

``A bankruptcy judge would have the power and jurisdiction to approve different rates pursuant to a plan of reorganization to provide companies with sufficient cash flow to effect a turnaround,'' added McEvoy.

INTERNATIONAL CHASE

Both parent companies, PG&E Corp. and Edison International, have assets around the world and a Chapter 11 declaration could set off an international asset grab.

``Power generators may rush to Brazil or wherever else to seize what they can. The overseas estate would be dismembered and the bankruptcy court does not prevent that,'' McEvoy said. Courts in Britain, Australia, Canada and Mexico are likely to defer to U.S. jurisdiction over the case, but other countries may not. ``It will be first come, first served,'' she said. ``0verseas assets are vulnerable to more aggressive creditors.''

Klee noted that when oil major Texaco filed for bankruptcy protection in 1987, creditors pursued its global assets.

The California utilities may not be the first to seek bankruptcy protection in recent years, but they would be the biggest. Two much smaller utilities have taken the step during the last 15 years.

Public Service Co. of New Hampshire sought bankruptcy protection in 1987 after state regulators rejected its demands for a rate increase. It had invested $2 billion in a nuclear power plant and state laws prevented the utility from passing on such costs to customers until electricity was produced.

More recently El Paso Electric, filed for Chapter 11 protection in 1992 -- a move linked to its investment in nuclear generation after it took a stake in the massive Palo Verde plant in Arizona.

-------- us nuc politics

Biographical Sketches of Bush Picks

Associated Press
January 6, 2001 Filed at 12:18 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/politics/AP-Cabinet-Thumbnails.html?pagewanted=all

Thumbnail biographical sketches of President-elect Bush's picks for his Cabinet. Some confirmations hearings are expected to begin this week.

SPENCER ABRAHAM, SECRETARY OF ENERGY

Abraham, 48, has drawn criticism from environmentalists because he supports oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and opposes higher fuel efficiency standards. Abraham, a Michigan senator who lost re-election in November, co-sponsored legislation in 1996 and 1999 to close the Department of Energy. He has a limited background in nuclear weapons issues, but during his years in the Senate he earned a reputation as a hard worker, never missing a roll call vote in six years.

JOHN ASHCROFT, ATTORNEY GENERAL

Ashcroft, 58, lost his Missouri Senate seat in November to the late Mel Carnahan. Ashcroft, a staunch conservative, is the most controversial of Bush's nominees both for his anti-abortion beliefs and for engineering the defeat of a black Missouri Supreme Court judge, Ronnie White, nominated to the federal bench.

He served two terms as governor of Missouri and was its attorney general from 1977 to 1985.

LINDA CHAVEZ, SECRETARY OF LABOR

Chavez, 53, is an outspoken opponent of affirmative action and bilingual education, and former head of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in the Reagan administration. Chavez said she will enforce regulations to guarantee nondiscrimination by federal contractors.

A nationally syndicated political columnist, Chavez lost a 1986 Senate bid in Maryland.

DON EVANS, SECRETARY OF COMMERCE

Evans, 54, is Bush's former campaign manager, longtime friend and a fellow oilman. Evans has been part of Bush's political career from the start: a fund-raiser for Bush's losing congressional campaign in 1978 and chairman of Bush's successful gubernatorial campaigns in 1994 and 1998.

MEL MARTINEZ, SECRETARY OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT

Martinez, 54, is Orange County chairman, a position akin to mayor of the county home to Orlando. He came to the United States from Cuba in 1962 as a teen-ager.

He bucked central Florida developers for his support of a moratorium on new residential projects in crowded school districts last year. He was president of the Orlando Utilities Commission from 1994-1997 and chairman of the Orlando Housing Authority for two years in the 1980s.

NORMAN Y. MINETA, SECRETARY OF TRANSPORTATION

Mineta, President Clinton's commerce secretary, is the only Democrat appointed by Bush. Mineta, 69, took over the Commerce job in June and is the first Asian-American to serve in a Cabinet. He served in the House for 20 years from San Jose, Calif., the last two as chairman of the Public Works and Transportation Committee.

GALE NORTON, SECRETARY OF INTERIOR

Norton, 46, directed the legal staff of the National Park Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service in the late 1980s under Interior Secretary James Watt. She was Colorado's first female attorney general, serving from 1991 to 1999.

She supports making federal lands more accessible to oil, mining and ranching interests, and she supports oil exploration in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

PAUL O'NEILL, SECRETARY OF TREASURY

O'Neill, 65, headed aluminum giant Alcoa Inc. and International Paper Co. after serving 16 years in the federal government. He is viewed by some conservatives as too moderate because in 1992 he endorsed the incoming Clinton administration's gas tax (a position he no longer holds) and has always emphasized deficit reduction over tax cuts.

ROD PAIGE, SECRETARY OF EDUCATION

Paige, 67, has been superintendent of the Houston Independent School District since 1994. Paige is widely credited with making the Houston school system, the largest in Texas and seventh-largest in the nation, one of the country's finest urban school districts. Academic performance and test scores have improved under his tenure at the 90 percent minority school district.

COLIN POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE

Powell, a retired Army general, served as the 12th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under the Bush and Clinton administrations. Before that, he was President Reagan's national security adviser.

Powell, 63, was hesitant about U.S. involvement in Bosnia and Somalia in the early months of the Clinton administration. He supports affirmative action. If confirmed, Powell, the son of Jamaican immigrants, will be the first black secretary of state.

ANTHONY PRINCIPI, SECRETARY OF VETERANS AFFAIRS

Principi, 56, was appointed deputy secretary of veterans affairs by President Bush in 1989 and later served as acting secretary in 1992. Principi is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and a decorated Vietnam veteran.

Principi has long supported expanding military and veterans benefits, including full college scholarships and home loans without down payments.

DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE

Rumsfeld, 68, was President Ford's secretary of defense from late 1975 to early 1977, during which time he was the youngest to hold the job. He is a veteran of four Republican administrations, dating from President Nixon's.

Rumsfeld is a strong advocate of a national missile defense program. He opposed a chemical weapons treaty ratified by the Senate.

TOMMY THOMPSON, SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

In his fourth term as governor of Wisconsin, Thompson, 59, is the nation's longest-serving Republican governor and was an early leader in the movement to cut welfare rolls. Thompson oppose abortion except in cases of rape, incest or when the woman's life is at stake.

ANN VENEMAN, SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE

Veneman, 51, was deputy secretary of agriculture from 1986 to 1993, dealing mainly with international trade. She helped to negotiate the Uruguay round of talks for the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. The daughter of peach farmers, Veneman is a strong advocate of technology's role in farming, including genetic engineering. If confirmed, she will be the first woman to hold the post.

CHRISTIE WHITMAN, ADMINISTRATOR OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY

The governor of New Jersey and a GOP moderate, Whitman, 54, championed open-space preservation and beach protection in the Garden State. She drew fire from environmentalists for cutting finances of state offices that investigate and prosecute environmental abuses by industry.

-------- MILITARY

-------- drug war

Convict too thin, white to be safe in prison

USA Today
01/06/01- Updated 03:32 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/ndssat06.htm

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) - A judge refused to send a drug offender to prison, saying the man would be a target for sexual assault because he is thin and white.

Instead, Hillsborough County Judge Florence Foster placed Paul Hamill on two years probation and sent him to a treatment center for violating probation on a previous cocaine conviction.

''He's a small, thin, white man with curly dark hair, and I suspect he would certainly become a sexual target in the Florida state prison system,'' Foster said, according to a transcript of the November sentencing hearing.

''I've been told they can't protect people like that. I'm not going to send a man like this to Florida state prison. That is cruel and unusual punishment in my book,'' she said.

Prosecutors objected at the time, but would not comment when contacted by The Tampa Tribune. They have complained in the past that Foster imposes light sentences.

Foster would not discuss Hamill's case specifically, but said her general goal is to ''help people with drug problems get rid of their drug problems.''

Her decision was praised by Bruce Rogow, a law professor at Nova Southeastern University in Davie.

''I think it's a statement of great sensitivity; she is probably trying to save this man's life,'' Rogow said.

But Susan Rush, a law professor at the University of Florida in Gainesville, thinks Foster's statement was inappropriate.

''That's a fairly racist comment,'' Rush said Friday.

-------- OTHER

-------- environment

Clinton forest action lauded, jeered
The order buoyed environmentalists.
Others, alleging a power grab, hope Bush will undo dozens of initiatives.

Philadelphia Inquirer
Saturday January 6, 2001
By Ron Hutcheson and Seth Borenstein
INQUIRER WASHINGTON BUREAU
http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/2001/01/06/front_page/FOREST06.htm

WASHINGTON - President Clinton issued an executive order yesterday declaring nearly 60 million acres of U.S. Forest Service land, in effect, off-limits to development, an action that could heighten the bitter debate over environmental policy.

While hailed by environmentalists, Clinton was accused by critics of joining in an aggressive campaign to hamstring President-elect George W. Bush before he takes power. The new order comes two weeks before Clinton leaves office.

Bush's allies are looking for ways to dismantle Clinton's environmental legacy as soon as he vacates the White House, reviewing and possibly rescinding some actions.

The two sides are likely to clash over Bush's proposal to permit oil and gas drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Buoyed by yesterday's order, environmentalists are pushing Clinton to extend similar protections to the Arctic refuge. An executive order prohibiting oil exploration there - by naming the refuge a national monument - would undermine a cornerstone of Bush's energy policy.

Under Clinton's forest management plan, the Forest Service will ban road-building in 58.5 million acres of federal forestland where no roads exist, including nearly 15 million acres in the Tongass National Forest in Alaska and the Allegheny National Forest in northwest Pennsylvania.

The regulations also will limit future logging in those areas to activities that "restore and preserve" the forest, although commercial timber contracts already in the government pipeline will be allowed to go through. In some cases, that could amount to continued logging for six to seven more years at today's harvesting rates, officials acknowledged.

While critics, including the timber, mining and energy industries, have attacked the plan as shortsighted and a threat to loggers, the administration maintains the economic impact will be slight.

Less than 5 percent of the timber from U.S. forests comes from roadless areas, the White House said. The Forest Service also will provide a six-year, $72 million assistance program to ease economic transition from job losses.

Rep. James Hansen (R., Utah), the new chairman of the House Resources Committee, urged the president-elect in a letter to rescind dozens of the Clinton administration's environmental initiatives.

Hansen's hit list includes snowmobile restrictions in Yellowstone National Park and other federally protected areas, limits on tourist flights at the Grand Canyon, restrictions on motorized skis, mining regulations, and new efforts to protect coral reefs.

The environmental dispute has taken on new stridency as both sides prepare for a change of power that could have dramatic implications for environmental policy.

"The president hasn't even been sworn in yet, and they're already trying to undo eight years of good environmental protection," said Cindy Shogan, executive director of the Alaska Wilderness League. "It just goes to show that Mr. Bush is incapable of being a compassionate conservationist. He's not even going to try."

Industry groups called Clinton's eleventh-hour environmental activism a desperate power grab.

"This is basically Sherman's march to the sea, and they're going to take everything they can and cut the throat of everybody in their path," said Chuck Cushman, executive director of the American Land Rights Association in Battle Ground, Wash., an organization that vehemently opposes land-use restrictions on federal property.

Administration officials said Clinton was still considering the Arctic Refuge designation, but he was expected to issue executive orders next week protecting federal tracts in California, Montana and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The orders will establish national monuments at five natural formations:

The Missouri Breaks, an area in central Montana spanning about 150 miles of the upper Missouri River.

Pompeys Pillar, 51 acres along the Yellowstone River, also in Montana.

The Carrizo Plain, more than 204,000 acres of undeveloped ecosystem along the San Andreas fault in California.

Buck Island Reef, more than 18,000 acres of coral reefs and shoals adjoining a protected area north of St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The U.S. Virgin Island Coral Reef, more than 12,000 acres of marine ecosystem near St. John.

Critics said yesterday's order would block access to as much as 23 trillion cubic feet of natural gas - about a year's supply. It covers 58 million acres in 38 states.

"Nobody has done this much environmental and economic damage going out the door since Saddam Hussein torched Kuwait's oil fields," Sen. Frank Murkowski (R., Alaska) said.

Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne said he and others would fight the order in federal court. Officials of the incoming administration said they would consider revoking the order and other last-minute directives when Bush takes office Jan. 20.

White House officials disputed suggestions that Clinton was ramming through a host of environmental directives in a final slap at Bush.

George Frampton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said all of Clinton's recent and pending moves were the "culmination of two, three, even four or five years of effort. I can't think of a single decision ... that would be in the slightest way different if Al Gore had been elected."

Added Clinton spokesman Jake Siewert: "The President is the president until Jan. 20, and he's going to use his executive authority to protect the environment. ... He's going to stay busy, right up until the last day."

Efforts by environmentalists to short-circuit Bush's plans for the Arctic wildlife refuge have prompted a fierce debate. Last week, environmental groups generated more than 400,000 calls to the White House on the issue, a follow-up to 650,000 postcards delivered last month.

Protecting the Arctic refuge "is the highest priority issue for the environmental community," said Dave Alberswerth, who runs land-management programs for the Wilderness Society.

"When he names the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge a national monument, it would complete his Alaska legacy," said Shogan of the Alaska Wilderness League.

"That would be a slap in the face to the president-elect," Hansen said.

Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt is arguing against naming the refuge a monument, saying a 1980 law already requires an act of Congress to allow drilling there. Even Bush's allies concede that they do not have the votes in the Senate to order drilling in the Arctic or to overturn yesterday's logging ban.

The dispute over environmental policy is sure to spill over into Congress. The first skirmish is likely to come over the nomination of Gale A. Norton to head the Interior Department. Norton, who worked under Interior Secretary James G. Watt in the Reagan administration, has been an outspoken advocate of economic development on federal land.

Ron Hutcheson's e-mail address is rhutcheson@krwashington.com

Sumana Chatterjee and Jackie Koszczuk of the Inquirer Washington Bureau contributed to this article, as did the Associated Press.

---

G.O.P. to Press for Unraveling of Clinton Acts

New York Times
January 6, 2001
By DOUGLAS JEHL
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/06/politics/06ENVI.html?pagewanted=all

WASHINGTON, Jan. 5 - With help from Western states and prominent mining and drilling industry representatives, the Republicans and their allies are drawing battle plans in the hopes of blunting or reversing much of what President Clinton has sought to accomplish in a blizzard of last-minute orders on environmental policy.

Those orders included new rules announced today that would put millions of acres in national forests off limits to development.

Well beyond that, the Republicans and industry groups intend to pursue avenues resolutely blocked by the Clinton administration, most important by seeking to open federally owned land in Alaska and other Western states to oil drilling, mining, logging and other activities.

In Washington today, President- elect Bush's spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said Mr. Bush would closely review "each and every" last- minute order that Mr. Clinton issues.

None of the orders could be reversed by Mr. Bush unilaterally, and the task of seeking a reversal in Congress could prove time consuming. As Republican lawmakers monitor the path of the lawsuits challenging Mr. Clinton's authority on several fronts, some members of Congress and industry officials expect the Bush administration to appoint officials at the Justice Department and other agencies who would coordinate a full-throttled attack against the last-minute Clinton environmental measures.

Some fights have already been joined in the courts, including a lawsuit by the Mountain States Legal Foundation, where Gale A. Norton, Mr. Bush's choice to become interior secretary, began her legal career. The organization, based in Denver, has filed a lawsuit challenging Mr. Clinton's unilateral designation in the past year of more than half a dozen new national monuments.

In his own public comments, Mr. Bush has been cautious when it comes to the environment, emphasizing the importance of striking a balance between conservation and economic development. But in laying plans for the future, his transition team is reaching out most directly to the industries and activists who felt most aggrieved by Mr. Clinton's tenure, and who have made clear that there is much that they want to see undone.

A list of the 38-member advisory group on Interior Department issues provided by a Bush transition official reads in part like a who's who of representatives of affected industries, and includes W. Henson Moore, a former deputy secretary of energy who is now chairman of the American Forest and Paper Association, the representatives of various mining and energy trade groups, and top officials from companies like General Electric.

"It's very clear that the extractive industries were out of favor with the old administration," said Jack Gerard, the president of American Mining Association and a member of a Bush advisory group, who said he looked forward to the departure of a Clinton administration consumed by "an extreme ideology that drove extreme solutions."

Representative James V. Hansen of Utah and Senator Frank Murkowski of Alaska, the new Republican chairmen of the Congressional natural resource committees, both vowed today to subject Mr. Clinton's forest-protection plan to review, with an eye to overturning it in the Congress if the federal courts do not do so first.

Republicans objected most vigorously to the portion of the administration's road ban that extended protection to the sprawling Tongass National Forest in Alaska, which had been excluded from earlier proposals in deference to Republican concerns about the effect on the timber industry there.

Some Democrats and environmental groups are so alarmed at the prospect of big reversals that they are scrambling to head off the emerging Republican efforts, first by trying to block Ms. Norton's nomination. "Clinton and Gore were like the goalies who stopped nearly every shot to weaken environmental protection, and now those goalies have been pulled," said Daniel J. Weiss, the political director of the Sierra Club.

Even before Mr. Bush takes office, the early wrangling has begun to elevate the environmental arena to the status of an important battleground in a contest over the direction a Bush White House will take.

In a letter to Mr. Bush, Representative Hansen offered an ambitious eight-page agenda for action, recommending that the new administration make it a priority "to correct the misguided direction the Clinton administration has taken in their attempt to manage our natural resources."

But another Republican, Representative Sherwood Boehlert of New York, was among those who cautioned against giving too much credence to the calls for any kind of upheaval on the environment. "The Congress is a pretty centrist institution these days in both the House and the Senate," Mr. Boehlert said, "and you're going to see resistance to any significant change in direction."

Many Republicans are watching the lawsuits as they wend their way through federal courts, hoping that rulings on whether Mr. Clinton exceeded his authority will bolster their cause. The mining association, headed by Mr. Gerard, filed suit last month in an attempt to block an Interior Department rule due to take effect on Inauguration Day that would guarantee any future interior secretary a veto over mining activity even when it had Congressional approval.

Among Mr. Bush's other advisers, Mark Rubin, a top official of the American Petroleum Institute and a member of the group advising the transition team, many are particularly eager to see the forest-protection plan undone because it would bar the oil industry and others from getting access to the vast areas of public lands that Mr. Clinton is seeking to protect from development.

In the courts, the challenges to Mr. Clinton's recent orders - including one by the State of Idaho to the forest-protection plan - could get a boost if Mr. Bush's appointees at the Justice Department decide not to defend Mr. Clinton's work.

For his part, Mr. Bush has signaled that a priority will be to move ahead on an energy policy that would give energy companies more freedom to explore for oil and gas in the United States. In that effort, his biggest task would be to win Congressional approval for a plan to open Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, a goal that Republicans have pressed since the late 1980's but one that some experts say is within reach if Mr. Bush stays attentive to the mission.

"I'd be very surprised if you see any major effort from the White House to roll back what the Clinton administration has done," said Jerry Taylor, director of natural resources at the Cato Institute, a research and advocacy group in Washington that is opposed to most federal regulation. "But I think you'll see Bush focusing like a laser beam on opening Western lands for development, not just in Alaska."

-------- spying

Documentary Examines NSA Role

Associated Press
January 6, 2001 Filed at 12:20 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Secret-Agency.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The National Security Agency, the supersecret intelligence mission most Americans do not even know exists, gives some explanation in a television documentary for its tightlipped behavior.

``It's really important that the American people understand what we do, that we are in fact a relatively powerful organization. And it's absolutely critical that they don't fear the power that we have,'' the agency's director, Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, says in a rare interview.

The History Channel program, airing Monday as part of the network's ``History's Mysteries'' series, seeks to explain the agency's mission and examines recent controversies.

Considered the eavesdropping branch of the intelligence community, the NSA gathers information through satellites, telephone intercepts and other methods. Not much else is known about the NSA, which employees joke stands for ``No Such Agency''

Hayden offers little more.

``We intercept communications of adversaries of the United States and attempt to turn that into wisdom for American policy-makers and commanders,'' he said, according to a transcript of the show. ``By the same token, we attempt to prevent other nations from doing that to the United States of America. That's what we do.''

Congress recently resolved a budget battle over funds for the NSA when President Clinton signed legislation authorizing money for intelligence agencies, including the NSA and CIA. He had vetoed the original spending bill because of a provision that would have made the leaking of government secrets a felony offense. The exact budget figure included in the bill is classified.

``If you were comparing NSA to a corporation in terms of dollars spent, floor space occupied and personnel employed, it would rank in the top 10 percent of the Fortune 500 companies,'' said Judith Emmel, a spokeswoman for the agency, which has its headquarters in Fort Meade, Md.

Last year, the NSA defended itself against allegations it illegally snooped into e-mail messages and other communications between ordinary Americans. On the cable program, Hayden denied such action.

``I'm here to tell you that we don't get close to the Fourth Amendment,'' he said, referring to the constitutional provision prohibiting unreasonable search and seizure. ``We, for better or worse, stay comfortably away from that line.''

The program recounts the agency's history and the codes it has deciphered from Japanese, German, Vietnamese and other foreign governments during past conflicts.

``The ability to do communications intelligence has saved lives. It has kept us out of war. It has shortened war when we've been in it,'' said David Hatch, NSA senior historian.

The NSA had to revise its mission after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. The agency soon shifted its focus to terrorists, drug traffickers and the threat of war over the Internet.

``Cyberwar is a term that you hear today a lot. And the business we're in is to counter the effectiveness of cyberwarfare against our infrastructures,'' said Michael Jacobs, deputy director of information assurance.

``We acquire information, we determine its value and we pass it on,'' said Maureen Baginski, who heads NSA's Office of the Director.

``Really, what you have here is a bunch of Americans that are safeguarding Americans.''

-------- activists

New Window on Tiananmen Square Crackdown

New York Times
January 6, 2001
By RICHARD BERNSTEIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/06/world/06CHIN.html?pagewanted=all

Throughout the day on May 17, 1989, with student-led protests occupying Beijing's Tiananmen Square and paralyzing much of the country, several of China's most powerful figures dropped by the home of the most powerful of them all, Deng Xiaoping, to discuss what to do.

"If things continue like this, we could even end up under house arrest," Deng warned his old comrades, according to a book of documents that its editors describe as classified Communist Party archives smuggled out of China. "After thinking long and hard about this, I've concluded that we should bring in the People's Liberation Army and declare martial law in Beijing."

The documents, which number in the hundreds and have been deemed authentic by several experts, appear in "The Tiananmen Papers," which will be published on Monday. [Excerpts, Page A6.] They depict how China's rulers decided to order a military crackdown that in June 1989 killed hundreds and put China's present leadership in place. They also suggest how deeply divided the top leaders were and how close the country came to embracing political change rather than crushing it.

Provided to American scholars by a shadowy Chinese figure who says he represents people in the Communist Party favoring more rapid change, the materials paint a vivid picture of the leadership during the Tiananmen crisis. While largely confirming impressions of how the crackdown came about, the documents detail internal arguments, the fears of the elderly leaders and the ways officials used those fears.

Inevitably, a central question is how certain one can be of the authenticity of the documents, which were provided as computer printouts. They include Politburo minutes, army and intelligence reports and memorandums of meetings that Deng held with his comrades.

Several times in recent decades, Chinese documents initially hailed as important were later discredited. For example, a supposed inside account of the 1971 fall of Mao's designated successor, Lin Biao, was published to great interest in 1983 but is now of dubious credibility.

But in interviews, the scholars who have pored over the Tiananmen documents and helped translate and edit them - and who have intensely questioned the Chinese man who handed them over - have expressed the firm conviction that the material is authentic. Even so, they said, they are less certain that it accurately captures the reality of the period.

"I believe that the documents are authentic," said James R. Lilley, the American ambassador during the protests and one of few experts besides the volume's editors to have examined the materials. "But I don't rule out the possibility that people might have played with the language to score certain points. In addition, the documents themselves contain material that is not true. For example, the reports on the C.I.A. are exaggerated and inflammatory to appeal to the paranoia of the Chinese leadership."

The documents indicate that the officials who formally held the top posts - the members of the Politburo Standing Committee - were split two to two, with one abstention, over whether to use force to end the protests. Without a majority, the hard- liners lacked standing to call in the troops.

But, according to the documents, the deadlock was broken by Deng and his octogenarian comrades, who had retired from most of their official posts but still held ultimate power. In this sense, the papers suggest an important conclusion, surmised before but now emerging more forcefully: that had it not been for Deng and the other elders, the moderates might have prevailed in the power struggle, averting bloodshed and inaugurating a period of greater political openness and economic liberalization.

There seems little doubt that the documents, which are to be published in Chinese in April and sold in places like Hong Kong, will slip into China and stir intense interest there, despite an almost complete ban on public discussion of the Tiananmen incident. Disclosure of the documents could erode the authority of two top Chinese leaders.

One is Jiang Zemin, China's president and Communist Party general secretary, who was awarded the top posts after Deng and the elders dismissed the former party chief, Zhao Ziyang, for opposing martial law. The other is Li Peng, now the chairman of China's Parliament and the second-ranking figure in the Communist hierarchy, who was prime minister in 1989. Mr. Li in particular is depicted in the documents as manipulating information to encourage a crackdown.

"The hard-liners that pushed the decision to use force, especially Li Peng, are still vulnerable on these issues, and these papers show how they acted," Ambassador Lilley said. "They show Li to be this guy with very little tolerance of dissent."

The Tiananmen protests began in mid- April 1989, at first to mourn the death of Hu Yaobang, a former party leader and a symbol of political reform. The mourning turned into vast demonstrations for a free press, more open and representative government, a crackdown on corruption and inflation, and independent labor unions.

The translated collection of documents is being published by PublicAffairs, a nonfiction house in New York. The material was provided by a man going by a pseudonym, Zhang Liang, who has not disclosed his real name, former position or present whereabouts. He said in an interview that his purpose was to stimulate a reassessment inside China about Tiananmen, which is officially branded a criminal uprising.

He says he is a party member who, with his friends, has tried to have the official judgment on Tiananmen reconsidered, which they believe essential if China is to become more democratic. But having been rebuffed in that effort, they decided to get the materials published elsewhere.

"To publish in the United States was our last choice, which we made only when there were no other options," Mr. Zhang said. He would provide no details on how the work was assembled or brought out of China.

"We believe that only the Communist Party has the ability in China to carry out political reform," Mr. Zhang continued. "In this sense we are not dissidents trying to operate from outside the system." He compared his collaborators to people like Boris N. Yeltsin, a Communist who eventually helped bring down the Soviet system.

The material covers the six weeks of the Tiananmen crisis and the period immediately after the movement was suppressed. It offers a portrait of the personalities of some top leaders, the questions and fears that obsessed them, their style of debate.

Deng, China's supreme leader, who died in 1997, comes across as both infuriated and tormented by the protests, which he saw as deeply damaging to his modernization strategy. According to the documents, he often voiced the opinion that the students were being manipulated by a "tiny minority" whose secret, unstated goal was the overthrow of Communism. Deng seemed to believe this minority was backed by outside countries, especially the United States.

"Some Western countries use things like `human rights' or like saying the socialist system is irrational or illegal, to criticize us," Deng is quoted as saying on June 2, as leaders made plans to use force, "but what they're really after is our sovereignty."

Death estimates are far lower in the documents than some foreign observers believe. Two days after the crackdown, Mr. Li is quoted as telling the elders that about 23 soldiers and 200 civilians had been killed; foreign estimates ranged from several hundred to several thousand or more.

The documents depict the party elders losing faith in Mr. Zhao and discussing various candidates to replace him. Early on, they indicate, Deng seemed to favor Li Ruihuan, a moderate with a reputation as open-minded about political and economic change. But other senior figures are quoted as favoring Mr. Jiang, the party secretary of Shanghai, whom they praise for his resolute and hard-line stance in closing down what was then China's boldest newspaper.

Deng, who is depicted as the key figure but also as deferential to other elders, apparently allowed himself to be convinced.

"Comrades Chen Yun and Xiannian and I all lean toward Comrade Jiang Zemin for general secretary," Deng is quoted as saying later. "What do the rest of you think?"

The documents show the rest of the elders readily agreeing, and that apparently is how Mr. Jiang came to vault over many more senior people to be China's top leader today.

Andrew J. Nathan, a Columbia University political scientist and the volume's main editor, collaborated with Perry Link, a literature scholar at Princeton University, and Orville Schell, a writer on Chinese affairs who is now dean of the Journalism School at the University of California at Berkeley. The three examined the documents over many months.

One cause of concern was the form of the materials provided by Mr. Zhang - computer printouts rather than originals. They also lack the incomplete sentences, hesitations and interruptions typical of real conversations. As is standard with such Chinese documents, they appear to have been edited.

But Mr. Schell and the other scholars list reasons that convinced them of the collection's genuineness. Among these are Chinese intelligence reports on closed-door meetings of Western experts.

Mr. Nathan and Mr. Lilley both said they had been able to track down some of the specialists referred to in the documents and verify the reports.

---

Activist Loses Web Initiative Bid

Associated Press
January 6, 2001 Filed at 10:00 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Internet-Initiative.html

BOULDER, Colo. (AP) -- Colorado election officials have rejected an activist's plan to use the Internet to collect the signatures necessary to get a voter initiative on November's ballot.

The Colorado Secretary of State's Office said collecting signatures via the Internet would violate provisions barring petition circulators from signing the petition. Officials also raised concerns about the ability to ensure the integrity of the petition language.

``Until we are directed otherwise by a higher legal authority, we will not approve petitions coming off the Internet,'' state Director of Elections William Compton said.

Page Penk, who said his initiative would be an effort to reign in the use of nuclear weapons, proposed having copies of his petition on an Internet site that could be printed out, signed and mail to him to be submitted with the petition.

He vowed to fight the state's ruling on Friday and said he was disappointed that his ability to reach rural Colorado residents was being limited.

``At the very least, it's an issue that's going to have to be debated and decided in Colorado and throughout the United States,'' said Pete Maysmith, of the election watchdog group Colorado Common Cause. ``The concept of making the petition process open and accessible to all citizens is a good and important one.''

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