------- Index of Articles
NUCLEAR
Official: China OK With India
60's Administrations Considered Bombing Nuclear Sites in China
Beijing And Moscow To Sign Pact
Iraq demands uranium inquiry
Greece steps up weapons row
British navy phases out depleted uranium shells
Uranium Shell Debris Not Cancer-Causing, U.S. Scientists Say
British Royal Navy phasing out uranium shells
NATO tries to reassure peacekeeping nations about uranium arms
Hundreds Died of Cancer After DU Bombing - Doctor
Environmental Woes in Kosovo
Fray in Europe Over Uranium Draws Doubters
Islanders little concerned with nuke bomb in harbor
Nuclear Maintenance Program Plagued
Effort on Missile Upkeep Falters, Report Finds
The Expansive Agenda at Defense
California seeks power deal
Nuclear Plant Was Restarted Too Fast
MILITARY
Iraq Calls U.S. Claim a "Lie"
Iraq Rejects Reports US Pilot Lived
Reports Say Navy Pilot Was Alive
OTHER
'13 Days' Ads Nixed for Inaccuracies
Norton Record Often at Odds With Laws She Would Enforce
Crippling the Clean Water Act
ECUADOR: FUEL RISE OVERTURNED
Strip searches prompt transferals
Sheriff's Downfall Cheered by Bergen County Officers
U.S. to Offer Detailed Trail of bin Laden in Bomb Trial
ACTIVISTS
U.S. Nationals Organize First Airlift to Iraq
American Activists Fly to Iraq
GERMANY: MAD COW PROTESTS
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- china
Official: China OK With India
Associated Press
January 13, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-India-China.html
NEW DELHI, India (AP) -- China harbors no ill will toward India, the head of the Chinese legislature said Saturday, despite the former combatants' ongoing border dispute and Indian suspicions that Beijing is supplying missile technology to Pakistan.
``We have never taken India as a threat nor do we intend to pose a threat to our neighbors or seek any sphere of influence,'' said Li Peng, the chairman of the Chinese People's National Congress, during a visit in New Delhi. ``We place emphasis on good neighborly relations with India.''
Activists demanding that China leave the restive Himalayan region of Tibet protested outside the India International Center during Li's speech to dignitaries on Saturday. Other activists shouted ``Free political prisoners!''
Before the event, riot police pushed back protesters from a Tibetan women's group and whisked them away in vehicles before Li arrived.
India's 21-day war with China in 1962 sowed seeds of distrust manifested in an unresolved boundary dispute between the two countries.
India says China illegally occupies a Maryland-sized, Himalayan region that it seized in the war.
Beijing says India is holding 36,000 square miles of Chinese territory -- an area the size of Indiana -- in what is now India's eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh.
The countries have been holding talks since 1988 to settle the boundary dispute. They signed agreements in 1993 and 1996 committing themselves to the existing cease-fire line pending an eventual solution.
In the past, Indian politicians -- including the current defense minister -- have called China India's principal enemy. India has also charged Beijing with supplying missile technology to its rival, Pakistan, a charge China denies.
``We agree India and China are lacking in mutual understanding, and to achieve better trust is a pressing task in our bilateral relations,'' Li said. ``Problems left over from history shouldn't be an impediment to good relations in the future.''
He noted both nations had experienced colonialism and said they had to pull together as globalization intensifies economic competition between rich and poor countries.
``World destiny should be in the hands of world people,'' he said.
---
60's Administrations Considered Bombing Nuclear Sites in China
New York Times
January 13, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/13/world/13CHIN.html
WASHINGTON, Jan. 12 (AP) - Alarmed by the rapid development of China's nuclear program in the early 1960's, the Kennedy and Johnson administrations considered bombing targets there and killing the experts, as well as supplying India with nuclear weapons, recently declassified documents show.
All options were rejected as too risky, according to the documents obtained by researchers at the independent National Security Archive and used as the basis for an article appearing this month in International Security, a Harvard University publication.
Pentagon officials expressed concern about China's nuclear program as early as February 1961, when Air Force planners said a C.I.A. estimate that China could have the bomb as early as 1963 was too conservative and predicted that bomb testing could begin as early as that year.
Intelligence reports concluded that the Chinese had made significant progress by 1963, and the issue began to figure prominently in meetings between President Kennedy and his national security advisers.
In April 1963, the Joint Chiefs of Staff prepared a document examining all available options - from blockading China and infiltrating and sabotaging the program, to air attacks on the facilities, backing a Taiwanese invasion of China and launching a tactical nuclear attack.
However, the document rejected direct force as unlikely to wipe out the Chinese nuclear capability. Indeed, it suggested that any attacks, covert or overt, would probably spur Chinese aggression.
It instead recommended cooperating with the Soviet Union and Britain to contain the Chinese threat through diplomacy, for instance, by offering the Chinese economic assistance as a disincentive to developing the nuclear program.
Subsequent reports by Robert Johnson, an official of the State Department's Policy Planning Council in both administrations, suggested that China's nuclear capacity would never be great enough to threaten American interests and that the Chinese were not disposed to recklessness in any case.
One Robert Johnson paper from April 1964, outlining the range of "unorthodox" responses should the Chinese ever pose a real threat, remains classified.
The view that it was impossible to wipe out the Chinese nuclear capability - and unwise to attempt it - prevailed until Oct. 14, 1964, when the Chinese first tested a nuclear device, alarming President Johnson's administration and prompting some officials to counsel more direct action.
In a paper dated Dec. 14, 1964, George Rathjens, an official of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, argues that Robert Johnson's reports ignored the danger "that relatively weak powers will be able to inflict very great and totally unacceptable damage on much stronger ones if they acquire nuclear capabilities."
He counsels "further consideration of direct action against Chinese nuclear facilities," and even considers a policy of assassinating Chinese nuclear officials. "For a longer term effect it would be necessary to destroy research facilities and personnel," he says.
The declassified papers show that officials also considered helping India develop nuclear weapons as a means of containing its neighbor.
President Johnson, who was committed to stopping the spread of nuclear weapons, rejected such direct responses and instead chose to continue the policy of containing nuclear expansion by diplomatic means.
--------
Beijing And Moscow To Sign Pact
By John Pomfret
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, January 13, 2001 ; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52131-2001Jan12?language=printer
BEIJING, Jan. 12 -- China and Russia are negotiating their first political treaty since an ill-fated peace and friendship pact at the outset of the Cold War, united this time by a desire to counter U.S. preeminence in world affairs and oppose U.S. proposals for building a missile defense shield.
Diplomats and Russian media reports said the treaty is likely to be signed in the middle of the year, when Chinese President Jiang Zemin travels to Moscow. Diplomats and analysts noted that it marks the first time China has entered into a political accord in decades and reinforces an assessment by many Russian and Chinese experts that Moscow and Beijing are enjoying their closest ties ever, even better than in the days of the Sino-Soviet alliance in the 1950s.
China's deputy prime minister and top foreign policy official, Qian Qichen, said in an interview last week that the treaty will be "nothing special" and sought to play down Western concerns that it will constitute a major step in Beijing's improving security ties with Moscow. "It will not be an alliance," Qian said.
Diplomats say the treaty is expected to include a broad statement on China's strategic partnership with Russia and sections on issues such as Russia's weapons sales to China and its support for China's space program, although those might be in unpublished codicils.
Details of the treaty are scarce, partly because negotiations are incomplete. An agreement to sign the treaty was reached during Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to China last July, Russian media reports and diplomats said. Deputy foreign ministers from each side, Alexander Losyukov and Liu Guchang, discussed details in Moscow on Dec. 27 and 28 and issued a statement that the treaty will "reflect a high level of cooperation reached in relations between Russia and China over the past few years and define prospective directions of cooperation in key spheres."
Officials said the agreement on a treaty constitutes a diplomatic success for Russia, which has already signed a treaty with North Korea and has tired of being treated as a peripheral element in East Asian security. It follows the announcement of an expanded military and security partnership between Russia and Iran, on another Russian flank.
For China, the treaty marks another step in a policy of avoiding heavy reliance on the United States as a big-power interlocutor, modernizing its military and working to dilute American power in Asia. All these goals make sense to Beijing as it enters unsettled waters with a new administration taking power in Washington.
Despite Qian's caution, Jonathan Pollack, chairman of the strategic research department at the Naval War College, said the treaty is a significant step in Sino-Russian ties and reflects Moscow's and Beijing's concerns about the incoming Bush administration.
"These negotiations are being publicized on the very eve of the Bush presidency. It may not be a formal alliance, but it's trying to give meaning and momentum to the concept of a strategic partnership, which seems overly nebulous to many," he said.
Pollack said one catalyst for closer ties was united opposition to U.S. policies.
"Both leaderships are very uneasy about the new administration's plans to accelerate national missile defense, though it's unclear that either has a strategy for restraining this process. But a more committed bilateral relationship would make it more difficult for either to do a side deal with Washington," he said.
For years, U.S. diplomats have scoffed at Russia's ties with China, arguing that historically there is too much animosity for anything challenging to arise from them. As proof they pointed to the legacy of distrust from the Sino-Soviet rift -- the Cold War friendship treaty fell apart in 1980. In addition, they said, ties are difficult because of Russian control of what many here consider Chinese territory, Russian worries about carpetbagging by Chinese merchants, a dose of condescension on both sides, the failure of cross-border trade to provide an economic basis for the relationship and wariness that comes with sharing such a long border.
In 1998, for instance, both sides agreed that by 2000 trade would reach $20 billion. Last year it barely broke $8 billion.
But for the last decade, and especially in recent years, Russia has been China's largest advanced weapons supplier. Russia is a strong backer of China's goal to unite with Taiwan. China has supported Russia's war in Chechnya. And the two sides have discussed cooperation against Islamic fundamentalism, which they view as a destabilizing factor in Central Asia.
Since 1992, Russia has sold China an annual average of $1 billion in weapons systems, including hundreds of advanced fighter jets, submarines, four destroyers and 48 state-of-the-art anti-ship missiles.
Two years ago, U.S. diplomats said they did not take Russia's security ties with China seriously. Today, the mood has shifted. One American military official, speaking about the reported sale of two more Sovremenny destroyers, which would make a total of four, said the vessels, equipped with Sunburn anti-ship missiles, "could potentially hurt our aircraft carrier battle groups."
"The sales are beginning to create concern," he said. "After a while, they start to build up. Of course, our real concern is in the things we can't see, the technical transfers, the help on China's cruise missile program, its rockets and strategic forces."
Chinese analysts agree that something fundamental appears to be happening to China's ties with Russia.
"Now the relationship is much healthier than in Stalin's time," said Lu Nanquan, deputy director of the Center for Russian Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. "Then the relationship was captive to ideology and it was unequal. Now it is the best it has ever been."
"In some ways," Lu added, "China and Russia have come this far because of the United States."
The United States has maintained an arms embargo on China since its crackdown on student-led demonstrations in Beijing in 1989. Chinese officials have accused the United States of acting imperiously -- in the Kosovo war, for instance, and in Asia by supporting Taiwan.
"My view is that the treaty is more or less a result of U.S. hegemonism," said Shen Dingli, a security expert at Fudan University in Shanghai. "Unless both Russia and China felt the need, they would not work on a new relationship. So the new type of relationship to be defined also indicates not only China but also Russia has a need to balance America." He added that the proposed national missile defense system, NATO expansion, and other issues "fuel such a need."
Moscow and Beijing both oppose creation of a missile defense system, which is strongly backed by the incoming Bush administration, and the eastward expansion of NATO. Those issues, particularly missile defense, have galvanized the wish to move toward closer ties. Several American security analysts said Washington's attitude toward these concerns has created what a U.S. military official called "a problem that was, at root, avoidable."
"The United States, through incompetence and ham-handed policymaking, has effectively driven China and Russia together," said James Mulvenon, a security expert at the Rand Corp. "NMD is a perfect example. By not having a coordinated policy vis-a-vis the Europeans and the Russians, we let the Chinese play them off against us. There is an enormous resonance in both countries for blaming problems on American hegemony, and we have done nothing to drive a wedge between them."
The United States has contended that neither NATO expansion nor deployment of a national missile defense system is aimed at China or Russia. The Clinton administration said missile defense research was targeted at unpredictable and hostile states such as North Korea and Iraq, which are believed to be developing missiles possibly with an eye to threatening the United States. But neither Moscow nor Beijing accepted this reasoning.
-------- depleted uranium
Iraq demands uranium inquiry
The Iraqi desert remains littered with war debris
BBC News
Saturday, 13 January, 2001, 09:33 GMT
By Barbara Plett in Baghdad
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_1115000/1115209.stm
The controversy over depleted uranium weapons used by Nato in the Balkans has also highlighted the health problems Iraq has suffered since the 1991 Gulf War.
American forces fired 320 tonnes of the low-level radioactive material during the allied campaign that drove Iraqi troops from Kuwait.
Iraq has since reported soaring rates of cancer and birth defects and this week demanded that the United Nations investigate.
The southern desert of Iraq is littered with the carcasses of burned-out old anks.
It is also sprinkled with particles that give off low levels of radiation left behind by weapons tipped with depleted uranium.
DU is used to penetrate armour because it is denser than other materials, but its residue is considered dangerous if inhaled or ingested.
Iraq has long argued that this toxic dust left behind by the Americans, and to a small degree the British, is responsible for a dramatic increase in cancer and birth defects since the Gulf War.
But such statements had not received much attention until European soldiers who served with Nato in the Balkans started making similar complaints.
One newspaper here said bitterly that Europe was now paying the price for ignoring a decade of evidence that depleted uranium is dangerous.
Contested
In fact the health risks are hotly contested. The central question is whether DU particles trapped in the body emit enough radiation over time to cause physical damage.
It is a political as well as a medical debate. The Pentagon would have reasons for downplaying DU dangers, such as the huge expense of cleaning up the contaminated battlefield.
Baghdad has used the issue as propaganda to win support against UN sanctions, making an accurate assessment of its effects difficult.
Iraq has also asked for an international inquiry into the use of depleted uranium weapons and the World Health Organisation announced this week that it was planning to make such a study.
It will to start by sending representatives to an Iraqi conference on depleted uranium next Tuesday.
---
Greece steps up weapons row
CNN
January 13, 2001 Web posted at: 5:42 AM EST (1042 GMT)
http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/01/13/balkans.uranium/index.html
LONDON, England -- Greece has told its troops in the Balkans that they can return home if they fear illness from depleted uranium weapons.
The Greek announcement came as growing alarm over the alleged toxicity of the controversial ammunition prompted Russia to demand a summit of NATO members on the issue.
A furore over the tank-busting shells has threatened to split the NATO alliance with critics blaming depleted uranium (DU), a radioactive heavy metal used in the munitions, for cancer among troops who served in the Balkans.
NATO held briefings in Brussels on Friday in an effort to reassure nations over the health fears but it is continuing to deny any proven link to DU weapons.
"The idea of a general risk of contamination is false," a NATO statement quoted an official as telling a special meeting of some 60 representatives of countries who have contributed troops to the peacekeeping missions.
In Athens, however, Greek Defence Minister Apostolos Tsochatzopoulos said any of his country's peacekeepers already serving in Kosovo who were worried about the possible risks of DU would be allowed to return home.
"We don't want even one soldier to stay against his will," Tsochatzopoulos told reporters during a visit to Kosovo. "Anyone who wants to leave will immediately be replaced."
Greece now has 1,481 peacekeepers deployed in Kosovo, some of whom already have expressed a desire to terminate their tour of duty.
A military official said nearly a third of the soldiers who had applied for a tour of duty in Kosovo have now changed their minds because of concern over DU munitions.
On Saturday, Britain's Royal Navy announced it would phase out the use of DU artillery by 2003 but not because of the health fears.
A Ministry of Defence spokesman said: "The U.S. manufacturers have decided not to manufacture depleted uranium rounds anymore. They are moving to alternatives. We have no choice but to do the same."
"The move is a gradual one that we had already decided on," he said.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Friday it was planning a study to assess whether there had been an increased rate of cancer among military personnel who served in the Gulf War or Balkans, as well as among exposed populations.
The U.N. health agency said it was unlikely that exposure to residue from the NATO weapons could have led to a higher risk of cancer among military personnel who served in the Balkan conflicts.
Depleted uranium (DU) munitions can pulverise on impact, creating radioactive dust that can enter the human body via the lungs.
NATO member Turkey said two of its soldiers had been exposed to depleted uranium munitions used during the Balkans conflicts.
"We have two personnel who had been affected at a benign level," Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Huseyin Dirioz told a news briefing.
'Objectively' work out the danger
Russia warned NATO that the furore over depleted uranium was only just beginning and said international experts should meet to discuss the dangers.
"We will make a proposal to Russia's president on holding an international conference of specialists on this problem within the OSCE (Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe) or the U.N.," Interfax news agency quoted Defence Minister Igor Sergeyev as saying.
He said the conference would allow experts to "objectively work out the degree of danger the use of these weapons presents to human life."
So-called "Balkans Syndrome" has been blamed on seven deaths from leukaemia among Italian troops and illness among servicemen from France, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium and Portugal.
Portuguese soldiers serving in the Balkans are likely to encounter higher background uranium radiation at home than on their Kosovo and Bosnia missions, the NATO meeting was told.
Portuguese officials said early results of an on-the-spot study of 50 depleted uranium sites closest to where Portuguese troops with NATO are based "showed overall natural levels of uranium are actually lower than in Portugal itself."
A new study showed that German peacekeepers serving in Kosovo had shown no signs of exposure to debris from depleted uranium ammunition fired during NATO's air war against Yugoslavia.
"All measurements of uranium were around levels we would expect from groups which have not been exposed," said Paul Roth, a radiation expert at the research body that carried out the tests for the German Defence Ministry.
---
British navy phases out depleted uranium shells
Environmental News Network
Saturday, January 13, 2001
By Paul Majendie
http://www.enn.com/news/wire-stories/2001/01/01132001/reu_uranium_41324.asp
Britain's Royal Navy is phasing out depleted uranium ammunition on its warships after the U.S. manufacturers stopped producing the shells that have sparked safety concerns.
A crisis over the armor-piercing shells has threatened to split the NATO alliance with critics blaming the munitions for cancer among troops who served in the Balkans.
The ammunition was used in the American-designed Phalanx anti-missile system which is fitted to the British Navy's Type 42 destroyers and three other vessels.
A Ministry of Defence spokesman said on Saturday: "The U.S. manufacturers have decided not to manufacture depleted uranium rounds anymore. They are moving to alternatives. We have no choice but to do the same."
But he stressed: "The move is a gradual one that we had already decided on."
He told Reuters: "Current stocks of (depleted uranium) ammunition will be exhausted by the year 2003. All current and proposed future buys of Phalanx ammunition will be of the tungsten variety."
Details of the British Navy move came as BBC Television quoted what it said was a leaked Pentagon document from 1993 which warned of a potential increase in cancer risk after exposure to depleted uranium ammunition.
The document, drawn up by the U.S. Army Surgeon General's office after the Gulf War, said: "When soldiers inhale or digest DU dust, they incur a potential increase in cancer risk ... that increase can be identified in terms of projected days of life lost."
A report on the Navy move in the Times newspaper quoted an American Naval Sea Systems Command history written in 1989.
It said: "The tungsten penetrator provides improved round effectiveness while eliminating safety and environmental problems associated with DU."
United Nations environmental officials have called for rigorous checks for possible health risks at war sites both in Kosovo, where NATO air attacks in 1999 made extensive use of depleted uranium munitions, and in Bosnia.
Britain, along with NATO and the United States, insists there is no evidence of a link between the use of DU weapons and cases of leukaemia in troops who served in the Balkans.
But Italy has demanded NATO investigate whether the deaths of at least seven of its soldiers from leukaemia after tours of duty in Kosovo and Bosnia were due to so-called "Balkans Syndrome."
Cases of cancer have also been reported among soldiers from France, the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium and Portugal.
---
Uranium Shell Debris Not Cancer-Causing, U.S. Scientists Say
European fears called unfounded
San Francisco Chronicle
Saturday, January 13, 2001
Gina Kolata, New York Times San Francisco Chronicle
mailto:feedback@sfgate.com
http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/info/copyright
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/01/13/MN176302.DTL
A furor has been growing in Europe for weeks over contentions that some allied troops contracted leukemia from exposure to the depleted uranium used to strengthen NATO ammunition used in the Balkans campaign or that European civilians are at risk because they may have breathed uranium-tinged dust near military testing grounds.
But physicists and medical experts say it is biologically impossible for depleted uranium to have caused the leukemia, and they doubt that the metal caused any illnesses in Europe.
Frank von Hippel, a physicist who is a professor of public and international affairs at Princeton University, said depleted uranium is not much of a radioactivity hazard, in part because it is what its name implies -- depleted. It is what is left when the more highly radioactive uranium 235 has been removed from its more abundant atomic cousin, uranium 238.
Uranium 235 is used to fuel nuclear reactors and make nuclear weapons. But uranium 238 "is very nonreactive," von Hippel said.
Even if one assumes that there is a ton of depleted uranium dust for every square kilometer in Kosovo, he said, its radiation would be just 1 percent of the natural radiation level. "So this is not a very significant hazard," he said.
Moreover, uranium 238 emits alpha radiation, said Dr. Michael Thun, who directs epidemiological research for the American Cancer Society, and that radiation does not even penetrate the skin. The radiation that causes leukemia --gamma rays and X-rays -- passes through the body and reaches the marrow, damaging cells and giving rise to disease. Uranium 235 emits gamma particles, and that is one reason it is so dangerous, Thun said.
Uranium is a heavy metal, and as with all heavy metals, it can be toxic. When it enters the body, it lodges in the kidneys, which it can damage.
Studies of a handful of Gulf War soldiers hit by friendly fire and left with fragments of uranium 238 in their bodies have not shown a rise in kidney disease, said Dr. Charles Phelps, the provost at the University of Rochester and a member of a Institute of Medicine committee that reported on the problem last year.
Uranium 238 clearly was leaching into the soldiers' kidneys, he said. "They had very high levels of uranium salts in their urine," Phelps said. "But there is no evidence of kidney disease."
Depleted uranium has long been used for weapons because it is extremely dense. A weapon made with depleted uranium can penetrate steel-armored tanks. It also ignites when it hits its target.
"When you fire into or through steel, it actually vaporizes the steel," said Dr. Bruce Kelman, a toxicologist who is a president of GlobalTox, a business in Seattle that studies industrial hygiene and toxicology for governments and industry. "You get a mist of depleted uranium and steel."
Because the radiation cannot go to the marrow, it is biologically impossible for depleted uranium to cause leukemia, said John Boice, scientific director of the International Epidemiology Institute, a research concern in Rockville, Md., and an expert on radiation and cancer.
"To get leukemia," Boice said, "you need to get the radiation to the bone marrow. And uranium 238 will not get to the bone marrow."
Bruce Boecker, a radiation biologist at the Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute in Albuquerque, N.M., said, "I don't think it causes leukemia at all."
If a person inhales uranium 238, it lodges in the lungs where, in theory at least, it might cause lung cancer or it might travel to the lymph nodes and theoretically cause lymphoma.
But Boice said extensive studies of uranium workers, some of whom were exposed to high levels by breathing uranium dust, did not find any association between inhaling uranium 238 and developing lung cancer or lymphomas.
Lymphomas do not seem to be caused by radiation in any case, Boice said. But lung cancer can be, although the study of uranium workers did not find that.
"We would not have been surprised at these high levels to find a link with lung cancer," he said. "But there was none."
Thun of the cancer society said even though science might not support the idea that depleted uranium is causing health problems in Europe, that does not mean that scientists should turn their backs on the concern. People think they have leukemia because they were exposed to depleted uranium, and those fears will not easily go away.
"What I've been telling people," Thun said, "is that we need a systematic open and prompt evaluation of the situation, which would involve determining the cases of leukemia, determining the age of the patients, the diagnosis and the type of leukemia.
"In most cases, one of the major reasons for doing a systematic evaluation is to determine what is actually going on and to provide some real information, rather than rumors."
---
British Royal Navy phasing out uranium shells
Yahoo News
Saturday, January 13 8:35 AM SGT
http://sg.dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/world/afp/article.html?s=singapore/headlines/010113/world/afp/British_Royal_Navy_phasing_out_uranium_shells.html
LONDON, Jan 13 (AFP) - Britain's Royal Navy is phasing out depleted uranium ammunition used on 14 of its warships after the US manufacturers stopped producing the shells, the defence ministry said late on Friday.
The American producer took the step because it was concerned over the safety of the uranium shells, which have been linked by ex-servicemen to certain types of cancer, according to The Times newspaper.
The ammunition is used in the US-designed Phalanx anti-missile system, which is fitted to the Royal Navy's Type 42 destroyers and three other vessels.
The Times said that the US Navy had been phasing out stocks for around a decade, replacing the projectiles with tungsten-tipped ammunition, which is not radioactive and far less toxic.
The newspaper quoted an American Naval Sea Systems Command document written in 1989 as saying: "The tungsten penetrator provides improved round effectiveness while eliminating safety and environmental problems associated with depleted uranium (DU)."
The paper said the British phase-out had already begun, but the ships still carrying DU rounds are the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal, the 11 Type 42 destroyers, HMS Ocean, a new helicopter carrier, and HMS Fearless, an amphibious assault ship.
A defence ministry spokesman said that the Americans' decision to cease manufacturing the munitions meant the Royal Navy had no choice but to phase them out.
He added: "We had already made a decision to do that anyway," as the tungsten alternative had been demonstrated to be as effective as the DU munitions.
The spokesman said the ministry had always known that there were dangers associated with DU ammunition.
But he added that the ministry maintained its line there was still no evidence of a link between DU and an increased risk of contracting cancer, and that possible exposure of troops to DU in the Gulf and Balkans conflicts would have been at "extremely low" levels.
The spokesman said he did not know whether there was a tungsten-based alternative to the DU tank-busting shells used by the British army.
The Royal Navy's stocks of DU ammunition will be exhausted by 2003, although the shells may well be withdrawn before then.
Veterans groups and families of soldiers are blaming the use of depleted uranium munitions by NATO troops for a spate of cancer cases among former Balkan peacekeepers.
Seven Italian peacekeepers, five Belgians, four Dutch nationals, two Spaniards, two Portuguese and a Czech have died after tours of duty in the Balkans, many from leukemia and other cancers.
---
NATO tries to reassure peacekeeping nations about uranium arms
Yahoo News
Saturday, January 13 1:36 AM SGT
http://sg.dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/world/afp/article.html?s=singapore/headlines/010113/world/afp/NATO_tries_to_reassure_peacekeeping_nations_about_uranium_arms.html
BRUSSELS, Jan 12 (AFP) - NATO sought on Friday to reassure countries who sent peacekeeping troops to the Balkans that their soldiers face no danger from depleted uranium munitions fired by US forces in conflicts there.
Officials from the alliance's 19 member states met with those from about 15 other countries which joined NATO-led peacekeeping forces in Bosnia (SFOR) and Kosovo (KFOR) to give them information about the controversial ammunition.
While NATO says there are no scientific links between depleted uranium (DU) munitions and cancers contracted by former Balkans peacekeepers, Russia said on Friday that the debate was only just beginning.
Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev said an international conference on the effects of DU should be held.
"We shall propose to the president of Russia that he convene an international conference of specialists under the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the UN so that experts can objectively determine the consequences of using depleted uranium munitions for human life," said Sergeyev.
The United States has said its aircraft fired 31,000 DU rounds during the 1999 Kosovo campaign and that another 10,800 rounds were fired during 1994/5 in Bosnia, where many of those afflicted were stationed.
But Washington has repeatedly said there is no scientific evidence linking cancers to the use of the munitions, and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright suggested on Thursday that political agendas were behind the claims.
Norway and Finland joined a growing list of countries, including Italy and Germany, to call for a halt on using the munitions on Friday.
"We are ready to support a moratorium on the use of depleted uranium ammunition, if need be", Thorbjoern Jagland, foreign minister of Norway -- a NATO member -- told journalists at a press conference near Oslo.
Norway says an undisclosed number of its former Balkans peacekeepers are suffering from cancer, which some blame on the controversial rounds.
His Finnish counterpart Erkki Tuomioja was more forthright -- Finland is not a member of the alliance -- saying: "I am in favour of a complete halt in the use of depleted uranium ammunition in the future," according to the Danish news agency Ritzau.
Toumioja said he would support a declaration by German Defence Minister Rudolf Scharping calling for a moratorium on the armour-piercing rounds.
But NATO and the US did get some support from the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Geneva.
The WHO played down a possible link between leukemia and exposure to DU on Friday, but recommended the clean-up and cordoning off of targeted areas because of remaining uncertainties.
"It just seems unlikely for a number of reasons that leukemia would be the result of exposure to DU in the Balkans conflict," the WHO's coordinator for occupational and environmental health, Mike Repacholi, said.
But Repacholi acknowledged uncertainties remained on the effects of DU and that more research was needed.
Meanwhile in Bosnia, experts from Portugal arrived to carry out radiation checks at locations where Portuguese members of SFOR are based.
Five experts from the Portuguese Institute for Technology and Nuclear Power were to conduct tests at the base of the 300-strong Portuguese SFOR contingent in Visoko, near Sarajevo, and at their former base in Rogatica, about 50 kilometres (31 miles) east of Sarajevo, Lieutenant Miguel Larangeira of the Portuguese contingent told AFP.
The team had just finished conducting radiation checks in Kosovo where they found no trace of radioactive debris from DU-enhanced munitions, Larangeira said.
They will also take blood samples from the troops for analysis, he added.
Two Portuguese peacekeepers, seven Italians, five Belgians, four Dutch nationals, two Spaniards and a Czech have died from cancer after tours of duty in the Balkans, many from leukemia.
A member of the Italian Red Cross also died of leukemia after working in the Balkans.
Switzerland is investigating the leukemia death of one of its soldiers, as is Portugal. France has four cases of service personnel with leukemia, Greece has one, Denmark two and Norway an unspecified number.
---
Hundreds Died of Cancer After DU Bombing - Doctor
Reuters
January 13, 2001 Filed at 1:19 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/health/science-health-balkan.html
BELGRADE (Reuters) - A Yugoslav pathologist said on Saturday about 400 Bosnian Serbs from an area bombarded by NATO with depleted uranium shells in 1994 later died of various forms of cancer.
Doctor Zoran Stankovic, head of the Department of Forensic Medicine of the Yugoslav Military-Medical Academy in Belgrade, linked the deaths -- which totaled about 10 percent of the community -- to radioactive weapons.
Some of the victims had worn flak jackets made from shells with depleted uranium (DU), he told Reuters in an interview.
``Four hundred people died of various forms of cancer in the past five years. They were part of a community of some 4,000 Serbs from Hadzici (near Sarajevo) who moved to Bratunac north-east of Sarajevo,'' Stankovic said.
``The death pattern was easy to follow in an isolated population, particularly with an increased occurrence of malignant diseases and deaths,'' Stankovic, who performed some 4,000 autopsies, said.
Many of the Serbs from Hadzici had worked in a factory repairing tanks and armored vehicles that was heavily bombed by NATO in 1994. At the time, DU shells found on the ground were recycled and used to produce flack jackets.
``Some of these Serbs wore the jackets and died,'' Stankovic said.
He said no organized multi-disciplinary study had been launched to establish links between DU and health hazards. But he said he strongly felt the link existed.
DOUBTS DU IS HARMLESS
He was commenting on reports by experts from some Western countries that denied any link between radioactive weaponry and cancers after a renewed DU scare swept many European states whose soldiers serve in Kosovo, where NATO fired thousands of missiles containing the radioactive substance.
``If it is so harmless as some people say, I would like them to collect all the remainders of the DU shells, take them to a nice house somewhere in Brussels, store the shells in the cellar and have their children playing in the house,'' Stankovic said.
Cases of cancer have been reported among Italian, Belgian, French, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese soldiers who served a peacekeepers in Bosnia and Kosovo.
NATO faces a potential split over the long-lasting health impact of using the armor-piercing depleted uranium shells which critics blame for cancer among the troops.
Britain, NATO and the United States insist there is no evidence of a link between DU weapons and cases of leukemia among Italian soldiers. But Italy has demanded a probe into the deaths of at least seven of its soldiers from leukemia after duty in Bosnia and Kosovo.
Stankovic said DU munitions were inflicting physical and thermal damage on human beings, while exposure to their ionizing radiation was seen as affecting bone marrow and the reproductive tract and causing congenital anomalies.
Particles from DU explosions were contaminating the soil and underground waters, posing threat to plants and animals, he added.
UN MUST INVESTIGATE DU HAZARDS
``The Americans have studied effects of the Gulf war on their soldiers. Their study showed that 76 percent of their descendants were born with physical anomalies. Some were born with six fingers, some without an arm or a leg,'' he said.
Stankovic said the United Nations had to organize a study of possible links between DU weapons and health hazards, as the world organization was directly responsible for the use of the depleted uranium weapons. But the study should take time because an illness takes time to develop, he said.
``NATO will have to finance the research. NATO will have to pay for regular medical screening of the local population. If we want to help the people, they must be screened every six months. NATO must also send its experts to collect the leftover DU shells, because we don't need them,'' Stankovic said.
NATO says it had fired 31,000 shells containing DU during its 1999 three-month bombing of Yugoslavia to halt Belgrade's repression in Kosovo. Most hit Kosovo, southern Serbia and Montenegro.
The Yugoslav Army has so far reported no cases of cancer among its members who served in Kosovo during the air strikes. It says screening of 1,000 soldiers had negative results.
But Stankovic said the 1,000 soldiers represented less than one percent of some 150,000 troops deployed in Kosovo.
He also said he had received reports of two cases of eyeball cancers. ``These two soldiers had served in the area where thousands of shells fell. My question to international medical experts is how does the surface of the eye-ball reacts when exposed to the DU dust and does the dust causes the cancer.''
---
Environmental Woes in Kosovo
Associated Press
January 13, 2001 Filed at 12:35 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Toxic-Kosovo.html?pagewanted=all
LANDOVICA, Yugoslavia (AP) -- The boy wiggles through thick brambles and slides into the bomb crater. He comes often to this spot -- a wooded hollow among rolling hills of vineyards -- to explore the crumbled bunker or hunt for pieces of the Yugoslav tanks blasted in the NATO bombardment.
Nexhat Gashi has never heard of depleted-uranium ammunition. He shrugs when asked about radioactivity. He has no clue his special hide-out is part of a global uproar over possible health risks from the armor-busting shells used by U.S. forces during the 1999 airstrikes.
But the 14-year-old is certain about one thing. ``The whole environment of Kosovo is sick,'' he says while poking around the bomb site about 35 miles southwest of Pristina, the provincial capital. ``Why isn't anyone trying to fix that first?''
The question rings loudly across Kosovo.
Worries about possible links between illnesses and depleted uranium have sent a chill through the highest political and military levels of NATO nations. But many ethnic Albanians wonder why obvious ecological calamities in Kosovo -- with clear health consequences -- aren't getting the same attention.
It doesn't take a Geiger counter to measure Kosovo's ecological crisis. Winds carry lead dust. Untreated sewage spills onto village streets. Toxic metals leak from neglected factories. Raw waste pours into rivers, leaving some stretches totally lifeless.
Such scenes are not uncommon in the Balkans, but Kosovo suffers particularly. The Yugoslav government made few ecology-minded investments in its province after the majority ethnic Albanians began setting up their own rival administration more than a decade ago. The 78-day NATO attack added to the problems by striking at industrial targets.
``It's a catastrophe,'' said Bejtullah Bejtullahu, an environmental activist in Kosovska Mitrovica, considered one of the most polluted areas in Kosovo.
Lead levels in the city's air and water have reached up to 200 times higher than World Health Organization guidelines. NATO peacekeepers closed the giant Zvecan lead smelter in August, but lead residue is still carried by the breeze and works its way down to the water table and into the food chain.
French soldiers in the city are routinely tested for lead levels and those with elevated readings are moved out and advised against conceiving a baby for several months, U.N. officials said.
Another part of the idle industrial complex -- which produced fertilizers, batteries and high-quality zinc -- leaks dangerous substances such as cadmium, arsenic, nickel and sulfuric acid. A tank containing nearly 160,000 gallons of sulfuric acid ruptured in September, leaking its contents into the Sitnica River and killing tens of thousands of fish.
Near the Macedonian border, a cement plant churns out a fine white dust that sometimes comes down like snow flurries. Respiratory problems and tuberculosis are common. An adjacent facility making asbestos products -- a known carcinogen -- was only recently closed.
Makeshift landfills and random dumping dot Kosovo, allowing tainted runoff to reach rivers and water supplies. More than 75 percent of rural homes draw water from unprotected, shallow wells, the World Health Organization says. High levels of fecal contamination have led to a sharp rise in diseases such as hepatitis A.
With no real environmental enforcement, there are countless abuses. An old fuel storage tank leaked directly into a bog in the southwestern village of Suva Reka. A pile of dozens of old car batteries was tossed into a roadside ditch near the western city of Pec.
Outside Pristina, coal-burning power plants have left a mountain of black ash visible for miles. Strong winds can push the grains into Kosovo's largest city, mixing with exhaust from the many diesel generators and cars with few pollution controls.
``We call it the Pristina cough,'' said Daut Maloku, head of the environmentalist Green Party of Kosovo.
``We are living in a toxic place,'' he added. ``There are so many things here to make you ill: the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat ... Why are we so worried about only depleted uranium when we have so many more pressing problems?''
Yet each day brings more resources devoted to the uranium question.
WHO plans to assign a special investigation team and help coordinate a voluntary testing program for citizens. NATO forces have started placing warning signs at 112 known areas hit by uranium shells, which can punch through thick armor at supersonic speed and ignite in a deadly fireball.
Experts note there haven't been any in-depth studies of depleted uranium.
``A lump of (depleted uranium) sitting on the ground is not especially a problem. The big worry is if any of this material is ingested,'' said Dave Phillips, an environmental toxin specialist at the Institute of Cancer Research in London. ``There is just so much we don't know.''
Along the swatch of southwestern Kosovo where most of the 31,000 depleted uranium rounds fell, doctors have not reported any spike in cancer cases or other possible radiation-linked cases.
``It's fine to look closely at this, but I think they should look at the whole picture. Kosovo is an environmental tragedy,'' said Dr. Bashkim Meqa, director of the Isa Grezda Hospital in Djakovica.
``If we don't have clean water and clean air, what is the point in worrying about something that may or may not make you sick?''
But the environment is a low priority for U.N. overseers struggling with huge security and administrative matters. Just $1 million of the U.N.'s $250 million Kosovo budget is marked for environmental projects. More money may be sought from donor nations at a February conference in Brussels, Belgium.
``It's similar to any developing country where you have to pace the various issues ... to improve incrementally,'' said Gerald Fischer, one of the top U.N. civil administrators. ``I think the emphasis is on incremental.''
---
Fray in Europe Over Uranium Draws Doubters
New York Times
January 13, 2001
By GINA KOLATA
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/13/health/13URAN.html?pagewanted=all
A furor has been growing in Europe for weeks over contentions that some allied troops contracted leukemia from exposure to depleted uranium used in NATO ammunition in the Balkans, and that civilians were put at risk by military testing.
But physicists and medical experts say it is biologically impossible for depleted uranium to have caused the leukemia, and they doubt that the metal caused any illnesses in Europe.
If the uranium was causing leukemia, it would presumably do so by emitting radioactive particles that would damage the bone marrow.
But Dr. Frank von Hippel, a physicist who is a professor of public and international affairs at Princeton University, said depleted uranium was not much of a radioactivity hazard. It is what its name implies - depleted. It is what is left when the more highly radioactive uranium 235 has been removed from its more abundant atomic cousin, uranium 238.
Uranium 235 is used to fuel nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons. But uranium 238 "is very weakly radioactive," Dr. von Hippel said.
Even if one assumes that there is a ton of depleted uranium dust for every square kilometer in Kosovo, he said, its radiation would be just one one-hundredth, or 1 percent, of the naturally occurring level of radiation in the environment. "So this is not a very significant hazard," he said.
Moreover, uranium 238 emits alpha radiation, said Dr. Michael Thun, who directs epidemiological research for the American Cancer Society, and that radiation does not even penetrate the skin. The radiation that is known to cause leukemia, gamma rays and X-rays, passes through the body and reaches the marrow, damaging cells and giving rise to disease.
Uranium is a heavy metal, and as with all heavy metals it can be toxic. When it enters the body, it lodges in the kidney, which it can damage. But studies of a handful of gulf war soldiers who were hit by friendly fire and left with fragments of uranium 238 in their bodies have been reassuring, said Dr. Charles Phelps, the provost at the University of Rochester and a member of an Institute of Medicine committee that reported on the problem last year.
Uranium 238 clearly was leaching into the soldiers' kidneys, he said. "They had very high levels of uranium salts in their urine," Dr. Phelps said. "But there is no evidence of kidney disease."
Depleted uranium has long been used to strengthen weapons because it is extremely dense, 65 percent denser than lead. A weapon made with depleted uranium can penetrate even steel-armored tanks. It also ignites when it hits.
"When you fire into or through steel, it actually vaporizes the steel," said Dr. Bruce Kelman, a toxicologist who is a president of GlobalTox, a business in Seattle that studies industrial hygiene and toxicology for governments and industry. "You get a mist of depleted uranium and steel."
Dr. von Hippel said that although the metal was radioactive, "its half- life is 4.5 billion years, which is, by coincidence, the age of the solar system." That means that it would take 4.5 billion years for half the uranium 238 atoms in a chunk of the metal to decay by emitting radioactive particles.
Because the radiation does not go to the marrow, it is biologically impossible for depleted uranium to cause leukemia, said Dr. John Boice, scientific director of the International Epidemiology Institute, a research concern in Rockville, Md., and an expert on radiation and cancer.
"To get leukemia," Dr. Boice said, "you need to get the radiation to the bone marrow. And uranium 238 will not get to the bone marrow."
Dr. Bruce Boecker, a radiation biologist at the Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute in Albuquerque, said, "I don't think it causes leukemia at all."
If a person inhales uranium 238, it lodges in the lungs where, in theory at least, it might cause lung cancer or it might travel to the lymph nodes and theoretically cause lymphoma.
But Dr. Boice said extensive studies of workers who processed uranium, some exposed to high levels by breathing uranium dust, did not find any association between inhaling uranium 238 and developing lung cancer or lymphomas.
Lymphomas do not seem to be caused by radiation in any case, Dr. Boice said. But lung cancer can be, although the study of uranium workers did not find that.
"We would not have been surprised at these high levels to find a link with lung cancer," he said. "But there was none."
Dr. Thun of the cancer society said even though science might not support the idea that depleted uranium is causing health problems in Europe, that does not mean that scientists should turn their backs on the concern. People think they have leukemia because they were exposed to depleted uranium, and those fears will not easily go away.
"What I've been telling people," Dr. Thun said, "is that we need a systematic, open and prompt evaluation of the situation, which would involve determining the cases of leukemia, determining the age of the patients, the diagnosis, and the type of leukemia.
"In most cases, one of the major reasons for doing a systematic evaluation is to determine what is actually going on and to provide some real information, rather than rumors."
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Islanders little concerned with nuke bomb in harbor
Lincoln Journal Star
01/13/00
BY RUSS BYNUM The Associated Press
http://www.journalstar.com/nation?story_id=3108&date=20010113&past=
TYBEE ISLAND, Ga. - Lost beneath the shallow waters and sand off the Georgia coast lies a Cold War relic that lingered for decades, a 7,600-pound nuclear bomb dumped by a crippled Air Force plane.
Nearly 43 years later, questions raised by a former military pilot and a Georgia congressman have caused the government to consider renewing its search for the lost bomb near Tybee Island, 12 miles east of Savannah. The bomb is lost in Wassaw Sound, where the 1996 Olympic sailing competition was held.
The Air Force insists the bomb lacks a key plutonium capsule needed to cause a nuclear explosion, though it still contains radioactive uranium and the explosive power of 400 pounds of TNT.
"It's a nuclear bomb," insists Derek Duke, a former Air Force pilot who's been researching the case for two years. "It's like if I take the battery out of your car, then I try to convince you it's not a car.
"It needs to be found so it moves from the dark, scary realm of lost and unknown and we know where and how it is."
Air Force officials aren't so sure. After weighing the potential dangers of leaving the bomb against the cost of finding it, possibly $1 million or more, they plan to decide soon whether a new search is warranted.
Duke's own search has revived what had become a largely forgotten tale on Tybee Island, a beach community of 4,000 where rustic bungalows sit beside $500,000 homes.
In February 1958, a B-47 bomber on a training mission collided with a fighter jet near Savannah and had to drop the bomb to land safely. It was dumped on the south side of Tybee's uninhabited sister island, called Little Tybee. The military spent weeks searching for the sunken weapon, then gave up.
For residents who remembered, the bomb was ancient history by the time the Olympics came to town. Others had never heard the story, or discounted it as local myth.
But there's no guarantee the bomb could be found. Experts have warned the Air Force that tides and strong weather patterns over the years could have moved the bomb out to sea.
Kingston said he's willing to follow the Air Force's lead for now. But he'd like to see some effort, if only a small search covering just a few miles.
"Four hundred pounds of TNT to some folks isn't a big deal," he said. "But if it's your family and your boat that hits it, it is a big deal."
But an Air Force expert on nuclear weapons who has studied the Tybee Island bomb said damage from an accidental explosion would be minimal.
Officials believe the bomb sank at least five miles off the coast, beneath 20 feet of water and an additional 15 feet of sand and silt, said Maj. Don Robbins, deputy director of the Air Force Nuclear Weapons and Counter Proliferation Agency.
If it exploded, the bomb "would create maybe a 10-foot diameter hole and shock waves through the water of approximately 100 yards," Robbins said. "Even boats going over it would not even notice. They might see some bubbles coming out around them."
The amount of uranium in the bomb's casing is too low to cause a serious environmental threat, he said.
A month after the Tybee Island incident, in March 1958, a second B-47 dropped a similar bomb, without its nuclear payload, in Florence, S.C. The resulting explosion blasted a crater into the ground and injured six people.
Tybee Island residents, known to ride out hurricane warnings at the beachside bars, haven't been ruffled by the wayward bomb.
"It was all over the newspapers and the radio. But nobody worried about it," said City Councilman Jack Youmans, 75, who was living on the island when the bomb was dropped. "If it's there, then it's there. That's all."
Tybee Island Mayor Walter Parker said he hasn't received a single phone call from residents about the bomb. And John Mack Adams, an island retiree who writes about local history, hasn't heard much other than a friend's joke that their property values might plummet.
"A lot of the locals have lived here all their lives. They look at it kind of like a crap shoot," Adams said. "These folks don't scare too easily."
---
Nuclear Maintenance Program Plagued
Associated Press
January 13, 2001 Filed at 12:37 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Nuclear-Stockpile.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Management problems have plagued the program to maintain the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile, forcing a two-year delay and overruns of more than $300 million, congressional investigators say.
A report by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, says the problems threaten a planned expansion of the program that will cover much of the warhead stockpile. The Energy Department oversees the refurbishment program.
The Defense Programs Office at the Energy Department ``has a dysfunctional organization with unclear lines of authority that lead to a lack of accountability,'' the report said.
In the past, the office managed the design, tests and manufacture of new weapons. But it shrunk after the Cold War and now focuses on extending the life of existing nuclear weapons without explosive testing, which was banned in 1992.
The Peacekeeper missile called the W87 was the first to be refurbished, but all other weapons in the arsenal must be refurbished to remain safe and reliable. The W87 program experienced design and production problems that increased costs by more than $300 million, or 70 percent, and caused a two-year delay, the report said.
At fault was an ``inadequate'' management process and unclear leadership in oversight of the program, the report said.
In the Energy Department's response to the report, officials said they agreed with the findings and already tried to correct some of the problems identified, such as reorganizing its field office. The next warheads for the program are the W76 and W80.
A House Appropriations subcommittee requested the report over concerns that the program extends the life of nuclear weapons well beyond the intended time. Also, there was uncertainty about how much of the refurbishment could be supported with the program's annual budget of about $4.5 billion, the report said.
Much of the infrastructure in the nuclear weapons complex dates to the 1940s and 1950s, making it difficult and expensive to maintain. Also, reductions at the complex in the past decade have made it difficult to hire the necessary number of skilled technicians and scientists, the report said.
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Effort on Missile Upkeep Falters, Report Finds
New York Times
January 13, 2001
By JAMES GLANZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/13/politics/13MISS.html
A new report by the General Accounting Office says a program to refurbish and extend the life of the nation's aging nuclear warheads is behind its original schedule, 70 percent over budget and plagued by management difficulties.
Officials at the Energy Department, which runs the program, say that the problems have now largely been solved, but the main author of the report maintains that the disarray persists, threatening a planned expansion of the program.
The problems have appeared with efforts to assess and improve warheads on MX or Peacekeeper missiles, according to the report by the accounting office, the investigative arm of Congress. The MX warheads are the first to enter the program, but all of the weapons that will remain in the arsenal must eventually undergo the process, called life extension.
The effort is part of the stockpile stewardship program that supervises the condition of the nation's nuclear weapons, which were not originally expected to remain in use for long without being replaced. No new designs have entered the arsenal since the United States declared a moratorium on explosive nuclear testing in 1992.
The bureau with responsibility for stockpile stewardship, the Office of Defense Programs at the Energy Department is a "dysfunctional organization with unclear lines of authority that lead to a lack of accountability," leading to design and production problems, cost overruns and inadequate oversight in the life-extension program for the MX warhead, called the W87, the report said.
Next for the program are nuclear warheads carried on submarine- launched Trident missiles and on air- launched cruise missiles.
"Our concern is, `Are you going to manage those better than you managed the last one?' " said James Noël, an assistant director of the accounting office and the principal author of the report. "And if you don't, the stakes are obviously higher - a lot greater portion of the stockpile and a lot more money involved."
Started in 1994 at an estimated cost of $440 million, the program fell two years behind schedule and is now expected to cost $750 million.
Last year, the National Nuclear Security Administration began operation within the Energy Department, in hopes of streamlining control of nuclear weapons programs and increasing accountability. The Office of Defense Programs now falls within the agency.
Madelyn Creedon, who has headed defense programs office since July, conceded that the program had suffered delays, but she strongly disagreed with criticisms of her office, saying: "When I came in July I did not see that. I did not see a dysfunctional office."
In addition, Ms. Creedon said, "we feel much better about this program now than we did six months ago and certainly better than when G.A.O. did the bulk of its work."
Dr. Billy Mullins, director of the Air Force's nuclear weapons and counterproliferation agency, also said that he believed the management of the program had improved in the past year and that many of the problems arose simply because several nuclear production plants involved in the refurbishment had been temporarily shut down, and starting them up again had been difficult.
Those plants include the Y-12 plant in Oak Ridge, Tenn., dealing with classified work involving nuclear components.
"Any time you put a plant in standby and you're not actually exercising, like a muscle it atrophies," Dr. Mullins said. "It atrophied more than folks really thought it had."
He added that "given all the hiccups we had, we're pretty much on track."
In fact, the report, which took two years and was originally requested by the energy and water subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, said that the W87 program, though delayed, was now keeping to a revised schedule and had begun swapping refurbished warheads onto the MX missiles.
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The Expansive Agenda at Defense
New York Times
January 13, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/13/opinion/13SAT1.html
Donald Rumsfeld has ambitious goals for the Pentagon and seems to be counting on large infusions of money to achieve them once he becomes secretary of defense. At his confirmation hearing on Thursday he promised to buy futuristic weapons, defend the country against computer terrorism and other unconventional forms of attack, increase military pay, enhance readiness and build a robust missile defense. This week a commission that Mr. Rumsfeld headed also called for expanded efforts to reduce the vulnerability of America's military, communications and reconnaissance satellites.
The defense budget is already nearly $310 billion a year, with hefty increases planned in the years ahead. How much more Mr. Rumsfeld and President-elect George W. Bush hope to add is unclear. But the Treasury is not inexhaustible, and the new administration must turn its ambitions into a realistic, financially responsible plan.
Once the nation's defense requirements have been carefully established, the cost of needed new weapons can be offset by the cancellation of redundant programs like the F-22 fighter and by slashing spending on military projects never requested by the Pentagon but mandated by Congress. Additional money can be freed for improvements in pay, housing and anti-terrorist protection by closing obsolete military bases.
The most problematic item on Mr. Rumsfeld's agenda is missile defense. Though he recognizes that a reliable technology for intercepting incoming warheads has yet to be perfected, he seems determined to press ahead with the development of a system that could cost as much as $100 billion over the next 20 years. He also plays down the potential diplomatic consequences of constructing a missile shield at this point, including possible new arms buildups by Russia and China and severe strains with America's NATO allies.
In his testimony Mr. Rumsfeld cavalierly dismissed the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty with Russia as "ancient history," suggesting that he saw no need to amend it or abide by it. But the ABM treaty remains a cornerstone of international nuclear arms control. European allies are alarmed at the idea that Washington would simply withdraw from it. He seems not to realize that they might be troubled enough to refuse to let their territory be used for elements of an American missile shield built in violation of the ABM agreement.
Mr. Rumsfeld, though clearly committed to building a missile defense system, promised that the Pentagon would first conduct a full review of existing plans and programs. Congress should hold him to that pledge. It should also demand a rigorous evaluation of available technology and a review of the diplomatic risks and how they might be minimized. It is not uncommon for new administrations to talk about revamping the nation's military forces and building exotic new weapons systems, but even in an age of budget surpluses there is a limit to what can be done.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- california
California seeks power deal
USA Today
01/13/01- Updated 11:28 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/nlead.htm
LOS ANGELES (AP) - A live satellite hookup linking both coasts had state and federal officials negotiating with utility company chiefs Saturday on a deal that could make California a long-term electricity broker. A state agency already has spent roughly $30 million buying electricity in the past month to stave off rolling blackouts during the California power crisis. Officials want the state to expand and continue wholesale electricity buys, selling the power to utility companies, said Steve Maviglio, a spokesman for Gov. Gray Davis.
It was expected that the meeting, which remained underway in Los Angeles and in Washington D.C. late Saturday afternoon, would lead to further negotiations over the next two days, said Gene Sperling, President Clinton's top economic adviser.
''I don't think any of us expect to get to the finish line tonight,'' Sperling said. ''I think we can still make some more progress.''
The California Department of Water Resources made the earlier emergency power purchases, including about 24,000 megawatt hours of electricity on Thursday and Friday, Carl Torgersen, the department's chief of utility operations, said Saturday. The department acted under authority of emergency orders by U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson.
''(This) is something we've never done before,'' Torgersen said. ''We're in a new era with deregulation.''
Wholesale power prices have increased fivefold in California since last summer, accompanied by a series of drops in the state's power reserves in part because power plants are shut for maintenance.
On Thursday, power reserves in California dipped below 2% after a storm cut production at a key nuclear station.
The Independent System Operator, which manages most of the state's power grid, said electricity supplies had rebounded but were still tight.
Davis and Govs. John Kitzhaber of Oregon and Gary Locke of Washington said Friday that they would urge their residents to cut electricity demand 7 to 10%, try to reduce power use by their state governments by at least 10%, and look into joining forces to buy energy-efficient products for state and local agencies to get through the crisis.
Davis and California's two largest investor-owned utilities have pointed fingers at energy wholesalers, saying they have exacerbated the crisis by taking advantage of the tight supplies for their own profit.
Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and Southern California Edison, both electricity retailers, say they have lost more than $9 billion because of wholesale price increases and the state's 1996 deregulation law that froze rate hikes. The utilities, which won permission to raise rates, said the temporary increases approved by the Public Utilities Commission weren't enough and have warned they could go bankrupt if something isn't done.
Davis, Kitzhaber and Locke said in a written statement that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission should impose immediate wholesale price controls.
''The federal government must take up its responsibility to prevent the chaos that threatens to engulf the entire western electricity system,'' the governors said.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said she would propose legislation to give the U.S. energy secretary authority to cap skyrocketing wholesale electricity prices in 11 western states. It would let the secretary impose a temporary wholesale price cap if there is ''unjust pricing'' and would remain in effect until prices stabilized, said Howard Gantman, the senator's spokesman.
About 30 officials, including Davis, key members of the state Legislature, the head of the state's Public Utilities Commission and utility representatives, gathered at the Ronald Reagan Building in downtown Los Angeles to confer with counterparts on the other side of the country.
Linked from Washington were Sperling, Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, James Hoecker of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Deputy Energy Secretary T.J. Glauthier and officials from power companies.
-------- new york
Nuclear Plant Was Restarted Too Fast
Sat, 13 Jan 2001 09:13:04 -0500
By MATTHEW L. WALD
Apparently feeling pressured by supervisors to reopen the Indian Point 2 nuclear reactor after 10 months of repairs, control room operators moved too fast to restart the plant last week, making the reactor harder to monitor and control, according to an internal report by Consolidated Edison.
The haste led to mistakes that have delayed the reactor's return to full power. Con Edison officials have held output at 30 percent of power until they straighten out the problems at the plant, 35 miles north of Manhattan in Buchanan, N.Y.
The report said the errors on Jan. 2 did not create an unsafe situation and did not violate any government rules. But it said operators piled mistake on mistake, and should have reported the problem to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission within four hours. They took seven hours to recognize that reporting was required.
A copy of the report, which the company began distributing to elected officials yesterday, was given to The New York Times by Critical Mass, a private group that monitors nuclear plant performance.
It said the plant's operators might have felt rushed because of pressure from supervisors to get the reactor back on line for the first time since February, when it was closed after a radioactive leak in a steam generator caused the worst accident in the plant's 26-year history.
"Pressure to perform while restoring the unit to service may have led operators to reduce their questioning attitude and make them more willing to accept less-than-adequate plant conditions during start up," said the report, which was signed by five company managers.
According to the report, one operator wanted to pause to review procedures before the process started; instead, managers replaced him with a more experienced operator and kept going. The errors, the report said, put the plant in "a condition that may degrade the ability of the operators to monitor and control reactivity" - the rate of the nuclear chain reaction, that is.
Con Edison has a contract to sell the reactor to Entergy Nuclear of Jackson, Miss., but the utility has to get it running first. The report said operators had sensed that one of their supervisors showed frustration with the pace of work.
Company officials had said before the start-up that the pace of operations would be deliberate and prudent, and they repeated that message yesterday. The officials said that managers were briefed yesterday on the proper attitude toward the work, and that workers would be briefed today, covering nearly all the 800 people at the site.
"We're unhappy," said Steven E. Quinn, a vice president of Con Edison. Operators should have been better prepared before starting the plant, he said, and should have waited longer after the first problem of the restart process appeared before trying to keep going and incurring another error. "Did we violate a law? I don't know that we found any violations here per se," he said. But the events "show us we haven't effectively communicated our expectations in regard to how we operate the plant, with regard to excellent operations," he said.
Mr. Quinn said excellent operation was "what our citizens demand and require, and that's what we've got to do."
Two leaks of radioactivity occurred during the restart process, but they are unrelated to the procedural problems discussed in the report.
The problem began as operators tried to match the supply of cooling water with the rising rate of heat production in the core, a process that engineers say is often tricky. The operators miscalculated and pumped in too much water, which then swelled as it was heated. When the level got too high in a part called a steam generator, it triggered the automatic shutdown of the turbine, which converts steam to mechanical energy.
With the turbine shut, operators had to reduce heat production in the reactor to a level that other cooling systems could handle, but they reduced it too much.
A more serious error came a few moments later, when the operators thought the temperature in the reactor was falling too low. To compensate and increase the nuclear reaction in the core, they partially removed control rods - the long metal blades that absorb neutrons and thereby choke off a chain reaction.
Withdrawing the rods makes the reactor produce more heat, like opening a damper on a furnace. But the reactor also runs faster when the water is cooler, because neutrons flowing through cooler water are more apt to continue the chain reaction than neutrons running through hotter water. Thus the operators were adding reactivity by two means at once, which is considered bad practice in the industry, the report noted.
At the Nuclear Regulatory Commission regional headquarters in King of Prussia, Pa., Brian E. Holian, deputy director of the division of reactor safety, said yesterday that by investigating the problem and making its findings public, Con Ed was doing what the agency had been pushing it to do.
Withdrawing the rods while the reactor was cooling violated Con Ed's operating procedures, he said. But he said the utility had volunteered that it had failed to report the incident within four hours and was unlikely to face a fine as a result.
Indian Point 2 had been closed since February, when a leak in a steam generator caused a release of radioactivity that officials said was no threat to public health.
Last week, as technicians restarted the plant, two minor leaks started, one of which appeared to be dripping a small amount of radioactive water into a containment tank. Federal regulators and the utility said such leaks were common and caused no safety or environmental problems.
But Andrew J. Spano, the Westchester County executive, and Senator Charles E. Schumer criticized Con Edison and the commission for not providing county officials and the public with a full, timely accounting of the new leaks. They said the restart should be delayed until the plan can be inspected by an independent panel of industry experts and local officials.
Yesterday, Representative Sue Kelly, a Republican whose district includes the plant site, said in a statement that "a keep-the-plant-running- at-all-costs mentality seems to have taken hold at the highest levels of Con Edison and clearly puts undue pressure on workers."
At Critical Mass, Jim Riccio, a spokesman, complained, "They're more concerned with starting the reactor than with doing it safely."
-------- MILITARY
-------- iraq
Iraq Calls U.S. Claim a "Lie"
Reuters
January 13, 2001 Filed at 8:34 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/iraq-usa-pilot.html
BAGHDAD, Jan 13 (Reuters) - Iraq on Saturday dismissed as a ``lie'' fresh U.S. claims that a fighter pilot shot down over Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War might still be alive.
``It is a new and cheap American lie,'' an Iraqi Ministry of Culture and Information spokesman said. ``When the Iraqi Foreign Ministry reveals documents related to the subject, this lie will be an American scandal,'' the spokesman said in a statement carried by the official Iraqi News Agency.
However, the spokesman did not say when documents on the pilot would be made public.
In an unusual step, the U.S. Navy has decided to change the status of Lt. Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher, who was shot down over Iraq early in the 1991 Gulf War, from ``killed in action'' to ``missing in action'' because of what it says is evidence that he may have survived the crash.
Speicher became the first American lost on the first day of the air war when his Navy F-18 attack jet was apparently hit and crashed in a fireball during a battle with Iraqi jets on January 17, 1991.
``We do not have hard evidence that he is alive,'' Clinton told reporters at the White House. ``We have some evidence that what had been assumed to be the evidence that he is lost in action is not so.''
``And we're going to do our best to find out if he is alive and if he is, to get him out because as a uniformed serviceman he should have been released if he is alive.''
The Iraqi spokesman said: ``What has been said by Clinton is only mere lie.
``The American president did not want to leave his post before adding a new lie to his record of lies towards Iraq,'' the spokesman said.
``It seems that the American president who is preparing his bags to leave the black (White) House is feeling frustrated and disappointed because he was unable to confront Iraq,'' he said.
``The new lie means nothing but Clinton's bankruptcy in his policy towards Iraq,'' he added.
The State Department said on Thursday the United States has written to the Iraqi government demanding an explanation of what happened to the pilot.
Although no wreckage was initially found, defence officials said Pentagon documents showed U.S. spy satellites more than three years later detected what was described as a man-made symbol at the crash scene. They declined to give details.
Although most of the information in the case is classified, officials said a flight suit that could have been Speicher's was more recently found lying on the surface of the desert.
In 1990, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein ordered an invasion of neighbouring Kuwait, triggering the Gulf War in which the United States led an allied force against Iraq.
-------- u.s.
Iraq Rejects Reports US Pilot Lived
Associated Press
January 13, 2001 Filed at 1:07 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq-Gulf-War-MIA.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Iraq said Saturday there was no truth to reports that a missing U.S. Navy pilot might have survived after being shot down during the Gulf War, calling the idea a ``silly lie.''
Iraq's Information Ministry said it would soon release documents concerning Lt. Cmdr. Michael S. Speicher, whose jet was hit on the first night of the Gulf War in 1991. The ministry did not say what information the documents contain.
U.S. intelligence officials in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Friday there have been unconfirmed reports in recent years that Speicher survived the downing of his plane and was seen afterward in Iraqi custody.
``This silly lie represents the bankruptcy of (President) Clinton,'' the Iraqi Information Ministry said in a statement on the state-run Iraqi News Agency.
Clinton cautioned that he didn't want to raise false hopes, but said the United States was ``going to do our best to find out if he is alive and, if he is, to get him out.''
The U.S. government sent a diplomatic communication to Baghdad on Wednesday demanding an accounting, U.S. officials said.
Speicher is the only American lost in Iraqi territory who has not been accounted for. After the war, the Iraqi government turned over remains it said were Speicher's, but DNA analysis and blood testing showed they were not his.
The U.S. officials said more than one informant had reported to U.S. intelligence agencies that an American thought to be Speicher was being held prisoner in Iraq after the war ended.
The reports were received over a period of several years but the sightings were in 1991 and 1992, the officials said. The veracity of the reports was uncertain, but they are credible enough to lead American government officials to think Speicher probably survived the crash.
Speicher, of Jacksonville, Fla., flew his F-18 Hornet off the carrier USS Saratoga on the opening night of the war in January 1991, and went down west of Baghdad. He apparently was attacked by an Iraqi MiG-25 fighter.
Another American pilot who saw the jet explode in the air reported that it was hit by an air-to-air missile and that he did not see Speicher eject. A combat search and rescue mission was planned but not executed, and the crash site was not found until 1994.
Shortly after then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney told reporters on the night of the shootdown that Speicher had died in the crash, the Pentagon declared him ``missing in action.'' In May 1991, the Navy approved a ``finding of death,'' in the absence of evidence that he had survived, and he was switched to ``killed in action.'' The KIA status was reaffirmed by the Navy in 1996.
The Navy told Speicher's family on Wednesday that it was changing his status to ``missing in action.'' On Thursday, the Navy said ``additional information and analysis'' led Navy Secretary Richard Danzig to reverse earlier determinations that Speicher had died.
---
Reports Say Navy Pilot Was Alive
Associated Press
January 13, 2001 Filed at 1:15 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Gulf-War-MIA.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A U.S. Navy pilot initially presumed to have died in a shootdown over Iraq during the Persian Gulf War in 1991 was seen alive in Iraqi custody afterward, according to unconfirmed reports reaching intelligence officials in recent years.
The officials, speaking Friday on condition of anonymity, stressed that they knew of no evidence that Lt. Cmdr. Michael S. Speicher was still alive, although President Clinton said ``we're going to do our best to find out if he is alive and, if he is, to get him out.''
Clinton said he did not want to raise false hope.
``We do not have hard evidence that he is alive,'' the president said.
The Defense Department declared initially that Speicher died in the shootdown. Another American pilot who saw Speicher's F-18 Hornet jet explode in the air reported that it was hit by an air-to-air missile and that he did not see Speicher eject. A combat search and rescue mission was planned but not executed, and the crash site was not found until after the war.
Shortly after then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney told reporters on the night of the shootdown that Speicher had died in the crash, the Pentagon declared him to be ``missing in action.'' In May 1991, the Navy approved a ``finding of death,'' in the absence of evidence that he had survived, and he was switched to ``killed in action.''
The KIA status was reaffirmed by the Navy in 1996.
The U.S. officials said more than one informant had reported to U.S. intelligence agencies that an American thought to be Speicher was being held prisoner in Iraq after the war ended in March 1991. The reports were received over a period of several years but the sightings were in 1991 and 1992, the officials said. The veracity of the reports is uncertain, but they are credible enough to lead American government officials to think Speicher probably survived the Jan. 16, 1991, crash.
The Clinton administration on Wednesday sent a diplomatic communication to Baghdad demanding an accounting, officials said.
Clinton commented on the Speicher case Thursday, after the Navy announced that Navy Secretary Richard Danzig changed the Navy pilot's status from ``killed in action'' to ``missing in action,'' based on unspecified ``additional information and analysis.''
``We have some information that leads us to believe that he might be alive and we hope and pray he is,'' Clinton said in an interview with CBS. ``But we have already begun working to try to determine whether, in fact, he's alive; if he is, where he is and how we can get him out and we're going to do everything we can to get him out.''
Clinton's comments went beyond the brief Navy statement, and on Friday the president sought to dampen expectations.
``I agreed with the decision to take his name off the killed-in-action list and put it on the missing-in-action list,'' Clinton said from the White House. ``I think it was the right decision, but I don't want to raise false hopes here.''
The U.S. intelligence informants whose sightings correlate with Speicher did not refer to him by name, the officials said. They described an American, and in more than one case referred to an American military pilot or U.S. Navy pilot. Other aspects of the physical descriptions seemed to fit Speicher, the officials said.
Speicher is the only American lost in Iraqi territory who has not been accounted for. After the war, the Iraqi government turned over remains that it said were Speicher's, but DNA analysis and blood testing showed it was not him.
Speicher, of Jacksonville, Fla., flew his F-18 off the carrier USS Saratoga on the opening night of the war and went down west of Baghdad. He apparently was attacked by an Iraqi MiG-25 fighter. His crash site was not located until April 1994.
In December 1995 an International Committee of the Red Cross team excavated the crash site with Iraq's permission. Wreckage from Speicher's aircraft was found and the team reported that there had been previous digging at the site.
-------- OTHER
'13 Days' Ads Nixed for Inaccuracies
Associated Press
January 13, 2001 Filed at 10:46 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Movie-Ad-Pulled.html
NEW YORK (AP) -- The makers of a film described as dead-on accurate and a ``by-the-numbers recreation'' of the days surrounding the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 were not as precise when it came to the print advertisements for the movie.
New Line Cinemas, which is distributing the Kevin Costner vehicle, ``Thirteen Days,'' is pulling a two-page ad that ran in some newspapers, because the collage-like images include military equipment that did not exist at the time of the missile crisis, The New York Times reported Saturday.
The advertisements -- which will be taken out of papers including the Times and The Los Angeles Times -- feature a Spruance-class destroyer and F-15 fighter jets, equipment not built until well after 1962.
A spokesman for New Line said that all equipment featured in the film is ``absolutely authentic to the time period,'' but that the ad had been created by an outside agency.
The advertisement appears as a photomontage, with still images from the movie arranged around a hazy, airbrushed image of the Spruance-class destroyer floating next to the capped dome of Congress.
Above that is an image of three aviators in flight suits walking away from a pair of parked F-15's.
The first F-15's flew in 1972 and the first Spruance destroyers appeared sometime later in the mid-1970s.
-------- environment
Norton Record Often at Odds With Laws She Would Enforce
New York Times
January 13, 2001
By DOUGLAS JEHL
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/13/politics/13NORT.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, Jan. 12 - Gale A. Norton, President-elect George W. Bush's designee as interior secretary, has repeatedly challenged some of the laws that she would be obligated to enforce.
A review of Ms. Norton's record, including documents released today by major environmental groups, shows that she has drafted a number of legal opinions opposing provisions of the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Protection Act and other laws she would oversee, if she is confirmed.
Ms. Norton, who is 46 and a former attorney general of Colorado, has criticized environmental laws that she says have given too big a hand to the federal government and paid too little regard to the rights of private- property owners.
As Colorado's attorney general until 1999, Ms. Norton declined to defend the state in a lawsuit challenging a minority-preference rule for highway contracts, a rule that she said she could not support.
A spokeswoman for President- elect George W. Bush defended Ms. Norton today as "an environmentalist" who looked forward to "setting the record straight" in Senate confirmation hearings that begin next week. She said Ms. Norton's past positions would not conflict with her task of carrying out her designated new responsibilities.
"Obviously, as the secretary of interior, she would follow the law in every case," the spokeswoman, Jeanie Mamo, said.
By contrast, Greg Wetstone, the national program director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, described Ms. Norton as someone who "in her official capacity has declined to endorse high-profile laws with which she disagrees."
"I think that makes it very hard to suggest that now that she's a nominee, she's a new person," Mr. Wetstone said.
In recent days, Mr. Bush has strongly defended Ms. Norton, calling on her opponents - as well as those of John Ashcroft, his pick as attorney general - to tone down their opposition to her nomination. Ms. Norton has not responded directly, saying through spokesmen that she intends to address her record directly during next week's confirmation hearings.
She has long been a critic of federal regulations affecting public lands, and the challenges she has raised to existing environmental laws have been consistent with that ideological and professional record.
Even so, the opposition to Ms. Norton's nomination widened today as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People joined major environmental groups in describing her as unfit for the job.
In a statement, the group focused on comments Ms. Norton made in a 1996 speech that described the cause of states' rights as having suffered a grievous blow with the defeat of the cause of the Confederacy in the Civil War. Ms. Norton did not express any support of the Southerners' cause, but her remarks were described by the NAACP's leader, Julian Bond, as a sign of "a wanton insensitivity toward slavery and its descendants."
At his news conference on Thursday, President-elect Bush defended Ms. Norton, and said criticism of these statements was a "ridiculous interpretation of what's in her heart."
Among criticism voiced by opponents to the nomination today had to do with Ms. Norton's current role as a registered lobbyist for NL Industries, formerly known as the National Lead Company, a major manufacturer of lead-based paints. The company is a defendant in scores of lawsuits, including some in New York, involving toxic waste sites currently or formerly in use.
Among other recent duties, Ms. Norton - who joined a Denver law firm after leaving office as attorney general in 1999 - has worked for the state government of Alaska in challenging a fisheries law enforced by the Interior Department. In that capacity, she has worked closely with the Mountain States Legal Foundation, the conservative Denver-based advocacy group where she began her legal career in 1978.
The organization was founded in 1977 by James G. Watt, who later became President Ronald Reagan's first interior secretary but who resigned under controversy in 1983. In 1978, Mr. Watt hired Ms. Norton as a young lawyer for the organization, and he later helped her find her first work in Washington, first as an assistant to the deputy secretary of agriculture and later as an associate solicitor at the Interior Department.
The Mountain States group was formed with money provided by the Coors brewing family as a way for conservatives to press their cause in public policy and in the courts. Although Ms. Norton has not worked for the group since 1983, records show that she has worked closely with its members as recently as 1999.
In the Alaska case, Ms. Norton has joined with Mountain States in a federal lawsuit trying to overturn the Interior Department's oversight of fishing in the state. Records obtained by the Associated Press show that Ms. Norton was paid more than $60,000 last year to help draft a brief that has been written in large part by the Mountain States Organization.
The documents cited in criticism of Ms. Norton were released today in a compilation by the Natural Resources Defense Council, among others.
The groups, including the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters, held a news conference in Washington today to announce their opposition to Ms. Norton's nomination.
Over the years, Ms. Norton's other challenges to current environmental laws have included assertions that the Surface Mining Act and the Endangered Species Act are unconstitutional. Ms. Norton was also a strong advocate of a "self-audit" Colorado law that allowed businesses to police their own environmental conduct. The law was opposed as ineffective by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
In stepping aside from a high-profile case in the past, Ms. Norton told the governor at the time, Roy Romer, a Democrat, that she would be unable to represent the state in a 1997 suit brought by Adarand Constructors of Colorado Springs, Colo. That suit challenged Colorado's support of a law setting aside some highway contracts for businesses headed by members of minority racial groups, a provision that Ms. Norton has opposed as unfair.
---
Crippling the Clean Water Act
New York Times
January 13, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/13/opinion/13SAT2.html
Ruling in an important environmental case this week, the Supreme Court severely and arbitrarily narrowed the scope of federal clean water protection by overturning a time-honored rule aimed at protecting isolated wetlands. The troubling 5-to-4 decision will make it harder to stem the loss of wetlands that act as natural filters for drinking water, help control floods and provide critical habitat for wildlife.
The case involved a decision by the Army Corps of Engineers to deny a permit to a consortium of local governments in Illinois that sought to build a landfill at a site dotted with dozens of isolated ponds that serve as habitat for more than 100 species of migratory birds. No one challenged the Corps's findings about the potential environmental hazards posed by the landfill, both for migratory birds and local drinking water supplies. Instead the local townships argued that because the ponds were isolated, the Corps's invocation of the so-called migratory bird rule to assert jurisdiction under the 1972 Clean Water Act was improper.
The court based its decision on an interpretation of Congressional intent. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice William Rehnquist expressed concern about impinging on "the states' traditional and primary power over land and water use." Then, fixating on language in the act granting the federal government authority over "navigable waters," he concluded that the legislation lacked an adequately "clear statement" granting the Corps authority over the non-navigable waters in the case.
But that "miserly" reading of the Clean Water Act, as Justice John Paul Stevens aptly noted for the dissenters, failed to give adequate deference to agency expertise. It also dismissed wording elsewhere in the statute, as well as the act's voluminous legislative history and decades of judicial interpretation, evincing Congress's intention to comprehensively protect all U.S. waters and wetlands, whether "navigable" or not.
The result could have been worse. By deciding the case on statutory grounds the court avoided, at least for now, the lurking constitutional issue of whether regulating wetlands located in just one state exceeds Congress's Commerce Clause power. But that is the best that can be said of a decision in which the court not only substituted its statutory interpretation for a federal agency's but, in effect, also rewrote the statute itself.
-------- imf/world bank
THE AMERICAS
ECUADOR: FUEL RISE OVERTURNED
New York Times
January 13, 2001
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/13/world/13BRIE.html?pagewanted=all
Responding to appeals by citizens' groups, a judge has overturned a price increase of 25 percent or more for gasoline and other fuels announced by the government, saying the increase is unconstitutional. The action followed more than a week of sometimes violent protests by students and labor unions against the increase, which the government says is necessary to comply with the terms of a credit package from the International Monetary Fund. Larry Rohter (NYT)
-------- police
Strip searches prompt transferals
USA Today
01/13/01- Updated 12:43 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/ndssat02.htm
YAPHANK, N.Y. (AP) - A police department under fire over allegations that one officer forced women stopped for traffic violations to strip off their clothes has transferred four supervisors out of the officer's agency.
The supervisors were not linked to the allegations against officer Frank Wright, but were transferred to send a message that supervisors are responsible for their subordinates' actions, Suffolk County Police Commissioner John Gallagher said in Saturday's editions of Newsday.
Wright is accused of pulling four women over for alcohol tests and then ordering them to remove their clothes or open their shirts.
The women said that in return for removing their clothes, they were not charged with drunken driving.
Wright was suspended without pay and prosecutors plan to present the case to a grand jury.
Gallagher ordered a captain, two lieutenants and a sergeant moved out of the Long Island county's highway patrol bureau.
''As commanders, I expect them to be held accountable. I am disappointed in the accountability level that was going on in that bureau,'' he said.
---
Sheriff's Downfall Cheered by Bergen County Officers
New York Times
January 13, 2001
By ROBERT HANLEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/13/nyregion/13SHER.html
HACKENSACK, N.J., Jan. 12 - Many rank-and-file officers of the Bergen County Sheriff's Department were elated today with the criminal conviction and ouster of their boss, Sheriff Joseph L. Ciccone, after a seven-month corruption investigation, union officials said.
"The morale, as of this morning, was upbeat," said Lewis Morrell, the president of Local 134 of the Police Benevolent Association, which represents about three-quarters of the 445 members of the department. "People are very happy. There's a light shining on us this morning."
Mr. Ciccone, 39, pleaded guilty in State Superior Court on Thursday to charges that he had improperly collected more than $200,000 in campaign contributions from members of his staff and sold "honorary special deputy" badges to contributors. As part of a plea agreement, prosecutors recommended probation rather than jail. But by law, Mr. Ciccone was forced to leave the office he has held for two years.
Mr. Morrell, a corrections officer at the Bergen County Jail, said today that Mr. Ciccone played favorites on his staff and rankled unionized officers so much that they issued a vote of no confidence in him last August.
"The people that backed the union suffered the most," Mr. Morrell said of Mr. Ciccone's response to the vote.
The day after the no-confidence vote, Mr. Morrell said, Mr. Ciccone eliminated five guard posts at the jail, a move Mr. Morrell said had put guards at risk by cutting the number available to respond to disturbances. "It was retaliation for the vote," Mr. Morrell said.
Mr. Ciccone could not be reached today for comment. In the past, he has dismissed his opponents in Local 134 as politically motivated and angry that he cut "exorbitant overtime practices" and reduced the department's budget by $1.3 million. After the no-confidence vote, he said the union was trying to intimidate him because he was a strict disciplinarian.
Three weeks ago, Mr. Ciccone said he had enhanced "professionalism" in the department through discipline, adding "a tough boss is not frequently a popular boss."
Mr. Morrell and the union vice president, Bob Albanese, appeared at a news conference today with the Bergen County executive, William Schuber, who said he hoped Mr. Ciccone's ouster would end divisiveness in the department.
His sentiments echoed those of the state and county prosecutors who led the investigation that resulted in Mr. Ciccone's guilty plea to two criminal charges of illegal fund-raising and agreement to surrender $226,000 in campaign funds. Lucia Van Wetering, an assistant Bergen County prosecutor, said officials hoped his departure would "heal a great rift" in the department.
Mr. Schuber said today that the working environment during Mr. Ciccone's two-year tenure had been turbulent. He also said he now had the "fullest confidence" in the department, including Mr. Ciccone's successor, Undersheriff Gordon Johnson, a former police sergeant in Englewood, N.J.
Mr. Schuber also said he was satisfied that more than 90 percent of department employees were not involved in the illegal fund-raising schemes that led to Mr. Ciccone's plea and downfall.
"It's a new day," Mr. Schuber said, adding that a "long nightmare" has ended for jail guards and the officers who work in county courtrooms.
Mr. Schuber said it was unconscionable that Mr. Ciccone had used county taxpayers' money to buy special-deputy badges that he sold for political purposes. Officials have said that 454 of the badges had been sold to contributors for $250 to $1,500. It is illegal for law enforcement officials to sell such badges and, likewise, for civilians to buy them, officials said.
Prosecutors have said they were worried the badges, which are authentic-looking replicas of regular badges, were circulating within the general public. Officials said someone with one of the badges could seek leniency by showing it to a police officer if stopped for a traffic violation. Worse, they said, a badge-holder could try to impersonate a law enforcement officer.
That is what happened at Kennedy Airport on Dec. 7, officials said. A 37- year-old Lodi, N.J., man carrying a handgun tried to get through a metal- detector by flashing one of the Bergen County badges and telling workers he was a police officer. The workers challenged him and called an officer from the Port Authority police, who arrested the man on charges of criminal impersonation and false reporting, officials said.
Anthony J. Zarrillo, deputy director of the state's division of criminal justice, said the authorities were considering steps to retrieve the badges. He said detectives have the names of contributors who paid for the badges, but not their addresses. Efforts would be made, he said, to locate them. Officials, he added, do not plan to file criminal charges against the badge holders.
-------- terrorism
U.S. to Offer Detailed Trail of bin Laden in Bomb Trial
New York Times
January 13, 2001
By BENJAMIN WEISER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/13/nyregion/13TERR.html?pagewanted=all
By the late spring of 1996, American intelligence learned that a group of Muslim extremists bent on Holy War against the United States had established a base in Nairobi, Kenya, the government says. The authorities believed that the operatives were tied to Osama bin Laden, the Saudi exile in Afghanistan suspected of terrorism against Americans abroad.
Moving quickly, and with considerable success, American intelligence officials say, they began to monitor what they considered to be Mr. bin Laden's cell in Nairobi.
They say they intercepted conversations on five telephones the men used, including one cellular phone that the group reserved for conversations with Mr. bin Laden himself. American agents searched a house and office the group used in Nairobi, examining computer files and retrieving one computer file that they say implicated a bin Laden group from Kenya in the ambush killings of American troops in Somalia in 1993.
The agents interrogated the suspected leader of the Nairobi cell, an Arab-American, debriefing him three times to try to learn about Mr. bin Laden and the cell's activities.
But on Aug. 7, 1998, prosecutors say, the same group in Kenya that American officials had been so engaged in tracking for two years nonetheless pulled off a brazen attack - bombing the American Embassy in Nairobi - which, along with a nearly simultaneous attack on the American Embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killed 224 people and wounded more than 4,000.
The trial of four men charged in the bombing conspiracy is now under way in Federal District Court in Manhattan, with jury selection about to enter its third week. Two of the men, a Saudi and a Tanzanian, face the death penalty if they are convicted of carrying out the attacks in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. Two others, a Jordanian and an American citizen born in Lebanon, are charged with participating in a terrorism conspiracy led by Mr. bin Laden.
As the government's case against the four men unfolds over the coming months, the trial will, in certain key respects, provide two narratives.
Prosecutors, drawing on what they believe is overwhelming evidence, will present the American government's most exhaustive portrait of what they contend is Mr. bin Laden's terrorist operation.
As newly available court filings show, they will also, inevitably, end up revealing how what they regarded as years of hard-won investigative breakthroughs - they say they had enough evidence three months before the bombings to indict Mr. bin Laden in the Somali attacks - was not enough to prevent the men in Africa from carrying out the deadly assault on the American Embassies.
The court record now shows, for example, that American intelligence was intercepting phone conversations and faxes of the Kenya cell right up to the Aug. 7, 1998, date of the embassy attacks, and for several weeks after. Prosecutors have made clear in court papers that Mr. bin Laden's operatives took elusive action in the face of surveillance, speaking in code on the phone and lying in interviews.
Spokesmen for the United States attorney's office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in New York and the Central Intelligence Agency would not comment yesterday, citing the pending legal case.
All four defendants in the New York trial have pleaded not guilty. Defense lawyers for one, Wadih El- Hage, whom prosecutors say was instrumental in setting up the Nairobi cell, have said that the reason the government heard nothing to suggest a bombing was coming is that their client had nothing to do with one.
Mr. El-Hage, a naturalized American citizen born in Lebanon, returned to the United States about a year before the Nairobi attack, and wiretaps on his phones in Arlington, Tex., where he lived with his family, also turned up nothing incriminating, his lawyers say.
The court record in the trial shows that by spring 1996, the government had identified Mr. bin Laden "as a serious threat to the national security of the United States," and it was about that time that intelligence agents began successfully to understand, and to some degree track, his potential ambitions.
The records indicate that American officials had learned from a close confidant of Mr. bin Laden's, Ali A. Mohamed, that Mr. bin Laden ran an organization called Al Qaeda, was operating camps in Sudan and was building an army "which may be used to overthrow the Saudi government."
It is not certain what pointed the authorities toward Kenya, but by the end of 1996, American intelligence officials were able to identify what they believed were five Nairobi phone lines used by Al Qaeda members, the new court records show. Among them was one line that went into a house at 1523 Fedha Estates in Nairobi, where Mr. El-Hage was living.
Mr. El-Hage has been described by prosecutors as the personal secretary to Mr. bin Laden, who went to Kenya and helped to set up Mr. bin Laden's operations there, including establishing front companies and producing false identifications and travel papers.
Prosecutors say Mr. El-Hage's Nairobi address was used as a safehouse for Al Qaeda members when they were passing through. Prosecutors say that Mr. El-Hage and his family used the phone line, but so did other Al Qaeda members. And one, Haroun Fazil, was overheard in July 1997 describing the designated cellular phone used for conversations between the group and Mr. bin Laden, who was based in Afghanistan, the government says.
Mr. Fazil has been accused of having a pivotal role in the bombing of the embassy in Nairobi, including renting a villa where the bomb was assembled and, on the day of the attack, driving a pickup truck to the embassy, leading the way for the vehicle carrying the bomb.
The government also intercepted calls on two lines belonging to Mercy International Relief Agency, an organization that prosecutors say was used as a front for Al Qaeda activity in Nairobi.
The government has never made public the specific contents of the overheard conversations.
But on Aug. 21, 1997, American and Kenyan agents raided Mr. El-Hage's house, seizing his papers, books and a laptop computer. It was in this raid that the authorities recovered from the computer a letter from Mr. Fazil to another Al Qaeda member that implicated the Nairobi cell in the Somalia attacks. In the letter, the government says, Mr. Fazil said he was very worried about the security of the "East Africa network," citing "intelligence activity" in Nairobi by the American, Kenyan, and Egyptian governments.
Mr. El-Hage was not home on the day his house was searched, records show. But the government's next attempt to learn about Mr. bin Laden and the Kenya cell came that night when American and Kenyan agents intercepted Mr. El-Hage at the airport in Nairobi.
This would be the first of several interrogations of Mr. El-Hage by American officials in the year before the bombings, F.B.I. and other documents show. The new court records show that in those interviews, conducted in Kenya, New York and Arlington, American officials and Mr. El-Hage appear to have exchanged information, but the government now believes he was being evasive, even toying with the federal agents.
Mr. El-Hage admitted he was working for Mr. bin Laden, but said that his work had to do only with Mr. bin Laden's legitimate businesses and that he had not seen him since 1994. He also admitted knowing members of a circle of militant Muslims in New York in the early 1990's, some of whom were later convicted in the bombing of the World Trade Center and other terrorism in New York.
Ultimately, the government came to believe that Mr. El-Hage was lying to them during the series of interviews, interviews they had hoped would further their ability to monitor Mr. bin Laden's aims.
But if Mr. El-Hage proved not to be terribly useful, the government was continuing to pursue other investigative routes, including listening in on the Nairobi group's phone lines, according to the new court filings. The phone intercepts on the Kenya cell lasted through October 1997 and then, after a break, began again in May 1998, just months before the bombing and precisely during the time the government now asserts the attack was being planned.
While the specifics of the conversations have not yet been revealed, it is clear now that there were limits to the usefulness of the surveillance. For on Aug. 7, 1998, with the intercepts still in place in Nairobi, a court record shows, the bombs went off.
Two days later, an F.B.I. agent was on the telephone with Ali Mohamed, one of Mr. bin Laden's associates who was living in California. Mr. Mohamed pointed the finger of blame at Mr. bin Laden's group in both attacks.
The court record shows that on that same day, Mr. El-Hage and his wife were overheard on their telephone in Texas.
Mrs. El-Hage expressed sympathy for a woman killed in the Nairobi bombing, whom she recognized as someone who had worked at the embassy and had assisted her in the past.
"No more work for her," Mr. El- Hage replied, the record shows.
One of the lawyers for Mr. El- Hage, Sam A. Schmidt, said, "The government has taken that quote out of context, and used it gratuitously and solely to embarrass Mr. El- Hage."
On Aug. 27, Mr. Mohamed was on the phone again with the F.B.I., saying that he knew who had carried out the attacks but would not mention the names. Within weeks, both Mr. Mohamed and Mr. El-Hage were arrested.
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U.S. Nationals Organize First Airlift to Iraq
Associated Press
January 13, 2001 Filed at 10:18 a.m. ET
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-iraq-pl.html
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - An airlift of humanitarian aid which organizers said was the first such American move to defy U.N. sanctions since the 1991 Gulf War arrived in Baghdad on Saturday.
Aboard the plane, chartered from Royal Jordanian airlines, were U.S. peace activists representing American humanitarian and human rights organizations.
The organizers said they were in Baghdad to defy the U.S.-led United Nations sanctions on Iraq.
Aboard the plane were some $150,000 worth of medicine and medical equipment and school supplies for Iraqi children.
``We are here to show as Americans that we are sorry for the damage the American bombs are doing,'' said James Jennings, one of the organizers of the trip and head of an American relief group called Conscience International.
``There are many thousands of American people who are concerned about the devastating effects of sanctions on the Iraqi people,'' Jennings told reporters at Saddam International Airport, 15 km (nine miles) west of Baghdad.
Jennings said the supplies and the flight had been organized without U.S. government authorization.
``By not applying for a U.S. permit to take the humanitarian aid to Baghdad, the group claims it is exercising its First Amendment rights,'' he said.
The United States led the multinational force which ejected Iraqi troops from Kuwait in 1991.
U.S. and British forces led a four-day extensive air and missile attack against Iraq in December 1998.
U.S. and British warplanes patrol two no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq set up soon after the Gulf War. The zones, which Baghdad does not recognize, are to protect a Kurdish enclave in the north and Sh'ite Muslims in the south from possible attacks by Baghdad troops.
Humanitarian aid to Iraq has been gaining momentum during the last few months. Dozens of humanitarian flights have landed in Iraq since August last year, but this was the first one organized by U.S. nationals.
Baghdad says that around 1.5 million Iraqis have died because of the shortages in medical and food supplies since the imposition of the U.N. embargo, and blamed continuation of sanctions on Washington.
Under a special deal with the United Nations, Baghdad is allowed to sell oil to buy food, medicine and other humanitarian needs for the Iraqi people.
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American Activists Fly to Iraq
Associated Press
January 13, 2001 Filed at 3:33 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq-US-Flight.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- More than 70 American activists arrived on two separate flights Saturday to deliver medicine, books and school supplies as part of the growing international challenge to the 10-year-old international embargo against the Arab nation.
The Americans, mostly members of religious and humanitarian organizations, make up one of the largest U.S. contingents to visit Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War. A pair of Royal Jordanian flights ferried them from Amman, capital of neighboring Jordan, adding to the dozens of planes that have touched down at Saddam International Airport following a decade of U.N. sanctions that had effectively banned air travel.
``We're probably the first Americans who have flown over Iraq for a long time who haven't brought bombs,'' said organizer James Jennings, head of Atlanta-based Conscience International.
``All these people have come together to show that there are many thousands of Americans who are concerned about the devastating effects of these sanctions,'' he added.
The visiting Americans did not request U.S. government permission for their trip. However, they did not technically violate the sanctions placed on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Jordan, which owns the airline, received advance approval for the first flight from the U.N. sanctions committee, officials said. It was not immediately known whether the second flight was also approved, but Jordan routinely applies and receives approval for its Baghdad flights.
``Down USA'' is painted in large black letters on the sidewalk at the entrance to the airport and similar handwritten signs are posted throughout the massive terminal building.
However, a delegation of more than 100 Iraqis led by Health Minister Omed Medhat Mubarak warmly greeted Jennings' group on the tarmac on a cold, foggy day.
``We think this is a very important event, because it has been the Americans who have imposed the embargo for more than 10 years,'' said Mubarak.
The second group of Americans, headed by former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, arrived Saturday night.
``There's been great progress made in ending the sanctions,'' Clark said as he stepped off the plane. ``What I hope and believe ... is that the rest of the nations of the world will simply refuse to participate in a criminal conspiracy against the people of Iraq.''
Several Palestinians wounded in clashes with Israeli forces also arrived on the flight, and will receive medical treatment in Iraq.
The Americans brought a total of $250,000 worth of medicine, eyeglasses, school supplies and medical books for the Iraqis.
U.S. activists have periodically brought humanitarian aid before, but they have usually traveled overland from Jordan. In 1998, an AmeriCares volunteer group flew into Baghdad with humanitarian supplies after first receiving permission from the U.S. government.
The de facto air embargo began to weaken in September, when French and Russian planes flew to Baghdad without the approval of the U.N. sanctions committee. Since then dozens of flights from European and Middle Eastern countries have arrived in the Iraqi capital carrying aid, activists and businesspeople.
Most of the flights have received approval from the sanctions committee, skirting the sanctions issue by including humanitarian aid, which is permitted.
At the United Nations on Friday, a U.S. official said that Washington allowed the Jordanian flight to be approved, though it was viewed as a ``propaganda tool for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.''
``It's well documented that there is plenty of food and medicine to go around in Iraq. But Hussein chooses not to distribute it,'' said Mary Ellen Glynn, spokeswoman at the U.S. mission.
In a similar statement on Saturday, P.J. Crowley, spokesman for the National Security Council, said in Washington that a U.N. oil-for-food program in force since 1996 meant that Iraq had enough food and medicine.
``The oil-for-food program, which we have long supported, remains the best path to ensure that humanitarian assistance gets to the Iraqi people without directly or indirectly supporting Saddam's regime,'' said Crowley.
The sanctions, which Iraq blames for more than 1 million deaths since 1990, can be lifted only when the United Nations can verify that the country's programs for weapons of mass destruction have been dismantled. Iraq claims it has done so, but the United States and others say it is still withholding both material and documents.
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EUROPE
GERMANY: MAD COW PROTESTS
New York Times
January 13, 2001
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/13/world/13BRIE.html?pagewanted=all
Farmers protested across the country against a proposed policy of slaughtering entire herds of cattle when one animal is infected with mad cow disease. But they declared their willingness to cooperate with plans to overhaul agriculture and promote organic farming. Newspaper reports say Germany will have to provide some $175 million in the next few months simply for buying, slaughtering and incinerating 400,000 animals that cannot be sold because of the failing beef market. Victor Homola (NYT)
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