------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Russia courts Germany against U.S. missile plan
Putin's show of power gives U.S. headaches
Chinese Guest Woos India
Power of U.S. Draws China and Russia to Amity Pact
Use of DU weapons could be war crime
NATO blamed for 400 cancer deaths
Uranium symptoms match US report as cancer fears spread
Britain to take action if depleted uranium a hazard: minister
Depleted Macedonia Yugoslavia Uranium
DOCTOR LINKS NATO SHELLS, 400 CANCER DEATHS
URANIUM'S CONNECTION TO LEUKEMIA IN QUESTION
Uranium weapons cited in Balkans Syndrome
Scharping: No Uranium Risk Proven
MoD secretly tested troops for depleted uranium poisoning
German Minister Rejects 'Balkan Syndrome' Hysteria
Indian Science Sanctions Regretted
Iraq Sees Oil Exports Rising
Rumsfeld's folly: National Missile Defense
Don't Shoot Until Proven Accurate
Problems vex nuclear program
Expanding Nuclear Service
Rethink Missile Defense
Radiation Compensation Offered
Excerpts From the Interview With President-Elect George W. Bush
In His First Days, Bush Plans Review of Clinton's Acts
'Well-Liked' Abraham Has 'Big Learning Curve' at Energy

MILITARY
Gulf War Tied Israel's Hands
Sell Destroyers to Taiwan
Death Squad Kills Eight in Colombian Cattle Town
Michigan
Iraq Releases MIA Search Details
Puerto Rico Governor Seeks a Ban on Vieques Bombing
Era Waning, Holbrooke Takes Stock
U.N. Weighs Return to Somalia to Aid Leaders
In a Farewell to Kosovo, U.N. Aide Urges Election
Helms Softens, Sort Of
New Tools Showed Gulf War on TV
Army Admits Killings of Korea Civilians
States
THE WAY WE LIVE NOW
Women Are Warned Against Some Fish
U.S. Seeks to Limit Logging in Sierra Nevada
Stringent Steps Taken by U.S. on Cow Illness
Gray wolves encroaching on ranches
As Europe Fights Mad Cow, Concerns Spread to U.S.
Arctic National Refuge
Our Public Lands
Kansas
Surprise Inside
Racial Math on Turnpike: More Stops, Fewer Arrests
Ex-Legislator Apologizes for Anti-Police Remarks
Delaware
HOLY WARRIORS One Man and a Global Web of Violence

ACTIVISTS
Security for Inauguration to Be Tightest Ever
Unprecedented security planned forparade
Americans Fly Into Iraq, Defying Sanctions
Falun Gong demands China rights
Spiritual movement defies Chinese crackdown
Falun Gong Slams China for 'Evil Persecution'
Falun Gong Sect Meets in Hong Kong
Detained Falungong members launch hunger strike in Hong Kong
Beijing's Stance Against Falun Gong Sect Is Protested in March


-------- NUCLEAR

Russia courts Germany against U.S. missile plan
Putin works to build alliance against the controversial defense shield backed by Bush.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution
SUNDAY • January 14, 2001
Margaret Coker - Cox Washington Bureau
http://www.accessatlanta.com/partners/ajc/epaper/editions/sunday/news_a316461ca414e0c600c3.html

Moscow --- Speaking fluent German through the gilded halls of the Kremlin last weekend, Russian President Vladimir Putin worked to elicit from visiting Gerhard Schroeder a public declaration the United States doesn't want to hear.

The German chancellor privately expressed sympathy with Putin's opposition to the National Missile Defense system championed by President-elect George W. Bush, according to Kremlin sources, giving the Russian another modest success in his globe-trotting mission to forge a coalition against the missile defense shield.

The battle over missile defense leads a long list of differences with the former superpower that pose the most serious foreign policy problems for Bush's first year in office, analysts say.

And in a speech last week, U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen put Russia at the top of the list of defense concerns for the incoming Bush administration, primarily because of the disagreements over building the complex missile defense system.

Thomas Graham, a senior associate at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, endorsed Cohen's move. ''Americans and Russians are intent on taking radically different paths on key issues," he said. "This will mean tension, at least in the short term.''

By all measures, U.S.-Russian relations are at their lowest ebb since the end of the Cold War. After a decade of economic turmoil, anti-American sentiment is strong in Russia, as is a sense of hopelessness about the future.

Putin tapped into these feelings in his election campaign last year. For the last nine months as president, the former KGB officer and Security Council chief has translated them into a hawkish foreign policy often inimical to U.S. interests, a fact Condoleezza Rice, Bush's pick for national security adviser, acknowledged in a recent editorial.

For instance, four days before the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 7, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov told Washington that Moscow would no longer observe a 1995 accord barring conventional arms sales to Iran, listed by the U.S. State Department as a sponsor of international terrorism. At the end of December, the Russian Foreign Ministry accused the United States of violating the START I arms reduction treaty by failing to destroy all stages of its MX missile program.

And earlier this month, the Pentagon confirmed intelligence reports first published in The Washington Times that Moscow had moved short-range nuclear weapons to a Russian port a few miles from Poland. Putin called the allegations ''rubbish'' but has not responded to Warsaw's demand for independent verification.

Putin makes no attempt to hide his view that the era of cuddly ties with the United States --- exemplified by the bear-hugging Boris Yeltsin and indulgent Bill Clinton --- are at an end.

''The Cold War is over,'' Putin told Russian journalists in a New Year's interview. ''But we still have national interests. We have to . . . clearly understand our national interests, spell them out and fight for them.''

The Kremlin's primary concern is the deployment of the missile system, a combination of sophisticated radars and rockets, designed to blast an incoming missile out of the sky on its way toward the United States.

Washington says it is necessary to protect U.S. interests against missile attack from a country such as North Korea, Iraq or Iran --- all of which are believed to be at work on weapons of mass destruction and the long-range rocket technology required to launch an intercontinental attack --- or a rogue state or terrorist group. Moscow says America has overstated the possibility of such attacks.

Putin, who traveled abroad an average of once per month in 2000, has spent countless hours courting Asian and European nations against the missile system. China was one of the first major countries to stand by Moscow in its opposition, threatening to expand its nuclear arsenal in response to U.S. plans.

If China were to do that, the Clinton White House has said it could raise tensions in East Asia, including Japan and Taiwan, and could provoke India, a long-standing rival of China, into building additional nuclear weapons. That, in turn, could prompt India's neighboring nemesis, Pakistan, to expand its small nuclear arsenal, raising the nuclear stakes across the volatile subcontinent.

Putin has also won a number of European allies of the United States over to his position that such a shield would violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, widely touted as the foundation of international arms control. To the surprise of the White House, Putin and Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien signed a joint protocol in Ottawa last month against the $25 billion system.

''Putin would like to insert a wedge between Europe and the United States, especially on this issue," said Keith Bush of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. "But the reality of the situation is, even if Europe hates the idea, the U.S. is in a position to offer them more for their allegiance than Russia can.''

---

Putin's show of power gives U.S. headaches

USA Today
01/14/01- Updated 09:42 PM ET
By Steven Komarow, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/world/nwssun08.htm

MOSCOW - The rebellion in Chechnya still fills graves, unemployment is staggeringly high and alcoholism and disease kill so many Russians that life expectancy today is nearly four years shorter than it was in the 1960s.

The benefits of globalization seem to have passed Russia by. Like a third-world country, it leans on its oil and mineral wealth to prop up an economy crippled by corruption and ineptitude.

But that's looking at the glass as half-empty, and Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to have a different perspective. A year after taking over from Boris Yeltsin, the former KGB agent has taken Russia back to the future.

His rhetoric and televised judo sessions can't reconstruct the Soviet Union, but he is working to rebuild Russian pride, in part by reviving its Soviet-era role as a check on American power.

"We must get rid of our imperial ambitions, on the one hand," he said recently. "On the other hand, we must clearly and unequivocally see where our national interests lie. We must fight for these."

Translation: Putin "will be a pain in the neck for Mr. Bush," says Ariel Cohen, a Russia scholar with the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington.

Putin's popularity remains high, even as the public's hopes in the country's future have declined. In a poll conducted in late November, The All-Russia Center for the Study of Public Opinion found that 70% approved of Putin's performance and only 22% disapproved. His approval rating, which dipped into the low 60s after the submarine Kursk sank in August, killing 118 sailors, is again near its peak of 72%, recorded in May.

Much of Putin's popularity seems to stem from what he is not - Yeltsin. Instead of an aging leader with health problems including a heart condition, Russia has a sober, energetic and relatively young man. Whether Putin is dealing with the war in Chechnya or addressing energy shortages in Russia's Far East, the Kremlin image-makers have managed to portray him as determined and hard-working.

"One can see that he is trying hard," says Anna Vemzkik, 52, a teacher.

He has also proved trying for the United States. Since he formally took office May 7, Putin has:

Declared that Moscow's relationship with China is more important than its ties with the United States - a switch from the Yeltsin years, when the emphasis was on the United States. Russia and China are reportedly assembling a treaty proclaiming their friendship. The pact is the strongest sign yet of their unhappiness with U.S. proposals to build a shield against ballistic missiles.

Visited North Korea in the midst of delicate U.S. diplomacy with that Stalinist state. Putin offered a plan to end North Korea's missile program, seen as a threat to the region - at U.S. expense.

Abandoned an informal agreement with the United States to refrain from selling weapons to Iran.

Proposed that the United States and Russia limit their nuclear arsenals to 1,500 warheads each. That's about 25% below what the Pentagon considers a minimum deterrence. It's Putin's answer to the plan backed by President-elect Bush to build a missile defense.

And just as the votes in Florida were being ruled in Bush's favor, Putin visited nearby Cuba. He and Cuban leader Fidel Castro stressed the need to develop a multipolar world - not one dominated by the United States.

Critics such as Andre Piontkowski, director of the Strategic Studies Institute in Moscow, say Putin's foreign policy goes out of its way to tweak the United States. Russia feels a strong need "to demonstrate independence," he says.

"The Russian political class is deeply frustrated by psychological defeat of the Cold War," Piontkowski says. Putin satisfies "a desire to provoke the United States."

There also is a strong practical side to Putin's policies, experts agree. "I think he's very much a pragmatist and somebody that very much wants to make sure that Russia works," U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright recently told USA TODAY's editorial board.

William Clark, a political science professor at Louisiana State University, says Putin is working with what was handed to him on New Year's Eve 1999, when Yeltsin resigned and named Putin acting president. He was elected in his own right in March.

Foreign investment in new Russian industry had been scared away by a financial panic and the collapse of the ruble, Russia's currency, in 1998. Putin thus must leverage Russia's most salable assets - military equipment and energy reserves - even if it means thumbing his nose at the United States. The decision to sell military equipment to Iran, for example, brings in profits and indirectly injects instability in the oil-rich Persian Gulf. That drives up prices for Russia's oil and natural gas sales.

There are other things, on the domestic front, that the United States doesn't much like. Putin's climb to power was aided by his bullish support for what was supposed to be a swift and certain military sweep of the renegade province of Chechnya. Russian troops were sent to the region 18 months ago, but the war continues, adding to fears that the new regime is eager to repress dissent.

After eight years of Yeltsin's sometimes chaotic presidency, Putin has worked to restore order and central control. As a result, critics complain, the nation's post-Soviet democracy has been weakened. Putin denies it. "We just had to pull ourselves together," Putin said. "We are obliged to assemble the state. We are doing it."

The Russian leader's most controversial move has been against media baron Vladimir Gusinsky, whose Media-Most empire includes NTV, Russia's only independent television network. Gusinsky was arrested Dec. 12 in Spain on a Russian warrant that seeks his extradition on charges of fraud.

Cracking down on Gusinsky sends a message not only to the media but also to other powerful Russian businessmen who accumulated their empires under what Putin says were suspicious circumstances after the demise of the Soviet Union. Under Yeltsin, a handful of wealthy entrepreneurs was able to grab control of formerly state-owned industries.

Putin wants Russia included in the first world, but he has no resources. He portrays his foreign trips as shows of Russian strength, but often the underlying goal is to bolster the country's sagging financial status with arms sales, trade pacts or debt renegotiations.

Alexei Trusor, 26, a plumber in Moscow, says Russians see Putin the way Americans see George W. Bush. "People just like him, so they elected him."

Recent statements in the Russian media suggest that the Kremlin looks forward to working with the incoming Bush administration. "My analysis of modern history shows that when the Republicans came to power in the United States. no deterioration of ... U.S.-Soviet relations was observed," Putin said.

Bush has avoided criticism of Putin, and he has appointed a Russia expert, Condoleezza Rice, as his national security adviser. Nevertheless, it's too early to predict a strong working relationship between the two presidents, Cohen says. "They'll go out on the first date ... the second date, and then they'll decide how far they want to go," he says.

---

Chinese Guest Woos India

New York Times
January 14, 2001
By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/14/world/14INDI.html

NEW DELHI, Jan. 13 - Li Peng, China's Parliament leader, urged India today to bury memories of a 1962 war and unresolved border dispute and take their relationship to "new heights."

He also urged India to join forces with China to form a new economic order to represent the interests of the developing world.

In a television interview, Mr. Li, who is on a nine-day visit, the highest-level Chinese tour of India since New Delhi's nuclear tests in 1998, also said that both New Delhi and Beijing opposed a "unipolar world."

"A multipolar world is safer and conducive for development," he said.

Mr. Li's visit is expected to pave the way for a visit by the Chinese prime minister, Zhu Rongji, later this year.

---

Power of U.S. Draws China and Russia to Amity Pact

New York Times
January 14, 2001
By ERIK ECKHOLM
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/14/world/14CHIN.html

BEIJING, Jan. 13 - China and Russia are working on a treaty proclaiming friendship, the strongest sign yet of their shared unhappiness with the supremacy of the United States and its plans to build a shield against ballistic missiles.

There is no sign that China and Russia plan to enter a genuine alliance, with mutual pledges of aid in time of war, say Chinese and Western scholars and diplomats.

Both countries have privately reassured American officials that they still seek close ties with the United States, which offers them far greater economic and technological advantages than they offer each other.

But their unusual effort to craft a more formal "strategic partnership," as the Chinese describe it, reflects the intensity of their concerns about American global power and especially about the proposal for a national missile defense, which Russia and China fear will put them at a military disadvantage.

And it is a tangible sign of the changing and complex landscape that will face the incoming Bush administration, which has vowed to increase defense spending, forge ahead with missile defenses and treat China as a competitor.

"When two major powers share an identical view that the United States is the biggest threat to global security and their own security, of course the United States has to be concerned," said David Shambaugh, a political expert at George Washington University and the Brookings Institution in Washington.

"But what are they going to do about it?" he said, adding that the treaty under negotiation is likely to be "hollow rhetoric."

Over the last decade ties gradually warmed between Russia and China as each has sought ways to offset the economic and military might of the United States. "The United States is pushing the two countries closer, despite their long tradition of mutual suspicion," said Shen Dingli, an arms control expert at Fudan University in Shanghai.

Chinese-Russian border disputes have been settled, and each side gains from Russia's sale to China of jet fighters, destroyers and other high-tech military goods it needs. Last year, Chinese and Russian leaders made joint statements of protest against American plans for missile defenses, calling them destabilizing. Both countries are nervous about the expansion of NATO and vehemently opposed the war in Yugoslavia.

Some time last year they began discussing a more general statement of amity, and since meetings in December, they have begun studying proposed treaty language, Chinese officials told Western scholars.

The contents have not been disclosed, but beyond a general statement of shared goals, possible subjects may include arms sales, economic ties, cooperation in space and their shared border, scholars said. A document may be signed later this year when President Jiang Zemin visits Moscow.

While treaty discussions began before the American election, the idea may have gained attraction after the Republican victory. The Chinese have said that they expect Mr. Bush, despite a sometimes hostile tone, to discover the same advantages his predecessors did in cooperating with China. Still, Mr. Bush's apparent determination to build a missile defense has caused great worry.

One goal in China, scholars said, may be to make it harder for Russia to cut a separate deal with the United States over missile defenses, something many experts expect.

The United States has contemplated defenses only to counter small numbers of missiles, presumably fired by the likes of North Korea or Iran. But for China, which now has perhaps 20 long-range nuclear missiles in place, even a small-scale defense would virtually negate its ability to threaten the United States. An American shield could thus force China to spend far more money than it can afford, fielding a larger nuclear force than it otherwise would in a spiraling arms race.

-------- depleted uranium

Use of DU weapons could be war crime

CNN
January 14, 2001

ITALY, Rome -- NATO's use of depleted uranium could be investigated as a possible war crime, the chief prosecutor for the international war crimes tribunal has said.

Carla del Pronte told Italian state TV on Sunday: "If we have sufficient elements we will be obliged to investigate" as to whether the use of the heavy metal in the Balkans conflicts constituted a war crime.

Numerous NATO member states, including Italy, are currently carrying out their own health and scientific investigations into a possible link between the use of the radioactive weapons used during the Balkan wars and cancer-related deaths among servicemen serving in the region.

The latest country to embark on an investigation is Switzerland. Its defence ministry said on Sunday it planned to check the health implications of DU weapons test-fired in central Switzerland 30 years ago.

Del Pronte added in another interview, published by Corriere della Sera on Sunday, that the tribunal had already looked into the use of the controversial ammunition during NATO's 1999 campaign in Kosovo "but we didn't have enough elements to proceed."

DU, used in the tips of missiles, shells and bullets to boost their ability to penetrate armour can be turned on impact into a toxic radioactive dust, defence experts say.

Doctor Zoran Stankovic, head of the department of forensic medicine of the Yugoslav Military-Medical Academy in Belgrade, said he has discovered a connection between the weapons and 400 cancer deaths among Bosnian Serbs.

Many of the Serbs from Hadzici had worked in a factory repairing tanks and armoured vehicles that were heavily bombed by NATO in 1994.

At the time, DU shells found on the ground were recycled and used to produce flack jackets.

He said no organised study had been launched to establish links between DU and health hazards, but added he strongly felt the link existed.

Russia has called for an international conference of specialists to look at the problem within the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the Interfax news agency quoted Defence Minister Igor Sergeyev as saying.

Switzerland's defence ministry spokesman Oswald Sigg was quoted in SonntasgBlick newspaper on Sunday as saying it would have to "investigate immediately" the results of test firing by a weapons company in the 1970s.

Sigg said the government was aware of only one test at one Swiss firing range. "We're checking to see if other places were used," he said.

"We fired uranium ammunition at our Ochsenboden firing range near Studen," in the canton (state) of Schwyz, the paper quoted Heinrich Meier, former head of the Oerlikon Contraves munitions factory that conducted the test, as saying.

The firing range is now a golf course.

The paper cited a local environmental official as saying the area was tested for heavy metals but not for radioactivity before the course opened.

Swiss military officials have played down the health risk of DU ammunition for peacekeeping troops who served in the former Yugoslavia, but have offered blood tests to any soldiers or civilian aid workers who want them.

One Swiss officer who served in Bosnia in 1998 has died of leukaemia, but the army surgeon general has said it would be practically impossible to establish that radiation from DU ammunition had caused or contributed to the illness.

NATO says the ammunition poses a negligible health hazard, and the World Health Organisation, says it is unlikely that exposure to DU ammunition could have led to a higher risk of cancer among soldiers in the Balkans.

But deaths from leukaemia among peacekeepers are under the spotlight after reports that six Italian soldiers who served in the Balkans had developed the illness.

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

Some 10,000 rounds were fired in neighbouring Bosnia in 1994-95.

---

NATO blamed for 400 cancer deaths

CNN
January 14, 2001
http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/01/13/balkans.uranium.02/index.html

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- A Yugoslav military pathologist has linked the cancer-related deaths of about 400 Bosnian Serbs near Sarajevo to 1994 bombardments by NATO using weapons containing depleted uranium.

The announcement followed the decision by Greece to allow its troops in the Balkans to return home if they fear illness from the controversial weapons.

The growing alarm over the alleged toxicity of depleted uranium (DU) ammunition also 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 DU -- a radioactive heavy metal used in the munitions -- for cancer among troops who served in the Balkans.

Doctor Zoran Stankovic, head of the Department of Forensic Medicine of the Yugoslav Military-Medical Academy in Belgrade, linked the 400 Bosnian Serb deaths -- which totalled about 10 percent of the community -- to the weapons.

Some of the victims had worn flak jackets made from shells with depleted uranium (DU), he said.

"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 armoured 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.

He said no organised study had been launched to establish links between DU and health hazards. But he said he strongly felt the link existed.

NATO denies risk

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 said. "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 had 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 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 said.

'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 (Organization 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.

---

Uranium symptoms match US report as cancer fears spread

The Guardian
Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor
Sunday January 14, 2001
The Observer (UK)
http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4116979,00.html
Special report: depleted uranium
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uranium/

Inhaling depleted uranium particles causes acute symptoms identical to those claimed by sick servicemen from the Balkan and Gulf conflicts, according to a US government toxicology report.

The 1998 report by the US Agency for Toxic Substances describes symptoms which include fatigue, shortness of breath, lymphatic problems, bronchial complaints, weight loss, bleeding and unsteady gait.

Italy is investigating the suspicious leukaemia deaths of six of its peacekeepers from Kosovo, where the weapons were heavily used by US pilots. Cases of cancer have also been reported among Belgian, French, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese soldiers. Governments across Europe have rushed to test their peacekeepers, with Turkey the first country to announce it had detected contamination in two of its soldiers.

Britain - one of the last European governments to offer screening last week - continues to deny any significant health risk. Veterans have accused the Ministry of Defence of a cover-up.

The American report will put further pressure on the MoD to announce a moratorium on the use, manufacture and testing of DU ammunition. It follows the disclosure that the US Navy has already phased out DU weapons for its Phalanx anti-missile gun on safety grounds, forcing the Royal Navy to announce on Friday that it was following suit.

A MoD spokesman said yesterday: 'The US manufacturers have decided not to manufacture depleted uranium rounds any more. They are moving to alternatives. We have no choice but to do the same. All current and proposed future buys of Phalanx ammunition will be of the tungsten variety.'

The Navy's move came as newspapers published a leaked Pentagon document from 1993 which warned: 'When soldiers inhale or ingest DU dust they incur a potential increase in cancer risk... that increase can be quantified in terms of projected days of life lost.'

Another warning in the early Nineties came from an official at AEA Technology, the trading name of the UK Atomic Energy Authority, in a document looking at what might happen if all the DU fired in the Gulf War by tanks - about 8 per cent of the total DU used there - were inhaled. If that happened, it said, there could be half a million deaths as a result by 2000.

Experts in DU poisoning claim that some Iraqi crewmen in tanks hit by DU weapons died not from uranium shrapnel but from acute depleted uranium poisoning on the spot.

The New York Times revealed last week that the Pentagon had urged all Allied forces in Kosovo to take special precautions when approaching the remains of DU ammunition. The document - called 'hazard awareness' - was issued by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and recommended health screening for some personnel.

Last week brought claims by three prison officers from HMP Featherstone, near Wolverhampton, that they had tested for raised levels of uranium following two fires in the last four years at the adjoining Royal Ordnance factory that produces the shells.

• Additional reporting by Nick Paton Walsh Guardian

----

Britain to take action if depleted uranium a hazard: minister

Yahoo! Asia - News World
Sunday, January 14 9:50 PM SGT
http://asia.dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/world/article.html?s=asia/headlines/010114/world/afp/Britain_to_take_action_if_depleted_uranium_a_hazard__minister.html

LONDON, Jan 14 (AFP) - Britain will take appropriate action if it finds clear evidence of a link between depleted uranium (DU) munition and illness, Defence Secretary Geoffrey Hoon said on Sunday.

"The reason why we will continue to use these weapons is that they are astonishingly effective and in that sense are protecting British forces in time of war," the minister told Sky News televison.

"If we do find clear scientific evidence that lead us to suspect there is a link between their use and illness then we would take an appropriate decision.

"In the absence of such evidence it would not be appropriate to put British lives at risk," he stressed.

Hoon's ministry announced only Friday the British Royal Navy was phasing out DU ammunition after the US manufacturers stopped producing the shells because of concern over the safety of the uranium ammunition, linked by ex-military personnel to certain types of cancer.

The munitions are used in the US-designed Phalanx anti-missile system, fitted to the Royal Navy's Type 42 destroyers and three other vessels.

"We've always recognised that there was a limited risk to the use of depleted uranium weapons," Hoon said on Sunday: "We have always instructed members of the armed forces accordingly.

"Beyond that specified, limited risk there are no risks associated with depleted uranium and certainly no proven link between its use and any illness.

"The best scientific evidence we have been able to secure indicates that there is no link between the consequences of the use of depleted uranium and any specific illness."

A British defence ministry spokesman said last week the American 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 alternative use of the metal tungsten had been demonstrated to be as effective as the DU munitions.

Depleted uranium can penetrate enemy armour better than conventional munitions and can therefore be fired from a greater distance, sometimes beyond enemy range.

Veterans groups and families of soldiers are blaming the use of DU munitions by NATO troops for a spate of cancer cases among former Balkan peacekeepers.

Both Washington and London maintain that there is no scientific evidence to prove DU -- used by US forces in the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia and in the 1994-95 conflict in Bosnia -- cause cancer.

NATO's medical committee was scheduled to convene on Monday in Brussels to compare data on possible health risks from DU.

---

ALBANIA FYRO FR Depleted Macedonia Yugoslavia Uranium

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http://balkans.unep.ch/fyrom/fyrom.html
http://balkans.unep.ch/fry/fry.html
http://balkans.unep.ch/du/du.html

A decision to carry out a field study on depleted uranium was made in Geneva in September 21 in a meeting with several UN agencies.

A team with 14 scientists from several countries was set up:

- 2 - Swedish Radiation Protection Institute (SSI)
- 2 - International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
- 2 - University of Bristol, Department of Earth Sciences
- 2 - AC Laboratorium-Spiez, (Switzerland)
- 1 - Italian National Environmental protection Agency (ANPA)
- 1 - US Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medecine
- 1 - Finnish Institute of International Affairs
- 3 - United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)

The field assessment was made possible thanks to the generous contribution from donor countries, especially from Switzerland, which had funded most of the mission.

The Team was in Kosovo in November 2000 and was able to visit 11 of the DU-targeted sites, 5 in the Italian sector - MNB (W), and 6 in the German sector - MNB (S). The work was carried out in close cooperation with UNMIK and KFOR, which assisted in logistics, accommodation, transport and security.

It is important to emphasize the security issue, as most of the sites visited by the Team had also been used for mines and cluster bombs during the Kosovo conflict. The Team therefore was accompanied throughout the exercise by specialized military EOD (Exploded Ordnance Disposal) officers. The presence of mines and cluster bombs was a major impediment to studying many of the sites more fully.

Out of the 11 sites visited, the Team found 3 sites with no signs of higher radioactivity, nor any remnants of DU ammunition. At 8 of the sites visited, the Team found either slightly higher amounts of Beta-radiation specifically at or around the holes left by DU ammunition, or remnants of ammunitions, such as sabots and penetrators. Altogether, the Team was able to collect 7 DU sabots and 7 penetrators which were either lying on the ground or embedded at a depth of 2-10 cms, close to the surface. These pieces of ammunition were thus easy to locate through Beta- and Gamma-radiation measurements. Also the ground directly beneath the penetrators were slightly contaminated, but with variations according to the soil-type.

At the sites, soil and water samples were collected. Soil sampling was carried out at various depths and locations; water was taken from streams, rivers and wells in farms; different vegetation sampling was also carried out, from grass, trees, fruit and mushrooms. At three sites, even cow milk was sampled directly from cows. Also, smear tests were taken on buildings, destroyed army vehicles and directly on the found penetrators.

All these samples including the DU penetrators and sabots which the Team found, will be analyzed in the 5 different laboratories: Sweden (SSI, Stockholm); Switzerland (AC Laboratorium-Speiz), UK (Bristol University), IAEA laboratories in Austria (Seibersdorf); Italy (ANPA-Rome).

The final report of this DU Assessment will be published in February-March 2001 by UNEP.

At this stage the conclusions are:

A) One and a half year after the end of the conflict, it is still possible to locate the sites where DU ammunition was used and find low amounts of Beta radiation and some remnants of DU ammunition.

B) The remaining unexploded ordnance are putting limits to fulfilling this type of assessment work in the field more fully.

C) The Team however, believes that the study of 11 sites out of the 112 indicated by NATO information, and that carrying out this field survey with many and various types of samples will give a representative picture of the overall DU situation in the areas concerned.

D) With the Beta and Gamma radiation measurements, the Team was unable to detect any wider area of contamination. The contamination was limited to the specific DU impact holes and to the actual sabots and penetrators found at the sites.

E) The Team was of course only able to measure the existence of radiation activity in its present situation, not during or directly after the conflict.

F) The Team was unable to find any tanks or armoured vehicles hit by DU ammunition which prevented the possibility of sampling for DU dust (ie. inside a vehicle).

G) The final conclusions will be made in the report, but already at this stage the Team can conclude that at some of the DU locations, the radiation level is slightly higher above normal at very limited spots. It would therefore be an unnecessary risk to the population to be in direct contact with any remnants of DU ammunition or with the spots where these have been found.

H) All findings of DU ammunition the Team feels, should be immediately reported to the KFOR which would take the necessary measures to dispose of these appropriately.

I) As a precautionary action, the Team would also wish to refer to the recommendations that were published as part of the DU Desk Study in October 1999.

J) More detailed recommendations will be part of our final report in February-March 2001, following completion of all our laboratory work.

Copyright 2000-2001 - UNEP Balkans United Nations Environment Programme - UNEP tél: +4122 917 86 16 fax: +4122 917 80 64 email & contact

http://balkans.unep.ch/contact.html
Hosted by: UNEP Geneva

---

DOCTOR LINKS NATO SHELLS, 400 CANCER DEATHS

Chicago Tribune
January 14, 2001
From Tribune News Services
http://chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/article/0,2669,SAV-0101140414,FF.html

BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA -- A Yugoslav pathologist said Saturday that about 400 Bosnian Serbs from an area bombarded by NATO with depleted uranium shells in 1994 have died of various forms of cancer.

Dr. Zoran Stankovic, head of the Department of Forensic Medicine of the Yugoslav Military-Medical Academy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, has linked the deaths--about 10 percent of the community--to radioactive weapons.

Some of the victims had worn Serbian flak jackets made from NATO shells with depleted uranium, he said.

Many of the Serbs from Hadzici, which is near Sarajevo, had worked in a factory repairing tanks and armored vehicles that was heavily bombed by NATO in 1994.

---

URANIUM'S CONNECTION TO LEUKEMIA IN QUESTION
SOME SAY DEPLETED METAL CAN'T CAUSE IT

Chicago Tribune
January 14, 2001
From Tribune News Services
http://chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/article/0,2669,SAV-0101140401,FF.html

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 some physicists and medical experts say it is biologically impossible for depleted uranium to have caused the leukemia, and doubt the metal caused illnesses in Europe.

Dr. 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's what remains 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 non-reactive," von Hippel said.

Even assuming there is a ton of depleted uranium dust for every square kilometer in Kosovo, he said, its radiation would be one one-hundredth, or 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 skin. The radiation that causes leukemia, gamma rays and X-rays, passes through the body and reaches the marrow.

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," Phelps said. "But there is no evidence of kidney disease."

Because the radiation cannot 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 you need to get the radiation to the bone marrow. And uranium 238 will not get to the bone marrow," Boice said.

The World Health Organization said in a preliminary report that not enough information was available on the exposure of NATO personnel in Kosovo to make conclusions on the cancer risks they ran.

---

Uranium weapons cited in Balkans Syndrome

Denver Rocky Mountain News
January 14, 2001
http://insidedenver.com/jensen/0114holge.shtml

Nearly every modern war, it seems, has its "syndrome."

There was the Vietnam Syndrome - not only the disastrous after-effects of Agent Orange but also a Pentagon reluctance to wage wars that did not promise guaranteed victory, minimal casualties and an early out.

There was the Gulf War Syndrome - still the subject of fierce disagreement in medical circles despite compelling evidence that some troops may have been exposed to toxic chemical and biological agents, as well as depleted uranium.

And now we have the Balkans Syndrome - another depleted uranium scare said to be causing leukemia and assorted mysterious ailments among troops and civilians in Bosnia, Kosovo and Serbia.

Depleted uranium is a byproduct of processed uranium ore. The most radioactive isotopes of uranium are extracted for use in nuclear weapons and civilian reactors. What's left is the less radioactive isotope 238 - depleted uranium - which increases the strength of armor plating and adds more punch to conventional, non-nuclear missiles, shells and bullets.

Its greater density hardens anti-tank weapons, and it can burn on impact. The United States and its NATO allies have been manufacturing DU weapons since the 1970s, Russia is known to have them, and Israel and some Arab and Asian states are assumed to have them.

However, they were never used in combat until the 1991 Gulf War, and then only by the Western allies. Declassified U.S. documents show that U.S. forces fired 944,000 cigar-sized rounds in Iraq and Kuwait. Also, NATO fired about 10,000 DU rounds during military airstrikes to stop Bosnia's war in 1994-95, and about 31,000 rounds against Yugoslav armored vehicles in the 1999 Kosovo conflict.

Though it is against federal law to use such weapons on training exercises, the U.S. Navy has confessed to the "accidental" firing of 263 depleted uranium-tipped bullets at its Caribbean range on Vieques Island, sparking outrage in Puerto Rico. Vieques was the site of frequent protests even before the disclosure.

U.S. veterans' blame DU for a vast range of health problems among GIs who fought in the Gulf War. Iraq blames DU for thousands of civilian cancer deaths and infant deformities. And cancer deaths are now being reported in countries that contributed peacekeepers to Bosnia and Kosovo: Britain, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium and Portugal.

The Pentagon keeps insisting that DU is "unlikely" to cause cancer. NATO Secretary-General George Robertson says "there is no proven link between the use of depleted uranium and the illnesses for which it has been blamed." And Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has warned that "this should not become an issue used by others for their personal agendas."

But European fears have snowballed following a leaked report from Britain's own defense ministry contradicting Robertson's assurances. And experts agree that any toxic and radiological hazard would be heightened by the tendency of depleted uranium to pulverize on impact into a fine dust that remains in the environment, or a human body, for many years.

"Uranium dust inhalation carries a long-term risk," the British report said. "It has been shown to increase the risks of developing lung, lymph and brain cancers."

Ten former peacekeepers from Belgium have filed suit against "unknown parties" - presumably NATO - accusing them of crimes ranging from "involuntary manslaughter" to "absence of assistance to persons in distress."

Angry Greeks protested outside the U.S. Embassy in Athens last week, carrying placards reading "American People-Killers" and "Put an end to NATO death. Bring our Greek troops home now."

To calm the clamor for action, NATO ambassadors have agreed on a "robust" plan to investigate any possible long-term health hazards posed by DU. Former peacekeepers are being screened for cancer. And scientists of the U.N. Environment Program are collecting samples in Bosnia and Kosovo.

More than 100 sites in Kosovo are said to be contaminated. They are being posted with signs saying: "Caution. Area may contain residual heavy metal toxicity. Entry not advised."

Holger Jensen is international editor. E-mail: hjens@aol.com His column also appears on the Internet at www.RockyMountainNews.com/jensen/

---

Scharping: No Uranium Risk Proven

Associated Press
January 14, 2001 Filed at 5:58 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Germany-Depleted-Uranium.html

BERLIN (AP) -- Germany's defense minister Sunday dismissed concerns that weapons containing depleted uranium pose a radiation risk, saying the ``excited debate'' about the issue ignores expert opinion that there is no scientific evidence to support such fears.

Interviewed on ZDF television, Rudolf Scharping also reiterated he sees no link between reported leukemia cases among German soldiers and the deployment of German peacekeepers to Kosovo, where U.S. forces used armor-piercing shells containing depleted uranium.

After consultations with health experts and military staff, Scharping last week stood by the finding of independent examinations in 1999 of German troops returning from Kosovo. Health tests on soldiers sent to Kosovo and those never deployed there showed no differences, he said.

The Defense Ministry says the incidence of two cancers -- leukemia and lymphoma -- among German soldiers was no higher than among the general population in 1999.

Scharping has called for a moratorium on use of depleted uranium weapons so more research can be carried out, but he also has criticized media-generated ``hysteria'' on the issue.

A newspaper reported that a second German soldier is now blaming his leukemia on his service in the Balkans. The soldier was stationed in Bosnia in 1996, Welt am Sonntag reported.

A Defense Ministry spokesman said he was not aware that the soldier had reported his allegations to the military.

Depleted uranium weapons were used in the Balkans by U.S. Air Force A-10 aircraft against Serb armored vehicles. The Pentagon says 31,000 rounds were fired during the 1999 war over Kosovo. In U.S.-led airstrikes in Bosnia in 1994 and 1995, about 10,800 rounds were fired around Sarajevo.

---

MoD secretly tested troops for depleted uranium poisoning

By David Cracknell and Rajeev Syal
14/01/2001
http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/01/14/nuran14.xml

THE Ministry of Defence was secretly testing for radiation poisoning among British soldiers just months before it sent troops to Kosovo with suspect depleted uranium weapons, The Telegraph can reveal.

Internal documents show that research by scientists at the military research centre in Porton Down was "ongoing" in November 1998, well before the start of the Balkans conflict. They show that the secret research had been going on for at least six months before then, with references to classified files on the depleted uranium held at the MoD dating back to May that year.

At the time, the MoD was refusing to launch an official screening programme for veterans of the 1991 Gulf War who feared that their illnesses were caused by radiation poisoning from expended DU munitions. The disclosure goes further than last week's leaks of internal MoD documents that showed only that officers recognised four years ago that there was a risk of developing lung, lymph and brain cancer from depleted uranium shells.

The MoD was so concerned that the documents obtained by The Telegraph had been leaked that they raided the houses of two Gulf War veterans who they alleged had stolen them. Yesterday the MoD refused to comment on the leaked documents.

Iain Duncan Smith, the shadow defence secretary, said: "The MoD must make a further statement on the issue of depleted uranium. The fact that they were carrying out secret testing of troops before Kosovo is further evidence of how this episode has been shrouded in secrecy and terribly mishandled." Telegraph has obtained a copy of minutes of a meeting of the MoD's Gulf Veterans' Medical Assessment Programme (GVMAP) on November 9, 1998, which say - contrary to official statements at the time - that "research was also ongoing on depleted uranium and NAPS [nerve agent protection tablets]".

The document goes on to refer to work being done at the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency at Porton Down into suspected poisoning of troops. The minutes also list five hitherto classified files held in the MoD's database, including a document entitled: "DU testing of UK Gulf Veterans". The Tories last night demanded that these documents also be made public by the MoD.

At the time the documents were compiled, the MoD was refusing requests by Gulf War veterans for depleted uranium testing. Former soldiers who complained of mystery illnesses after the conflict had to pay for their own private tests to be done in Canada. It was only in September 1999, after the Kosovo conflict was over and nearly a decade after the end of the Gulf War, that the MoD finally relented to pressure and agreed to retest a small number of veterans for depleted uranium.

Ministers last week staged a dramatic U-turn and relented to pressure for an official, full-scale screening programme for depleted uranium for troops who had served in either the Balkans or the Gulf. It emerged yesterday that the Royal Navy is phasing out depleted uranium ammunition used on some of its warships after the American manufacturers stopped producing the shells because of safety concerns.

The Telegraph has also learnt that nearly 100 Gulf veterans are to sue the MoD over their exposure to depleted uranium, in a test case that could cost tens of millions of pounds. Peter Bright, a senior partner at solicitors Nash and Co, based in Plymouth, said the proceedings will be issued in the light of recent evidence that shows the MoD had full knowledge of the risks of depleted uranium.

He represents veterans who claim they were exposed to depleted uranium in the Gulf while serving in Operation Desert Storm. Some of the veterans also saw service in the Balkans. Around half were medics in the field, who claim that they were exposed to the materials as they tended Iraqi and British soldiers.

-------

German Minister Rejects 'Balkan Syndrome' Hysteria

Reuters
January 14, 2001 Filed at 1:18 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-health-.html

BERLIN (Reuters) - German Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping said Sunday public concern about depleted uranium munitions was tinged with hysteria and the issue was being used to undermine the legitimacy of NATO's role in the Balkans.

Scharping told ZDF television he rejected criticism that he had failed to protect German soldiers in the Balkans or even warn them of potential dangers of exposure to depleted uranium.

He fended off charges of mismanagement and tardy response to claims in Italy that several deaths of former peacekeepers from leukemia resulted from a ``Balkans Syndrome'' caused by exposure to depleted uranium, a radioactive metal used in tank-busting munitions fired by U.S. ground attack aircraft.

``The German army was warned about the possibility of low levels of radiation when it first arrived in Kosovo in the summer of 1999,'' Scharping said. He said he had regularly kept parliament and the public informed about the use of uranium munitions in Kosovo.

Scharping said there seemed to be a ``hysteria syndrome'' among the public about the issue and promised that he would ''continue to make public everything'' known about depleted uranium.

``An attempt is being made to undermine the political legitimacy of an alliance and its support for freedom and security with a debate based on few facts but a high level of emotions,'' Scharping said.

There was no evident connection between cancer in the army and the deployment in Kosovo, he added.

An official study published Friday found that German peacekeepers in Kosovo have shown no signs of exposure to fallout from weapons containing depleted uranium.

Urine tests carried out by a medical research body at the request of the Defense Ministry found no unusual traces of depleted uranium.

Depleted uranium weapons are pulverized on impact, creating radioactive dust which can enter the human body via the lungs. Children who clambered onto burned-out tanks could be at particular risk, for example.

Scharping has ruled out comprehensive testing on all of the 60,000 German group troops who have seen peacekeeping action in the Balkans.

That position contrasted with the line taken by the British government, which has extended screening not only to include troops who had served in the Balkans, but also veterans of the 1991 Gulf War.

-------- india / pakistan

Indian Science Sanctions Regretted

Associated Press
January 14, 2001 Filed at 9:25 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-India-US-Science.html

CALCUTTA, India (AP) -- The American decision to halt all scientific cooperation with Indian scientists after India conducted nuclear tests more than two years ago was a mistake, U.S. Ambassador Richard Celeste said.

``I know this is not how you expect a U.S. ambassador to speak, but it (the imposition of sanctions) was wrong. It was a mistake on our part,'' Celeste told scientists Saturday at the Bose Institute, a leading scientific research laboratory in Calcutta.

The Clinton administration had imposed economic and scientific sanctions soon after India carried out five nuclear tests in May 1998. India's tests were soon followed by a series of nuclear explosions by Pakistan.

Celeste, a Clinton appointee, said the sanctions on Indian research institutes and the discontinuation of numerous joint scientific projects had not gone down well with the scientific establishment in both countries.

``The sanctions were an emotional decision as we felt aggrieved, deceived and spurned by a friend,'' Celeste said.

While India's nuclear capabilities were known in American defense and nonproliferation circles, New Delhi's decision to go public with its nuclear program and conduct the tests had taken the world by surprise.

The U.S. sanctions imposed on India and Pakistan were mandated by American law on nuclear nonproliferation and were the result of political decisions, Celeste said.

At least 48 projects involving scientists from the two countries ground to a halt after the sanctions were imposed.

But in the two and a half years since the nuclear tests, U.S.-India relations have undergone significant change. President Clinton's highly successful visit to India in March last year, followed by India Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's trip to Washington in September have resulted in better understanding of the two countries' security concerns.

Although the sanctions continue to be in force, India and the United States established a science and technology forum last July with a $7 million endowment to help promote cooperation among scientists, and to identify scientific research that could be carried out together.

Celeste called for greater interaction between scientists in the United States and in India. ``It is time we provided a buffer which guards science against political uncertainties,'' he said. ``Future misunderstandings should not spill over to this area.''

-------- iraq

Iraq Sees Oil Exports Rising

Associated Press
January 14, 2001 Filed at 4:11 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Iraq-Oil.html

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Iraq's oil exports, which fell sharply last month amid a dispute with the United Nations, are expected to reach 2 million barrels a day by the end of January, close to previous levels, the country's oil minister said Sunday.

Amer Mohammed Rashid also called for OPEC to cut its output by 2 million barrels a day at its meeting this Wednesday to help reduce what he called an oversupply in the international market.

In a wide-ranging news conference, Rashid expressed frustration at the U.N. sanctions committee that has repeatedly delayed approval of contracts for spare parts and other supplies Iraq needs to rehabilitate its oil industry.

Despite a decade of sanctions, Iraq has been producing at close to the same level as before the 1991 Gulf War. The country was exporting 2.3 million barrels of oil a day in the latter part of 2000.

But Iraq slashed exports to just 600,000 barrels a day in December due to a dispute over pricing with the United Nations, which regulates Iraqi exports. Rashid said Iraq would soon overcome this hiccup.

``We will come back to 2 million (barrels a day) at the end of January,'' Rashid said. He also described the recent slowdown in exports through the Turkish port of Ceyhan as a ``temporary interruption due to the holidays'' at the end of December.

The United Nations has lifted the ceiling on Iraq's oil exports and the country sold more than $16 billion worth of oil last year, roughly what it earned annually before the war.

However, the United Nations now takes almost 30 percent of that amount for war reparations and to cover the operating costs of the U.N. oil-for-food program. The program has delivered a measure of economic stability, but the vast majority of Iraq's 23 million people live in poverty.

Iraq also complains that its contracts to import many items -- including spare parts for the oil industry -- are delayed for months or even years by the U.N. sanctions committee.

``There is absolutely no hope for this program to succeed, even with good faith,'' said Rashid, who accused the United States and its allies of seeking to undermine Iraq's efforts to rebuild its economy. ``Contracts over two years old are still on hold.''

Iraq is a member of OPEC, but due to Iraq's current economic state, it operates independently and does not take part when OPEC raises or lowers its output quotas.

Still, Iraq's output is large enough to influence world oil prices.

OPEC increased oil output four times last year, helping drive down prices that had peaked around $35 a barrel. The United States and other major oil consuming nations are urging OPEC to make only a moderate cut in production this week, not the 2 million barrels that Iraq is seeking.

On other issues, Rashid said:

-- Iraq total oil production, for both exports and domestic use, averaged around 3 million barrels a day last year, and the target this year is 3.5 million barrels, Rashid said. He said Iraq could pump up to 4 million barrels a day, but needs spare parts to reach full capacity.

-- Iraq's oil export pipeline to Syria, which has been out of operation for nearly two decades, is in the ``final phase of repairs and testing.'' He did not give a date when it would be formally reopened.

-- When asked about Iraq oil smuggling through neighboring states such as Syria and Turkey, Rashid said his country was free to engage in trade with its neighbors despite the U.N. program that calls for the sanctions committee to approve all oil contracts.

The U.N. sanctions, imposed to punish Iraq for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, cannot be lifted until U.N. inspectors certify that Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs have been dismantled along with the missiles to deliver them.

Iraq claims it has met the conditions but the U.N. weapons inspectors, who pulled out of Iraq in December 1998 dispute, have demanded additional weapons material and documents.

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

Rumsfeld's folly: National Missile Defense
The prospective leader of the Defense Department supports a program that, perversely, weakens national security, says Eric Swanson

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Sunday, January 14, 2001
http://www.post-gazette.com/forum/20010114edswan9.asp

Donald Rumsfeld, the incoming secretary of defense, has a long history in Washington. He served as secretary of Defense in the Ford administration and as assistant to President Nixon. In 1977 he left politics to become president of G.D. Searle & Co. Pharmaceuticals, where he gained notoriety for using his connections to push the approval of aspartame through government circles (thereby spawning a subindustry for medical-government-military-complex conspiracy theorists).

His last foray into politics was in 1998. He was tapped to head a congressional commission to examine the threat to national security posed by nuclear missile attack from rogue nations. The commission was formed in response to Republican pressure raised, in part, because they did not like the conclusions of a 1995 National Intelligence Estimate, which did not find a substantial risk.

Rumsfeld fulfilled his role perfectly, concluding that the intelligence estimate report was incorrect and strongly supporting the proposed National Missile Defense program. With this appointment, it is clear that President-elect George W. Bush intends to fulfill his campaign promise to deploy NMD as quickly as possible.

Unfortunately, funding this multibillion-dollar boondoggle - a gilded jobs program for the defense industry - will not serve to make Americans safer.

NMD is a system of "exoatmospheric kill vehicles" (EKVs) that are launched into space by conventional ballistic missiles upon the detection of any suspicious missile activity. Guided by several types of onboard, ground-based and satellite-based detectors, the EKVs are supposed to seek and destroy any enemy missiles by directly impacting them in flight (called "hitting a bullet with a bullet"). The whole process is to be monitored by the North American Aerospace Defense Command in Colorado and is estimated to cost between $30 billion and $60 billion to build and maintain.

The NMD program is a direct descendant of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, or better known as Star Wars). Sprung from the fevered imagination of Edward Teller and his cronies at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and made national policy by Ronald Reagan in 1983, the idea was to orbit giant satellites in space equipped with nuclear bombs and lasers. Enemy missiles were to be shot down by an intense X-ray beam, powered by a nuclear explosion and lasting only for an instant before the entire satellite was annihilated.

It was not until 1993 - and $30 billion later - that the project was deemed unworkable. Its successor was the equally hare-brained idea of orbiting hundreds of "brilliant pebbles" that would intercept and destroy incoming missiles by smashing into them. This program was justifiably renamed "loose marbles" by at least one senator.

In September 2000, President Clinton decided to place the deployment of the NMD program on hold. Clinton's decision was based on simple science - the system had not been proved. Only five of a planned 19 intercept tests have been carried out and the last two, on Jan. 18 and July 7, 2000, have been failures (the third achieved an intercept, but only with the aid of the target itself). Perhaps the most positive result so far is that the system has been declared Y2K compliant by the office of the Director of Evaluation and Testing.

In a further blow, the American Physics Society, a collection of 40,000 of the nation's top physicists, has declared that "the United States should not make a deployment decision relative to the planned NMD system unless that system is shown . . . to be effective against the types of offensive countermeasures that an attacker could reasonably be expected to deploy."

The physicists are raising another serious issue with this missile defense system: the smartest of sensors can be fooled with simple and cheap decoys, electronic noise and radar-evasive technology. The current system has not been tested under these circumstances.

Perhaps the most damaging problem with NMD is that it is designed to defend only against ballistic missiles. Surely any rogue nation crazy enough to attack the United States would not trust its precious nuclear weapons to notoriously unreliable ICBMs. As pointed out by the National Intelligence Council of the CIA, it is far simpler and more accurate to load the bomb onto a boat and have a volunteer sail it into Los Angeles harbor.

While all of these considerations make it clear that Clinton's decision was the correct one, a subtler issue remains for Bush and Rumsfeld. When announcing SDI, Reagan said, "I call upon the scientific community, those who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace, to give us the means of rendering these weapons impotent and obsolete." What could possibly be wrong with a purely defensive system?

The problem is that is serves to destabilize a delicate nuclear balance built over 30 years of intense diplomatic effort. Igor Ivanov, Russia's foreign minister, has made it clear that Russia regards NMD as an abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972 - the cornerstone of subsequent nuclear arms control treaties. The strong Russian response is understandable. Police would also be upset if, say, the Mafia were threatening to deploy an anti-police-bullet system.

In the same address that announced the White House decision, Clinton said, "It would be folly to base the defense of our nation solely on a strategy of waiting until missiles are in the air, and then trying to shoot them down."

One can go further than this and say that it will be technologically impossible to reliably shoot them down for the foreseeable future, especially if simple countermeasures are taken, and that insisting on deploying any flawed system will needlessly put millions of Americans at a heightened risk of nuclear attack.

If such a danger were to develop in the future, NMD would do nothing to defend us from rogue nations. However, the deployment of NMD will destabilize the delicate balance with the nuclear powers, placing us at greater risk.

We can only hope that Donald Rumsfeld carefully reviews his options before making a decision on National Missile Defense.

---

Don't Shoot Until Proven Accurate

Los Angeles Times
Sunday, January 14, 2001
By JERRY H. MELDON
http://www.latimes.com/news/comment/20010114/t000003849.html

BOSTON--The 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty reduced the chances for a nuclear conflagration and is a cornerstone of the last three decades' thaw in East-West relations. Not long into his Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday, Secretary of Defense-designate Donald H. Rumsfeld stated that he favors deployment of a national missile defense system when it is technically proven adequate. He later referred to the 1972 treaty as "ancient history."

Rumsfeld's remarks suggest that President-elect George W. Bush intends to follow through on his campaign vow to deploy a national missile defense (NMD). On its face, the notion of a system that will defend against incoming enemy missiles is certainly attractive. But its widespread deployment would violate the ABM treaty, which bans such a defense because it could encourage a first strike by a nation able to defend against retaliation. That is, it would undermine the deterrent of mutually assured destruction.

Rumsfeld's remarks took no one by surprise. In 1998, he chaired the congressionally appointed Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States. The panel's report disputed earlier intelligence estimates that North Korea, Iran and Iraq, regarded as the most likely candidates to stage a missile attack against the U.S., would remain incapable of launching a missile that could strike the U.S. mainland until 2015. It instead urged Washington to continue developing and testing a national missile defense in order to parry a missile attack that North Korea could be in a position to launch as early as 2005. The report underpins Bush's call for deployment of a NMD.

Republicans have been clamoring to pump additional billions into the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), the Reagan administration program to shoot down nuclear missiles with spaced-fired laser and particle beams, ever since technical problems, skyrocketing costs, disarmament talks and the fall of communism persuaded Congress to slice its funding. Horrifying images of the damage inflicted on Israel by Iraqi missiles during the 1991 Gulf War remained fresh in the memory of voters when the Republicans included a national missile defense in "contract with America," their campaign platform in the 1994 midterm elections. Following the Republican landslide that year, President Bill Clinton began to retreat from his stated opposition to the NMD.

Amid his 1996 reelection campaign, Clinton agreed to three years of research and development on a national missile defense, to be followed by a decision, based on existing and potential threats, to deploy or not. Deployment would take three years. Since then, the goal has been a limited missile-defense system to fend off a single-missile attack from North Korea,Iraq or Iran. This scaled-down missile defense is consistent with the "rogue states" doctrine, which was first formulated before the Gulf War by then head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Colin L. Powell. According to its critics, the doctrine was motivated as much by the Pentagon's search for a post-Cold War mission as by genuine threats to U.S. security. However, no sooner had the Rumsfeld commission issued its 1998 report than North Korea fired a three-stage missile that crashed into the Pacific. Missile-defense advocates declared vindication.

Critics responded that even if a North Korean missile could reach the West Coast and inflict tens or even hundreds of thousands of casualties, the North Koreans would not launch such an attack because it would provoke a massive U.S. nuclear response. Missile-defense supporters countered that it is far more ethical to threaten to shoot down an enemy's missiles than to annihilate its entire population.

As long as the NMD is debated in such moral terms, the result will be impasse. But in the case of the national missile-defense system, facts allow one to answer some key questions: Does the U.S. need a missile defense--that is, is there a real threat--and is there no reasonable alternative to one? If the answer is "yes" to these questions, then is it worth the time and money to build a reliable NMD?

Missile-defense supporters answer "yes" to all the above. Naysayers claim that even if the answers to the first three are "yes," which they are not, the answer to the fourth is "no." In the past two decades, Washington has spent $130 billion on SDI/NMD, with little to show for it. Test firings have failed regularly, including key preliminary NMD tests attempted in January and October 1999 and this past July. Even the "success," which the Pentagon initially deemed unqualified, was later acknowledged as only partial. In the absence of demonstrable success, the Clinton administration left deployment up to its successor.

During Thursday's hearing, Rumsfeld assured Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) that the NMD will be thoroughly evaluated. Hopefully, he meant by an independent team of experts.

Most important, the Pentagon has not yet described, much less demonstrated, a reliable means to deal with what critics consider the NMD's fatal flaw: the insurmountability of enemy countermeasures. The latter range from launching decoy balloons to shielding warheads within aluminum liquid-nitrogen-cooled shells to avoid sending out heat signatures.

Frank Gaffney, deputy assistant secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration and currently director of the Wash ington-based Center for Security Policy, contends that if relatively simple approaches to overcome enemy countermeasures do not work, we can put "nuclear warheads" on our defensive missiles, relying on thermonuclear explosions, rather than direct impact, to annihilate incoming missiles.

If that option is ruled out, we can develop weapons that will shoot down enemy missiles at the "booster stage," that is, before a warhead separates from a much larger, slower and more easily tracked three-stage missile. Asked where the detection and firing systems would be located, Gaffney answered "space."

Interestingly, Rumsfeld, who is an advisor and donor to the Center for Security Policy and recipient of its annual "Keeper of the Flame" prize, is the chair of another congressionally appointed panel: the U.S. Commission to Assess National Security Space Management and Organization, which is about to issue its report. Rumsfeld did not say to what extent the recommendations of his two panels complement one another.

Jerry H. Meldon Is Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at Tufts University.

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Problems vex nuclear program
A two-year delay and overruns of more than $300 million are besieging the warhead stockpile.

Philadelphia Inquirer
Sunday, January 14, 2001
By Leigh Strope
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/2001/01/14/national/NUKES14.htm

WASHINGTON - 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 shrank 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, 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.

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Expanding Nuclear Service

New York Times
January 14, 2001 In Review: Jan. 7-13
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/14/weekinreview/14P2ST.html?pagewanted=all

The Pentagon is opening the nation's elite strategic nuclear forces to members of the National Guard and Reserves, reversing a policy that presumed that "citizen soldiers" were not up to the standards of full-time service members. The decision, which clears the way for reservists to serve in missile silos and command bunkers or aboard strategic bombers and transport planes, is part of an effort by the Pentagon to rely more heavily on its 870,000 part-time soldiers to carry out the nation's military operations.

Steven Lee Myers

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Rethink Missile Defense

New York Times
January 14, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/14/opinion/L14MIS.html

To the Editor:

President-elect George W. Bush's continuing support for a missile defense program is misguided (front page, Jan. 8).

As the continuing flow of tons of illegal drugs and tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants into our city centers illustrates, there are much cheaper and more effective ways for a "rogue" nation to get a nuclear device into our country. And unlike a missile, none of these methods are instantly traceable back to the country of origin, making retaliation, and therefore deterrence, far more difficult.

Mr. Bush would be far wiser to drop his support for missile defense and instead divert some of those billions of dollars into already effective programs aimed at reducing proliferation and securing existing nuclear weapons, especially those in the former Soviet Union.

ANDREW GREENBLATT
Brooklyn, Jan. 8, 2001

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

Radiation Compensation Offered

Sunday, January 14, 2001 ; Page C03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A57642-2001Jan13?language=printer

Workers at two D.C. laboratories involved in the Manhattan Project during World War II could be eligible for new benefits if radiation affected their health, according to the Department of Energy.

The Energy Department last week released a list of sites across the country where workers handled radioactive material for nuclear weapons and other government projects. Workers at those sites should call the Energy Department, because they could be eligible for government-paid health care and $150,000 if their health suffered.

The two sites in the District are the National Bureau of Standards, then near Connecticut Avenue and Van Ness Street NW, and the Naval Research Laboratory, on Overlook Road SW. A Department of Energy spokesman said both sites presented relatively small risks to workers.

The toll-free number to call is 1-877-447-9756.

-------- us nuc politics

Excerpts From the Interview With President-Elect George W. Bush

New York Times
January 14, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/14/politics/14BTEX.html?pagewanted=all

Excerpts from a 75-minute interview with President-elect George W. Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., on Friday.

Q. Do you think much about the historic nature of what will happen on Jan. 20 - about being only the second son of a president to assume the office?

A. No. I mean, I think about assuming the presidency, of course. But I don't - I don't think you can really define your position in history while you are alive. I mean, I am defining it, but I don't think it gets defined properly until people have passed on and objective historians start to take a look at how a presidency fits into the - into the whole flow of history. So I don't worry about it. I view short-term history as generally political documents reflecting the prejudice of the writer. I don't think true history is - that you really get a picture of history until a period of time has lapsed. And so I don't worry about standing and - yeah, it's unique. I am more interested in what he and Mom will be thinking than some kind of stand.

Q. What do you mean by that?

A. Well, I love the thought that they are leaving in essence a legacy of people that have followed them into public service - a son or two sons, governors of states, and now one is going to be the president. I think that is a great testimony to them.

Q. You think that makes them proud, too?

A. I'm sure it does, yeah. It's got to. I mean, we don't sit around and say, you know, "How proud exactly are you?" [Laughs.]

Q. Does it concern you at all, with the hullabaloo over the Ashcroft nomination, that no matter what you think of him, the choice has sent a message that may disturb some Americans?

A. No, because I think - I know that this is the short term. I think he's going to do a good job. I mean, every press conference I have or press availability I have, his name always comes up. You've been there. You haven't been to them all, but every time, the same question arises, which is fine.

Q. Does it worry you at all that those questions mean there are some Americans reading into something about you from that choice?

A. No, because I know - my point, Frank, is that I know that he's going to do a fine job. I mean, he's going to be the attorney general of all people. He will enforce the civil rights laws, and when it's all said and done, people are going to say, "Now I understand why President-elect Bush made the choice."

Q. Have you talked to him about the enforcement of civil rights laws?

A. Yeah. Listen, Frank, when I talked to John about the job, asking him - in interviewing him, I knew that there was going to be some, you know, that there were going to be some questions. He could end up being a lightning rod. I mean, I felt that way on - and if it had not been him, it would have been somebody else. That's just part of the process.

Q. Couldn't you have chosen someone else who would not have been a lightning rod?

A. For any - for all positions?

Q. For that position. That's one that is a particular lightning rod.

A. What happens if I pick one for secretary of state? You know, my point is that somebody would be made a lightning rod. I am comfortable with my choice of John Ashcroft. I think he's going to be a very fine attorney general. Anyway, to answer your question, I have confidence in his ability to do the job, and therefore, believe people will begin to say, "Gosh, I understand." And I hope - you know, you noticed me yesterday talking about that he had been elected five times. I can't remember if he had been re- elected as attorney general, but let's call it four times. I said that for a reason. Somebody who is - in a state like Missouri, somebody who is, you know, common-sensical, down to earth, a decent person, is going to get elected as many times as he has. Somebody that is not that way will end up getting defeated. And the defeat of John Ashcroft against - in his race against Mel Carnahan - was just an unusual situation. Secondly, I believe that he handled the defeat in a gracious way, which speaks to the character of the man. He was unbelievably gracious in defeat.

Q. I think a lot of people said that. As people have begun looking back at his past statements, though, some have raised concerns. He spoke to the Southern Partisan magazine --

A. Southern what?

Q. Southern Partisan magazine last year, and said, "You've got a heritage of defending Southern patriots like Lee, Jackson and Davis." He said, "Traditionalists must do more. I've got to do more. We've got to stand up and speak in this respect or else will be taught that these people were giving their lives, subscribing their sacred fortunes and their honor to some perverted agenda." It has circulated around a lot.

A. Well, what are they trying to say about John Ashcroft in that?

Q. The question, I think, was what was he trying to say?

A. You need to ask him that. I'm sure he will be asked that question. I suspect what he was saying is that there is something noble about the Southern history. That they were fighting for - it's like what they tried to ascribe to Gale Norton. She was talking about states' rights, the ability of states to run their business. It's been a philosophical argument throughout our history - the relationship between the federal government and the states. She [was] in no way, shape or form embracing slavery, and neither was John Ashcroft. . . .

Q. Is there any lesson from what happened to Linda Chavez?

A. From my perspective?

Q. Yeah. What's the moral of that story?

A. I think you ought to take her - what she said. She said she made some mistakes.

Q. You agree with that - she did make some mistakes?

A. Well, she's a fine person. I'm sorry she - I truly am sorry she's not a part of my cabinet.

Q. Do you feel misled by her?

A. I wouldn't say that.

Q. You think she made some mistakes?

A. She said she made mistakes. That's all I can tell you. I'm glad Elaine [Chao] agreed to serve. She'll be good. I'm proud of our cabinet, by the way. I think it's going to be a very interesting group of people. It's a very strong group of folks. A lot of them have held office. Some of them haven't. I'm always mindful of what Sam Rayburn told Lyndon Johnson when he first saw the Kennedy administration. He said, "Gosh, I just wish one of them had run for sheriff." And that's why I'm very comfortable with an Ashcroft or a Norton. They not only ran for sheriff, they ran for statewide offices. Yeah, there's something about Gale Norton. She comes from an environmentally sensitive state and was elected twice in Colorado. But it should not surprise you, Frank, that I understand the Western mentality, and I want the Western mentality represented in this administration. It's part of that big swath of red on the map. . . .

Q. Gale Norton has talked about the property rights issue of having the federal government compensate land owners for loss of use.

A. The concept of the federal government taking people's property without compensation is something that I agree with Gale Norton on. It should not. There ought to be a balance between, obviously, the public interest and private property. And a lot of people in my state and in the Western states feel that balance is not there. Gale Norton's pick - I talked yesterday about A.N.W.R. [the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge]. I mean, I was amazed to read critics of her saying, "My goodness she is for drilling in A.N.W.R." Well, so am I. It should not - I mean, people shouldn't be shocked that I'm picking somebody who agrees with me. That's what a president does.

Q. Are you interested in undoing President Clinton's policy of restricting logging in roadless national forests?

A. I'm interested in every one of these executive orders and regulations, reviewing them, which we will do, and I will let you know what I intend to do the day after I'm sworn, or the day of, or shortly after I'm sworn in. Let's put it to you that way.

Q. It's interesting you say that. A lot of presidents have come in and immediately in the first week or two done a whole bunch - not just undone, but done a whole bunch of executive orders.

A. Right. In this case, it looks like the first task is going to be to review all the ones that are - the avalanche of regulations and executive orders that have taken place in -

Q. But the avalanche disturbs you?

A. I wouldn't say disturbs me. It's an interesting exit strategy.

Q. On the roadless areas, do you have an instinct of where you're going to be going on this?

A. My instinct is I'm going to review it carefully, David. You know, it's interesting you said that. We've got lawyers. And I haven't been briefed recently on the law. But we do have lawyers analyzing the very, you know, premise that you just mentioned - that is, nothing can be done. . . .

There's several ways to address these issues. But we're going to look at them all. . . . I would not have done that that way. I would have called in the governors and senators and local folks and said, "This is of interest to me. This is a fine piece of American real estate that I think we ought to protect. Why don't we come together to figure out how best to do so?" As opposed to unilaterally moving.

Q. But you've expressed a lot of concern, in the past, during the campaign, of balancing that preservation instinct against the livelihoods and other things.

A. Well, I will give you an example. This is where Ms. Norton, I'm confident, will probably come under fire. We need to drill for gas. We need to review - and I said this in the campaign. None of this is new. But you didn't have to suffer through these endless hours of my speeches, my mangled syntax. Anyway, I've said that we are going to review parcel by parcel Western lands to determine the cost-benefit ratio for America. We need energy. There is a point of view sometimes expressed by the vice president during the campaign that "oh, don't worry; we will conserve our way out of the crisis." Or the pinch - let me put it to you that way. Conservation is important. That's going to be an important ingredient . . . but we need energy. The California crunch really is the result of not enough power-generating plants and then not enough power to power the power of generating plants. We need to move natural gas, whether it be from Alaska or on our Western lands. All those properties need to be reviewed. There's going to be some in which it doesn't make any sense to drill. . . .

Q. There's another set of executive orders -

A. I must say, I'll be glad to tell you, we've got lawyers looking at every single issue, every single opportunity, and I have yet to sit down with them and review options yet. But you're right. To the extent that there are some of these promulgations that require reviews and then a piece of legislation to overturn them, which is --

Q. Hard going.

A. It seems like it, particularly since it doesn't take much to block action in the United States Senate.

Q. There's another set of executive orders that actually aren't recent ones that date further back regarding abortion. I think one comes up Feb. 15. It's the "Mexico City rule."

A. I just have to - I will look at all executive orders.

Q. This rule, this has been debated for a long time, but this issue is whether or not - a philosophical issue of whether or not - the United States government should be supporting international organizations that promote abortions in foreign countries. Do you have an instinct on this?

A. My instinct is I - to the extent that organizations promote abortion, I - let me start over. Organizations that promote abortions are organizations I don't want to support.

Q. With taxpayer money.

A. Yeah, right, with taxpayer money. I have not reviewed this particular order. . . . I mean, I'm having people review all these. One of the things that I am mindful of is not only picking people, but building a team. I hope history will say that George W. was effective at building a team. That not only means competent people, but it means forging them via the honest and open discussion that is necessary for decisions to be made - forging the groundwork for honest and open discussions. So when I was in Washington, you know, I had a breakfast with the National Security Team and had a very frank discussion about a lot of issues. I've provoked it, because I wanted to see the interaction. And I didn't need to provoke it, because there was a lot of opinion.

Q. And you don't have a shy group.

A. No, they didn't. People got to understand something, David. A lot of them are talking about the Iron Triangle. Bruni and all them talked about loyalty and Bush demands loyalty. Here's loyalty. Loyalty is somebody who walks into my office and says, "Here is my opinion," or "I hear you are thinking this way. I don't agree with you." Loyalty is somebody who walks into the National Security Team and says, "You believe this. I believe this." And it's a two-way street, by the way. A loyal president, someone loyal to the team, the chief says, "I expect to hear from you. I don't want to muzzle you. I want to know." And that opinions be open, and that I listen, and I decide. And once the decision is made, everybody binds together and implements. In order for that to happen, people have to be comfortable with each other - to succeed depends on our ability as human beings to relate. So spending time with the folks, just watching everybody interact and letting them see how I respond and my style. I want them to see the decision-making process and how it works.

Q. The Mideast: It seems clear President Clinton is not going to get a deal in the next week. Are you coming prepared to offer something different?

A. I really don't want to comment in your newspaper about his plan until peace has - until it has run its course, and it hasn't finished yet. We're speculating that nothing will happen. We'll see. But I think it's important for our country to speak with one voice. Any plan has to be agreed upon by the parties. Any outline has to be something that the parties are comfortable with. Doesn't matter whether I'm comfortable with it. It matters whether they are comfortable with it. And that's going to be the definition of a successful outline ultimately, you know.

Q. Do you have any new ideas you bring into this?

A. If I do, I'm not going to lay them out now.

Q. On the Balkans, do you plan to raise with the allies soon your idea about reducing our presence in Kosovo.

A. I think they are very aware of it. . . . I'm in consultation with our allies. In other words, at some point during the campaign, people began to say, and I think the word got overseas, "Oh, he's just precipitously going to withdraw." And that's not the case. Yes, I'll make it clear to them. I think Colin Powell will make it clear to them that this is our intention . . . That we'd like for them to be the peacekeepers. And they know that.

Q. Do you have deadlines in mind?

A. No, I don't have deadlines in mind. I don't think it's fair to have deadlines. Listen, I'll honor the agreements that the president has - that our country has made. And we've got an agreement to be in the Balkans. And it's going to take a while, and I understand that.

Q. The president is also leaving a partial deal with North Korea on the table.

A. Yeah, he brought it up to me. . . . You know, I am comfortable with the idea of using food to help nations in need. . . . Again, there is a lot of these deals where there is an outline with the deal, but part of any, seems like to me, agreement with North Korea must enable this country to be able to verify that they are upholding their end of the agreement.

Q. What worries you more when you think about China, a strong China that begins deploying more weapons, becomes more aggressive in the area, or a weak China that is internally having great difficulty?

A. That's an interesting question. I would hope that there would be a strong market- oriented country that does not feel the need to spend a lot of its G.N.P. on offensive weaponry. . . . China is not going to be weak. It is still going to have a military presence. . . .

Q. Internally weak?

A. Internally weak is going to mean that there is uncertainty and instability in the government. . . . The cultural revolution, for example, to me, is the kind of thing that the world would like to avoid because of the uncertainty of what China would look like after a cultural revolution. It was an unbelievable period of time in that country. It was a period of time where - it was just an unleashing. It was chaotic. It was anarchistic in many ways. To me, particularly as China develops as the military power, a chaotic China would be something that should cause great concern to people in the region and to us. . . .

I would like to see predictability when it comes to people with whom we are dealing. That is not to say that I am not going to push for freedoms. And I agree with the president to trade with China. As a matter of fact, I agreed with him to the point that during the campaign I supported his initiative.

I'm trying to figure out if your question is a trick question.

Q. No, it was pretty straightforward.

A. We're just going to have a lot of work. . . . Redefining the role of the United States from enablers to keep the peace to enablers to keep the peace from peacekeepers is going to be an assignment. And national missile defense is going to be an assignment of the secretary of state. I am very aware of that.

Q. Would you go ahead even if it looked like the Chinese would build up their nuclear forces [to overwhelm the missile defense system]?

A. They are building up their nuclear forces. . . .

Q. But right now, they are nowhere near what Russia, for example, has deployed. . . .

A. Correct. But nevertheless . . . Russia's nuclear force load is decreasing. They [China] are increasing. And we've just got to explain why we are doing what we are doing. National missile defense is - let me start over. . . . The Chinese know and the Russians know that there will be no system developed in the immediate future or foreseeable future, is a better word, that can conceivably intercept a multiple launch regime. . . . You know that. They know that. . . . I'm kind of rambling on here. But I thought it was very interesting when at some point [Russian President Vladimir V.] Putin said, "You start talking about interception on the launch and theater-based protections." I found that to be an interesting statement. When I ever visit, I look forward to exploring that discussion with him, because it's precisely what I told [Russian Foreign Minister Igor S.] Ivanov in my meeting with him prior to the election.

And they've raised great objections about missile defense, but I explained to them that I understand that the technology and the will, for that matter, of some in Congress will really mean that initially we will be deploying systems that will prevent the accidental launch of the ones and twos, with the ability for some nation like Iran to eventually say to us, "And we've got one aimed at Israel. And what are you going to do about it? . . . "

One thing I did talk about in the campaign that hasn't gotten much focus is our willingness to reduce our own nuclear capacity, to reduce the offensive nature of our inventory and enhance the defensive posture of America.

Q. Did that issue come up in your Pentagon discussions?

A. No, it didn't, interestingly enough.

Q. How low do you think you could bring the American arsenal?

A. That's what we are going to find out. I'm going to make our case to parties involved. . . . I have said that one of our top priorities with Russia is to work with them on the spread of technologies, as well as nuclear safety. . . . I also have said it's going to be up to Russia to decide whether or not it is a place for - it's a welcoming place for our capital. They have to make the decisions on matters of real law and sound accounting principles. They have to assure capital that it is a safe haven. That you can get a reasonable rate of return. That's up to Russia.

Q. Are they heading in the wrong direction on that?

A. Well, you mean in terms of, for example, stifling free press? Yeah, that concerns me. As much as I'd like to stifle it occasionally. [Laughter.] He [Putin] has pledged to root out corruption. I think that's going to be a very important part, but it's his choice to make. That's the point I'm trying to make. It's hard for America to fashion Russia. . . .

Q. If you look back now at Russia, Mexico, the Asia crisis, clearly there will be financial crises in your time as president.

A. Absolutely. Yeah, particularly if our own economy continues to sputter. . . . As I understand, part of the issue in Russia was we kind of encouraged them to raise taxes on a system that people were avoiding taxes to begin with, and then the tax load became so unbearable that it was impossible to pay, as opposed to restructuring taxes, to have low taxes that would really encourage growth and more tax revenues into the economy. . . .

The I.M.F. at times has made kind of decisions that really have affected growth of economies and really have been clobbered savers and the middle class. The other thing I think the I.M.F. can do a better job of is anticipating issues. The problem is that that's easy to say, but I also recognize that globalization causes capital just to stampede throughout the world now like never before.

Q. You have said in some other papers you were increasingly pessimistic about the economy.

A. Yeah. Because the numbers are beginning to come in to show that there are layoffs. There's the energy crisis they're expecting. The California situation is going to affect the economy. People are not making their targeted forecasts. I'm not pessimistic for the long run. Quite the contrary. I'm very optimistic for the long run for the country. I just don't know the definition of short and long run yet.

Q. How quickly do you think the federal government needs to act on that in a real way?

A. That's part of the strategy that we're now developing. First of all, Alan Greenspan acted quickly. . . .

Q. In what way [do you feel you can stimulate the economy]?

A. And that's tax cuts. Tax relief. . . .

Q. And are you willing then to have it go through Congress in some pieces, if it looks like that will do it faster or do it better?

A. Here's what I am willing to tell you. I am willing to tell you that to the extent that the entire package gets passed, I will work with Congress. I want the entire package passed. And I'm answering all kinds of questions about speeding up, slowing down. Those are all tactical decisions. The key is that the economic recovery plan be implemented. And I want to talk to you quickly about the merits of marginal rate cuts. The folks are paying in essence a tax because of high energy bills. When you couple that with - and by the way, the home heating bills are now beginning to hit people's wallets. And you couple that with a potential slowdown and the effects on wages, what it places in jeopardy now is the ability of people to handle their own personal debt. There is a lot of focus on national debt, and that is a legitimate focus. Part of the national debt will be relieved as result of lock-boxing Social Security. But the overhang there is an overhang of personal debt on working people that is substantial. We had as one of the C.E.O.'s told us there in Austin, I think she said 61 million Americans have $10,000 in debt or more. That's a lot.

Q. Beyond their houses.

A. Yeah. Credit card debt. And we need to worry about that.

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In His First Days, Bush Plans Review of Clinton's Acts

New York Times
January 14, 2001
By DAVID E. SANGER and FRANK BRUNI
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/14/politics/14BUSH.html?pagewanted=all

CRAWFORD, Tex., Jan. 12 - President-elect George W. Bush said today that he planned to review and possibly roll back some of the most ambitious initiatives that President Clinton has taken in recent days, including regulations that put nearly 60 million acres of the nation's forests off limits to development.

"I understand the Western mentality, and I want the Western mentality represented in this administration," Mr. Bush said of his own land use policies. In an interview, he emphasized that "we've got lawyers looking at every single issue, every single opportunity" to reverse actions Mr. Clinton has taken in the waning weeks of his presidency.

He also described what could well become a new, tougher approach toward Russia, limiting aid for its conversion to a market economy, and he elaborated on several other foreign policy issues. Previewing one of the most closely watched decisions he will face in his first month in office, he signaled that he was inclined to use an executive order to stop the flow of American money to any international organizations that provide abortions in foreign countries.

"Organizations that promote abortions are organizations I don't want to support" with American taxpayer dollars, Mr. Bush said.

Mr. Bush's remarks came in a 75- minute interview in his renovated farmhouse here, followed by less formal conversation during a 90-minute tour of his ranch and a hike up a limestone canyon to his favorite waterfall. [Excerpts, Page 28.]

Along the way - stopping at moments to admire the middle fork of the Bosque River rushing through his land or to point out a buzzard - the man who will become the 43rd president of the United States on Saturday also talked about his legislative priorities, his Inaugural Address and the diplomatic troubles he anticipates with Moscow and Beijing over his plans to deploy a national missile defense system.

Mr. Bush was dismissive of the Clinton administration's eight-year- long use of direct financial aid to Russia, part of a broad Western effort to coax the country toward a market economy. He suggested he would try to stop the money - except for that used to dismantle nuclear weapons - until Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian president, cleaned up corruption and enacted far-reaching economic and legal reforms.

"It's hard for America to fashion Russia," Mr. Bush said. "It just seems like to me that we don't want to be lending money and/or encourage the lending of money into a system in which the intention of the capital is never fulfilled," he said. "The intent of the capital was to encourage entrepreneurship and growth and markets."

According to the General Accounting Office, the United States has spent roughly $2.3 billion since 1992 promoting democracy, the rule of law and market reforms in Russia, but the annual disbursements have tailed off steeply since the Russian financial crisis of 1998. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, institutions in which the United States is the largest single shareholder, have issued loans to Russia over the same period worth approximately $30 billion.

Taken together, Mr. Bush's comments amounted to a sketchy road map for his first 100 days in office. By making it clear that he would rigorously review Mr. Clinton's environmental orders and suggesting he might reverse the Clinton administration's position on aid to family planning groups working overseas, he was embracing some favorite causes of his conservative base, especially the Western states he called "that big swath of red on the map" - a region of contiguous states he swept as he took the presidency in the narrowest of victories.

In the case of reversing President Clinton's forest policy, which was made final this month, after years of painstaking review and public comment, Mr. Bush would face many legal restraints. He acknowledged that his lawyers would have to look carefully at what options were open.

His comments on Russia, if converted into policy, could lead to a fundamental change in the way the United States seeks to influence the behavior of a nation that was once its chief superpower rival - and it risks heightening suspicions in Russia of how America is leveraging its economic and military power.

In the interview, Mr. Bush also made the following points:

¶He said his Inaugural Address, which he hopes to keep to a short 12 minutes, would carry the message that "we can be a unified America." But he insisted that this theme was not the product of his slim victory in the Electoral College and loss in the popular vote.

¶Mr. Bush said he planned to quickly introduce his plan to cut taxes by $1.3 trillion over 10 years as a single bill, perhaps modifying it to deepen the tax cuts in the next few years so that it could spur a slowing economy. Asked if he was willing to negotiate the size of his proposed tax cut with a sharply divided Congress, he shot back: "The answer is no. I think it's the right number."

¶He suggested he might be willing to pick up on Mr. Clinton's framework for a deal with North Korea to control its production and export of missiles but said it must include provisions to "verify that they are upholding their end of the agreement." If North Korea no longer threatens its neighbors, he said, he would "take a look" at reducing American troops on the Korean Peninsula, but only in consultation with South Korea and other Asian allies.

¶Mr. Bush acknowledged that the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq since the Persian Gulf war have so collapsed that "they resemble Swiss cheese." But while he was critical of Mr. Clinton's handling of Iraq, he declined to say what tools he might use to pressure Saddam Hussein.

¶The president-elect said he may have erred in commenting on the Federal Reserve's action early this month to cut interest rates, and suggested that to preserve the Fed's independence he would not publicly evaluate its actions as president. "I kind of read the feedback and tended to agree with it, frankly," he said of the criticism he received for enthusiastically backing the half-point cut in short-term rates.

From Ranch to Frying Pan

Throughout the conversation Mr. Bush looked relaxed. He was clearly enjoying a day off puttering around his ranch, brewing coffee for visitors and interrupting the conversation repeatedly to admonish his two friendly but occasionally disobedient dogs, Spot and Barney. But he leaned forward and turned intent when the subject turned to his choice for attorney general, former Senator John Ashcroft, a religious conservative who he said he knew "could end up being a lightning rod" for criticism.

He said he expected that Mr. Ashcroft's confirmation hearings, which begin on Tuesday, would be focused on the designee's comments on civil rights, his fierce opposition to abortion and comments he made supporting leaders of the Southern side of the Civil War. "They are going to dig up every word the guy uttered," Mr. Bush said. "He's going to get to explain them. He explained many of the words he uttered to me."

The president-elect professed to be unfazed by the withdrawal this week of his choice for labor secretary, Linda Chavez, who had failed to tell the Bush transition team that she had once had an illegal immigrant live in her home and perform occasional house chores. Mr. Bush would not say that he had been misled by Ms. Chavez, but noted, "She said she made mistakes," and he seemed to agree with that assessment.

Mr. Bush described his cabinet as "a very strong group of folks," made stronger by their extensive experience in government.

"I'm always mindful of what Sam Rayburn told Lyndon Johnson when he first saw the Kennedy administration," he said, referring to the famously gruff former speaker of the House. "He said, `Gosh, I just wish one of them had run for sheriff.' " And that's why I'm very comfortable with an Ashcroft or a Norton. They not only ran for sheriff, they ran for statewide offices."

Talking like a professor of management at Harvard Business School - which he attended decades ago - he said he was working hard to turn his cabinet choices into a cohesive team that is accustomed to his own style. In his two visits to Washington in recent weeks, he noted, he was "spending time with the folks, just watching everybody interact and letting them see how I respond and my style. I want them to see the decision- making process and how it works." He wanted, he insisted, no yes-men or yes-women.

"Here's loyalty," he said. "Loyalty is somebody who walked into my office and says, `Here is my opinion,' or `I hear you are thinking this way. I don't agree with you.' " He made it clear, however, that once he had chosen his path, he expected his cabinet members to voice unanimous support for his decisions in public.

At one point Mr. Bush said that he had cautioned his press secretary, Ari Fleischer, that at times he would withhold information so that Mr. Fleischer could truthfully profess ignorance to reporters - hardly a new strategy for occupants of the White House. Mr. Bush recalled telling Mr. Fleischer recently, "When I tell you you are not going to know something, you say, `Yes, sir.' "

`I Love Land'

Mr. Bush made little effort to hide his interest in reversing some of Mr. Clinton's recent executive orders and rules. But he cautioned that his aides were still researching whether reversals would be legally or politically possible, noting at one point that some of his actions would require legislation and "it doesn't take much to block action in the United States Senate," where there are now 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats.

Mr. Bush's views on the administration's recently completed effort to block the development of roadless areas of federal lands, essentially putting those areas off limits to loggers and oil drillers, was complex. Mr. Bush himself clearly treasures his natural surroundings - "I love land," he said while driving around the 1,600 acres he acquired in 1999 - but he instinctively bridles at the thought that the federal government would trump local officials or private landholders in deciding how that land should be used.

"What I would seek to do is to make sure that our bureaucracies were not trampling the interest of the people - and the president himself would work with local stakeholders before takings - such as what the president has done with the roadless areas, for example." The word "takings" is used to describe government action to limit the use of land, with minimal or no compensation.

"The concept of the federal government taking people's property without compensation is something I agree with Gale Norton on," he said. "It should not. There ought to be a balance between obviously the public interest and private property. And a lot of people in my state and in the Western states feel that balance is not there."

He reiterated his determination to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and said: "People shouldn't be shocked that I'm picking somebody who agrees with me. That's what a president does."

But he stopped short of saying that he would reverse the forest policy wholesale, suggesting he would consult with "governors and senators and local folks" to determine which lands should remain off limits and which should be developed. "There's going to be some property in these giant chunks of land that we can use and not damage the environment," he said. "There are some in this country that have wanted zero exploration or zero activity. And I just don't think it's in our national interest to take that approach."

He was more definitive about his opposition to federal aid for family planning groups that promote or perform abortions abroad. One of Mr. Clinton's very first acts, two days into his presidency in 1993, was to sign an executive order scuttling a Reagan-era policy that prohibited these private organizations from receiving public funds.

Under a compromise reached in October to avoid a confrontation between Congressional Republicans and Mr. Clinton, Congress allocated $425 million for such family planning activities - but said it could not be spent until Feb. 15. That clears the way for Mr. Bush to return to the Reagan policy, and while he said that he had not yet thoroughly reviewed the matter, he suggested he was inclined to head in that direction.

He also gave a sense of his other priorities, suggesting that in addition to education reform legislation and his tax bill, "we may be able to move a little faster on Medicare" reforms, including prescription drug coverage for elderly Americans. But he tacitly conceded that an overhaul of Social Security, a major subject of debate in the campaign, would take time.

Looking Abroad

In discussing his approach to foreign policy, both in the formal interview and on his ranch tour, Mr. Bush again said he would not allow American military forces to engage in what he called "nation-building" - converting countries to stable democracies - because it was a distraction from their main mission. That was a critical difference with Vice President Al Gore, who repeatedly cited the experience of American forces in helping remake Japan and Germany after World War II.

He said allies in Europe were "very aware" of his desire to gradually reduce America's presence in Kosovo and Bosnia, and said Secretary of State-designate Colin L. Powell would make it clear that Washington wanted Europe "to be the peacekeepers." (In fact, the United States provides less than 20 percent of the peacekeeping forces in the Balkans.) But, Mr. Bush said, "I don't have deadlines in mind" and "I honor the agreements that the president has - that our country has made."

"It's going to take a while" to pull back, he said.

He endorsed much of Mr. Clinton's core strategy toward China, using economic engagement to promote more freedom, but he seemed unable to decide whether China posed more of a threat to the United States because of its growing military strength or its internal weaknesses.

"I'm trying to figure out if your question is a trick question," he said with a smile. After a digression on the chaos brought about by the Cultural Revolution, he concluded, "To me, particularly as China develops as the military power, a chaotic China would be something that should cause great concern to people in the region and to us."

He said he was prepared for objections from Moscow and Beijing to his plan to build a national missile defense, but he insisted it should not be seen by either capital as a threat.

"We've just got to explain why we are doing what we are doing," he said. "The Chinese know and the Russians know that there will be no system developed in the immediate future or the foreseeable future, is a better word, that can conceivably intercept a multiple launch" of missiles at the United States.

"You know that. They know that," he said. His real intent, he said, was to intercept an accidental launching of one or two nuclear weapons, or to deprive "some nation like Iran to eventually say to us, `And we've got one aimed at Israel.' " He would not discuss what kind of incentive he might offer China or Russia to accept the system, other than decreasing the size of America's own nuclear missile fleet. And how many warheads could he eliminate from America's arsenal?

"That's what we are going to find out," he said.

-------

'Well-Liked' Abraham Has 'Big Learning Curve' at Energy

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 14, 2001 ; Page A06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A57588-2001Jan13?language=printer

In June 1999, at the height of congressional concern over security at the nation's nuclear weapons laboratories, former senator Warren B. Rudman (R-N.H.) told House and Senate committees, "I hope whoever is elected president in the year 2000 selects a secretary of energy that has some national security background, and some, hopefully, technical backgrounds."

Republicans and Democrats applauded that suggestion, made by the man who chaired an acclaimed study by the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board of alleged espionage at the labs.

On Jan. 2, 18 months after Rudman's statement, President-elect Bush appeared to ignore the suggestion and picked former senator Spencer Abraham (R-Mich.) for energy secretary. Abraham was a lawyer, a deputy chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle and a politician before coming to the Senate.

In his one term in the Senate, the closest Abraham got to Energy was in April 1996 when he and three other Republicans sponsored legislation that would have abolished the department and put the nuclear weapons complex inside the Pentagon. In 1999, when charges of espionage at the labs were rampant, he joined in reintroducing that legislation.

Nonetheless, because he is a "known quantity and well-liked across party lines, nothing will deny him the job," said one Democratic aide. Sen. Jeff Bingaman (N.M.), ranking Democrat on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, who will chair the confirmation hearing on Thursday, has said he will vote for Abraham.

"The people who made the most noise about qualifications to run Energy have been Republicans," said one Democrat, noting criticism of President Clinton's choices of Hazel R. O'Leary and Federico Peña. "Abraham has the same big learning curve to climb."

In naming Abraham, Bush never referred to the troubled nuclear weapons complex inside the Energy Department, although it makes up one-third of the agency's $19 billion budget and its national labs have been at the center of almost two years of controversy.

Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.), chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee on energy, whose state contains two of the nuclear labs, has announced his support for Abraham. "He knows he is taking a difficult job in a difficult time," Domenici said. "The crisis facing the country now is energy and not the weapons complex, and Spence Abraham can do that fine."

The General Accounting Office recently released a report that highlights a raft of problems needing attention in the Energy Department's $4.5 billion nuclear stockpile stewardship program that maintains the reliability and safety of the nation's 6,000 deployed bombs and warheads.

For example, the GAO found a cost overrun of $300 million to extend the life of the W-87 warhead, which sits atop the Peacekeeper intercontinental ballistic missile. The cause, the GAO reported, "was lack of an effective management structure and leadership." Vacancies in the office handling defense programs grew from 17 percent in 1996 to almost 65 percent in 2000.

Retired Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also reported to Clinton that "a dedicated infrastructure revitalization fund should be established" for the Energy Department to bring up to needed standards the nuclear production facilities and labs that have deteriorated over the past decade.

Another multibillion-dollar decision facing the incoming secretary will be whether to begin development of a facility to produce the plutonium triggers, called pits, that are used to create the thermonuclear explosion in U.S. strategic warheads and bombs. Although the size of the strategic nuclear force of the future will rest with Bush, it will be the department that determines how many pits are needed and produces whatever number is decided.

Abraham's lack of experience all but guarantees that Gen. John A. Gordon, the newly approved administrator of the National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA) and undersecretary of energy, will be able to establish a stronger separate identity for his organization than he could under Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, who was concerned about its semiautonomous status. The NNSA was established last year because of congressional concerns about upgrading security; Gordon's post was given a three-year term.

Gordon "will be able to operate a bit more independently and more effectively," said one senior Energy official.

There also is a move to repeal a congressionally mandated rule that requires 15,000 department employees who deal with nuclear materials and data to be polygraphed, far more than the department's former head of counterintelligence thought was needed. The polygraph program has become so controversial within the labs that some senators have forced a National Academy of Sciences study of the practice.

But Gordon will still need the support of the new energy secretary to get the White House to back additional funds and legislation "to raise morale, recruitment and retention of the lab work force," this department official said.

As structured, the NNSA is very much like the Defense Nuclear Programs Agency that was called for under Abraham's 1996 and 1999 legislation to dismantle the Energy Department. The legislation would have established a new undersecretary of defense for defense nuclear programs who would serve as the principal adviser to the president and the defense secretary on all matters related to the military use of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons.

But for now, Congress wants to keep the NNSA within the department.

Sen. Frank H. Murkowski (R-Alaska), who has chaired the energy panel and will hold that position after Jan. 20, greeted the Abraham nomination by saying his former colleague "will make a great secretary of energy."

But a current top department official painted a different picture: "Abraham may lose control over the weapons complex to Gordon and oil and gas policy to the White House, leaving him little more than efficiency standards for refrigerators and air conditioners."


-------- MILITARY

Gulf War Tied Israel's Hands

Associated Press
January 14, 2001 Filed at 12:13 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Gulf-War-Israel.html

JERUSALEM (AP) -- Robert Rosenberg's rooftop apartment in Tel Aviv was his front-row seat in the Persian Gulf War -- the fiery clash of Iraqi Scud and U.S. Patriot missiles playing out nightly overhead.

``It looks like the finger of God going up in the sky -- the Patriots firing, the Scuds,'' says Rosenberg, now one of Tel Aviv's many Internet entrepreneurs, then both hapless target and fascinated spectator.

The first night that air-raid sirens whined -- 2 a.m. on Jan. 18, 1991 -- one of Saddam Hussein's Scuds hit near enough to crack the woodwork in the window and door frames of Rosenberg's apartment.

Later, it was Nir Barnea's turn in a Tel Aviv suburb, emerging from his mother's home, its window glass in shards, to find a neighbor's house flattened. ``The woman inside was dead,'' says Barnea -- witness to one of Israel's two direct fatalities from the missile barrage.

For Israelis, the Gulf War was the conflict that compelled the fiercely proud Jewish nation to do the unthinkable -- sit tight and not hit back.

Over 31 nights, 39 Scud missiles slammed into Israel. A stunned populace fumbled with gas masks and waited fearfully in rooms sealed with tape and plastic against gas attacks, while outsiders saw to the besieged nation's defense.

U.S. pressure forced Israel to keep its arms sheathed throughout the conflict, for fear of inflaming Arab members of President Bush's anti-Iraq coalition. More than once, Israel's Air Force Journal reported this month, ground crews armed warplanes, pilots scrambled to cockpits, and military jets hung in the air just this side of Israel's border -- but the strike order never came.

In a demonstrative effort to allay Israeli fears, Bush ordered batteries of Patriots airlifted into the country on short notice.

``It's not in Israel's nature to be hit, without hitting back,'' said Moshe Arens, then-Israeli defense minister, 10 years later his voice still cold on the topic of the U.S.-dictated passivity.

Israel came ``very close'' to responding, he confirmed.

But the inaction strained the nation's ethos of always -- always -- meeting force with greater force so hard that it never quite snapped back into shape.

``The Gulf War taught us about the limits of power,'' said Rosenberg, an author and former journalist. ``We were and still are the most powerful military force in our region, and there was nothing we could do.''

Supporters of Israel's restraint say it kept the allied coalition together.

Opponents say inaction weakened Israel in the eyes of the world -- and its neighbors.

Some say the jolt led, directly or indirectly, to the landmark Mideast peace accords of the 1990s.

Peace advocates such as former Prime Minister Shimon Peres have pointed to the war as evidence of the vulnerability of all of Israel, some 60 miles across at its broadest point; since no available buffer was wide enough against ballistic missiles, they argued, it was better to trade land for peace.

Ironically, it was the bustling coastal city of Tel Aviv that came most under target -- disrupting the lives of people who had told themselves they had little in common with intense religious and political passions elsewhere in the country.

Some threw ``end of the world'' parties to mark the night the allied deadline expired for Iraq's withdrawal from Kuwait.

For years after the Friday that the missiles hit his neighborhood, Barnea says, dogs on the streets would scramble under tables or cars whenever they heard a backfire, or any bang.

``The war penetrated their homes, not only physically, but mentally,'' said Nachman Shai, the wartime military spokesman who became a national hero as he nightly, calmly, let Israelis know when danger was coming, and when it had passed.

Now a broadcast executive, Shai was dubbed ``The National Comforter'' during the war. Grateful parents named innumerable Israeli babies after him. One set of twins was named Nachman and Shai.

With one phone in one hand for radio, another in the other for TV, Shai would go on the air: Two missiles have been fired toward Israel; in two or three minutes, they'll be landing somewhere in the country.

He can still repeat his calming patter from those frightening days: ``Make sure we get in the sealed room with the family. Talk to your kids, make sure they feel comfortable. If they don't want to wear the masks, they can go without for a while ...''

---

Sell Destroyers to Taiwan

New York Times
January 14, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/14/opinion/L14TAI.html

To the Editor:

Re "Taiwan Is Likely to Ask the U.S. to Sell It 4 Destroyers" (news article, Jan. 8): The United States should agree to sell four Kidd-class guided-missile destroyers to Taiwan and indicate its intention to sell additional advanced jets and destroyers to the island.

The Clinton administration recently deferred to China's opposition to such sales to avoid an increased possibility of armed conflict. But it is China that has actively pursued the acquisition of advanced short- and medium-range weapons.

China's military buildup as it relates to Taiwan likely has three purposes: to diminish the Taiwanese desire for a permanent independent democracy, to make possible a successful attack on the island and to dissuade Taiwan's allies from aiding it in the event of armed conflict. Should Taiwan fail to maintain military parity with China, the Chinese authorities would be encouraged to pursue a more aggressive policy toward the island.

MATTHEW E. KAPLAN London, Jan. 9, 2001

-------- colombia

Death Squad Kills Eight in Colombian Cattle Town

Yahoo News
Sunday January 14 10:46 PM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010114/wl/colombia_war_dc_8.html

BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - Suspected members of a right-wing death squad shot and killed eight people in the northern Colombian cattle-rearing town of Valledupar, police sources said on Sunday.

Right-wing paramilitaries, who often target civilians suspected of sympathizing with leftist guerrillas, also killed another seven people in the Caribbean department of Guajira, local radio reported. It was not immediately possible to confirm the report.

A group of at least 20 men in camouflage gear and carrying assault rifles drove up to a house on the outskirts of Valledupar, about 400 miles north of the capital, Bogota, at about 11:30 p.m. on Saturday, local police said.

They killed three men, including one who was only 17. Pausing to throw a grenade into a nearby house, they drove to another neighborhood where they gunned down four men and a woman.

Paramilitaries have been responsible for many of the 35,000 civilian deaths in the past 10 years of Colombia's four-decade long conflict. With the armed forces failing to defeat the guerrillas, paramilitary ranks have been swelling.

The country's biggest leftist rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), walked out of peace talks in November calling for the government to do more against the paramilitaries.

Major human rights groups on Friday accused Colombia's army of failing to sever ties with the death squads and said that President Clinton (news - web sites) should block the small remaining part of a $1 billion package of mainly military aid.

In other bloodletting around the country, the army said it killed two guerrillas from the Cuban-inspired National Liberation Army (ELN) and unidentified gunmen reportedly killed at least 10 peasants in Norte de Santander.

The latest killings came as the government of President Andres Pastrana is close to beginning formal peace negotiations with the ELN but is struggling to restart talks with the FARC.

The United States is providing the country with almost $1 billion in mainly military aid to fund a helicopter-born offensive against drug plantations in southern Colombia.

The Americans say they want to stay out of the guerrilla war and target only drug traffickers. But it will be hard to separate cocaine from the war as both main leftist groups and their right-wing paramilitary foes now draw a significant part of their funds from the drug trade.

Pastrana's government declares that it sees the paramilitaries as just as much of a problem as the leftist rebels.

The president must decide by Jan. 31 whether to allow the FARC to continue using a Switzerland-sized demilitarized zone in southern Colombia, which critics say has been utilized as a base for recruitment and for keeping hostages for ransom.

-------- drug war

USA Today
01/01/14
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Michigan

Rochester Hills - A mother left the drug Ecstasy in her purse, where her 2-year-old daughter found and ate the substance, authorities said. Jami Wojtaszek, 21, of Waterford Township, is charged with possession of cocaine and Ecstasy and fourth-degree child abuse, investigators said. The girl was hospitalized for two days.

-------- iraq

Iraq Releases MIA Search Details

Associated Press
January 14, 2001 Filed at 8:49 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq-Gulf-War-MIA.html

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Responding to U.S. reports about a missing American pilot from the Gulf War, Iraq on Sunday divulged details of a 1995 search of a crash site in its western desert carried out by the U.S. military and the Red Cross.

U.S. intelligence officials in Washington said Friday there were unconfirmed reports in recent years that Lt. Cmdr. Michael S. Speicher survived the Jan. 17, 1991, downing of his F-18 Hornet, and was detained by the Iraqis. The U.S. government sent a diplomatic communication to Baghdad on Wednesday demanding an accounting, U.S. officials said.

The Iraqis say Speicher didn't survive the downing of his plane.

In 1995, U.S. crash site specialists from the Defense Department, working with the International Committee of the Red Cross, entered Iraq with President Saddam Hussein's permission.

The U.S and Red Cross team found the wreckage from Speicher's aircraft and reported there had been previous digging at the site. The team also found Speicher's flight suit near the site. A Pentagon report later said the flight suit apparently had been cut off the pilot.

In its account of the search released Sunday, Iraq's Foreign Ministry said in a statement, ``The Americans demanded the (search) to be carried out secretly.''

``The team, accompanied by Iraqi experts and (Red Cross) representatives, found the pilot's uniform, but not his remains,'' the Foreign Ministry said.

Parts of the plane were found at the site, along with ``evidence the pilot was killed,'' the ministry said without elaboration.

The Iraqis said prior digging at the site had been carried out by desert-dwelling bedouins in the area. The bedouins took some parts of the plane, the Iraqis added.

Iraq's government ``did not know where the site was prior to the visit. The American team supplied Iraq with the details on the location,'' the statement said.

Meanwhile, Iraq renewed its demand that the U.S. government pay $70,000 for Iraqi expenses incurred during the investigation.

Speicher is the only American lost in Iraqi territory during the war who has not been accounted for.

The U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, 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.

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.

-------- puerto rico

Puerto Rico Governor Seeks a Ban on Vieques Bombing

New York Times
January 14, 2001
By ELIZABETH BECKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/14/national/14VIEQ.html

WASHINGTON, Jan. 13 - The new governor of Puerto Rico said today that she was repudiating the agreement reached last year to allow the Navy to resume firing training on the island of Vieques and would ask President Clinton to issue an executive order for the immediate cessation of all bombing on the island range before he leaves office.

Pointing to a new study showing a high incidence of heart problems among the fishermen and children of Vieques, Gov. Sila M. Calderón said this was "dramatic evidence" that 50 years of bombing exercises on Vieques had harmed the health and lives of its 9,000 residents. This preliminary study showed that Vieques residents have a high rate of symptoms of an unusual disorder known as vibroacoustic disease, which is associated with exposure to loud noises like those from jet engines or deep explosions.

"Before he leaves office we would like the president to stop the bombing as soon as possible," Governor Calderón said in a telephone interview. "We can renegotiate a new agreement, but after a more decent quality of life has been restored to the people of Vieques."

Saying she was "neither anti-Navy nor anti-United States," the governor said she wanted to begin immediate discussions with the administration of President-elect George W. Bush "based on dialogue and consensus."

"This is a human problem and I believe we are on the same side of the fence, that the United States and Puerto Rico are concerned about the welfare and human rights of the people of Vieques," she said.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Bush's transition team said he would have no comment until he took office.

All training on Vieques, a small island off the eastern coast of Puerto Rico, was suspended in April 1999 when a civilian Puerto Rican security guard was killed in a bombing accident, touching off widespread protests. Governor Calderón took part in a subsequent commission that found initial proof of health and environmental problems caused by repeated shelling from ships and aerial bombardments from fighter jets.

Ms. Calderón's predecessor, Pedro J. Rosselló, struck an agreement last year with the Clinton administration allowing the Navy to resume training using inert ammunition on the 900-acre range. It also called for a referendum for the people of Vieques to decide whether to close the site altogether. But the accord was unpopular and protesters staged sit-ins at the camp when the Navy resumed training this summer.

Ms. Calderón, the first woman to be governor of Puerto Rico, was elected in November on a platform that included a demand for the immediate cessation of the bombing.

That places her in direct conflict with the Navy. Last month Richard Danzig, the secretary of the Navy, told Ms. Calderón that he would not transfer land or initiate several community projects as promised in the accords until she publicly affirmed she would live by them. For the Navy, the range at Vieques is indispensable, the only training area in the Atlantic where the Navy can fire live ammunition in large joint amphibious, aerial and ship bombardment exercises. Those exercises, the Navy says, are essential to prepare for overseas deployments.

In a letter, Ms. Calderón told Mr. Danzig "this is not a time for threats."

A spokesman said today that the Navy remained committed to last year's accords.

"We believe we have a formula for working out the issue of Vieques and hopefully we can continue with that program," said Kenneth Bacon, the Pentagon spokesman.

That formula included $90 million in aid for Vieques if the residents voted to allow exercises with live ammunition in the referendum the Navy recently scheduled for Nov. 6.

"We thought by declaring an early date for the referendum we were offering Governor Calderón an olive branch, but it didn't work," a defense official said. "Now everything is on hold."

On Monday, Governor Calderón will release the findings of the study that presents preliminary evidence that the Navy training exercises may be causing vibroacoustic disease, a recently identified syndrome that can be detected by a thickening of the membrane that encloses the heart.

In the study, 49 of 50 Vieques residents examined had this symptom at a level rarely seen in a general population. A control study of 50 residents from Ponce, on the main island of Puerto Rico, showed no evidence of the ailment, which is associated with a number of heart, lung and other problems. In addition, the study found, several Vieques children showed an unusual number of heart abnormalities, possibly from jumping into the water during bombing exercises to experience what they called a Jacuzzi effect, to feel vibrations carried through the water.

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

Era Waning, Holbrooke Takes Stock

New York Times
January 14, 2001
By CHRISTOPHER S. WREN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/14/world/14HOLB.html?pagewanted=all

UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 12 - As his last days as United States ambassador here dwindle down through the single digits, Richard C. Holbrooke has yet to run out of ideas for fixing the United Nations.

In a scant 17 months, Mr. Holbrooke has made himself an unapologetically assertive proponent of American interests at the United Nations, pulling off some feats that many diplomats believed were doomed to fail.

"You can do jobs like this the safe way, the completely reckless way or the calculated-risk way," Mr. Holbrooke said during an interview at the United States mission. And by his own measure, in the post-cold-war world, "we have more room for taking risks."

Shamshad Ahmad, the ambassador from Pakistan, said Mr. Holbrooke brought to the United Nations the same high-energy diplomacy that enabled him to hammer together a peace accord for Bosnia in 1995. "He is fond of missions impossible," Ambassador Ahmad said.

The impossible mission this time was the high-wire act Mr. Holbrooke deftly maintained before the General Assembly three weeks ago when, employing the sort of arm-twisting a professional wrestler might envy, he persuaded other member countries to restructure the assessment of United Nations dues.

The agreement cut the American share of administrative costs to 22 percent, down from 25 percent, and its peacekeeping costs to 26 percent by 2004, down from 31 percent. But more than that, it cut through the long American standoff with the organization, and allowed Senator Jesse Helms, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and Congress's most powerful critic of the United Nations, to release $582 million the United States owed in dues.

When Mr. Holbrooke briefed the Senate committee on his achievement, he received a standing ovation.

"We pledged to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that we would give it our best shot, and then we did it," Mr. Holbrooke said, sprawling shoeless on his office couch.

Mr. Holbrooke said he invested almost a year in preparation, dispatching more than 800 cables to United States ambassadors overseas with instructions for pressing the case for reduced American dues with their host governments. "Negotiating is like jazz," he said. "You're improvising on a theme, and the theme has to be your goal."

Before the negotiating marathon ended at the United Nations, the General Assembly's budget committee room looked "like a very high-priced homeless shelter," he recalled, with exhausted diplomats sleeping on chairs.

Mr. Holbrooke has also steered the United States back onto the General Assembly's budget committee, which had taken away the American seat after Washington consistently fell behind in its payments.

He arranged Israel's admission to a regional grouping of Western European and other nations; Arab countries had excluded Israel from the Middle East grouping. (Participation in a regional group makes a country eligible for committee slots and other perquisites.)

"Kissinger had a famous aphorism, which was you don't go into diplomatic negotiations unless your chances of success are 85 percent," Mr. Holbrooke said, "because if you lose, it's a zero-sum game, and your loss is a setback for national prestige and a gain for your adversaries."

But avoiding risk could become counterproductive, he continued. "Excessive caution in these jobs becomes a rationale for inactivity," Mr. Holbrooke said. "And inactivity raises the larger question of why bother taking these jobs at all? They don't pay well, they're hard, long hours and you're under intense public scrutiny and criticism. So the only point in doing the job is to try to accomplish something."

To break down the animosity that had developed over the years between Congress and the United Nations, Mr. Holbrooke brought members of Congress - Senator Helms among them - to the United Nations headquarters as well as escorting ambassadors from the world organization to Capitol Hill.

"The men and women involved on this in New York and Washington are not evil people," Mr. Holbrooke said, but "at opposite ends of the shuttle, people viewed each other as malignant."

He called Kofi Annan the best secretary general the United Nations ever had. But, Mr. Holbrooke added, "The U.N. still falls very far short of its potential, although it's improving under Kofi Annan's leadership."

Mr. Holbrooke singled out peacekeeping as an example of what the United Nations could do well, most recently in East Timor, but which the organization has also done badly in Bosnia and Sierra Leone. Reforming its peacekeeping capability, he said, deserved the highest priority. The peacekeeping department's staff of 400 employees, he said, was half the size of the department of information, which he said should be the next target for reform.

"The U.N. public information office is a swollen monstrosity and needs to be cut severely," Mr. Holbrooke said. "They are not up to date. The documentation services pile up documents nobody reads, in six official languages."

But the specialized agencies of the United Nations, he said, included "fabulous organizations" like the World Health Organization, the World Food Program and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Moreover, he said, "I think the quality of the U.N. ambassadors in New York is the highest of any I've worked with."

Mr. Holbrooke said the resolutions denouncing Israel put forward by countries in the nonaligned movement "are both deleterious to the peace process in the Middle East and damaging to the efforts to build a strong United Nations."

"The single greatest threat to the institutional success of the United Nations is its use by people for theater rather than for conflict resolution," he said. "One of the great tasks of the next administration is to try to prevent the U.N. from being used for propaganda purposes," he added.

Mr. Holbrooke, a Clinton administration appointee, is leaving the United Nations to join the Council on Foreign Relations, and he plans to write a book about the history of American diplomacy. His successor at the United Nations has yet to be named.

But Mr. Holbrooke is not done yet. Next Friday, on his final day as United States ambassador, he has asked the Security Council to hold an open session on the problem of AIDS and the United Nations' failure to prevent peacekeeping troops from spreading the disease.

Mr. Holbrooke put the AIDS pandemic on the Security Council's agenda a year ago as a threat to global peace and security. "I think it's the most dangerous problem in the world today, the biggest health crisis in 600 years," he said.

---

U.N. Weighs Return to Somalia to Aid Leaders

New York Times
January 14, 2001
By CHRISTOPHER S. WREN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/14/world/14NATI.html

UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 12 - Nearly six years after the last international peacekeepers quit Somalia, abandoning it to utter anarchy, the Security Council is considering whether and how the United Nations should return.

Its role this time would be to shore up the fragile transitional government formed recently in neighboring Djibouti and help it restore peace and rebuild Somalia, but the extent of reported destruction suggests that the task could be formidable.

In a statement on Thursday, the Security Council tentatively endorsed a return and invited Secretary General Kofi Annan to propose how such a "peace-building mission" in Somalia would work.

Somalia's prime minister, Ali Khalif Galaydh, briefed the Security Council this week on his country's needs. "We're not talking about large numbers of peacekeeping forces," he said at a news conference today. The new government, he said, had to demobilize thousands of militia members, reintegrate them into society and "provide them with the hope of gainful employment." By one estimate, Mogadishu alone has 20,000 gunmen. The prime minister said his government wanted to put more than 6,000 militia members in camps to learn vocational skills and discipline, and then expand the camps to accommodate another 14,000.

Chaos and deprivation have gripped Somalia since warlords drove President Muhammad Siad Barre into exile in 1991. Factional fighting derailed the economy and led to widespread hunger. The United Nations dispatched a force of peacekeepers, including American troops, to secure the delivery of foodstuffs and impose some order.

"Somalia has been without central authority for over a decade," Mr. Galaydh said. "There's been massive self-destruction. Members of the international community, specifically the United Nations, tried to come and help us in the early 90's, and that effort failed and some members of the international security forces got killed, unfortunately."

The casualties included 18 American soldiers killed in 1993 when the search for a wanted warlord went awry. Television reports showing a mutilated American soldier being dragged through the streets led the Clinton administration to withdraw the American contingent in early 1994, and others followed suit.

---

In a Farewell to Kosovo, U.N. Aide Urges Election

New York Times
January 14, 2001
By STEVEN ERLANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/14/world/14KOSO.html?pagewanted=all

PRISTINA, Kosovo, Jan. 13 - Bernard Kouchner, saying he was more than a little sad to leave one of the biggest challenges of his life, departed Kosovo today, urging the world to respond quickly to the local desire for increased self-government.

Elections for an assembly should be held throughout the province as soon as possible, ideally by June but certainly by September, or frustration could explode, Mr. Kouchner, who was the United Nations official in charge here, said in an interview.

He urged his successor, the former Danish defense minister, Hans Haekkerup, who arrives on Monday, not to waste time with bureaucratic fine- tuning. "The main thing is a general election," Mr. Kouchner said. "I tell him not to lose your time in setting up a better administration - help them here to set one up. Don't play the game of an eternal mandate" from the United Nations to rule Kosovo for those who live here.

Mr. Kouchner, 61, has been the virtual czar of Kosovo since he arrived 18 months ago, in July 1999, barely a month after NATO troops entered the blasted Serbian province. As the leader of the United Nations administration that runs Kosovo, Mr. Kouchner - a doctor who was co-founder of Doctors Without Borders - brought an emotional urgency and boldness to the bewildering problems of a society traumatized by war and revenge.

For all his administrative shortcomings - and Mr. Kouchner never pretended to be a model bureaucrat - he quickly understood that the United Nations must try to share responsibility with the local population or risk the backlash inevitable to any colonial rule.

That meant a reluctance to confront evidence of Albanian crime or corruption tied to important political figures here, especially from the former Kosovo Liberation Army. But NATO-led forces, with much greater resources, were no more eager than the civilians to risk serious clashes with the majority population.

Mr. Kouchner reacted emotionally to the victims, which endeared him to Kosovo's Albanians and finally earned him a smidgen of respect from Kosovo's Serbs when they were turned on by angry Albanians. And to his last days here, Mr. Kouchner preached flexibility and courage to the countries and the international bureaucrats charged with making Kosovo function with at least an acceptable degree of justice, security and tolerance for all of its inhabitants. In the interview, Mr. Kouchner said his biggest failure, shared by international groups, the soldiers here and by the Kosovo Albanians themselves, "is our inability to stop the violence, to offer enough protection to all the members of the community, the Serbs and the other minorities."

In a farewell speech, broadcast on local television and repeated to local leaders, Mr. Kouchner urged on them a final message, "simple and grave: stop the killings, my dear friends, stop the violence." The Kosovo Albanians have already damaged their reputation in the eyes of the world and undercut international sympathy by the culture of impunity and tolerance for reverse ethnic cleansing and violence, Mr. Kouchner said.

"As one friend to another, I want to warn you that you are in danger," he said. "In the eyes of the outside world, the victims, in a way, have become the oppressors."

He listed joint achievements like housing reconstruction and power- sharing, then said, "If the violence continues - against minorities, against honest administrators, against intellectuals and elected leaders - then all the wonderful achievements I have just listed will have been for nothing."

But in a twist that some here saw as a metaphor for the disorganization that has undercut the United Nations' efforts, Mr. Kouchner's farewell speech was mistakenly transmitted over the local television's Albanian-language channel with the Serbian-language voice- over.

But in general Mr. Kouchner pushed the bureaucratic envelope, trying to force decisions from reluctant United Nations bureaucrats fearful of the legal consequences of necessary actions like issuing Kosovo license plates and identity cards or using the German mark as the province's currency.

And Mr. Kouchner seemed to have to spend at least as much time browbeating Western bureaucrats to keep their financing promises, to try to ensure that the peace might not be lost in Kosovo after the war was won.

Even now, after 18 months of regular power and water shortages and millions of dollars of reconstruction aid, Kosovo's two electrical power plants do not function reliably (just now, in fact, they do not function at all, with nearly all the power being imported from abroad).

Identity cards have been delayed again because of a mix-up with the Indian company hired for data input, with many Albanian names simply spelled wrong.

While the numbers of international police officers are finally approaching the original goal and hundreds of newly trained local police officers are now walking the beat, a Serb is eight times more likely here than an Albanian to be the victim of ethnic violence, even though the vast majority of the remaining 100,000 or so Serbs in Kosovo are now living in protected ethnic enclaves.

And the justice system remains almost entirely unreliable, officials concede, with Albanian judges either biased or intimidated and the 12 or so international judges and prosecutors overwhelmed with work.

Mr. Kouchner, after watching police officials from more than 50 countries struggle to understand one another, let alone the Albanians, whose language they do not speak, is urging that the United Nations prepare more aggressively for future challenges like Kosovo and East Timor.

He and his counterpart in East Timor, Sergio Vieira de Mello, have recommended that the United Nations prepare and train police units that can be ready to move into a crisis, rather than reinvent the wheel each time. It would be even more helpful, he suggests, for German police units to work in sectors alongside German troops, French with French, and so on.

"Police must be trained together, like the soldiers, and use a common language," Mr. Kouchner said. "We need a new political attitude; we can't start from zero again the way we had to do here."

Mr. Kouchner is most proud of the October elections for advisory municipal councils. The elections showed great patience on the part of the inhabitants and a great desire by the Albanians to exercise their democratic rights and move toward self- government, he said, even if the Serbs refused to take part.

The world was pleased by the victory of the party of the moderate Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova. But Mr. Kouchner was also pleased by the turn to politics of the former Kosovo Liberation Army, whose party, led by Hashim Thaci, won about 27 percent of the vote.

The final status of Kosovo will be resolved down the road, Mr. Kouchner said, not soon. But the United Nations has promised the people here substantial autonomy and self-government, "and self-government without the vote I don't understand."

He criticized European countries for wanting to delay general elections here for a provincewide legislature to please the newly democratic leaders in Belgrade, like the Yugoslav president, Vojislav Kostunica.

The Europeans, he said, are afraid that a local assembly will lead to pressure for independence. "They're more worried about destabilizing Belgrade. But they will lose all their success if they destabilize Kosovo. Quick elections here are the only way to keep violence away."

---

Helms Softens, Sort Of

New York Times
January 14, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/14/weekinreview/14P2ST.html?pagewanted=all

Senator Jesse Helms, the Republican leader of the Foreign Relations Committee, has loosened his grip on the nation's purse, agreeing to pay $582 million in back dues to the United Nations. But the longtime foe of foreign spending said he did so only after the Clinton administration succeeded in "cajoling" and "browbeating" United Nations officials into reducing Washington's share of its budget.

Mr. Helms offered a plan to increase foreign aid, with a catch: the money would flow, he said, only if it was funneled through charities and religious groups instead of a federal agency.

Christopher Marquis

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

New Tools Showed Gulf War on TV

Associated Press
January 14, 2001 Filed at 1:14 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Gulf-War-US-Media.html

NEW YORK (AP) -- It made stars of Norman Schwarzkopf and Colin Powell. It gave luster to CNN, which proved perfectly suited for the hour-after-hour, you-are-there narrative.

A decade ago, TV's coverage of Operation Desert Storm rallied a newsgathering effort whose responsiveness was unknown during Vietnam, the oft-described ``living room war'' of a quarter-century earlier.

This was a new kind of war coverage that, thanks to satellite technology, delivered images of fighting as it happened.

``Instead of in the living rooms,'' recalls CNN veteran Bernard Shaw, ``it was in people's faces.''

And there were many faces to be seen.

Besides the soldiers from home, there were grinning Saudis and Kuwaitis who flashed the V-sign as they rolled past the cameras. There were Iraqi soldiers, wearing naked expressions of relief upon surrender or capture by allied forces once the ground war began.

But the high-tech marvels clashed with political agendas. Censors kept journalists away from much of the action, and didn't hesitate to pull the plug on correspondents' gadgetry if it fed an inconvenient message to the world.

With on-site video limited, and its broadcast often delayed, TV had to find other ways to explain what was happening. Every available military analyst was drafted for duty, and maps, charts and diagrams were used extensively.

ABC's Peter Jennings even took viewers for a walk through the Gulf region, striding across a huge map on the floor of his Manhattan studio.

``The way you control war coverage is to control the movement of reporters and camera crews,'' says Shaw, ``and all sides did that very effectively -- especially the Pentagon.''

Despite its long tradition of a free press, the U.S. government came under fire from reporters, who complained that the media pool system for covering combat was designed less for efficiency than for managing the news.

Saudi censors, reacting to live TV pictures of nighttime Iraqi missile attacks, warned the networks not to report exact locations of missile strikes. Israeli officials, concerned that live TV shots of missile strikes could help Iraqis adjust their fire, issued similar cautions.

Early on, ABC scored with video showing a barrage of Iraqi anti-aircraft fire over Baghdad. Shot with a night-vision device that painted the city in a luminous green, the pictures showed tracer bullets that looked like streams of deadly pearls streaking into the pre-dawn sky. But those pictures couldn't be aired live. The footage was transported to Jordan for transmission hours later.

CNN got perhaps the most riveting scoop of the whole war with what, in effect, was a live radio dispatch. Blessed with an audio link in their ninth-floor Baghdad hotel room, Shaw and colleagues Peter Arnett and John Holliman gave voice accounts of explosions and anti-aircraft fire during the first U.S. air strikes.

``I'm lying on the floor,'' Shaw said during one eerie pause. ``The sky over Baghdad is black. ... It occurs to me that I didn't get dinner tonight.''

By next morning, Iraqi military authorities had ordered the reporters to cease those broadcasts.

Such coverage didn't go unnoticed at home, either. Assessing bomb damage during a news conference, Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, added the joking disclaimer, ``at least according to what Bernie Shaw tells me.''

TV was an information resource at the White House, too. President Bush watched the televised briefings given in Saudi Arabia by Schwarzkopf, his commander of U.S. forces in the region.

But Ken Bode notes that, through it all, there prevailed a mutual distrust between the press and the military.

``It was left over from the Vietnam War,'' says Bode, formerly a network correspondent and host of PBS' ``Washington Week in Review'' and now dean of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.

``The press took into the Persian Gulf War the idea that the government will lie to the American people,'' he says. ``The military assumed that the press is a disloyal and unreliable force, and therefore tried to keep us at arm's length.''

Still, Bode voices hopes for eventual detente.

Shaw isn't such an optimist, despite subsequent conferences between the press and the Pentagon on finding ways to bury the hatchet in wartime.

``They all say, 'Well, let's do it different and better next time,''' declares Shaw. ``But it'll never happen. We'll always be in contention.''

---

Army Admits Killings of Korea Civilians

New York Times
January 14, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/14/weekinreview/14P2ST.html?pagewanted=all

After a yearlong study, the Army acknowledged that American soldiers killed unarmed civilians near the village of No Gun Ri in the early days of the Korean War. In 1999 the Associated Press reported that American soldiers had been ordered to kill South Korean refugees in July 1950. But the Army and South Korean investigations found no such order and said the shootings resulted from the confusion of war. There was no agreement on how many Koreans died. Local records list 248 as wounded, dead or missing.

Elizabeth Becker

---

USA Today
01/01/14
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

New York

Fort Drum - A former Olympic boxer from Puerto Rico, now a U.S. soldier, is accused of beating his 7-year-old son to death because the boy wet himself. Testimony revealed the injuries inflicted Aug. 21 on Angel Villalongos-Rodriguez were similar to those of a "bad car accident." Enriques Flores could be court-martialed by the Army on charges of murder, assault and impeding an investigation.

North Carolina

Wilmington - The Army Corps of Engineers plans to begin dredging a channel in the Intracoastal Waterway at Carolina Beach to reduce the number of boats running aground. The dredging could begin as early as this weekend, officials said.

-------- OTHER

-------- environment

THE WAY WE LIVE NOW
Produce Politics The spread of eco-labeling may turn the grocery store into a supermarketplace of ideas.

New York Times
01/14/00
By MICHAEL POLLAN
http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/20010114mag-wwln.html

Whenever I go to the supermarket these days, I collect labels. No, I'm not saving up box tops in order to get a decoder ring from Battle Creek. The sort of labels I collect now promise something else, a slightly different decoding. Each of them tells me a little story about where the food I'm buying comes from and how it has been produced.

"Organic" is the oldest and by now most familiar of these labels, and it's about to become even more commonplace, now that the federal government has finally issued its long-awaited, much-debated national organic standards. Sometime next year, a new green-and-white U.S.D.A. "organic" seal will begin to show up on everything from carrots to TV dinners and breakfast cereal, indicating that their ingredients were grown and processed without synthetic chemicals. But organic is just the earliest bud in what is beginning to look like a flowering of supermarket narrative. Lately I've seen labels informing me that the fish in the seafood cooler was caught in a sea-turtle-friendly net; that the coffee in the caffeine aisle has been "shade grown"; that the tea on sale next to it is not only organic but "fairly traded"; that the beef in the meat case was humanely raised; and that the apples in the produce section were locally grown by a farmer who treats his workers respectfully.

At first I wasn't certain whether this banquet of storied food was just a marketing gimmick or the first stirrings of a new politics of food. Superficially at least, the proliferation of eco-labels is of a piece with the trend toward "liberation marketing," in which almost everything is sold as an expression of the consumer's sense of social justice, environmental consciousness or moral virtue. But while it is true that casting the purchase of an iMac or a pair of Nikes as an act of political courage is a gesture worse than empty (particularly when the sneakers in question were made in a sweatshop), the stories now on sale in the supermarket strike me as belonging to a very different genre. These are stories about what used to be called "the means of production," and in a food system as troubled and opaque as ours, they can be radical indeed.

Ever since we began buying our food in supermarkets, the food chain that ostensibly links the American eater to the American land has grown steadily longer, more intricate and less legible; by now it is all but invisible to most of us. This is evidently the way agribusiness wants it, judging by the vigor with which they fight any effort to tell consumers more about how their food is made. It's not hard to see why: the stories about our food system that do get out don't do much for the appetite. There's the one about how genetically engineered StarLink corn deemed unfit for human consumption somehow found its way into tacos and breakfast cereal. Then there's the mad-cow story, which brought us the disquieting news that beef cattle in this country routinely dine not only on hormones and antibiotics but also on bits of other beef cattle (not to mention pellets made from their own manure).

Stories have a way of begetting more stories, and it is scary ones like these that have spawned the more pastoral tales told by the new food labels. The industry objects to eco-labels on the grounds that they constitute an "implicit criticism" of conventional food. They also point out that the spectacular growth of the organic industry during the last decade has been driven by "food scares." Exactly!

Food that comes with a story -- whether it's organic, fairly traded, humanely grown, sustainably caught or whatever -- represents a not-so-implicit challenge to every other product in the supermarket that dares not narrate its path from farm to table. To get some idea of the potential power of that challenge to an industry that has fought to nullify the word "organic" and now campaigns against proposals to label food made with genetically modified ingredients, consider a technology now in some supermarkets in Denmark. Packages of meat and poultry carry a bar code that, when scanned by a machine in the store, calls up pictures of the farm where the animal was raised, as well as information about its diet, living conditions, the date of its slaughter and so on. Imagine how quickly this sort of transparency would force a revolution in our food chain.

Indeed, the simple act of suggesting that such stories about our food are our business verges on sedition in an era of deregulation and free trade. It is one of the pillars of free trade that a country may not discriminate against any product based on the way it was made. "Dolphin safe" gives conniptions to the World Trade Organization, just as "Ulysses" once did to the courts. The W.T.O. doesn't like stories.

That a growing number of consumers apparently do is alarming or encouraging, depending on what you've got to sell or tell. One of the many triumphs of free-market thinking over the past few years has been to redefine "the public interest" as simply whatever the public is interested in buying. Under this convenient formulation, the consumer -- that one-dimensional economic actor beloved of world traders and food marketers -- trumps the citizen, and the corporation can pretty much do what it wants so long as it enjoys the consent of the shopper. What the architects of this so-called market populism could never have foreseen, however, is that the sharp distinction between the roles of consumer and citizen might blur, and that the citizen - that somewhat recherché character -- would actually show up in a supermarket one day. Well, here he comes now. Look for him in the produce aisle.

---

Women Are Warned Against Some Fish

New York Times
January 14, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/14/health/14FISH.html

WASHINGTON, Jan. 13 - Pregnant women and those who might become pregnant should not eat shark, swordfish, king mackerel or tilefish, because they could contain enough mercury to hurt an unborn baby's developing brain, the government has warned.

In issuing the warning on Friday, the Food and Drug Administration rejected calls to also put tuna on the list, saying the other fish contain far more mercury than tuna does.

Women who had swordfish for dinner last night should not panic, Joseph Levitt of the drug agency said. "It is not a one-dose problem," Mr. Levitt said. "They should just simply stop eating it from this time forward."

Fish is widely considered part of a healthful diet. But some fish harbor mercury, an element found naturally in the environment and a pollutant.

Pregnant women can safely eat up to 12 ounces of any other cooked fish a week, the drug agency said, adding that it was important to eat more than one type.

When ingested in pregnancy, mercury can damage the central nervous system.

While Friday's warning was aimed at pregnancy, the agency said it would be prudent for nursing mothers and young children not to eat the four types of fish either.

The F.D.A. deems fish safe if it contains less than one part per million of methylmercury. The larger the fish, the more methylmercury it has absorbed both from water and from eating smaller fish.

Consumer advocates have pushed the agency to warn pregnant women about mercury since the early 1990's.

"This is a significant potential health risk for the children of pregnant women," Caroline Smith DeWaal, of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said. "But it's easy to avoid. F.D.A. has taken an important public health step." But Ms. Smith said she was surprised the agency left tuna steaks - those from large fish, not the canned tuna made from little fish with far less mercury - off the list, and urged it to reexamine that advice.

The National Fisheries Institute, a trade group, questioned whether the mercury levels in swordfish and the other species were really high enough to harm, saying it would review F.D.A. records.

Mr. Levitt refused to say how much mercury the agency had found in canned tuna. But he said levels in shark, swordfish, king mackerel and tilefish were three times higher than in fresh tuna.

But what level of mercury the agency considers safe is under attack. A panel convened by the National Academy of Sciences recommended last summer that the agency should follow E.P.A. safety standards, which are four times stricter and could make tuna a concern.

The F.D.A. is considering whether to change its standard.

"While I am disappointed that the agency has not yet updated their methylmercury action level, this consumer warning is a step in the right direction," said Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, who had urged the warning.

---

U.S. Seeks to Limit Logging in Sierra Nevada

New York Times
January 14, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/14/science/14SIER.html

SACRAMENTO, Jan. 13 - The United States Forest Service has issued a plan to safeguard a huge swath of the Sierra Nevada, proposing sharp restrictions on logging and new protections for water and wildlife in 11 national forests.

Environmentalists welcomed the plan announced on Friday, while the timber industry criticized it as part of President Clinton's effort to build an environmental legacy at its expense.

"It will all but eliminate logging in the national forests," said Chris Nance of the California Forestry Association, an industry group.

The proposal prohibits logging of old-growth and big trees, protects areas near streams and meadows and calls for thinning of small-diameter trees near inhabited areas to prevent wildfires. It covers 11.5 million acres of federal forests, and includes protections for the California spotted owl and other species.

Officials said the plan was not related to Mr. Clinton's ban this month on building roads and most logging on millions of acres of federal forest. They also said the plan was not linked to the Forest Service's call this week to end all logging of old- growth forests.

Opponents have 90 days to appeal to the chief of the Forest Service, Mike Dombeck, a Clinton administration appointee who is expected to be in office for another four months. If Mr. Dombeck upholds the rules, there could be court appeals.

The Sierra, a 500-mile-long mountain range that includes Mount Whitney, Lake Tahoe and Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks, has suffered environmental damage for years from logging, a growing population and increasing numbers of visitors.

The Forest Service plan covers about 40 percent of the Sierra. It does not apply to private or state property. Environmentalists said the 1,800-page proposal represented a shift in the fundamental goal of forest management from logging to protecting old-growth forests and reducing the risk of wildfire.

Mr. Nance, the timber industry representative, said the plan would limit logging to 50 million to 100 million board feet annually. The Forest Service's numbers were higher: 191 million board feet annually during the first five years and slightly more than 100 million board feet after that. At logging's peak the annual timber harvest reached an estimated 900 million board feet.

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Stringent Steps Taken by U.S. on Cow Illness

New York Times
January 14, 2001
By SANDRA BLAKESLEE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/14/health/14COW.html?pagewanted=all

As panic over the spread of mad cow disease grips Western Europe, American health officials say they have been taking stringent steps to prevent the disease from taking hold in the United States.

The brains of sick cattle are routinely tested for the disease. Imports of beef and certain beef products are banned. No one who lived in Britain since the late 1980's, when the epidemic became known, is allowed to donate blood.

"We are doing our best to not be complacent," said Dr. Linda Detwiler, a veterinarian with the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service at the United States Department of Agriculture. Pointing out that some European countries were sure they had no risk, but now find themselves caught up in the epidemic, she said, "We have tried to learn from their mistakes."

So far, they appear to have succeeded. Mad cow disease and its human analogue, the new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, have not been found to have killed any cattle or been identified in people on this side of the Atlantic. Given the small number of human cases in Europe and that mad cow disease has never been proved to exist in American cattle, most experts agree that the risk for most Americans remains extremely low.

Yet experts on mad cow disease say that there is cause for concern. Despite a decade-long ban on British imports of meat and bone meal - a form of animal feed rendered from cows that is blamed for spreading the epidemic in Europe - the United States still imports tons of bovine byproducts and manufactured goods containing bovine materials from Britain and other European nations.

The disease, formally called bovine spongiform encephalopathy because of the spongelike holes that appear in the brain and other nervous tissue, can also develop spontaneously. Although mad cow disease has not been detected in cattle in the United States, a related malady called chronic wasting disease is spreading rapidly among deer and elk herds, captive and wild, in six Western states and in Canada. In laboratory dish experiments, chronic wasting disease has been shown to infect human cells; in principle, hunters who ate infected deer or elk meat could have the disease and, if they donate blood, could pass it on.

At 11 Midwestern farms, scores of captive mink developed a form of mad cow disease after being fed meat from "downer cows" - animals bred in America that died of unknown causes, possibly cases of mad cow disease that were never diagnosed. At various times, 45 states have had sheep that are infected with scrapie, another malady related to mad cow disease.

It is not known whether eating infected sheep, deer or elk causes any form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans, but the infectious agent, misfolded proteins called prions, has been shown to cross barriers between species.

Moreover, government officials acknowledge they are still finding and filling gaps in the wall designed to protect the American food supply from the disease. On Thursday, the Food and Drug Administration reported that hundreds of feed manufacturers and rendering companies were not complying with regulations intended to ensure the safety of domestically produced feed.

The United States' ban on risky British meat products, adopted in 1991 and extended to imports from other countries, contains many loopholes and exceptions that could leave the door open to infected products, says a report by a scientific advisory panel to the European Union on the risk of mad cow disease in America.

Missteps by European governments, too, have made the United States more vulnerable to the disease, said Dr. Maura Ricketts of the World Health Organization's animal- and food-related health risks unit.

Even though Britain and the United States banned the practice of feeding cows to cows in the early 1990's, some British renderers continued to make and ship contaminated meat and bone meal around the world while some European farmers knowingly used such products until November because the products were cheap, Dr. Ricketts said. Public health officials suspect that infected meat was repackaged and resold as having come from countries presumed free of mad cow disease.

"The murky movement of live cattle and rendered animals around the world," Dr. Ricketts said, means mad cow disease has gone global.

A few weeks ago, the United Nations estimated that at the height of the mad cow epidemic in Britain at least 500,000 tons of untrackable bovine byproducts were exported from Britain to Western Europe and other nations around the world, including the United States.

British export statistics show that 20 tons of "meals of meat or offal" that were "unfit for human consumption" and probably intended for animals were sent to the United States in 1989. And 37 tons were exported to the United States in 1997, well after the government banned imports of such risky meat. No one has tried to trace this meat or to determine whether it was allowed into the United States.

In an exception to the import ban, many health supplements contain glandular material from animals whose health status cannot be determined. While acknowledging that the risk is very small, experts on mad cow disease note that glandular material is more likely to be infected with prions, the disease's infectious agent, than most other tissue. Products must have labels listing ingredients like bovine pituitaries and adrenals, but manufacturers are not required to list the country of origin.

Other beef byproducts that are still allowed in the country include milk, blood, fat, gelatin, tallow, bone mineral extracts, collagen, semen, amniotic fluid, serum albumin and other parts of European cattle that are widely used in American products, including vaccines and medicines. The federal Agriculture Department states that these tissues are not believed to contain dangerous levels of prions, but acknowledges that not all have been tested to prove that they pose no risk.

United States health officials are just now closing some of these regulatory gaps, documents posted on their Web sites say. One year ago, the Agriculture Department told supplement manufacturers to avoid neural and glandular material from domestic and foreign sheep flocks infected with scrapie. Compliance is voluntary.

Although cud-chewing animals, or ruminants, are the known carriers of mad cow disease, the Agriculture Department last month temporarily barred European feed supplements made from nonruminant animals like chickens or pigs. This is because, through November, many European farmers were still giving feed made from potentially infected cows to chickens and pigs and were then feeding chickens and pigs back to cows. This practice is now banned in Europe, and Agriculture Department officials are worried that European feed manufacturers will slash prices and try to dump their products on American farmers. In theory, prions could be spread in this feed.

On Dec. 23, the Food and Drug Administration told American drug manufacturers to stop using bovine serum from countries where mad cow disease has been found for making vaccines against flu, hepatitis A and diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus, but vaccines made from the materials are still being used. The agency maintains these vaccines are safe. An F.D.A. committee will meet this month to discuss extending restrictions on who can donate blood to include people who lived in Europe for six or more months in the 1990's. The committee is also expected to discuss whether to ban donations from deer and elk hunters.

As potential weaknesses have emerged, the American beef industry has become increasingly concerned, particularly about the safety of animal feed. On Jan. 9, the F.D.A.'s Center for Veterinary Medicine held a nationwide telephone conference with its field officers and 50 state agencies responsible for inspecting feed producers. The agency told the states that only about 2,700 of the estimated 9,500 feed manufacturers had been inspected for compliance, the center's director, Dr. Stephen Sundlof, said.

Among smaller companies that handle ruminant byproducts and wastes, nearly half did not have a system for putting labels on their products warning that they should not be fed to cattle or sheep, the F.D.A. said. More than a quarter of large rendering companies that handle risky material had no system to prevent the commingling of ruminant wastes with that of other animals like chickens and fish.

Dr. Gary Weber, executive director of regulatory affairs for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, said that enforcing the ban must be a priority for President-elect George W. Bush.

Compounding officials' concerns is the baffling nature of the infectious agent that is believed to cause these deadly diseases, collectively known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies. For unknown reasons, a normal protein called a prion twists into an abnormal shape, usually in the brain. These misfolded prions accumulate into toxic clumps that eventually destroy normal brain tissue. Spongelike holes develop. Animals and people are driven mad and then die. Apparently, these diseases arise spontaneously in one out of every million humans, cows, sheep and many other mammals. Since 36 million cattle are slaughtered annually in the United States, about 36 cows spontaneously infected with mad cow disease could be entering the nation's food chain each year.

These abnormal prions can pass from one species to another, including humans. Prions can survive outside the body for years and are not easily killed by freezing or cooking. No one knows the incubation period for humans. Nor does anyone know how much is required to transmit the disease, although evidence suggests that people can be infected from even a few bites of tainted beef.

Those infected share a genetic trait that appears to have made them susceptible to the disease. Eighty-eight people have died from or have been found to have the new variant, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, in Britain. Three people from France and one from Ireland have also died.

This variant has not surfaced in the United States. Dr. Pierluigi Gambetti, director of the National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, said he has examined tissues from 292 Americans known to have prion diseases but none have shown the hallmarks of this variant.

But at the same time, chronic wasting disease is a growing problem, said Hal Herring, a hunter and writer in Corvalis, Mont., who is tracking that disease. Thirteen captive herds in the United States have been infected and up to 18 percent of wild deer in parts of northern Colorado and southern Wyoming are infected, Mr. Herring said. In December, a federal agency in Canada slaughtered 1,700 domestic elk at six Saskatchewan farms to contain an outbreak. The disease was traced to a single animal, which never showed any signs of illness, exported to Canada from South Dakota. No one knows how deer and elk in the wild or in captivity pass the disease among themselves, Mr. Herring said.

An unknown number of American sheep are infected with scrapie, which, like mad cow disease, is a spongiform encephalopathy. It is not known if scrapie can harm humans who eat infected sheep tissue, but last autumn the fear of such transmission led the Agriculture Department to quarantine and order the destruction of a herd of sheep, exported to Vermont from Belgium. A few of the animals had been found to have developed a spongiform encephalopathy of unknown origin. The sheep's owners, who make cheese from the sheep milk, fought back. Lawyers continue to argue over the fate of the remaining animals, which show no sign of illness.

Dr. Tom Pringle, a biochemist in Eugene, Ore., and independent researcher on transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, says American officials have not done enough to battle the disease. He says the United States should set up a system to track bovine material coming into this country and increase testing. Out of 900 million cattle, the Agriculture Department tested fewer than 12,000 sick cows for mad cow disease in the last decade. None were found to have the disease. France, with 5.7 million cattle, is now testing 20,000 animals each week and identified 153 infected animals last year.

Dr. Pringle and other experts emphasize that Americans should not panic over events in Europe. While prion diseases are frightening, they say, the odds of coming into contact with them are extremely low for most Americans.

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Gray wolves encroaching on ranches

USA Today
01/14/01- Updated 11:35 PM ET
By Patrick O'Driscoll, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/ndssun07.htm

Six years after they were returned to the world's first national park, the gray wolves of Yellowstone are pushing beyond its borders into an edgy, life-and-death coexistence with the populated West. Multiplying faster than wildlife biologists expected, the wild predators are a marquee success story for wilderness ecology, park tourism and the federal Endangered Species Act. In Yellowstone and central Idaho, about 350 wolves now hunt their traditional prey, weaker elk, deer and moose.

But increased run-ins with domestic livestock outside the park and near human settlements have forced managers of the restoration program to kill or remove scores of wolves. Farm and ranch groups, who lost a court fight to keep wolves from being brought back, want the government to lift restrictions on stockgrowers' shooting the animals to protect their cattle, sheep and dogs. With the inauguration nearing, some wolf defenders worry that the new administration will weaken a program that has allowed the species to regain a foothold in the wild.

Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, who helped carry the first 14 transplanted Canadian wolves into Yellowstone in 1995, returned to the park Saturday for a final briefing before leaving his post next weekend. It was the first anniversary of a court ruling that upheld the species' controversial return. The 31 wolves released in Yellowstone in 1995-96 have grown to 164 animals in 16 packs. Another 34 let loose in the central Idaho wilderness have expanded to 185 wolves.

Babbitt won't speculate about whether his Republican successors will try to undo the gains for wolves. But he said Saturday that livestock "will not have priority" over wolves on public lands in the West.

Bob Ferris, vice president at Defenders of Wildlife, which has paid more than $155,000 to ranchers for livestock killed by wolves, expresses "tremendous fears" about changes under President-elect Bush. "We're gearing up to do whatever it takes to preserve this effort." Ed Bangs, wolf recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, dismisses the worries. "This program has received about zero political intervention," says Bangs, who joined the project during the Reagan administration.

Richard Krause, assistant counsel for the American Farm Bureau Federation, says stockgrowers will press anew for authority to shoot wolves that threaten herds, rather than have to wait for government agents to investigate, verify and then track down the culprits. Krause says that Gale Norton, whom Bush has nominated as Babbitt's successor, "is not as politicized as people on the other side think."

In a society reared on Old World tales of wolves as bloodthirsty killers, the gray wolf was hunted to extinction across the West by the 1930s. Since 1974, when the species was listed as "endangered," it has rebounded in the Great Lakes. Canadian wolves also have begun to re-colonize parts of northwest Montana.

But eight of Yellowstone's wolf packs now spend most or all of their time beyond the park boundaries. The Sheep Mountain pack was reduced from 13 wolves to one by legal shootings and live removals after it repeatedly attacked livestock last year in Paradise Valley, Mont., north of the park.

Since the 1980s, authorities have had to shoot 82 wolves and relocate 91 others in the northern Rockies for killing livestock. Last year, Yellowstone wolves killed seven cattle, 31 sheep and five dogs, while central Idaho packs killed 15 cattle, 55 sheep and three dogs.

Three young Sheep Mountain males, trained in captivity to avoid livestock, are now back in the wild. The acid test might come this summer, when ranchers move cattle back to Paradise Valley pastures.

Wolves killing livestock "is just inevitable," local rancher Martin Davis says. He says having wolves in the park "for show-and-tell" is fine, "but if they come out, we can't have our hands tied.''

Some people already have killed some wolves illegally, hewing to an anti-wolf philosophy known as "shoot, shovel, and shut up." Reliable counts are elusive. A tally as of 1998 found 21 illegal shootings of radio-collared wolves. Fish and Wildlife just posted a $10,000 bounty last month for the killers of two more in Idaho.

Despite the turmoil, the northern Rockies packs have reached Fish and Wildlife's goal for down-listing the species to "threatened": 20 pairs of mates producing successful litters for at least two of three consecutive years. Last July, the agency proposed reclassification.

Wolf advocates say they worry that such moves are hasty.

Defenders of Wildlife and the Turner Endangered Species Fund are pushing for wolf reintroductions in Colorado's southern Rockies . Last month, Defenders of Wildlife established a "proactive" fund for attack prevention: herd-guarding dogs, electric sheep fences, noise-making devices to scare wolves and perhaps even adding extra cowboys.

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As Europe Fights Mad Cow, Concerns Spread to U.S.

New York Times
January 14, 2001
In Review: Jan. 7-13 By THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/14/weekinreview/14P2ST.html?pagewanted=all

Mad cow disease grabbed headlines again as Germany's agriculture and health ministers resigned after a national testing program found 10 infected cows. And an Italian scientist warned that current tests cannot give infallible guarantees of animal health.

In the United States, officials have begun admitting that the safety net against the disease has flaws. A large number of feed manufacturers are violating rules designed to keep mad cow out of American cattle, they said. The rules bar ground-up cows and sheep from being fed to cattle, a practice that is believed to be what started the spread of mad cow disease in Britain since it was diagnosed there in 1986.

Sandra Blakeslee

Environmental End Run

With its time running out, the Clinton administration continued its rush to set in place environmental policies that the incoming Bush administration might find hard to reverse. The latest step, taken by the Forest Service chief, Mike Dombeck, could lead to a ban on the cutting of the biggest, oldest trees in the national forests. The Bush team, which has signaled its opposition to locking away natural resources, has promised to review all such last-minute actions. But with environmental issues becoming a clear focus of contention, its first task will be to defend the nomination of Gale A. Norton as interior secretary, which is being opposed by major environmental groups.

Douglas Jehl

Another Antibiotics Warning

A public interest group warned that antibiotics are being used on farm animals much more heavily than the drug and livestock industries have reported. Studies have warned that routinely feeding antibiotics to farm animals breeds drug-resistant bacteria. The Union of Concerned Scientists estimated that 24.6 million pounds of antibiotics a year are given to healthy chickens, cows and pigs, to help fatten them up and to prevent, not to treat, infections. Industry estimates are 40 percent lower.

Denise Grady

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Arctic National Refuge

New York Times
January 14, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/14/opinion/L14ARC.html

To the Editor:

Re "Nearing a Forest Legacy" (editorial, Jan. 8):

As you have long and wisely opposed oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, I was surprised to see wavering on the question of whether President Clinton should declare the refuge a national monument.

With the inauguration of George W. Bush, this national treasure will face its greatest threat ever. I can only hope that you will remain vigilant when the new Congress, encouraged by the new president, once again tries to slip an Arctic Refuge drilling rider onto some must-pass bill.

In the meantime, perhaps you will see the light and endorse this national monument designation. It may just mean that we have an untouched Arctic Refuge to pass on to our grandchildren.

SUSAN ALEXANDER V.P., Environmental Communications Public Media Center San Francisco, Jan. 8, 2001

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Our Public Lands

New York Times
January 14, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/14/opinion/L14INT.html

To the Editor:

Re "The Death of a River Looms Over Choice for Interior Post" (front page, Jan. 7):

In selecting Gale A. Norton as his choice for secretary of the interior, President-elect George W. Bush has sent a clear message to Americans that the mining, timber and oil industries will be permitted to assault our public lands with minimal fear of federal scrutiny or interference.

Ms. Norton has in essence depicted the federal government's stewardship of public lands as an overbearing teacher who does not give students enough freedoms. She argues that if given incentives like immunity from fines and prosecution, industries will both report and clean up their own messes. Maybe today's high school students would improve their test scores if we applied that same approach and allowed students to report when they cheated on a test. They could punish themselves.

ROBERT J. BOYD Staten Island, Jan. 7, 2001

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USA Today
01/01/14
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Kansas

Topeka - Members of the Senate Natural Resources Committee want the state to take a hard line with officials from the Environmental Protection Agency over water quality standards. The EPA is considering new water quality standards for Kansas. State senators say a U.S. Supreme Court ruling this week means the state has primary responsibility for regulating water quality.

Wyoming

Gillette - The state has proposed restricting by 10% the amount of barium, a heavy metal, that it will allow in water discharged during the production of coal bed methane. An industry group criticized the slight regulatory change by saying it would cost the industry millions of dollars and only minimally improve the environment.

-------- genetics

Surprise Inside

New York Times
January 14, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/14/weekinreview/14P2ST.html?pagewanted=al

Scientists have created the first genetically engineered primate, a baby monkey with a gene from jellyfish in his cells. They hope to eventually make colonies of monkeys with genes for human diseases, allowing the diseases and their treatments to be studied. The jellyfish gene was a test - it directs cells to make a protein that glows under fluorescent light, making it easy to see if the added gene is active. Molecular tests showed the gene was present in the monkey's cells, but hey did not make the protein, so they did not glow.

Gina Kolata

-------- police

Racial Math on Turnpike: More Stops, Fewer Arrests, and Divided Conclusions

New York Times
January 14, 2001
By IVER PETERSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/14/nyregion/14TROO.html?pagewanted=all

TRENTON, Jan. 12 - The argument over racial profiling by state troopers in New Jersey has become an argument over numbers.

To the lawyers who have leveled charge after charge of racial profiling on the New Jersey Turnpike since 1994, the first survey of highway users and a new breakdown of stop-and-arrest rates by race are clear proof that troopers are stopping minorities at a greater rate than before, even though the number of arrests declined.

But to state officials, the results are inconclusive, and proof that they need time to collect more data and install a better reporting system. "You ask me what does it mean that stops are marginally up and arrests are marginally down, and I don't have answers to that question," Attorney General John J. Farmer Jr. said on Wednesday, when the new statistics were released. "The whole point of the reform effort is to put into place a system that will enable us to tell you what these numbers mean."

Even the Black Ministers Council of New Jersey, which is leading the drive for new anti-profiling laws, said it was willing to give the police the benefit of the doubt, at least until the next set of numbers comes out this summer.

In April 1999, when state officials stopped denying that state troopers on the turnpike were singling out minority drivers, they agreed to start releasing periodic summaries of all traffic stops by state troopers by race and by offense. The first such report was released last year. The assumption was that any evidence that minorities were being stopped at rates greater than their numbers on the highway would be proof of bias, and the report released on Wednesday, which included the first look at the racial makeup of the turnpike's users, seemed to show just that.

According to the figures, blacks accounted for about 12.5 percent of all motorists on the turnpike but experienced 23.3 percent of all stops during the six months from May through October last year. Blacks were driving 22 percent of the vehicles stopped from January through April, the period covered by the first of the state's periodic reports.

William H. Buckman, a Moorestown lawyer, filed one of the first racial profiling lawsuits in 1994 after becoming suspicious over the number of minority defendants coming to court with tickets for petty violations. To him, the latest report shows the practice is continuing.

"My review of these materials is that there are still a very high number of warnings being issued, and that statistic tells me that profiling is still afoot," Mr. Buckman said. "I mean, the stop rate of minorities went up, and I think Attorney General Farmer's comments that they can't tell anything from these numbers is very telling. For years they denied it, then they admitted it, and now they have these numbers, and if the best they can say is they can't interpret them, I think reading between the lines, they're saying they haven't stopped it yet."

The disparity between population and stops seems to be the greatest on the southern half of the turnpike, where a decade ago the state police made headlines with an aggressive campaign against interstate drug smugglers, and where the original racial profiling suit against the state was fought and won by minority drivers.

There, according to the latest report, African-Americans accounted for 15.1 percent of all motorists but for 31.5 percent of all stops from last May through last October, an increase from 29 percent from January through April.

The Rev. Reginald T. Jackson, executive director of the Black Ministers Council, said he was particularly troubled by the apparent increase in the stop rate for blacks along the turnpike patrolled by the Moorestown station, which covers the stretch south of Exit 7. Yet he said his group was unwilling to leap to conclusions so soon.

For one thing, Mr. Jackson said, the population survey, which has a wide margin of error, is based on questionnaires handed out at toll booths and may not give an accurate picture of who is using the turnpike.

"I guess part of me wants to find a conclusion here, but I think we should be cautious," he said. "You can almost make a report like this say anything you want, and I think we are going to have to wait until the next report in another six months."

Ed Lennon, president of the State Troopers Fraternal Association, asserts that it defies common sense to believe that troopers would increase the number of racially biased stops after the spotlight was turned on them, particularly now that nearly every marked patrol car is equipped with a video camera and microphone to record each stop.

"Right there on the camera is proof positive for the reason for every stop," Mr. Lennon said. The police have long disputed the assumptions that all races drive similarly and that any disparity in stop rates indicates some bias.

The arrest figures released on Wednesday showed that African- Americans were more likely to get moving violations, which are mostly for speeding, than their numbers would suggest, but that whites were statistically more likely to be arrested for drunken driving.

Mr. Buckman, the lawyer, rejects Mr. Lennon's assertion that troopers do not respond differently to a driver's skin color.

"You're talking about an organization that is deeply entrenched with the culture of profiling," Mr. Buckman said. "Because of its history and hierarchy and training policies, it is going to take a lot more than the almost cosmetic changes than the attorney general has promised."

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Ex-Legislator Apologizes for Anti-Police Remarks

New York Times
January 14, 2001
National News Briefs
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/14/national/14NATI.html

NASHUA, N.H., Jan. 13 (AP) - A former state legislator has publicly apologized for calling for the killing of police officers, remarks that led to his resignation.

"I just wanted to say that a lot of the stuff I put out was wrong, and it was hateful," the former legislator, Tom Alciere, said in a telephone interview that WSMN, a Nashua radio station, broadcast on Friday.

"And you can call that a retraction," Mr. Alciere said. "I never imagined that my words were going to be the focus of such intense media scrutiny. But I really don't have anyone to blame for that but myself."

Mr. Alciere, Republican of Nashua, resigned from the State House of Representatives on Wednesday after intense criticism. He advocated killing police officers in hundreds of Internet postings uncovered weeks after his election in November.

Mr. Alciere continued to make anti-police remarks as recently as Thursday, when he told WSMN that there were "lots of opportunities" to kill police officers by swerving into construction sites. He said he decided to apologize after listening to stories from the families of murdered police officers.

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USA Today
01/01/14
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Delaware

Wilmington - The Justice Department claims Delaware State Police discriminated against blacks who applied to become troopers. Justice officials sued state police following a three-year investigation. The suit contends that until 1999, state police used a test method that denied employment to qualified black applicants.

Georgia

Decatur - Interim Sheriff Thomas Brown said he plans to run in the special election March 20 to replace DeKalb County Sheriff-elect Derwin Brown, who was assassinated before he could take office. The interim sheriff was the county's public safety director for a decade before accepting the temporary appointment.

-------- terrorism

HOLY WARRIORS One Man and a Global Web of Violence

New York Times
January 14, 2001
By STEPHEN ENGELBERG
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/14/world/14JIHA.html?pagewanted=all

The following article is based on reporting by Craig Pyes, Judith Miller and Stephen Engelberg and was written by Mr. Engelberg.

In 1987, several years after he began training Arab volunteers to oust Soviet forces from Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden had a vision. The time had come, he told friends, to start a global jihad, or Islamic holy war, against the corrupt secular governments of the Muslim Middle East and the Western powers that supported them.

Mr. bin Laden, the Saudi millionaire, would use his camps in Afghanistan to take holy warriors from around the world - who had always pursued local goals - and shape them into an international network that would fight to bring all Muslims under a militant version of Islamic law.

Some of his comrades in arms warned him that the goal was unattainable.

"I talked to Osama one day and asked him what was he doing," recalled Abdullah Anas, an Algerian who was fighting in Afghanistan at the time and provided a rare personal narrative of the formation of Mr. bin Laden's organization. " `Imagine after five years a guy from Malaysia goes back to his country. How can he remember you are his leader? He will get married, have children, engage in work in his country. How can you establish one camp for jihad in the world?' "

But he and other doubters watched as Mr. bin Laden, who is now America's most wanted terror suspect, set about doing just that. Mr. Anas's account and those of other witnesses, along with intelligence from United States, the Middle East and Europe, draw a vivid and newly detailed portrait of the birth of a modern jihad movement. What began as a holy war against the Soviet Union took on a new dimension, Mr. Anas said, when Mr. bin Laden broke away and established a new corps of militant Muslims whose ambitions reached far beyond the borders of Afghanistan.

From his Afghan camps, Mr. bin Laden created a kind of clearinghouse for Islamic terrorism, which American officials say not only conducts its own operations but trains and underwrites local militants, connecting home-grown plots to a global crusade.

His strategy is aptly captured by one of his many code names: The Contractor. The group he founded 13 years ago, Al Qaeda, Arabic for The Base, is led by masterful opportunists who tailor their roles to the moment, sometimes teaching the fine points of explosives, sometimes sending in their own operatives, sometimes simply supplying inspiration.

The group has become a beacon for Muslim Malaysians, Algerians, Filipinos, Palestinians, Egyptians, even Americans who have come to view the United States as their enemy, an imperial power propping up corrupt and godless governments. Mr. bin Laden has tried to bridge divisions in a movement long plagued by doctrinal, ethnic and geographic differences. "Local politics drives what they're doing, but it's much more visionary," said Robert Blitzer, a former F.B.I. counterterrorism official. "This is worldwide. This is, `We want to be somewhere in a hundred years.' "

According to a recent Central Intelligence Agency analysis, Al Qaeda operates about a dozen Afghan camps that have trained as many as 5,000 militants, who in turn have created cells in 50 countries. Intelligence officials say the group is experimenting with chemical weapons, including nerve gas, at one of its camps.

Mr. bin Laden and his supporters use centuries-old interpretations of the Koran to justify violence in the name of God against fellow Muslims or bystanders - a vision on the farthest extremes of one of the world's largest religions. But their operations are thoroughly modern - encrypted e-mail, bomb-making recipes stored on CD-ROM's, cell phones and satellite communications.

The group plans attacks months or years in advance, investigators say. A former United States Army sergeant, Ali A. Mohamed - who worked for Mr. bin Laden and is now a government witness - has told prosecutors that Al Qaeda trains "sleeper" agents, or "submarines," to live undetected among local populations.

Mr. bin Laden has not achieved his more ambitious goals. He has not brought more Muslims under the rule of Islamic law, toppled any of the Arab governments he took aim at, or driven the United States out of the Middle East. His violence has repulsed many believers and prompted severe crackdowns in Arab states that already have limited political freedoms.

Nonetheless, he and his small inner circle have preoccupied American officials, paralyzing embassies, thwarting military exercises and making Americans abroad feel anxious and vulnerable. Earlier this month, the United States closed its Rome embassy for nearly two days after intelligence officials warned of a possible attack.

American officials have charged Mr. bin Laden with masterminding the 1998 bombings of two embassies in Africa that killed more than 200 people, and suspect him of involvement in the October bombing of the destroyer Cole in Yemen, which killed 17 sailors. Four men went on trial this month in lower Manhattan in the African bombings.

American authorities are also examining Al Qaeda's role in three plots timed to millennium celebrations in 1999 - attacks directed at another American ship, a so-far unknown target in the United States, and tourist sites and a hotel in Jordan.

Mr. bin Laden's group has recently attempted operations against Israel - a significant departure, American and Middle Eastern officials say. They acknowledge that he has ensured his organization's survival, in the event of his capture or death, by designating a successor: his longtime aide, Abdulaziz abu Sitta, an Egyptian known as Muhammad Atef or Abu Hoffs al-Masri. Last week, according to Al Jazeera, an Arab satellite channel, his son married Mr. Masri's daughter in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

"His arrest, which we dearly hope for, is only one step along the road of the many things we need to do to eliminate the network of organizations," said Richard A. Clarke, the top White House counterterrorism official.

The Cause:

Afghan War Draws Young Arab Fighters

Al Qaeda grew out of the jihad inspired by Muslim scholars to combat the Soviet Union's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. They issued religious rulings, known as fatwas, which exhorted Muslims everywhere to defend the Islamic land of Afghanistan from infidels. Over the next few years, several thousand young Arab men joined the Afghan resistance.

One of the first to answer the call was a young Algerian named Boujema Bounouar, who went by the nom de guerre Abdullah Anas. In recent interviews in London, where he now lives, Mr. Anas recounted how Mr. bin Laden went to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets and was drawn to a group of Egyptians who wanted to start a global jihad.

Mr. Anas, who is now a leader of an Algerian Islamic political party, is not a dispassionate observer. He acknowledges that he opposed Mr. bin Laden, whose program of terrorism, he says, has tarred the reputations of thousands of Arabs who fought honorably for the Afghan cause. But his firsthand account, which conforms with Western intelligence analysis, provides one of few portraits of Mr. bin Laden's evolution as a militant leader.

The two men were defined by many of the same forces. Mr. Anas said his journey from teacher of the Koran to holy warrior began in 1984, when he was 25 and living with his family in Western Algeria. Visiting the local library, he read in a news weekly about a religious ruling that waging war against the Soviets was every Muslim's duty.

"After a few days, everyone heard about this fatwa and started talking," he recalled. " `Where is this Afghanistan? Which people are they? How can we go there? How much is the ticket?' "

That year, Mr. Anas was among the million Muslims who participated in the hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia. "You feel very holy," he said. "People from all over the world. From Zimbabwe to New Delhi. Everyone is wearing just two pieces of white cotton. Everybody. You can't describe who is the minister, who is the president. No jewelry. No good suit."

In Mecca, he said, prayer leaders spoke emotionally about the jihad in Afghanistan.

He was standing in the marble expanse of the Great Mosque with 50,000 others when, he said, a friend pointed out a radical Palestinian scholar who was organizing the Arab support for the Afghans. His name was Abdullah Azzam, and his writings, which would help spur the revival of the jihad movement in the 20th century, were just becoming widely known.

Mr. Anas introduced himself and asked whether the magazine article he had seen in the library was correct. Had the religious leaders agreed that fighting in Afghanistan was a duty of all Muslims?

"He said, `Yes, it's true.' "

" `O.K.,' I said. `If I want to go to Afghanistan, what do I do now?' "

Mr. Azzam gave him a business card with a telephone number in Islamabad, Pakistan, where he was a university professor. A week later, Mr. Anas was on a flight from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan.

He had no idea where he was going, or what he would do. He dialed the only phone number he knew in Pakistan, reaching Mr. Azzam, who offered him a place to stay in his own house, a bustling salon frequented by students and scholars.

It was there that he first caught sight of Mr. Azzam's youngest daughter, whom he would marry five years later. And Mr. Azzam introduced him to a Saudi visitor identified in the traditional Arabic way, as Abu Abdullah, the father of his eldest son, Abdullah. The visitor was Osama bin Laden.

The two men exchanged pleasantries. Mr. bin Laden's name was well known. He was said to be the youngest of 24 brothers in a family that ran one of the largest construction companies in the Arab world.

Mr. bin Laden seemed no different from the other Arab volunteers who were starting to arrive in Pakistan, Mr. Anas recalled. The conversation turned to how the volunteers could help the Afghans win their jihad, and teach them more about Islam.

The Soviet forces had a considerable advantage in the Afghan conflict. Their helicopter gunships controlled the air, and their troops held the main roads. But the rebels had powerful friends. The United States and Saudi Arabia were spending millions funneling arms to the Afghans through Pakistan's intelligence service.

Mr. Anas began by teaching the Koran to the Afghan rebels, who did not speak Arabic and learned the verses by rote. He also led prayers at a "guest house" set up in Pakistan for Arab volunteers. At the time, he said, there were no more than a few dozen Arabs in the country, working with the rebels. None spoke the Afghan languages.

After a few months, Mr. Anas said, he trekked into Afghanistan to join a combat unit, one of three Arabs traveling with a caravan of 600 Afghan soldiers. He learned Farsi and took on the role of mediator, traveling among the feuding rebel camps. He spent most of each year inside Afghanistan.

Mr. Anas became a top aide to Commander Ahmed Shah Massoud, whose troops controlled northern Afghanistan and are now fighting the Taliban rulers - who support Mr. bin Laden.

Like many Muslims who joined the rebels, Mr. Anas expected to die in the Afghan jihad and earn the special status designated in the Koran for martyrs, which includes forgiveness of sins and the enjoyment in Paradise of beautiful virgins. "It's not the main idea to be a shahid," or martyr, he said. "But it's part of my plan."

In the mid-1980's, American and Middle Eastern intelligence officials say, Mr. bin Laden moved to Peshawar, a Pakistani city near the border with Afghanistan. The city was a staging ground for the war against the Soviets; American, French and Pakistani intelligence officers intrigued and competed there to manipulate the Afghan cause to their countries' advantage.

Mr. bin Laden's fortune of several hundred million dollars gained him immediate popularity.

"He was one of the guys who came to jihad in Afghanistan," Mr. Anas said. "But unlike the others, what he had was a lot of money. He's not very sophisticated politically or organizationally. But he's an activist with great imagination. He ate very little. He slept very little. Very generous. He'd give you his clothes. He'd give you his money."

Mr. Anas, who returned annually to Pakistan from the Afghan battlefields to visit with Mr. Azzam, said Mr. bin Laden at first slept in the guest house in Peshawar on a cushion on the floor. He recalled that Mr. Azzam liked to say: "You see, this man has everything in his country. You see he lives with all the poor people in this room."

At about this time, in 1984, Mr. Azzam set up the organization that would play a pivotal role in the global jihad over the next decade. It was called the Makhtab al Khadimat, the Office of Services, and its goal was to recruit and train Muslim volunteers for the Afghan fronts. Mr. Azzam raised money for the organization in countries overseas including the United States and gave impassioned speeches promoting the Afghan cause. Mr. bin Laden embraced the idea from its inception and became Mr. Azzam's partner, providing financial support and handling military affairs.

Mr. bin Laden worked best with small groups, Mr. Anas said. "When you sit with Osama, you don't want to leave the meeting," he said. "You wish to continue talking to him because he is very calm, very fluent."

A main goal of the Office of Services, Mr. Anas said, was to prevent the increasing number of outside volunteers from taking sides in the rebels' factional struggles. "We are in Afghanistan to help the jihad and all the Afghan people," Mr. Azzam told him.

But there was increasing frustration from many of the disaffected young Muslims over Mr. Azzam's insistence that the Office of Services support only the Afghan cause - when many were agitated about the plight of their own homelands. Some approached Mr. bin Laden.

"They told him: `You shouldn't be staying with Abdullah Azzam. He doesn't do anything about the regimes - Saudi, Egyptian, Algerian. He's just talking about Afghanistan,' " Mr. Anas said.

"These people are always saying to Osama: `You should establish something. Have a clear idea to use these people after Afghanistan for other wars.' "

Among those most ardently courting Mr. bin Laden was a group of Egyptian radicals called the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which helped assassinate President Anwar el-Sadat in 1981.

The Egyptian group advocated the overthrow of governments by terrorism and violence, and one of its key figures, Ayman al- Zawahiri, had taken shelter in Afghanistan. Mr. Anas said - and Western intelligence agencies agree - that Dr. Zawahiri was a commanding early influence on Mr. bin Laden. Today he is part of Al Qaeda's leadership, according to intelligence officials.

But Mr. Azzam quarreled bitterly with the Egyptians.

Mr. Anas said he once witnessed a heated argument between Mr. Azzam and Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, a radical religious scholar, who argued that the flouting of Islamic law had turned Presidents Mohammed Zia ul-Haq of Pakistan and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt into infidels who could therefore be killed. Sheik Abdel Rahman later moved to Brooklyn, where he was associated with an Office of Services branch. In 1995 he was convicted of plotting to blow up New York landmarks.

In 1986, according to Mr. Anas and Middle Eastern intelligence officials, Mr. bin Laden began to chart a separate course. He established his own training camp for Persian Gulf Arabs, a group of about 50 who lived in tents set apart from the other Afghan fighters. He called the camp Al Masadah - The Lion's Den.

Within little more than a year the movement divided, as Mr. bin Laden and the Egyptians founded Al Qaeda - the "base" for what they hoped would be a global crusade.

Mr. Anas said Mr. Azzam confided to him that Egyptian ideologues had wooed Mr. bin Laden away, gaining access to his money. "He told me one time: `I'm very upset about Osama. This heaven-sent man, like an angel. I am worried about his future if he stays with these people.' "

The differences between Mr. Azzam and Mr. bin Laden were largely tactical, Mr. Anas said, noting that the two men remained friends.

A committed enemy of Israel, Mr. Azzam believed the Arab warriors should focus on creating an Islamic state in Afghanistan, a process that could take decades. Mr. bin Laden, according to Mr. Anas, came to believe that such a war could be fought in many countries simultaneously.

"The arguments were very secret," Mr. Anas said. "Only three to four people knew about them at the time." Mr. Azzam saw little difference between the United States and the Soviet Union, contending in his articles and speeches that both were hostile to Islam. But Mr. Azzam opposed terrorism against the West, Mr. Anas said.

By the late 1980's, Peshawar had become a magnet for disaffected young Muslims who shared Mr. bin Laden's views. "Ten people would open a guest house and start issuing fatwas," Mr. Anas recalled. " `We are going to make revolution in Jordan, in Egypt, in Syria.' And they haven't got any contact with the real jihad in Afghanistan."

The tide of the Afghan war was turning. Stinger missiles, provided through the American covert program, had forced Soviet aircraft to fly far above the battlefields. Afghanistan had become Moscow's Vietnam. By February 1989, the Soviets had withdrawn.

A C.I.A. official said that the agency, aware of the changing nature of the jihad, had taken some steps he would not specify to counter the threat. But Milt Bearden, the former C.I.A. station chief in Islamabad, who coordinated the agency's anti-Soviet effort in Afghanistan, disagreed.

"The Soviet Union, armed to the teeth, was falling apart," he said. "A shooting war then erupted in the Persian Gulf. Afghanistan was off the front burner."

When the war ended, he said, "we got the hell out of there."

The Afghan rebels' war continued, first against the Soviet-backed government and then within their own ranks. On Nov. 24, 1989, Mr. Azzam and two sons were killed by a car bomb in Peshawar as they drove to Friday Prayers. The murders were never solved.

Mr. Anas said he tried to take over leadership of the Office of Services. According to the C.I.A., the group split; the extremist faction took control, siding with Mr. bin Laden.

"They loved the ideas of Osama and the person of Abdullah Azzam," Mr. Anas said wistfully. "They don't love me."

The Base:

From Many Lands, Under One Banner

Fired by their triumph over the Soviets, the Arabs who had fought in Afghanistan returned home, eager to apply the principles of jihad to their native lands.

The Koran sets strict limits on when and how holy war is to be undertaken. But Gilles Kepel, a leading French scholar of contemporary Islam, said the Afghan veterans were guided by their own radical interpretation of sacred Muslim texts. "Intoxicated by the Muslim victory in Afghanistan," he said, "they believed that it could be replicated elsewhere - that the whole world was ripe for jihad, which is contrary to Islamic tradition."

They called themselves the Arab Afghans.

In Jordan some founded a group, Jaish Muhammad, that officials say took aim at King Hussein, whose family claims descent from the Prophet Muhammad.

In Algeria, the Arab Afghans were among the founders of the Armed Islamic Group, the most radical to emerge after the military government canceled the 1991 elections. Known by its French initials, G.I.A, it began by blowing up military targets and escalated to wholesale massacres of Algerians who did not believe in the jihad.

According to Mr. Anas, one of its founding members was an Algerian who had initially fought with him in Afghanistan but joined Al Qaeda in the late 1980's. Mr. Anas says he has been told that Mr. bin Laden provided some of the seed money for the G.I.A.

The early 1990's proved difficult for Mr. bin Laden. He was enraged by King Fahd's decision to let American troops wage the Persian Gulf war from Saudi Arabia, site of the two holiest shrines in Islam. He began to focus his wrath on the United States and the Saudi government. After the conflict ended, he moved to Afghanistan.

But his stay was brief. Within months he fled, telling associates that Saudi Arabia had hired the Pakistani intelligence service to kill him. There is no confirmation that such a plot existed. Nonetheless, in 1991, Mr. bin Laden moved to Sudan, where a militantly Islamic government had taken power.

Over the next five years, Mr. bin Laden built a group that combined legitimate business with support for world holy war.

He also set out to accomplish his overriding goal of gathering the leading Islamic extremist groups under one banner. According to Middle Eastern officials, Mr. bin Laden and his envoys met with radicals from Pakistan and Egypt to propose an international Islamic front, led by Afghan veterans, that would fight Americans and Jews.

Al Qaeda began training its own operatives. Ali Mohamed, the government witness, who has said he arranged Mr. bin Laden's move to Sudan, told investigators that he taught group members about weapons, explosives, kidnapping, urban fighting, counterintelligence and other tactics at camps in Afghanistan and Sudan. He said he showed some of the trainees how to set up cells "that could be used in operations."

The dispatch of American troops to Somalia in late 1992 and 1993 as part of a United Nations mission was another affront to Mr. bin Laden. The Bush administration presented it as a relief operation.

American officials say a defector from Al Qaeda told them it viewed the deployment as a dangerous expansion of American influence in the region and a step toward undermining the Islamic government of Sudan.

Al Qaeda privately issued fatwas that directed members to attack American soldiers in Saudi Arabia, Yemen and the Horn of Africa, according to American prosecutors. They said he also sent his military chief, an Egyptian who had been with him at the formation of Al Qaeda, to find the vulnerabilities of United Nations forces in Africa.

Al Qaeda created a cell in Kenya as a "gateway" to its operations in Somalia, the prosecutors assert. Members of the group blended into Kenyan society, opening legitimate businesses that sold fish and dealt in diamonds, and operating an Islamic charity.

Federal prosecutors say at least five group members crossed the border to Somalia, where they trained some of the fighters involved in an Oct. 3, 1993, battle with United States special forces that left 18 Americans and several hundred Somalis dead.

The battle, one of the most widely publicized setbacks for American forces in recent memory, cast a shadow over every subsequent Clinton administration debate on the possible uses of ground troops. American intelligence did not learn of Al Qaeda's role in the ambush until several years later.

Prosecutors say the group also considered attacking Americans in Kenya to retaliate for the Somalia mission. Mr. Mohamed testified that Mr. bin Laden sent him to Nairobi in late 1993 to look over possible American, French, British and Israeli targets for a bomb attack, including the American Embassy. He said he took photos, drew diagrams and wrote a report, which he delivered to his boss in Khartoum. "Bin Laden looked at the picture of the American Embassy and pointed to where a truck could go as a suicide bomber," he said.

American prosecutors say Al Qaeda had more grandiose plans: a leading member, an Iraqi who Mr. Anas said had first gravitated to Mr. bin Laden in Afghanistan, tried to buy enriched uranium in Europe.

The Iraqi, Mahdouh Mahmud Salim, forged links between Mr. bin Laden's group and others supported by Iran. Mr. Salim met with an Iranian religious official in Khartoum, and soon afterward, the prosecutors say, Al Qaeda members got training from Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite group in Lebanon skilled in making car bombs. American officials said this alliance was notable because it marked the first time radicals from the minority Shiite branch of Islam collaborated with extremists from the dominant Sunni branch.

Mr. bin Laden's business ventures in Sudan - including a tannery, a transportation company and a construction concern - raised money and served as cover for the travels of Mr. Salim and others, according to American officials. They said that his companies cornered Sudan's exports of gum, sunflower and sesame products - and that he invested $50 million of his family money in a new Islamic bank in Khartoum.

The Network:

As in Afghanistan, So in the World

The new jihad movement was fueled by the civil war that consumed Afghanistan in the early 1990's. The training camps that had once schooled soldiers to battle the Soviet enemy now attracted militants more interested in fomenting holy war back home - in America, Europe or the Middle East - than in the struggle for control of Afghanistan.

The Office of Services, the Pakistan-based group founded in the 1980's by Mr. Azzam to recruit soldiers for the anti-Soviet cause, arranged the travels of some of these new jihadists, according to European and American officials.

Many of those associated with the office, Mr. Anas said, shared Mr. bin Laden's vision of a global movement. American officials suspect they were acting under his instructions, though this remains a subject of debate among intelligence analysts.

American investigators stumbled across the first signs of the new global phenomenon in 1993, when they began to examine the bombing at the World Trade Center.

They discovered that the four men who carried out the attack, which killed 6 and wounded more than 1,000, had ties to Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, whom they charged with leading a worldwide "jihad organization" that had begun plotting to kill Americans as early as 1989.

Mr. Abdel Rahman was later convicted of conspiring to blow up New York landmarks, including the United Nations. But in the years since, American intelligence officials have come to believe that he and the World Trade Center bombers had ties to Al Qaeda.

The evidence is suggestive, but not conclusive. Several of those convicted in the World Trade Center case were associated with the Brooklyn refugee center that was a branch of the Office of Services, the Pakistan-based organization that Mr. bin Laden helped finance and lead. The Brooklyn center was headed for a time by Mustafa Shalabi, an Egyptian murdered in 1991 in a case that remains unsolved. Federal prosecutors recently disclosed that it was Mr. Shalabi whom Mr. bin Laden called in 1991 when he needed help moving to Sudan, according to Mr. Mohamed, the federal witness.

One of the men convicted of bombing the World Trade Center, Ahmad M. Ajaj, spent four months in Pakistan in 1992, returning to the United States with a bomb manual later seized by the United States government. An English translation of the document, entered into evidence in the World Trade Center trial, said that the manual was dated 1982, that it had been published in Amman, Jordan, and that it carried a heading on the front and succeeding pages: The Basic Rule.

Those appear to be errors. Two separate translations of the document, one done at the request of The New York Times, show that the heading said Al Qaeda - which translates as The Base, the name of Mr. bin Laden's group. In addition, the document lists a publication date of 1989, a year after Mr. bin Laden founded his organization. And the place of publication is Afghanistan, not Jordan.

Steven Emerson, a terrorism expert who first pointed out the errors, said they deprived investigators of a subtle early clue to the existence of Mr. bin Laden's group.

While the trade center trial ended in 1994, federal prosecutors did not open their grand jury investigation of Mr. bin Laden and Al Qaeda until 1996.

"Had the government correctly translated the material," Mr. Emerson said, "it might have understood that the men who blew up the World Trade Center and Mr. bin Laden's group were linked."

Asked about the mistranslation, an official in the United States Attorney's office, who declined to be identified, said only that Mr. Ajaj had been carrying "voluminous material printed by various organizations." He added that their titles referred to international conspiracy, commando operations and engineering of explosives.

The jihad movement also took root in Europe. In August 1994, three young French Muslims of North African descent, wearing hoods and brandishing machine pistols, opened fire on tourists in a hotel lobby in Marrakesh, Morocco, killing two Spaniards and wounding a third. The French police investigating the attack learned that it had been planned by two Moroccan veterans of the Afghan war, who had recruited commandos for the attack in Paris and Orléans and sent more than a dozen of them to Afghanistan for training.

The indoctrination of the young Muslims began with religion, according to French court papers and testimony. An Orléans mathematics professor and interpreter of the Koran, Mohamed Zinédine, gathered around him a group of men from the slums of Orléans who wanted to learn how to pray. Later, French court papers say, he instructed them in the concept of waging jihad against corrupt governments, saying it was a higher stage of Islamic observance.

One young Moroccan testified that Mr. Zinédine - who is now a fugitive - showed him a videotape of Muslim victims of "torture in Bosnia, of babies with their throats cut, of pregnant women disemboweled, and fingernails torn off." The young man added, "He told me there was a way of helping them and that I must help them." Prayers for people like the Muslims in Bosnia, he quoted Mr. Zinédine as saying, were not enough. He must become an "armed humanitarian."

European investigators tracing the Afghan network in France, Belgium and Germany found records of phone calls between local extremists and the Office of Services in Pakistan. In March 1995, Belgian investigators came across another clue: A CD-ROM in the car of another Algerian, who had been trained in Afghanistan in 1992 and was part of the G.I.A. cell in Brussels. The CD was initially ignored, Belgian officials say.

Months later, the Belgians began translating its contents and discovered several different versions of a manual for terrorism that had begun circulating among Islamic militants in the early 1990's. The voluminous manual covered diverse subjects, from "psychological war in Islam" to "the organizational structure of Israeli intelligence" to "recruiting according to the American method."

The manual also offered detailed recipes for making bombs, including instructions on when to shake the chemicals and how to use a wristwatch as a detonator. In addition there were instructions on how to kill with toxins, gases and drugs. The preface included a dedication to the new hero of the holy war: Osama bin Laden. Versions of the manual circulated widely and were seized by the police all over Europe.

Reuel Gerecht, a former C.I.A. official, said he was told that the agency did not obtain its own copy of the manual before the end of 1999. "The truth is," he said, "they missed for years the largest terrorist guide ever written." The omission, he asserted, reflects the agency's reluctance to scrutinize the fallout from its support of the anti-Soviet jihad.

A C.I.A. official said that the agency had had "access to versions" of the manual since the late 1980's. "It's not the Holy Grail that Gerecht reports it to be," he said, adding that the terrorist-related parts were fairly recent additions.

By the mid-1990's, American officials had begun to focus on Mr. bin Laden and his entourage in Sudan. They saw him as the embodiment of a dangerous new development: a stateless sponsor of terrorism who was using his personal fortune - which one Middle Eastern official estimated at $270 million - to bankroll extremist causes.

American officials pressed Sudan to eject Mr. bin Laden, and in 1996 they succeeded, forcing him into exile. It was a diplomatic triumph, but one that many American officials would come to rue. Mr. bin Laden made his way back to Afghanistan, where a new group of young Islamic militants, the Taliban, was taking control.

American and Middle Eastern officials said some of the cash that the Taliban used to buy off local warlords came from Mr. bin Laden. Soon the new, hard-line rulers of Afghanistan allowed him to use their country to pursue his goal of creating "one jihad camp for the world," as Mr. Anas put it.

The Edict:

A Sacred Muslim Duty to Kill All Foes

Two years after he arrived in Afghanistan, in February 1998, Mr. bin Laden publicly announced his intentions. At a camp in Khost, in eastern Afghanistan, he and several other leaders of militant groups declared that they had founded the International Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders, an umbrella entity that included Al Qaeda and groups from Egypt, Pakistan and Bangladesh, among others.

The front issued the following fatwa: "To kill Americans and their allies, both civil and military, is an individual duty of every Muslim who is able, in any country where this is possible."

On Aug. 7, 1998, eight years to the day after the first American troops set foot in Saudi Arabia, Mr. bin Laden delivered on the threat, American prosecutors say. Bombs exploded hours apart at the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

The plot, as described by federal prosecutors, was truly international. Prosecutors assert that the attacks were carried out by Muslims from Tanzania, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, most of whom were trained in Afghanistan. The Kenyan plotters, they say, spoke directly with Mr. bin Laden by satellite telephone as they developed their plans.

The attacks were costly for Al Qaeda. Less than two weeks after the embassy bombings, the United States conducted air strikes against Mr. bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan. Over the next two years, police and intelligence agencies around the world, many prodded by the United States, arrested more than 100 militants in some 20 countries.

Almost every month, authorities detain or question people with ties to Al Qaeda. Late last year, in what American officials described as one of the more alarming cases, the Kuwaiti police arrested a local man, an Afghan veteran, who said he was associated with Mr. bin Laden's group and planning to bomb American and Kuwaiti targets. American officials say he ultimately led the police to a weapons cache of almost 300 pounds of explosives and more than 1,400 detonators.

And in addition to the two-day closure of the American Embassy in Rome, officials say, recent warnings of a possible Al Qaeda attack prompted the United States to divert an entire carrier battle group scheduled to dock in Naples.

American officials acknowledge that Al Qaeda and Mr. bin Laden have proven resourceful, resilient adversaries. Much of his personal wealth has now been spent, or is in bank accounts that are now frozen. But officials say he is raising money through a network of charities and businesses. His group reconstitutes its networks in many countries as quickly as they are disrupted.

And failure can breed success. In late 1999, American officials say, a group of Yemenis botched an attempt to blow up an American ship, The Sullivans, as it passed through Yemen. Their boat, loaded with explosives, sank a few feet off shore.

This year, American officials say, a Saudi operative of Mr. bin Laden's who helped organize that attack worked with some of the same people on the bombing of the Cole in Yemen.

Internal crackdowns on Muslim militants, like the Algerian government's largely successful attempts to stamp out the G.I.A. in the mid- 1990's, have in several instances fueled the international jihad.

American officials said the most radical Algerians were now collaborating with Mr. bin Laden. In 1999, Algerians were for the first time implicated in plots against the United States, when Ahmed Ressam was arrested crossing the border from Canada with a carload of explosives. Mr. Ressam goes on trial later this year in Los Angeles.

American and Middle Eastern officials say Al Qaeda has now expanded its jihad to include Israel, which until recently had regarded Mr. bin Laden as an American problem. The officials say Al Qaeda has financed and trained an anti-Israel group, Asbat al Ansar, that operates from a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon.

Last June, Israel charged in a sealed indictment that a Hamas member who was plotting to attack targets within Israel, including settlers and the army, had been trained in one of Mr. bin Laden's Afghan camps. "Al Qaeda wants in on the action - the new intifada against Israel," said one American official.

Olivier Roy, a French scholar who follows Islamic activities, says Al Qaeda's biggest asset is the thousands of jihadists around the world who no longer see their struggle in strictly local or even national terms, which makes them impervious to normal political or military pressure.

Mr. bin Laden's actions, he said, are "not the continuation of politics by other means."

"Osama bin Laden doesn't want to negotiate."

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Security for Inauguration to Be Tightest Ever

New York Times
January 14, 2001
By DAVID E. ROSENBAUM
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/14/politics/14PROT.html

WASHINGTON, Jan. 13 - With thousands of demonstrators expected here next Saturday, the law enforcement authorities are planning the tightest security ever for a presidential inauguration.

Police officers will be stationed every few feet along Pennsylvania Avenue. For the first time, people going to watch the inaugural parade will have to pass through checkpoints where bags can be searched. Signs with long handles will be confiscated. And most of the Mall between the Capitol and the Washington Monument will be off limits.

"We don't know how many protesters there will be or what they plan to do," Charles H. Ramsey, the District of Columbia police chief, said in an interview. "Those we have talked with say they intend to be peaceful, but being peaceful and being lawful are different things."

Some of the protesters are expected to be among those who took part in the violent demonstrations during a world trade meeting in Seattle in 1999 and in the protests here last April during meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Others will be protesting what they believe to be faulty election procedures that led to George W. Bush's victory. Still others will be demonstrating on issues like the death penalty, the environment, the minimum wage and aid to Israel.

During the swearing-in ceremony, the National Organization for Women will hold a rally several blocks away at the Navy Memorial on Pennsylvania Avenue.

While the crowd is gathering at the Capitol for Mr. Bush's swearing in, the Rev. Al Sharpton plans to lead a march nearby, from Stanton Park southeast of Union Station to the Supreme Court.

At noon, as Mr. Bush is taking the oath of office, Mr. Sharpton will take an oath, he said, to uphold the Voting Rights Act and to establish uniform voting standards across the country. Then, while Mr. Bush is delivering his Inaugural Address, Mr. Sharpton will give his own address.

Law enforcement officials said they had heard that counterdemonstrations would be mounted by conservative organizations, including Loud Citizen, which demonstrated outside Vice President Al Gore's home as the outcome of the presidential election was being contested.

These will be the first substantial protests during an inauguration since antiwar demonstrators protested at Richard M. Nixon's second inauguration, in 1973. The National Park police said then that there were 60,000 protesters. The demonstrations were mostly orderly, with some minor scuffles and a few arrests.

Protest organizers who have come forward said they did not plan on civil disobedience next week. "We're going to be noisy, we're going to be seen, but we're not going to try to shut down the event," said Adam Eidinger, an organizer for a coordinating group called the Justice Action Movement.

Brian Becker, co-director of the International Action Center, a New York group that is organizing buses of protesters on the East Coast, said: "We don't want to be tear-gassed or create a war zone. As George Bush proceeds up Pennsylvania Avenue and as the eyes of the world focus on this, the world will see there is a very divided United States. We will be all along the parade route."

But police officials said they were prepared for more violent demonstrators like those who called themselves anarchists and were in Seattle in 1999.

For the first time, the inauguration has been designated a "national special security event," which means that the Secret Service is in overall charge of security arrangements. More than a dozen law enforcement agencies will be involved, including the Capitol police, the Supreme Court police, the National Park police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and police forces from suburban Maryland and Virginia.

But the biggest burden will fall on the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia. The force generally received high marks in April when the financial meetings went on as planned and the city emerged unscathed, though some protesters complained of rough treatment. All the department's 3,600 officers will be on duty. Chief Ramsey said the demonstrators would be free to exercise their right to say anything they wanted and display any hand-held sign as long as it did not have a long handle, but would not be permitted to interfere with the event or to threaten the safety of the spectators or those in the parade.

A point of contention is likely to be the decision of the authorities to prohibit demonstrators from using stilts or giant puppets, favorite props in recent protests. The notion, said Jim Mackin, a spokesman for the Secret Service, is that the stilts could be used as clubs and the puppets could be used to hide weapons.

The Capitol police rejected a request for a permit in the park between Union Station and the Capitol because military salute canons will be fired there.

The Mall will be closed to the public between Third and Fourth Streets and between Seventh and 14th Streets. These will be staging areas for the parade. Two Metro stations, Smithsonian and Archives-Navy, will be closed. This is the first time subway stops have been shut for an inauguration.

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Unprecedented security planned forparade

USA Today
01/14/01- Updated 11:15 PM ET
By Richard Willing, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/vote2000/bush200.htm

WASHINGTON - People attending Saturday's inaugural parade will face unprecedented security precautions, including sidewalk checkpoints that will control access to the parade route itself.

Metropolitan police say the heightened security is necessary to prevent protesters from disrupting George W. Bush's parade down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House, an event expected to be attended by more than 500,000 people.

But protest organizers charge that police are overstating security concerns to discourage protesters and as a pretext for dealing with them harshly.

They say "tens of thousands" of demonstrators advocating both voting reform or a variety of left-wing causes are expected to attend the parade.

D.C. police arrested 600 protesters who attempted to obstruct a meeting of the World Bank last April, and say many are expected to return for the Bush inaugural.

"A significant majority (in April) were peaceful, but some of the tactics they used were a cause for concern," says Charles Ramsey, Washington's chief of police.

"They say they are going to be peaceful, but that does not necessarily mean they'll be lawful," Ramsey says. "We have to be aware of that."

Among D.C.'s security precautions:

At least nine security checkpoints on sidewalks near the parade route. Police will stand every 6 to 8 feet along the route. Metal detectors will not be used routinely, but police say that people passing through the checkpoints will be subject to searches.

Beefing up the city's 3,600-member police force with reinforcements from at least four suburban departments.

Limiting large groups of protesters to two sites on the mile-long parade route. The National Park Service has granted permits to half a dozen groups to protest along the route. There are also permits for rallies elsewhere in the city. Groups of fewer than 25 can protest without a permit.

Banning stilts and large poles used to carry signs. Police say such items can be converted to weapons.

More than four dozen large "protest puppets," some of them 15 feet high, were confiscated by police during the protests near the World Bank's Washington headquarters in April. Police considered the poles used to hold the puppets aloft to be potential weapons.

Police and protest leaders are discussing whether puppets will be permitted at the Bush inaugural.

"We're trying to be as flexible as we can," Ramsey says. "But everyone has the right to enjoy the inauguration of the 43rd president."

Protest organizers accuse police of overstating the threat.

"It's a pretext and nothing but a pretext," says Brian Becker, co-director of the New York-based International Action Center. "This is not about protecting national security but preventing lawful demonstrators from acting."

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Americans Fly Into Iraq, Defying Sanctions

New York Times
January 14, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/14/world/14IRAQ.html

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 13 - More than 70 Americans arrived on two flights today to deliver medicine, books and school supplies as part of a growing challenge to the 10-year-old international embargo against Iraq.

The Americans, mostly members of religious and relief organizations, did not ask permission from Washington, and arrived on Royal Jordanian flights from Amman. One group was led by Ramsey Clark, the former attorney general.

Since September, dozens of flights from Europe and the Middle East have arrived. Americans bringing aid have usually traveled overland.

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Falun Gong demands China rights

BBC News
Sunday, 14 January, 2001, 10:23 GMT
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/asia-pacific/newsid_1116000/1116900.stm

The conference heard personal accounts of ill-treatment

A big conference of the Falun Gong spiritual movement in Hong Kong has bitterly criticised China's top leader for the campaign of suppression against it.

About 1,000 members from around the world heard harrowing allegations of persecution on mainland China and called on President Jiang Zemin to halt the crackdown.

They were meeting in Hong Kong's city hall, taking advantage of the former colony's autonomy to defy the ban on the movement in the rest of China.

Practitioners say China has tortured 120 followers to death while in custody. Chinese authorities have acknowledged several deaths in custody but say most were suicides or the result of illness.

A personal account of ill-treatment was given to the conference in the form of a letter, because the member - whose name and identity were kept secret - was unable to travel to Hong Kong.

The letter spoke of detention and torture at the hands of the Chinese authorities.

While the movement is legal in Hong Kong, the organisers have complained that a dozen people trying to attend the conference were detained by immigration officers at the airport.

Some, they said, were holders of Chinese passports and one was an Australian citizen who had come to talk about her experiences of being jailed in Beijing.

The group said it believed the detentions were made because of pressure from the central government. Hong Kong's immigration authorities refused to discuss individual cases.

'Evil cult'

The Chinese authorities say behind Falun Gong's appearance as a meditation movement it is really an evil cult harmful to those who join.

The Beijing Daily has launched a fresh editorial attack, accusing Falun Gong of teaming up with unidentified "anti-China" forces abroad to sow discord and destabilise the country.

Government statements have expressed alarm over a message by the movement's exiled leader, Li Hongzhi, appearing to say that followers are justified in resisting state suppression of it.

"Li Hongzhi's claim that he doesn't take part in politics and doesn't oppose the government is a cheap lie," a Beijing Daily editorial said.

Wreaths and placards

On Saturday, around 800 Falun Gong adherents performed exercises in a public park in Hong Kong, forming their bodies into the Chinese characters for "truthfulness", "benevolence" and "tolerance".

Others stood in the city centre carrying placards with the names of the 22 countries they represented.

The movement, loosely based on Taoist and Buddhist doctrine, teaches meditation and exercise. It is also known as Falun Dafa.

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Spiritual movement defies Chinese crackdown

CBC News
WebPosted Sun Jan 14 14:26:12 2001
http://cbc.ca/cgi-bin/templates/view.cgi?/news/2001/01/14/falungong010114

HONG KONG - Members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement continued to defy the Chinese government Sunday with a global conference in Hong Kong.

Thousands of people who follow Falun Gong, a movement that combines meditation and breathing exercises, gathered to protest China's persecution of their members.

Falun Gong members say hundreds of followers have been either tortured or killed, or both, after being arrested in China.

Chinese authorities have banned the mediation group because they believe it's a dangerous cult trying to undermine the Communist regime.

Falun Gong continues to highlight what it calls China's dismal record on human rights as Beijing attempts to clean its reputation on the world stage.

China doesn't want any controversy as it moves closer to joining the World Trade Organization and bids for the 2008 Olympic Games.

The group held its global meeting at a government venue in Hong Kong. It was considered a major public relations coup in defiance of the Chinese government.

Falun Gong is tolerated in Hong Kong because the former British colony has kept a degree of autonomy in mainland China.

But Falun Gong members are immediately arrested if they perform the same slow, rhythmic exercises in China.

China detains followers

Li Jing Yu, a Canadian from Montreal, was in Hong Kong to plead for her husband's freedom. He is a Falun Gong follower and she says he's been in a Chinese labour camp since 1999.

Another Canadian, Zhang Kunlun, was released by Chinese police this week, just before Jean Chrétien was scheduled to lead a Canadian delegation to China.

FROM JAN. 10, 2001: China frees Canadian follower of Falun Gong

http://cbc.ca/cgi-bin/templates/view.cgi?/news/2001/01/10/falun_zhang010110

On Saturday, practitioners marched to the Chinese government liaison office. They followed 120 women dressed in white, the traditional colour of mourning.

The women represented each follower of Falun Gong that the group says has been killed in police custody.

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Falun Gong Slams China for 'Evil Persecution'

Yahoo News
Sunday January 14 7:51 AM ET
By Chee-may Chow and Carrie Lee
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010114/wl/religion_hongkong_dc_3.html

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Followers of the Falun Gong spiritual movement slammed China's top leader at a conference in Hong Kong Sunday for what they said was a campaign of ``evil persecution'' against their group.

About 1,000 Falun Gong supporters from around the world attended the all-day gathering in City Hall, which is owned by the Hong Kong government. They met on Chinese soil in defiance of mainland leaders who have outlawed the movement.

``Stop persecuting Falun Gong. This has gone on for far too long and the cases have been extreme. It is inhumane and not acceptable,'' Australian practitioner Caroline Lam told a news conference after the international meeting.

Falun Gong is legal in Hong Kong which has retained a high degree of autonomy since the former British colony reverted to Chinese rule in mid-1997.

A Hong Kong-based human rights group said four Falun Gong practitioners had gone on hunger strike at the Hong Kong airport where they were being detained.

They were among 12 people who had come for this weekend's meeting and had been denied entry by immigration officials, the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said.

Of the 12, seven were from Japan, three from Australia and two from the United States, the center said.

Four of them were later allowed into Hong Kong. Six from Japan were deported Sunday, after two from Australia and the United States were sent back Saturday, the center said.

A spokeswoman for Falun Gong in Hong Kong, Sharon Xu, said that immigration officials used violence against the detainees and some were forcibly lifted onto aircraft.

Chinese Blacklist

Xu said they were barred from entering Hong Kong because they were on China's blacklist and that their detention was unlawful.

Nine of the 12 said in a statement immigration officials told them they were held because they came for the conference.

But the Immigration Department said officials at the airport had not barred anybody from entering in the past two days because of their belief in Falun Gong.

``People are refused entry only because they fail to meet the immigration requirements...'' a department spokesman said. He also denied that immigration officers had resorted to violence in removing the detainees.

Falun Gong believers attending Sunday's conference accused Chinese President Jiang Zemin (news - web sites) of having ``undeniable responsibility'' for what they said was the ``evil'' and ``brutal'' persecution of the movement in mainland China.

The movement says China has tortured 120 followers to death while in custody. Beijing has acknowledged several deaths in custody but say most resulted from suicides or illness.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, preaches a mixture of Taoism, Buddhism and traditional Chinese physical exercises.

No Political Agenda

Beijing labels it as an ``evil cult'' and a tool of China's foreign enemies aiming to topple the Communist government.

Falun Gong followers insist they have no political agenda.

``This is not a political fight. Keeping silent about the evil persecution is a way of encouraging it,'' Hui Han Yee, a spokeswoman for the Hong Kong Falun Dafa Association which organized the meeting, told Reuters.

Sunday's meeting concluded a two-day gathering which started Saturday, when some 900 adherents performed a mass exercise routine and staged a march to condemn Beijing's ban.

China launched a crackdown against the movement in July 1999, when it also began a media campaign in earnest to vilify the group. It intensified its verbal attacks earlier this month, after the weekend of events in Hong Kong was announced.

It was the first time a Falun Gong meeting was held in a building owned by the Hong Kong government.

Practitioners of the spiritual movement said they had to agree not to show photographs of Falun Gong adherents being tortured in mainland China before Hong Kong authorities granted them a permit to hold the conference.

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Falun Gong Sect Meets in Hong Kong

Yahoo News
Sunday January 14 12:51 AM ET
By MARGARET WONG, Associated Press Writer
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010114/ts/hong_kong_banned_sect_7.html

HONG KONG (AP) - The Falun Gong meditation sect, outlawed and often subject to violent crackdowns in mainland China, held a global conference in Hong Kong Sunday where followers lashed out at Beijing's suppression.

``Over 100 of our great Falun members have lost their lives to spread the truth,'' adherent John Hu said during the meeting at an auditorium in Hong Kong City Hall. ``But this won't change our beliefs and determination to practice Falun Gong.''

Falun Gong is demanding the right to practice freely in communist China and an end to the crackdowns that it claims have resulted in the torture and killings of 120 followers at the hands the mainland authorities.

``There's no human rights in China because you cannot even say a word about Falun Gong in Tiananmen Square,'' complained Hong Kong practitioner Fiona Ching.

Beijing authorities round up and often beat Falun Gong practitioners on the mainland, but the sect remains legal in Hong Kong.

About 900 Falun Gong adherents turned out for Sunday's well-publicized gathering, which has drawn sharp criticism from pro-Beijing forces furious that the ``evil cult'' can attack Chinese policies while on Chinese soil.

The meeting included 700 overseas followers from 23 countries - evidence, Falun Gong said, of the movement's appeal.

Hong Kong barred 13 practitioners from entering the territory but said late Saturday it was because they failed to meet visa requirements, not because of their Falun Gong affiliation.

A drawing of the movement's founder, Li Hongzhi, seated in a Buddhist meditation pose, was the central backdrop on a stage where Falun Gong members spoke about their experiences in the group.

One man read aloud from a letter purportedly from another follower in Beijing who had been arrested and beaten in December, then later released. He was not identified for fear of retaliation.

``There are evils which should not exist in this cosmos,'' the letter said.

Hong Kong practitioner Hui Kwok-hong opened the conference by thanking the territory's government for letting the sect rent space in City Hall despite criticism from pro-Beijing newspapers.

``We sincerely thank the government officials for giving us their special support,'' Hui said - although there has been no indication that Falun Gong has been treated any differently from any other group in Hong Kong.

The English-language Sunday Morning Post editorialized that the event was good publicity for Hong Kong, showing ``that freedom of religion and assembly remains intact.''

Saturday was dominated by both meditation and protest.

In the morning, Falun Gong followers gathered in a park to practice their slow, rhythmic exercises to the mellow sounds of recorded Chinese music.

They later marched on the liaison office of the mainland Chinese government and placed petitions on the sidewalk addressed to Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji and other authorities.

Falun Gong insists it has no political motives, but Beijing has been alarmed by the group's ability to organize huge demonstrations.

``I do not get involved in politics, but when people see a mass of people, they see it as a threat,'' said Sterling Campbell, a follower from New York.

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Detained Falungong members launch hunger strike in Hong Kong

Yahoo! Asia - News Asia
Sunday, January 14 6:34 PM SGT
http://asia.dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/asia/afp/article.html?s=asia/headlines/010114/asia/afp/Detained_Falungong_members_launch_hunger_strike_in_Hong_Kong.html

HONG KONG, Jan 14 (AFP) - Four Falungong practitioners, detained while attempting to enter Hong Kong to attend a conference, have gone on hunger strike, a spokeswoman for the group said Sunday.

The four, among 13 barred from entering the territory, announced the strike at midnight on Saturday as a protest against immigration officials, said spokeswoman Sharon Xu.

The other nine had been deported, Xu said.

Those denied entry were due to attend a conference of more than 1,000 Falungong practitioners held on Sunday at Hong Kong's government-run City Hall.

The detentions have provoked fears among followers that the sect may be outlawed in the territory, in line with a ban issued July 1999 by Chinese authorities who have branded the sect an "evil cult."

One of the four, Yu Shan -- said to be a US citizen -- was able to use a public telephone at Chek Lap Kok international airport to contact a Falungong press conference with details of the detention.

She said fellow detainee, Zhang Cuiying, reportedly an Australian citizen, had been physically assaulted by security officers attempting to force her to board a plane.

Zhang had been due to speak at the conference about her experiences following her arrest in Beijing during a Falungong protest.

"We are on hunger strike because we are being detained illegally. We hold all the appropriate documents for entering Hong Kong, the detention is not right," Yu said, speaking via Xu.

According to Xu, Hong Kong's Australian Consul Bruce Phillips was on his way to investigate claims that an Australian passport holder was being wrongly detained.

Hong Kong immigration officials say that "unnecessary force" was never used on detainees, adding that those barred entry were refused due to inappropriate travel documents.

However, according to Yu, all detainees were legally entitled to enter the territory, but were rejected because of pressure from the Chinese government.

She added that, since Falungong were legally allowed to practice in Hong Kong, the detentions were a dark omen for followers based in the territory.

"The one country, two systems principle is internationally known, but when they have pressure from the mainland, Hong Kong is starting to act negatively towards Falungong.

"From the stand point of the practitioners being detained, even though they are free to practice in Hong Kong, they feel that this this kind of persecution is threatening the one country, two systems policy.

"Many of us have never entered into Hong Kong before, we should not have any record as a reason to deny us entry into Hong Kong so we believe the immigration officials are under pressure from (Chinese President) Jiang Zemin and his officers," Yu said.

On Saturday, practitioners staged a series of peaceful demonstrations, delivering a petition to Beijing's liaison office here in protest against the persecution of followers.

According to a human rights group in Hong Kong, 98 have died under suspicious circumstances in police custody on the mainland.

The third conference of its kind to be held in the territory, Sunday's event was the first staged in a government-managed facility. Organisers said they had received full cooperation from the venue's managers -- but had been requested to refrain from distributing on the premises photographs of injuries allegedly sustained by practitioners at the hands of mainland police.

These were handed to reporters in sealed envelopes with instructions not to open them until outside the building.

"We respect the opinions of City Hall management," said Hong Kong Falungong spokesman Kan Hung-cheung.

"We can only show pictures that positively relate to Falungong based on their understanding, so they do not want us to show pictures of practitioners being tortured."

A statement issued by the Hong Kong's Leisure and Cultural Services Department (LCSD), which manages the City Hall venue, said it would be checking to ensure that an agreement had been observed restricting the event to purely religious or cultural activities.

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Beijing's Stance Against Falun Gong Sect Is Protested in March

New York Times
January 14, 2001
By MARK LANDLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/14/world/14HONG.html

HONG KONG, Jan. 13 - For the second time since the Falun Gong was outlawed by China in 1999, hundreds of members of the group gathered here today to protest their treatment by Beijing.

Hong Kong is the only place on Chinese soil where the Falun Gong has been allowed to practice its meditation and breathing exercises. Today about 800 members rallied with banners and wreaths in a downtown park to remember the 120 members they say have been killed by the Chinese government. "We want to show the world that what Jiang Zemin is doing is against the law," said Fiona Ching, a spokeswoman for the group, referring to the Chinese president. "We are only exercising our most basic human rights."

Ms. Ching said the group was not seeking to make trouble in Hong Kong, which operates under a separate legal system from the mainland, albeit subject to pressure from Beijing. Yet the crowd took its grievances to the doorstep of the most potent symbol of China here, the Chinese government liaison office.

Led by 120 women dressed in white - the traditional color for mourning in China - members marched to the building, only to find the gates locked and no one to accept their petition.

A few police officers marched alongside the protesters, while officials in plain clothes filmed the crowd. But Falun Gong members said the atmosphere was more relaxed than at a demonstration in December 1999.

"I wasn't worried coming here," said Guo Jingchung, a medical technician who flew from Boston with 20 others. "Hong Kong is the one place in China where we can speak freely."

Still, a second spokeswoman said the government had detained 12 Falun Gong members at the Hong Kong airport, putting two Americans and one Australian on flights out of the territory. One member, Zhang Cuiying, was still being detained this afternoon, said the spokeswoman, Sophie Xiao.

Ms. Zhang has traveled extensively in recent months, recounting her experiences while in prison in China last year. She had been scheduled to speak about that here, and Ms. Xiao said she believed that by stopping her at the border, the government was showing the limits of its tolerance.

Government officials said this meeting was more sensitive than the last one because Falun Gong is renting a government-owned building for its activities. In 1999 the group rented a ballroom at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center. This year the center turned them down. Ms. Xiao said 30 local hotels had denied Falun Gong space for its meetings.

Falun Gong's Web site says that at least 50,000 members have been detained since the government outlawed the group in July 1999. According to the Web site, 114 people have died while in police custody.

Last week, China's official news media began a fresh attack, with the Communist Party newspaper, People's Daily, describing Falun Gong as a "cheap tool" of "anti-China forces in the West."

China has tolerated the meetings in Hong Kong, a former British colony that operates under the principle of "one country, two systems." But Macao, a former Portuguese colony that reverted to China in 1999, rounded up Falun Gong members who tried to protest during a visit by President Jiang last month.

ong Kong residents in the park seemed unfazed by the rally. Protests are common here, with people demonstrating against everything from the crackdown in Tiananmen Square to real estate prices.

------- Onelist (submissions from subscribers)