------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
International Papers Rockets' Red, White, and Blue Glare
India, China to Work to End Border Dispute
Legacy of weakness
Canada to Test Arms - Grade Russian, U.S. Plutonium
Uranium arms warning issued in 1991
Uranium missile health fears deepen
MISSILE BAN IS RULED OUT
Nato faces inquiry into uranium 'war crimes'
Experts See No Uranium Arms-Leukemia Link
Guard, Reservists Receive Nuke Duty OK
The Department of Depleted Uranium
France Casts Doubt on Uranium Claim
German official insists uranium risks unproven
Pakistan ruler meets Indian ambassador
'Emotional decision'
Focus Shifting in U.S.-Russia Relations
Taiwan Premier Made Mistakes
Sink the Stealth Ship - Before It's Built
Missouri
As Energetic Reformer, Clinton Changed World Foreign policy
Democrats Facing Difficult Choices in New Congress

MILITARY
U.S. backs gun rights at U.N. summit
Containing Colombia's Troubles
Air Force Academy hit by drug scandal
States
Iraq: US Pilot Killed Did Not Eject
Iraq releases details of MIA search
U.N. Disaster Team Members Killed in Helicopter Crash
U.N. officials killed in helicopter crash
Helicopter crash kills U.N. disaster officials
Army drops case against gay reservist
Overhaul of Army puts a premium on speed
Risks of Aid for Africa
Mississippi

OTHER
Hunger in America: A Mark of Shame
Save the pandas? Better: Save their habitat
Alaska
Our Campsite Is the Planet Earth
A Vegetarian Solution
Federalism and the environment
Broad Plan Aims to Improve Police Rapport With Public
NYPD plans to reach out to communities
Metro Briefing
Vermont
Moscow 'Spy' Case Is Still a Mystery
Panel Calls for Creating Counterterrorism Agency
On Jordan's Death Row
Holy Warriors: Dissecting a Terror Plot From Boston to Amman

ACTIVISTS
French police remove Cherbourg Greenpeace activists
300 Rally in St. Louis in Opposition to Ashcroft
Arkansas
In Hong Kong, Mixed Signals on Falun Gong
Sentences of Some Dissidents Are Quietly Reduced in China
China punishes 242 Falun Gong leaders
Sect members on hunger strike
Pressure grows on Anson Chan to name names


-------- NUCLEAR

International Papers Rockets' Red, White, and Blue Glare

Slate
Monday, Jan. 15, 2001, at 10:30 a.m. PT
By June Thomas
http://slate.msn.com/InterNatPapers/01-01-15/InterNatPapers.asp#Bio
http://slate.msn.com/InterNatPapers/01-01-15/InterNatPapers.asp

A new wave of anti-Americanism washed over Europe this weekend, set off by concerns about the Bush administration's support of National Missile Defense. Britain's Independent summarized the opposition to NMD: "[I]t is expensive, it is unproven, it will destabilise arms-control efforts, and it does not even meet the most likely threats from rogue nuclear states chief among them the 'bomb-in-a-suitcase' scenario." Most of Europe, like Russia and China, opposes NMD, but governments have been reluctant to say so publicly for fear of jeopardizing relations with the incoming Bush administration.

On Friday, British opposition leader William Hague came out in favor of NMD, warning that if Britain-and the rest of Europe-fails to get behind the project, the United States will abandon its allies and focus instead on a "purely national" shield. Britain's liberal press dismissed Hague's statement as a rather desperate attempt to make political capital out of the issue when his Conservative Party faces almost-certain defeat in the general election expected to be called this year. The Independent said that although Hague may be "adopting a posture for the sake of pre-electoral mood music rather than any conviction about the national interest," Prime Minister Tony Blair and the Labor government have to get off the fence and forcefully oppose NMD: "There is no point in Mr Blair pretending that Britain enjoys a special relationship with the US if he is not prepared, in a firm but friendly way, to tell Mr Bush that he is about to make an expensive mistake." The Observer also demanded that Blair "must not kowtow to Bush." Since the missile defense system would depend on early warning monitoring stations around the world-including the Fylingdales base in northern England-Britain would make itself a "legitimate target," and "[o]ffering to house a misguided American weapons system would further isolate us from our deeply sceptical European allies."

In an interview with the International Herald Tribune, departing Secretary of State Madeleine Albright described U.S. plans for national missile defense as "an elephant in the room." But an IHT op-ed advised Europeans to quit their bitching: There was no "compelling reason to take the lead in a crusade against U.S. missile defense. Indeed, since the shield is a hot button issue in the United States, where it receives bi-partisan support, the Europeans should refrain from giving the impression that they are denying the U.S. population its right to defend itself against missiles."

A story with a short half-life? Even as the papers teem with the latest speculation about Balkans syndrome (see, for example, this Sydney Morning Herald story linking cancer-related deaths with flak jackets made from recycled DU shells), the backlash has clearly begun. In a piece headlined "DU fears are baseless," Toronto's liberal Globe and Mail declared, "People in wealthy nations such as Canada have never been healthier, yet we fret about our health as never before. Almost every day brings a new health scare." The Times of London took up a similar cry, diagnosing Brits as being in the grip of Gulf War syndrome, "the pathological tendency to surrender our critical faculties whenever an army of scaremongers fires off another hysteria-tipped broadside about an unsubstantiated or exaggerated risk to public health." The op-ed said the public is currently "predisposed to accept that there must be something in these panics, regardless of the known facts" and it blamed the government for being "too sensitive to public criticism. ... By repeatedly giving in to the scaremongers, Whitehall has given these health scares the kind of credence and credibility they do not deserve."

---

India, China to Work to End Border Dispute

Associated Press
January 15, 2001 Filed at 9:59 a.m. ET
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-india-c.html

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India and China agreed on Monday to make faster progress in resolving a decades-old border dispute that is considered central to ties between the world's two most populous nations.

Head of China's parliament Li Peng and Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said both sides had made progress in clarifying some parts of the 2,500-mile Himalayan border and agreed to hasten the process, an official said.

``Both the Prime Minister and Mr. Li Peng agreed that this process should be completed as soon as possible,'' foreign ministry spokesman Raminder Singh Jassal told reporters.

Li, the highest ranking visitor from Beijing since India's 1998 nuclear tests frayed ties, is on a nine-day visit across the country to heal years of mistrust between the Himalayan neighbors.

Indian and Chinese negotiators in November exchanged maps relating to the less controversial ``middle sector'' of the border, in what officials said was a major step forward and could lay the ground for resolving the northern and eastern stretches of the border.

China holds about 20 percent of the disputed Himalayan territory of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh. This comprises a small area New Delhi says Pakistan ceded illegally and the Aksai Chin area further to the northeast, which India also claims.

China claims large parts of Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh, both northeastern Indian states.

The two countries fought a brief border in 1962.

``There were differences between the two sides, but the common ground between the two far outweighs the differences,'' the Indian spokesman said.

During their 30-minute meeting, Li and Vajpayee stressed greater high-level contacts between the two countries.

The Chinese leader extended an invitation from Premier Zhu Rongji to Vajpayee to visit China, the official said.

VISIT TO HIGH-TECH CAPITAL

Li, whose meeting with Vajpayee was the last in a list of meetings with Indian dignitaries, later left for the southern city of Bangalore, India's technology capital.

The two countries had discussed possible collaboration in software-based technology during a visit of China's Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan last July.

Indian authorities stepped up security to control Tibetan protesters during Li's visit. India-based Tibetan exiles are regarded as a sensitive issue by New Delhi, particularly during efforts to improve relations with Beijing.

Tibet did not figure in the discussions between Li and Vajpayee.

Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, has been in India since 1959 when he fled from his homeland after a failed uprising against Beijing.

A Tibetan youth was wounded when police opened fire late on Sunday to stop a dozen protesters who tried to storm the hotel where Li was staying. Eight others were arrested.

---

Legacy of weakness

Washington Times
January 15, 2001
Alan Dowd
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-column-200111317340.htm

Bill Clinton is said to be obsessed with his legacy, and for good reason. A president's legacy has a way of defining his presidency: Harry Truman's drew a road map for fighting the Cold War; Lyndon Johnson's sentenced Richard Nixon to Vietnam; Ronald Reagan's finished off the Soviet empire.

Like his predecessors, Mr. Clinton leaves behind a legacy that will shape America and the world for years to come.

The Clinton legacy serves as an epilogue to the first Bush administration and a prologue to the second. Just as the younger Bush cannot foresee exactly where the story will take him, Mr. Clinton didn't know what lay ahead in December 1992, as the elder Bush dispatched 28,000 troops to Somalia on what was supposed to be a low-risk mission of mercy. Bill Clinton would never fully recover from the mistakes he made in the months that followed.

We do not intend to dictate political outcomes, Mr. Bush assured Somalia's tribal leaders as the first Americans arrived. We come only to feed the starving. Within days, the starving ended. Within four months, the number of U.S. troops in Somalia had shrunk to 3,000. But Bill Clinton had placed them under U.N. command. And with Mr. Clinton's blessing, the U.N. had expanded what was a limited humanitarian mission into an ambitious reconstruction of Somalia's government - nation-building, as it came to be called.

With the Americans doing exactly what Mr. Bush promised they would not do, Somali leader Farah Aidid ignited a revolt. Mr. Clinton responded by sending hundreds of U.S. Army Rangers into Somalia to apprehend Aidid. Along the way, Defense Secretary Les Aspin denied Maj. Gen. Thomas Montgomery's request for heavy armor to protect his troops, doubtless with the president's knowledge.

The Rangers creeping mission would crescendo on Oct. 3, 1993, during a day-long gun battle with Aidid's forces in the dusty alleys of Mogadishu. When the guns fell silent, 18 Rangers and hundreds of Somalis lay dead, triggering the beginning of the end of Operation Restore Hope. All told, Mr. Clinton's nation-building experiment would claim 30 American lives and 175 U.S. casualties.

Just eight days after the Mogadishu gunfight, Bill Clinton sent 193 troops to Haiti to install Jean-Bertrand Aristide as president. Awaiting the Americans was a group of club-wielding thugs loyal to Haitian dictator Raoul Cedras. A standoff ensued, as the White House agonized over whether to take the beach by force and thus risk another Mogadishu or withdraw and risk further erosion of American credibility. Choosing the path of least resistance, the president backed down and decided to deal with the consequences later. Those consequences would be far-reaching. Indeed, we are dealing with them today.

By waving the white flag in Somalia and Haiti, Mr. Clinton sent a message around the world that could be understood in every language: America had lost its way and its nerve.

North Korea promptly expelled atomic energy inspectors and built a small arsenal of nuclear warheads. Iraq began to harass U.N. weapons inspectors. Belgrade flouted NATO's threats and intensified its vivisection of Bosnia. And Beijing tightened the noose around Taiwan.

By 1998, China was threatening nuclear war over Taiwan, North Korea was testing long-range missiles for its new warheads, Saddam Hussein was expelling U.N. weapons inspectors and Slobodan Milosevic was cracking down on Kosovo. Bill Clinton's response to these challenges would leave friend and foe alike scratching their heads.

In Asia, it was called strategic ambiguity and constructive engagement. But it looked a lot like appeasement.

In Iraq, it was called low-grade war. But the almost-daily air attacks on radar posts and SAM sites left Saddam's nuclear weapons program and long-range missiles intact, making the raids a strategic failure.

In Serbia, it was called peace enforcement. And it was completely avoidable. Mr. Clinton was forced to use bombs to get Mr. Milosevic's attention because by 1999 his words carried no weight. Empty threats in Mogadishu, Port-au-Prince and Sarajevo gave Mr. Milosevic good reason to doubt the president's resolve in Kosovo.

Regrettably, not even a 78-day air war could rehabilitate America's word. Look to the Middle East for evidence of that.

Indeed, international troublemakers are no longer frightened by our military might - they're emboldened by it. After watching Mr. Clinton pummel Iraq, Serbia, Afghanistan and Sudan for half a decade, America's enemies have concluded that nothing short of an ICBM will give Washington pause. As a high-level North Korean official bluntly warns, "We're not going to be another Yugoslavia." And Bill Clinton's cavalier way of war has driven them to that conclusion.

Perhaps the only thing more alarming than this global missile buildup is the state of America's defenses against those missiles. Bill Clinton killed the Strategic Defense Initiative in one of his very first acts as president. For the balance of his presidency, he starved the Pentagon's other anti-missile programs and assured Americans that there was no real missile threat to the United States. Now we know better.

In the span of just eight years, Bill Clinton not only inflamed the passions of America's enemies, but left America unprotected from their weapons of vengeance. That may turn out to be a more lasting legacy than even he could have imagined.

Alan Dowd is a freelance writer specializing in foreign affairs and national security.

-------- canada

Canada to Test Arms - Grade Russian, U.S. Plutonium

Reuters
January 15, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-canada-.html

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada said on Monday it was about to start a unique test to see whether Russian and U.S. weapons-grade plutonium could be burned in a civilian nuclear reactor and thereby help boost nuclear disarmament.

Atomic Energy Canada Ltd. (AECL) plans to use its Chalk River nuclear laboratories to burn around 1 pound of Russian weapons-grade plutonium, which has been mixed in with 31 pounds of regular uranium oxide reactor fuel to produce mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel.

``I'm pretty sure the test will start this month,'' AECL spokesman Larry Shewchuk told Reuters.

A team from Russia will visit Chalk River -- in a remote part of eastern Ontario -- this week for final consultations before the test begins.

The test could have a significant impact on Moscow's program to disarm its nuclear warheads since if it succeeds, Canada could eventually help dispose of the 50 tons of weapons-grade plutonium that Russia has identified as excess.

And if Russian reactors could be converted to burn MOX fuel, it could also help generate much-needed electricity in a country hit by periodic power shortages.

Chalk River will also burn a smaller amount of U.S.-produced MOX in a side-by-side test that will take three years followed by a cooling-off period.

Initial results will be available in about four years' time and if all goes well, some of the weapons-grade plutonium will have been destroyed and the rest will no longer be pure enough to use in warheads.

Washington, which is confident it can take care of the 34 surplus tons of U.S. weapons-grade plutonium, is paying for the test of the Russian MOX. Shewchuk would not reveal the amount.

``Why this experiment is unique is that Russian and U.S. fuels have never been tested together before. People want to know the differences between the two,'' he said.

``It is important for the two countries to have their fuel tested side-by-side for verification purposes. Canada is a country capable of doing this and which is deemed trustworthy by both countries.''

Environmentalists say the test could turn Canada into a nuclear dumping ground but Ottawa says it will help increase security around the world by speeding up the process of destroying weapons-grade plutonium.

``No one will steal U.S. plutonium because it is very well-guarded but the same is not true in Russia, where there is no great security,'' Shewchuk said.

MOX has been used commercially for years in Belgium, France, Germany and Switzerland but the tests in Canada are a first because they will involve weapons-grade rather than reactor-grade plutonium.

-------- depleted uranium

Uranium arms warning issued in 1991

CNN
January 15, 2001
http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/01/15/defence.uranium.02/index.html

LONDON, England -- Nuclear safety advisers for the British Government warned 10 years ago about the potential health hazards of controversial uranium tipped weapons.

The UK Atomic Energy Authority's 1991 report warned that depleted uranium (DU) shells left in Kuwait after the Gulf War were potentially harmful.

DU weapons have been linked -- although there is no solid scientific proof -- to illnesses among peacekeepers who served in the Balkans, where the weapons were also used.

The report, which AEA confirmed to CNN.com was published in full in 1998 in response to a parliamentary question. It was publicised as senior medical officers of the 19-member NATO alliance met in Brussels on Monday to examine reports of health problems.

The special meeting of the Committee of the Chiefs of the Military Medical Services (COMEDS), which normally assembles twice a year, was being held at the Belgian Defence Ministry.

The AEA report said: "Handling heavy metal munitions does pose some potential hazards, as does the possibility of the spread of radioactive and toxic contaminations as a result of firing in battle... and can become a long-term problem if not dealt with ...and [pose] a risk to both military and civilian population."

The report said the tank ammunition fired by British and U.S. vehicles in the Gulf War amounted to 50,000 pounds of depleted uranium.

If that amount of DU was inhaled it could kill 500,000 people, but the report added: "Obviously this theoretical figure is not realistic; however, it does indicate the significant problem."

The report said "the DU will be spread around the battlefield in varying sizes and quantities, from dust particles to full-size penetrators (tank shells and air-launched systems) and it would be unwise for people to stay close to large quantities of DU for long periods."

It warned that there was an urgent need to clean up DU shells in Kuwait because of the risk of radioactive contamination.

The report's existence was highlighted the day after the chief prosecutor for the International War Crimes Tribunal said NATO's use of depleted uranium could be investigated as a possible war crime.

Carla del Ponte said "if we have sufficient elements we will be obliged to investigate" whether the use of the heavy metal in the Balkans conflicts constituted a war crime.

DU weapons were used in the Balkans by U.S. Air Force A-10 aircraft against Serb armoured vehicles.

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, some defence experts say.

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.

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

Switzerland's defence ministry said on Sunday it planned to check the health implications of DU weapons test-fired in central Switzerland 30 years ago.

Russia, meanwhile, is calling for an international conference of specialists to look at the problem within the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

Rudolf Scharping, the German defence minister, said he sees no link between reported leukaemia cases among German soldiers and the deployment of German peacekeepers to Kosovo.

After consultations with health experts and military staff, Scharping said he was standing by the finding of independent examinations in 1999 of German troops returning from Kosovo.

Health tests on soldiers sent to Kosovo and those not deployed there showed no differences, he said.

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

Scharping has called for a moratorium on using depleted uranium weapons so more research can be carried out, but he also has criticised media-generated "hysteria" on the issue.

---

Uranium missile health fears deepen

CNN
January 15, 2001
http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/01/15/defence.uranium/index.html

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- The political fall-out over concerns over the potential health risks to NATO troops exposed to uranium-tipped weapons looks set to intensify.

As Germany's defence minister dismissed the health concerns on Monday, it was reported that Britain was warned a decade ago about the risks to troops of using depleted uranium missiles in combat.

The developments came the day after the chief prosecutor for the International War Crimes Tribunal said NATO's use of depleted uranium could be investigated as a possible war crime.

Carla del Ponte said "if we have sufficient elements we will be obliged to investigate" whether the use of the heavy metal in the Balkans conflicts constituted a war crime.

Depleted uranium (DU) weapons were used in the Balkans by U.S. Air Force A-10 aircraft against Serb armoured vehicles.

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, some defence experts say.

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.

Several NATO member states, including Italy, are now carrying out their own health and scientific investigations into a possible link between the use of the weapons in 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.

Russia, meanwhile, is calling for an international conference of specialists to look at the problem within the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

Rudolf Scharping, the German defence minister, said he sees no link between reported leukaemia cases among German soldiers and the deployment of German peacekeepers to Kosovo.

After consultations with health experts and military staff, Scharping said he was standing by the finding of independent examinations in 1999 of German troops returning from Kosovo.

Health tests on soldiers sent to Kosovo and those not deployed there showed no differences, he said.

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

Scharping has called for a moratorium on using depleted uranium weapons so more research can be carried out, but he also has criticised media-generated "hysteria" on the issue.

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

Meanwhile, in Britain, a newspaper says the government was warned by its nuclear safety adviser a decade ago about the risks to its own troops of using depleted uranium missiles.

A confidential report written in 1991 by the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (AEA) made clear that the shells left in Kuwait after the Gulf War were a potential source of radioactive contamination. The Times said.

The Times quoted the AEA report, as saying DU could "become a long-term problem if not dealt with."

The AEA concluded, according to The Times report: "The problem will not go away and should be tackled before it becomes a political problem created by the environmental lobby."

On Sunday, British Defence Minister Geoff Hoon defended the use of depleted uranium arms, which he described as "astonishingly effective."

---

MISSILE BAN IS RULED OUT

The Mirror
01/01/15
http://www.ic24.net/mgn/THE_MIRROR/NEWS/P2S2.html

THE Government has ruled out a ban on controversial depleted uranium missiles just hours before a House of Lords debate on the health of Gulf War veterans.

Ten years after the conflict, peers will today discuss claims radiation from the armaments caused the deaths of service personnel from cancer.

But Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon said yesterday that banning the "astonishingly effective" missiles would put the lives of British servicemen and women at risk during a conflict.

Meanwhile, the prosecutor of the international war crimes tribunal says she cannot rule out an investigation of Nato's use of depleted uranium as a war crime.

---

Nato faces inquiry into uranium 'war crimes'

The Independent
By Kim Sengupta,
15 January 2001 Independent (UK)
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/World/Europe/2001-01/uranium150101.shtml

NATO could face a criminal investigation into the use by its forces of depleted uranium ammunition, the chief prosecutor of the UN war crimes tribunal said yesterday.

Carla Del Ponte said her tribunal was awaiting the results of several inquiries being made into the issue by Nato governments. "If coherent results emerge directly linking the use of depleted uranium ammunition with health problems suffered by soldiers and civilians, we will proceed immediately. If we have sufficient elements we will be obliged to investigate."

The tribunal had already carried out an initial inquiry into the use of DU ammunition in 1999, Ms Del Ponte said. "But we did not have enough elements to proceed at the time. There are new facts which could lead us to investigate the issue again."

The Secretary of State for Defence, Geoff Hoon, admitted there was a "limited risk" in the use of DU ammunition, but ruled out a ban on the rounds. The refusal came as the Royal Navy announced it was phasing out DU ammunition on some of its warships.

The House of Lords will address the health of Gulf War veterans today in a debate sponsored by Lord Morris of Manchester, a Labour peer. "It is the compelling duty of any country to act justly towards those prepared to lay down their lives in its service and the dependents of those who do so," he said.

"Now the Gulf veterans feel provoked to say it is shameful that Britain can stand by and watch other countries taking the lead in this issue, when we were among the first to use depleted uranium."

But Mr Hoon said that banning the "astonishingly effective" missiles would put the lives of British soldiers at risk during a conflict. No scientific evidence suggesting a link between the weaponry and illness had been seen by the Government, making a ban "inappropriate," he said. A "limited" risk had always been recognised, which the armed forces had always been made aware of.

DU ammunition is used in the American-designed Phalanx anti-missile system fitted to the Navy's Type 42 destroyers and three other ships - the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal, HMS Ocean, a new helicopter carrier, and HMS Fearless, an amphibious assault ship.

However, with health concerns surrounding DU, the American manufacturer has stopped production and the US Navy has been phasing out stocks for a decade, replacing the projectiles with tungsten-tipped ammunition, which is not radioactive and is far less toxic.

A history of the American Naval Sea Systems Command, written in 1989, concluded that "the tungsten penetrator provides improved round effectiveness while eliminating safety and environmental problems associated with DU".

The Ministry of Defence said the tungsten alternative had been demonstrated to be as effective as the DU munitions. The Royal Navy's stocks of DU ammunition will be exhausted by 2003, although the shells may be withdrawn before then.

The MoD said it had always known that there were dangers associated with DU ammunition, although it maintained its line that there was still no evidence of a link between DU and a higher risk of cancer.

Iain Duncan Smith, shadow Defence Secretary, said: "It is necessary now for the Government to make a clear statement about the position of depleted uranium, given all the evidence that has been coming out in dribs and drabs."

The Liberal Democrat defence spokesman, Menzies Campbell, said: "These reports raise yet more questions about what the Ministry of Defence knew and when it knew it."

---

Experts See No Uranium Arms-Leukemia Link

International Herald Tribune
Monday, January 15, 2001
Gina Kolata New York Times Service
http://www.iht.com/articles/7545.htm

NEW YORK It is biologically impossible for depleted uranium to have caused the leukemia that some allied troops who served in the Balkans have contracted, physicists and medical experts say. And they doubt that uranium-tinged dust near military testing grounds has caused any illnesses in Europe.

Frank von Hippel, a physicist who is a professor of public and international affairs at Princeton University, said depleted uranium was not much of a radioactivity hazard, in part because it is what its name implies - depleted. It is what is left when the more highly radioactive uranium 235 has been removed from its more abundant atomic cousin, uranium 238.

Uranium 235 is used to fuel nuclear reactors and make nuclear weapons. But uranium 238 "is very nonreactive," Mr. von Hippel said.

Even if one assumes that there is a ton of depleted uranium dust for every square kilometer in Kosovo, he said, its radiation would be just 1 percent of the natural radiation level.

"So this is not a very significant hazard," he said.

Moreover, uranium 238 emits alpha radiation, which does not even penetrate the skin, said Dr. Michael Thun, who directs epidemiological research for the American Cancer Society. The radiation that causes leukemia - gamma rays and X-rays - passes through the body and reaches the marrow, damaging cells and giving rise to disease. Uranium 235 emits gamma particles, and that is one reason it is so dangerous, Dr. Thun said.

Uranium is a heavy metal, and as with all heavy metals it can be toxic. When it enters the body, it lodges in the kidneys, which it can damage. But studies of a handful of Gulf War soldiers who were hit by friendly fire and left with fragments of uranium 238 in their bodies have been reassuring, said Dr. Charles Phelps, the provost at the University of Rochester and a member of a Institute of Medicine committee that reported on the problem last year.

Uranium 238 clearly was leaching into the soldiers' kidneys, he said. "They had very high levels of uranium salts in their urine," Dr. Phelps said. "But there is no evidence of kidney disease."

Depleted uranium has long been used for weapons because it is extremely dense, 65 percent more dense than lead. A weapon made with depleted uranium can penetrate even steel-armored tanks. It also ignites when it hits its target.

"When you fire into or through steel, it actually vaporizes the steel," said Dr. Bruce Kelman, a toxicologist who is a president of GlobalTox, a business in Seattle that studies industrial hygiene and toxicology for governments and industry. "You get a mist of depleted uranium and steel."

Mr. von Hippel said that although the metal was radioactive, "its half-life is 4.5 billion years, which is, by coincidence, the age of the solar system." That means that it would take 4.5 billion years for half the uranium-238 atoms in a chunk of the metal to decay by emitting radioactive particles.

Because the radiation 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, Maryland, and an expert on radiation and cancer.

"To get leukemia," Dr. Boice said, "you need to get the radiation to the bone marrow. And uranium 238 will not get to the bone marrow."

Dr. Bruce Boecker, a radiation biologist at the Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico, said, "I don't think it causes leukemia at all."

If a person inhales uranium 238, it lodges in the lungs where, in theory at least, it might cause lung cancer or it might travel to the lymph nodes and theoretically cause lymphoma.

But Dr. Boice said extensive studies of uranium workers, some of whom were exposed to high levels by breathing uranium dust, did not find any association between inhaling uranium 238 and developing lung cancer or lymphomas.

Lymphomas do not seem to be caused by radiation in any case, Dr. Boice said. But lung cancer can be, although the study of uranium workers did not find that.

"We would not have been surprised at these high levels to find a link with lung cancer," he said. "But there was none."

Dr. Thun of the cancer society said that even though science might not support the idea that depleted uranium is causing health problems in Europe, that does not mean that scientists should turn their backs on the concern. People think they have leukemia because they were exposed to depleted uranium, and those fears will not easily go away.

"What I've been telling people," Dr. Thun said, "is that we need a systematic open and prompt evaluation of the situation, which would involve determining the cases of leukemia, determining the age of the patients, the diagnosis and the type of leukemia.

"In most cases, one of the major reasons for doing a systematic evaluation is to determine what is actually going on and to provide some real information, rather than rumors."

NATO to Discuss Health Risks

Military health chiefs from the 19 member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are to meet Monday to discuss health risks associated with the use of depleted uranium ammunition, Agence France-Presse reported from Brussels.

The meeting of the medical committee is designed to address the fears of some member states and veterans groups that the high-impact rounds may be responsible for a spate of illnesses among former Balkan peacekeepers.

The alliance itself continues to insist that there is no scientific proof to establish a tie between the rounds and a rash of cancers in peacekeeping soldiers.

---

Guard, Reservists Receive Nuke Duty OK

Albuquerque Journal
Monday, January 15, 2001
By John J. Lumpkin Journal Staff Writer
http://www.abqjournal.com/news/225577news01-15-01.htm

The military announced last week it will allow reservists and members of the National Guard to serve in nuclear units, but officials were unsure whether the nuclear weapons depot at Kirtland Air Force Base will begin employing them.

Guard members and reservists previously were excluded from nuclear-capable units, because the military considered their limited annual service requirement - one weekend a month and two full weeks a year - insufficient "to provide adequate continuous evaluation for personnel reliability purposes," a press release from the Pentagon said.

The move is to better integrate the active-duty forces and the reserves, which have been sharing more missions after post-Cold War personnel reductions, the release said.

"The number of Reserve and National Guard forces to be used in nuclear-related missions will be up to commanders to determine, as they work through this process," Charles L. Cragin, principal deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs, said in a statement. "However, a major structural barrier to full integration of the force has been shattered with this determination."

It has not been determined which units will receive billets for reservists and Guard members, but the nuclear weapons squadron at Kirtland is a likely candidate.

The 898th Munitions Squadron at Kirtland oversees the maintenance and protection of hundreds of nuclear weapons stored at the Kirtland Underground Munitions Complex. Although the Air Force does not acknowledge the presence of nuclear weapons at any location, it is widely known that Kirtland is one of two primary nuclear weapons depots in the United States. The other is at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev.

Estimates by watchdog groups put the number of nukes at Kirtland at about 2,450 in 1998, the most at any single location at that time.

They include various missile warheads and bombs, some functioning as the nation's reserve of nuclear weapons and others awaiting dismantling at the Pantex plant near Amarillo, in accordance with treaty requirements.

------

The Department of Depleted Uranium

Washington Post
Monday, January 15, 2001
By William M. Arkin Special to washingtonpost.com
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/nation/columns/dotmil/A53226-2001Jan12.html

I had planned to do my last column of the Clinton administration about why I thought William Cohen has been the worst secretary of defense in recent memory, but depleted uranium (DU) panic diverted my attention. And then I realized the two are related.

Responding to NATO claims that troops have died after being exposed to DU in the Balkans, Cohen said at the National Press Club last week that the radioactive material "doesn't pose an unreasonable risk." The secretary said he is confident that the studies that NATO and European governments have initiated will prove that DU is not linked to cancer and other illnesses. "There's been no scientific study that shows any connection between depleted uranium and leukemia or other forms of cancer," he said.

Unreasonable risk? Any connection? The poetry-writing former senator from Maine still has so much to learn. These are categorical statements that beg to be disproved, just the kind of above-it-all dismissal of hysteria that Cohen has played a key role in nurturing. DU is nowhere near the radioactive conspiracy some in Europe believe. But it is hardly just another weapon.

The Rise and Fall of a Super Weapon

First used in combat in the 1991 Gulf War, DU is a heavy metal byproduct of the enrichment of uranium for nuclear weapons. It was introduced in the 1970s as an anti-tank weapon during a time when the raison d'etre of U.S. and NATO militaries was halting a Soviet tank invasion of western Europe. Soon enough, DU had been incorporated into bullets for the Air Force's A-10 low-flying anti-tank killer, on tanks as main gun rounds and protective armor, and on ships in anti-aircraft and anti-cruise missile guns. A cheap super-weapon had been found.

This was the Cold War. Global nuclear war was just a hair trigger away. If DU saved lives, contributing to military capabilities at a time when Soviet domination was conceivable to many, the health and environmental hazard that it inherently posed was of secondary importance.

By the time of the Gulf War, not only had the Soviet threat evaporated, but an entire generation of smart weapons had been fielded. Tankers finally got a chance to put their DU ammunition and armor through its paces, but small anti-tank missiles proved just as capable at killing Iraqi tanks -- even laser-guided bombs were brought into the "tank-plinking" fray. A-10s fired hundreds of thousands of DU bullets as well. But any pilot will tell you that the Maverick missile proved most effective against armored vehicles. Although the Army claimed magical effect from the 4,000 DU rounds it unloaded, postwar assessors couldn't come to agreement as to which weapons killed which vehicles.

DUmb and DUmber

The Pentagon could hardly see or acknowledge that DU was now just another weapon, yet it would soon realize that something it once thought of as free wasn't. Even before the war, environmental concerns circumscribed live firing. Now that it had been used in combat, soldiers wounded by DU shrapnel from friendly fire required special health surveillance. Complaints mounted that safety regulations to deal with the toxic and radioactive substance were not followed on the battlefield. Hundreds of additional soldiers stepped forward (or were told) that they had been exposed to potentially harmful doses.

The history of DU after the Gulf War is pure damage control. Baghdad took up the anti-DU banner in 1993; activists, aided by a gaggle of lunatic congressmen, began a campaign to associate DU with Gulf War Syndrome; studies multiplied; and the Veterans Administration began special programs. The Pentagon's position never wavered despite new training, new internal regulations, new admonitions to soldiers, even despite the beginning of the development of "friendlier" tank and shipboard non-DU ammunition by the Army and Navy. "We do not believe that it has led to adverse health consequences," Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said on Jan. 4.

One might ask, if DU poses no risk, why is it that the Pentagon spends so much time warning soldiers to be cautious. Name me another weapon system accompanied by volumes of health regulations and studies.

Europe Erupts

There is, of course, another weapons system: nuclear weapons.

The hallmark of the Clinton years has been promoting the threat of weapons of mass destruction, trumpeting biological weapons in particular as a growing problem. Secretary Cohen is particularly obsessed with the issue. "There are more than two dozen countries . . . who either have or are in the process of acquiring these weapons of mass destruction," Cohen said at the Press Club. In his parting statement, Cohen warned that "this is not some scare tactic that the Pentagon is generating in order to secure more resources; this is reality."

This is the reality: The Pentagon speaks of terrorists obtaining and using chemical or biological weapons, of the big "when" and not the "if," yet it has nothing to offer but a jumble of domestic "response" programs should there be an incident. Cohen and company are also utterly promiscuous in arguing that the nuclear situation is worse today than it was during the Cold War. What a way to cover up eight years of disarmament failures.

The consequences of a reactive nuclear throwback is familiar territory: public panic, confusion, European-American discord. Now on top of it all, we face an emerging "Balkans Syndrome" of undiagnosed illnesses from military duty in the former Yugoslavia. Cohen's overstated comfort has already become the bread and butter for those who oppose his mandatory Anthrax vaccination program. The lack of trust and respect for the Pentagon's reassurances is surely one of the biggest recent failures of leadership.

Hell No, We Won't Glow

"By the way," Cohen exclaimed at the Press Club last week, "I learned for the first time that depleted uranium is also used in most of our aircraft and most of our ships, used as a ballast."

Now that's a confidence builder. Everyone is scrambling to understand what DU is and what effects it has and the secretary of defense is just learning that it exists. One would think that he would be fully knowledgeable of every aspect of a weapon that his forces used during his watch.

A number of reputable independent studies dispel the impression that DU threatens the general population in Iraq or Yugoslavia, but sufficient exposure, particularly direct, unprotected contact with vehicles struck with DU munitions or areas heavily contaminated by burning DU does carry with it potential heavy-metal poisoning risks. Ironically, it is the radiological health effects that are most unlikely from casual contact.

Opponents of DU completely overstate its effects, while the Pentagon says there's no problem. Peace-loving Europeans are unlikely to be soothed by more restatement of this basic contradiction - they will decide what "unreasonable risk" is. Already numerous nations are specifying that they will only purchase non-DU weapons from the United States. The likely outcome of this current frenzy will be that numerous European governments, if not the European Union itself, will restrict DU use in coalition operations. The U.S. military could thus find itself on a battlefield somewhere in the future unable to use one of its weapons, without the foresight to have developed a politically acceptable alternative. But that will be the next secretary of defense's problem.

---

France Casts Doubt on Uranium Claim

Associated Press
January 15, 2001 Filed at 2:31 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Europe-Depleted-Uranium.html

PARIS (AP) -- France cast doubt Monday on claims that exposure to armor-piercing ammunition containing depleted uranium may have triggered cancer in French troops who served in the Balkans.

The fear that depleted uranium ammunition might be a health risk has swept Europe in recent weeks as various nations have reported cancer cases among their troops, and NATO medical experts are studying the possible health risks.

But the Defense Ministry in Paris said tests on five French soldiers who served in the Balkans and who now have cancer did not reveal any traces of depleted uranium. Tests on a sixth ill soldier were continuing.

The findings mirrored similar research from neighboring Germany.

Last week, German Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping said tests on soldiers sent to Kosovo and those never deployed there showed no differences. He said the incidence of two cancers -- leukemia and lymphoma -- among German soldiers was no higher than among the general population in 1999.

Depleted uranium, a slightly radioactive heavy metal, is used in anti-armor munitions because of its high penetrating power. U.S. forces fired weapons containing depleted uranium in Bosnia in 1994 and 1995, and in 1999, NATO fired such weapons during its 78-day bombing campaign in Yugoslavia.

Depleted uranium has not been widely studied, and experts say they don't know exactly how much must be consumed to be harmful. The lack of conclusive scientific evidence has only served to feed public concern, which emerged when Italy said it was investigating illnesses in 30 Balkan veterans and then exploded as tales of sick or dying soldiers poured in from local media across Europe.

One European minister described the uproar as media-generated ``hysteria,'' and NATO has said there is no evidence that remains of depleted uranium rounds pose a health risk. But in the face of mounting public anxiety, the alliance's highest medical advisory body met in Brussels on Monday to discuss the reports.

Several European countries have introduced screening programs for Balkan veterans. And to be safe, Italy and Germany have called for a moratorium on use of depleted uranium weapons until health experts can study possible risks, but last week NATO turned down that recommendation.

On Monday, a Swiss ammunition company said it would investigate its own testing of depleted uranium ammunition on a company-owned range in the late 1960s.

Oerlikon Contraves Pyrotec said it used the foreign-made ammunition on a range near Studen, in central Switzerland. It was not immediately clear how much was used or whether the company had permission. Swiss authorities said they would investigate the possibility of long-term pollution at the site.

In Greece, where public opposition to the NATO strikes in Kosovo was widespread, Defense Minister Akis Tsochadzopoulos said Monday that Secretary of State Madeleine Albright asked him to muffle complaints about possible health risks linked to the munitions. In Washington, State Department officials who asked not to be identified said they hadn't heard about any such request from Albright.

---------

German official insists uranium risks unproven

Washington Times
January 15, 2001
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-2001115211530.htm

BERLIN - Germany's defense minister yesterday dismissed concerns that weapons containing depleted uranium pose a radiation risk, saying the "excited debate" about the issue ignores scientific opinion that there is no 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.

-------- india / pakistan

Pakistan ruler meets Indian ambassador

USA Today
01/15/01
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001-01-15-pakistan.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Pakistan-India.html

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - Pakistan's military ruler met with the Indian ambassador Monday for the first time since he took power in 1999, a rare high-level contact that signaled a new effort to end a deadlock between the nuclear neighbors over disputed Kashmir.

While neither side budged from its long-standing position on the issue, an Indian external affairs ministry official said the meeting might have opened a door for a way out of the impasse over the resumption of Kashmir peace talks. The official spoke on condition of anonymity.

Pakistan's Gen. Pervez Musharraf ''stressed the need for an early resumption of the dialogue process for the resolution of the Kashmir dispute,'' the government press office said. Pakistan has repeatedly called for talks with India on the issue.

Indian ambassador Vijay Nambiar reiterated India's refusal to hold talks unless Pakistan stops arming and training Pakistan-based Islamic militants waging a bloody insurgency in the Indian-ruled portion of Kashmir. Pakistan claims it lend the rebels only moral support.

The meeting was Musharraf's first with a high-level Indian official since the Pakistan's army seized power in a a bloodless coup in October 1999.

The coup came shortly after an 11-week confrontation in Kashmir that killed 1,000 people in the summer of 1999 and threatened to explode into full-scale war between the nations, whose combined population is 1.2 billion.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars since 1947 - two of them over Kashmir - and the prospect of another has frayed nerves worldwide because the old enemies are also among the world's newest nuclear powers.

In another meeting Monday aimed to ease tension between India and Pakistan, a group of influential figures from both countries met to look for ways to make sure their animosity never flares into nuclear war.

A seminar on nuclear restraint and risk reduction brought together several former military leaders and retired government officials who are trying to keep the lines of communication open amid the near-silence between their governments.

''We have to establish a degree of trust,'' said Tanvir Ahmed, a former Pakistani foreign secretary. ''In a nuclear war there is no victor or vanquished. In our case it is a doomsday scenario.''

Retired Indian army admiral Raja Menon told the seminar that the tests made South Asia a safer place because it removed the uncertainty ambiguity that had surrounded the rival nuclear programs.

Since the tests, however, a new shroud of secrecy has enveloped the programs. Neither country knows where the other's program is headed, what weapons its foe possesses or whether it has developed nuclear warheads to marry to its missiles.

Both India and Pakistan have missiles that can reach deep within the other's territory.

While many Western analysts say a full-blown nuclear arms race has yet to materialize, outsiders know less than they would like about the programs. Neither country has signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, designed to discourage nuclear proliferation by outlawing nuclear tests.

The most likely flashpoint would be Kashmir. The Himalayan region is divided between mostly Muslim Pakistan and mostly Hindu India, but each country claims the province in its entirety.

The 11-year-old fighting between Islamic separatists and the government in Indian-ruled Kashmir has killed at least 40,000 people, and human rights groups say the number is nearly twice as high.

---

'Emotional decision'

Washington Times
January 15, 2001
Embassy Row
James Morrison News and dispatches from the diplomatic corridor.
http://www.washtimes.com/world/embassy-2001115212443.htm

Richard Celeste, the U.S. ambassador to India, believes the United States acted emotionally when it blocked the visit of a top Indian nuclear scientist after India conducted nuclear tests in 1998.

"With the wisdom that comes with the passage of time, it was a mistake," Mr. Celeste said. "It was an emotional decision. Future misunderstandings should not spill over into the area of scientific cooperation."

The Clinton administration imposed sanctions on India as well as Pakistan, which conducted its own nuclear tests in response to its regional rival.

The sanctions blocked Indian scientist Rajagopala Chidambaram, director of India's Atomic Energy Commission at the time, from attending a nuclear energy conference in Arlington.

-------- russia

Focus Shifting in U.S.-Russia Relations

By Peter Baker and Susan B. Glasser
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, January 15, 2001 ; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52702-2001Jan12?language=printer

MOSCOW -- The last leader of the Soviet Union returned recently to the Kremlin, a decade after the fall of communism, and asked the new president of Russia a simple if pointed question: Do you plan to take the country back to an authoritarian regime?

"His answer was a very definite 'no,' " Mikhail Gorbachev recalled in an interview last week.

In President Vladimir Putin's Russia, though, Gorbachev's question remains very much unresolved and touches on what may become one of the most vexing foreign policy challenges facing the son of the American president who was in office at the end of the Cold War.

In a sharp diplomatic course change, George W. Bush will enter the Oval Office signaling a renewed emphasis on the issues of nuclear security and geopolitics that so preoccupied his father, while abandoning the Clinton administration's mission to reinvent the fitful, corruption-plagued Russian economy. But at a time when Putin is cracking down on the independent media and consolidating state power, it may not be so simple to turn away from the internal struggle that still roils Russia's incomplete transition to Western-style democracy.

Bush's determination to build a national missile defense system in the face of loud Russian objections heralds a new era of nuclear tensions. Yet arms control talk may be a welcome diversion for a Moscow leadership that has grown tired of high-minded lecturing from Washington. A pragmatic dose of realpolitik might be a tonic after what many here consider the idealistic but alternately intrusive, naive or uninterested approach of the last eight years under President Clinton.

"The Kremlin was extremely happy" that Bush won, said Sergei Karaganov, deputy director of the Institute of Europe and an influential voice in Moscow foreign policy circles. "Their view of the Bush team is that you can deal with them, there will be a clear set of rules. The Kremlin people are more or less traditionalists, as are the Bush people. It's easy for this kind of people to talk to each other."

For Bush, this is not his father's Russia. The new president will have to confront a country where U.S. national interests are not always so clear, a deeply troubled, nuclear-powered state that today is neither partner nor enemy, as his new secretary of state, Colin L. Powell, put it the other day.

The Russian economy remains smaller than Portugal's and anathema to most foreign investors since the 1998 crash of the ruble. Democracy and civil society appear to be tenuous concepts under Putin, who touts his commitment to a free press over dinner with Westerners at New York's 21 Club while his government back home jails the leading independent television network owner. Russia still wrestles with freedom of speech and religion, basic laws on private property and the rule of law.

From the point of view of some democracy activists here, any U.S. disengagement from Russia's internal issues could encourage Putin's autocratic streak even as he tries to take control of Russian broadcast networks and continues a brutal war in Chechnya. "It would be seen as carte blanche for the possibility of authoritarian rule inside Russia," said Oleg Orlov, a leader of the human rights group Memorial.

"I don't remember a period in our relationship when the United States was deaf, dumb and blind to what happened in Russia," said Andrei Richter, director of the Media Law and Policy Center at Moscow State University. "Democracy in Russia is as important to America as it is to Russia."

Bush has little personal knowledge of Russian affairs, but the rest of his team brings a wealth of experience. Condoleezza Rice, a longtime Soviet scholar who served in the last Bush White House, is returning to be national security adviser.

In interviews last year, Rice sketched out the basis of a Bush policy toward Russia that would focus on creating a new arms control regime allowing construction of a national missile defense -- either by renegotiating the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972 or abrogating it if necessary. "I'm not too optimistic that we Americans can do much on the economic side and I'm perfectly happy to let markets take care of that," she said.

Rice made clear that Russia's internal woes continue to concern the United States, criticizing for instance "the perilous state of the Russian military" and bemoaning Putin's return to "the really bad habits" of Soviet times during his devastating military campaign in Chechnya. But in terms of policy, she subordinated such issues to the geopolitics of nuclear arms control and nonproliferation.

Putin is not especially knowledgeable about the United States, but he has proved a more energetic player on the world stage than his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, going out of his way to court China and countries that Washington would rather isolate or contain, including North Korea and Cuba. And he accomplished little in several meetings with lame duck Clinton last year, seemingly waiting for his successor. Now Putin is reportedly studying English in preparation.

The consensus in Moscow is that relations with the United States have reached a dangerous low. Gorbachev, for example, said he considered the 1990s to be a time of squandered opportunity. "There were a lot of smiles, but it really went downhill," he said. "The blame goes equally to Russia and America."

Gorbachev, who in the dwindling days of the Soviet Union forged a close relationship with President George Bush, welcomed the credentials of the new team but suggested that the son not make the mistake of his father and wait many months before reaching out to Moscow. And Gorbachev, too, was critical of the prospect of American withdrawal from Russian affairs.

"That would be wrong," he said. "That would be a mistake. Security issues will be addressed more effectively if they are part of a broad agenda within which we will be cooperative." He added, "The U.S. does not have a strong foreign policy for the post-Cold War world. America has not yet decided what kind of Russia it wants."

Gorbachev said the onus is on Bush to take the first step. "I think it is essential that the new president take the initiative and make a gesture to Russia," he said. Putin is ready to talk, added Gorbachev, who has informally advised the new Russian leader. "He does want the relationship to change, I do know that. He believes the relationship has deteriorated in recent years."

In a bit of geopolitical deja vu, just as Gorbachev dueled with Washington over the prospect of a "Star Wars" missile defense system, so now will Putin confront the issue, if in different form. The program envisioned by President-elect Bush is more limited, avowedly aimed at potential strikes by rogue nations rather than Russia's giant nuclear arsenal.

But Russia considers any anti-missile program to be a direct threat to its last claim on great-power status and has threatened to withdraw from other arms control agreements if Bush vacates the ABM Treaty.

"I think we will enter into some pretty harsh polemics," said Dmitri Trenin, a Russian military expert at the Carnegie Moscow Center. "I think you can envision a complete rupture." In that case, "for the first time in 30 years you have a situation where the strategic forces of the United States and Russia will develop totally separately without any treaty framework. Arms control in that sense will be dead."

But Trenin said he believes Putin knows Bush is not bluffing and therefore will find a way to negotiate. As trade-offs, Putin could insist on repealing the ban on multiple warheads on land-based missiles in the START II treaty or creating a joint theater-based missile system to cover Europe. Gen. Vladimir Yakovlev, the head of Russia's Strategic Rocket Forces, recently floated an "ABM tariff" exchanging deeper cuts in nuclear missiles for defensive systems.

"We believe the Republicans will have a more pragmatic and concrete approach toward setting up national missile defense," said Boris Gryzlov, head of Putin's Unity party in the State Duma. "If Democrats did not want to discuss it with us, the Republicans are more prepared to do so."

The new emphasis on arms control comes after eight years in which Clinton failed to negotiate a major disarmament treaty with Russia. Instead, his administration attended to the economic travails of the former superpower, something Bush plans to avoid as much as possible.

That could be easier for the moment since Russia's economy, driven by high oil prices, has begun growing for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, leaving it less reliant on loans from the International Monetary Fund. But that could be a short-lived respite, given that Putin has not enacted many economic reforms. Just last week, Russia announced it would not be able to make its full payment of Soviet-era debt this quarter to the Paris Club of creditor nations.

Without U.S. pressure, some reformers worry whether Russia will ever push forward with structural changes. The country remains without a federal law on private ownership of land or genuine guarantees of investor rights. In their absence, foreign businesses remain deeply wary of returning.

Likewise, democracy activists fear Putin will roll back the gains of the last decade. Putin's government already has forced two media-owning oligarchs into exile in Western Europe and may be able to take control of all three national television networks soon.

Vladimir Gusinsky, the founder of independent NTV, now sits in house arrest in Spain on a Russian extradition request and is struggling to keep the network out of government hands. When word leaked out last week that CNN founder Ted Turner might buy a share of the network, Russian prosecutors searched the Moscow offices of NTV's holding company and the state-controlled natural gas monopoly Gazprom, which owns a large stake in NTV, blocked any potential sale.

"Unless the United States supports freedom of speech in Russia," warned Alexei Venediktov, editor in chief of Echo Moskvy, a Gusinsky radio station, "they will end up dealing not with a civilized country but with a nuclear barbarian."

-------- taiwan

Court: Taiwan Premier Made Mistakes

Associated Press
January 15, 2001 Filed at 1:10 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Taiwan-Politics.html

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) -- Taiwan's premier skirted the law by scrapping a nuclear power project without consulting lawmakers, the nation's highest court said Monday in a landmark decision many hope will end months of feuding that has threatened to topple the government.

Premier Chang Chun-hsiung infuriated the opposition-controlled legislature last fall when he announced the government would halt construction on a $5.4 billion nuclear plant that was one-third complete.

Lawmakers argued that because they approved funding for the plant before Chang's minority government took office in May, they should have had a say in the decision to cancel the project.

On Monday, the Grand Justices agreed with the lawmakers and ordered Chang to seek the legislature's approval -- a ruling the government immediately said it would respect.

``We hope that this decision will calm the people and stabilize the political situation,'' Vice Premier Lai Ing-jaw told reporters.

The premier, the No. 3 ranking leader, is appointed by the popularly elected president and is responsible for dealing with the legislature.

Scrapping the nuclear plant was a campaign promise of President Chen Shui-bian, who became Taiwan's first president from an opposition party after winning a March election. Chen has argued that finishing the plant -- Taiwan's fourth -- would be irresponsible because Taiwan cannot safely store the waste.

Many expect the opposition will demand Chang's resignation in the wake of the court decision, but opposition leaders did not mention that possibility on Monday. If he does resign, Chang would be the second premier to step down since the shaky minority government took office eight months ago.

Late last year, the opposition campaigned to recall the president, but the movement lost steam because of a lack of public support and fear it would wreck the sputtering economy. The stock market lost 44 percent of its value last year amid the fierce political feuding.

Shortly after Monday's ruling, the president of the legislature, Wang Jin-pyng, said the government should immediately restore the nuclear project or request lawmakers' approval for canceling the plant.

``We should seek a resolution to help bring political stability,'' said Wang, whose once-ruling Nationalist Party won the legislature's approval for the project in 1980.

If another vote is held on continuing the project, it would likely to face strong opposition. Many lawmakers oppose nuclear energy but were angry that the premier canceled the project without consulting them.

General Electric Co., Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Boston-based Stone and Webster Engineering Corp. supplied the unfinished nuclear plant's two 1,350-megawatt reactors.

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

Sink the Stealth Ship - Before It's Built

New York Times
January 15, 2001
By LAWRENCE J. KORB
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/15/opinion/15KORB.html

During his campaign, President-elect George W. Bush promised to modernize America's armed forces while keeping his defense budget within reasonable bounds. That twofold promise may face its first big test with the DD-21 destroyer, an electric-powered stealth ship designed to attack enemies hundreds of miles inland from any of the world's oceans as well as to fight at sea. If he is serious about keeping both pledges, Mr. Bush must cancel this program.

While these ships do represent an advance in technology, they are not worth their cost; more cost-effective ships can be built. It is particularly important that Mr. Bush move quickly against the DD-21 because once weapons systems move from development to production, they are much more difficult to cancel, even when the taxpayers get very little return on their investment. For example, the Pentagon has spent more than $40 billion on the Air Force's F-22 fighter and the Marine Corps V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, and neither aircraft has moved into full production.

Canceling the DD-21 will not be easy. It is strongly supported by John Warner, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Trent Lott, the Senate majority leader. In addition, the Navy is arguing that the stealth ship will fulfill Mr. Bush's promise to "propel America generations ahead in military technology."

But let's look at the cost. If it does not run into financial and technical problems, we will pay about about $25 billion for 32 stealth ships - about $750 million each. They will be more than twice as expensive as the existing DD-963 destroyers and FFG-7 guided missile frigates, which, like the stealth ship, primarily operate on the high seas against another large navy.

What's the alternative? During his campaign, Mr. Bush supported the building of the earlier version of the DD-21, called the arsenal ship, which the Navy scuttled shortly after the death of its primary backer, Michael Borda, the former chief of naval operations.

The arsenal ship would not be able to wage war in the open ocean, as the DD-21 could. But it would be half as expensive. It would carry 500 cruise missiles; the DD-21 would carry only 120. The DD-21 would need a crew of 95; the arsenal ship would need less than half that number. The Navy could also get the arsenal ship more quickly. The DD-21, even if there were no delays, would not be operational until 2010. The first arsenal ship can be made operational in half that time.

Mr. Bush should not underestimate the difficulties of canceling the DD-21. A decade ago, when Dick Cheney served as the defense secretary, he tried to cancel the V-22. But he was overwhelmed by opposition from the Marine Corps, defense contractors and the Congress. Similarly, in 1999, when the House canceled the F-22, the decision was reversed after unanimous opposition from the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the defense secretary.

But Mr. Bush should also remember that if the DD-21 is built, he will have little chance of fulfilling both his promises - to modernize the military and to keep costs in check.

Lawrence J. Korb, vice president of the Council on Foreign Relations, served as assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration.

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

-------- missouri

USA Today
01/15/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Missouri

Fulton - The Callaway nuclear power plant will be more closely monitored by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission after being cited last week for three violations of worker safety. An October 1999 refueling procedure resulted in workers being exposed to higher amounts of radiation than expected. The plant was downgraded to a moderate safety risk from a low safety risk.

-------- us nuc politics

As Energetic Reformer, Clinton Changed World Foreign policy:
His willingness to bridge old and new global orders may prove to be greatest legacy.

Los Angeles Times
Monday, January 15, 2001
By ROBIN WRIGHT, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON--Bill Clinton surprised the world. A governor from a small Southern state with a largely domestic agenda when he took office, America's 42nd president immersed himself in the world's conflicts, political dramas, economic crises and humanitarian emergencies.

Indeed, as the first president in a new global era, Clinton may have altered the world more than he did his own country by helping to craft a tentative framework for a new world order while also working to wind up the old order's remaining messes.

The range of his actions--from setting up the World Trade Organization to waging war on Serbia, from bailing out Mexico's economy to persuading North Korea to freeze its nuclear program--was arguably as diverse as that of any president of the last half-century, according to foreign policy analysts. He visited 72 countries, more than any previous president.

"The transformation from the domestic, inward-looking candidate of 'It's the economy, stupid,' to the first globalization president was quite amazing," said Moises Naim, editor of Foreign Policy magazine. "Clinton understood earlier, better and more profoundly than most the challenges of the new world of globalization. He had the intellectual grasp of it and the political instincts to assess its larger implications and act on it."

By his second term, Clinton reveled even in the tiny details. On the penultimate night of Middle East peace talks last summer, after a quick trip to Okinawa to attend a meeting of world economic powers, Clinton returned to Camp David and worked until 5:30 a.m. on Israeli-Palestinian security issues, such as disputed air traffic control rights over the West Bank. Clinton's compromise gave Israel de facto control but preserved the Palestinians' sovereignty.

The administration clearly had its share of failures, disasters, mistakes and conundrums. Clinton has been unable to conclude his down-to-the-wire Mideast peace efforts. In 1998, the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed, killing 302, allegedly by extremists loyal to Saudi renegade Osama bin Laden. U.S. warplanes struck the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in 1999 because of outdated CIA maps. And Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein lingered on, contained but still capable of creating havoc.

Yet Clinton won unexpected respect at home and abroad in foreign policy, as reflected in two Gallup polls. In the first, conducted in 1994, Americans rated Clinton a poor leader on foreign policy, trailing Presidents Kennedy, Nixon, Truman, Eisenhower, Reagan, George Bush and Carter. But by 1998, the quadrennial survey ranked Clinton as the best foreign policy president since World War II.

His popularity abroad was epitomized in Hanoi two months ago, when he became the first American leader to visit Vietnam since the end of the war that had killed 3 million Vietnamese and devastated one of the world's poorest countries. Crowds began assembling at midafternoon for his midnight arrival. Thousands of people squatted precariously on guardrails, stood on rooftops and waited on balconies to catch a glimpse. He was mobbed at every stop, with Vietnamese shouting: "Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill!"

Clinton's international achievements "exceeded the average accomplishments of U.S. presidents," former Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone writes in the latest issue of Washington Quarterly. "However slow in coming or seemingly small, over time they will deliver steady and substantive gains for the U.S."

Pragmatic Approach Frustrating at Times The Clinton administration produced neither stunning triumphs nor smarting defeats. As with domestic policy, the president tended to be a pragmatist rather than a visionary. He often dithered, second-guessing himself, prolonging decisions and deeply frustrating his aides.

His administration had problems dealing with Congress, especially on foreign aid. Washington now devotes only one-seventh as much of its budget to foreign affairs as it did under Truman, after whom the State Department headquarters was named last year.

Clinton's purist rhetoric on human rights and democracy was also repeatedly compromised by policies emphasizing economic expediency. Making a buck for America in the short run often seemed to supersede setting precedents and principles for the new global era.

"In China, Clinton officials swept aside democracy interests in favor of trade. In the Middle East and Central Asia, oil and gas interests led to a soft line on strongmen regimes," said Thomas Carothers, author of a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace study called "The Clinton Record on Democracy Promotion."

During the 1992 campaign, Clinton blasted President George Bush for "coddling dictators" and befriending the "butchers" of the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators at Bejing's Tiananmen Square. Yet Clinton, after initially linking renewal of normal trading status to human rights improvements, scrapped the standard, bestowed permanent trade status and helped bring Beijing into the World Trade Organization.

Some of Clinton's nobler initiatives also soured. In 1994, the United States sent 20,000 troops to Haiti to depose a dictatorship and restore the rule of democratically elected Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was ousted by the military in 1991. Washington then invested $2.2 billion in aid. During a 1995 visit to Haiti, Clinton proclaimed, "We celebrate the return of democracy."

Haiti has since crumbled politically and economically. Aristide, a populist priest to the poor, left office and the priesthood, married and moved to a wealthy suburb. His Lavalas Party was linked to corruption and fraud in local elections last May. When he ran for reelection in November, Washington distanced itself from the outcome, "absent meaningful action to address serious deficiencies," and transferred aid from the government to private groups.

In a broader context, Clinton is widely perceived as having failed to live up to his full potential. "Tragically, his many political and personal distractions prevented him from transforming all of his instincts into actual policies," Naim said.

In foreign policy, Clinton probably will be remembered as a shrewd steward but not a statesman during a period of historic transition. He was more "sportsman or man of action" than intellectual, wrote Nakasone, lacking the "gravitas and substance" expected from history's defining figures.

Over the last eight years, the Clinton administration's goals were fairly modest and straightforward. Its underlying strategy was "to build from the center outward, strengthening core alliances, engaging Russia and China, building peace, repelling threats and supporting democratic transitions in key regions," Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said in recent testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Yet Clinton altered foreign policy in three fundamental ways.

First, the "Clinton doctrine" significantly expanded the parameters of American military engagement abroad, perhaps the most controversial tenet of Clinton's foreign policy.

"If somebody comes after innocent civilians and tries to kill them en masse because of their race, their ethnic background or their religion, and it's within our power to stop it, we will stop it," the president told North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops in the Balkans in 1999.

That principle was put to use twice in Yugoslavia. In 1995, after the massacre of Muslims in Srebrenica and the shelling of a Sarajevo marketplace, the president mobilized NATO for its first-ever military engagement.

The two-week NATO air campaign, known as Operation Allied Force, led to peace talks and the Dayton Accords signed by three Balkan presidents. But it also led to a controversial, open-ended deployment of American and European peacekeepers in newly independent Bosnia-Herzegovina.

In 1999, Clinton pressed for NATO airstrikes against Serbia for its bloody campaign against ethnic Albanians seeking self-rule in the province of Kosovo. The 79-day Operation Deliberate Force was followed by a Serbian withdrawal, repatriation of 900,000 refugees and a tumultuous election period that forced Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, Europe's last dictator, from power last year. But it, too, involved an indefinite international troop deployment.

But the Clinton Doctrine was applied selectively, mainly to cultures and countries considered closer to home. The president, for example, opted not to get enmeshed in Rwanda's genocide in 1994.

The second and perhaps most enduring way Clinton altered U.S. foreign policy was his use of economics as a primary instrument of diplomacy. That approach recognized that the barometer of power in the post-Cold War world was shifting from territorial size and military might to economic strength.

Clinton banked largely on opening up markets to generate jobs, higher incomes and access to global commerce, technology and information, which in turn he believed would create increasing demand for political change. As incentives, he offered aid and training, launched or invigorated economic coalitions such as the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum and negotiated nearly 300 trade agreements.

As punishment, he imposed more economic sanctions than any other president. Some economic initiatives were bold, such as the president's decision to use executive powers in defiance of Congress to bail out Mexico at a cost of about $25 billion. Mexico repaid the entire debt with interest a year early. Tentative democratic reforms followed.

In 1994, the administration lured North Korea out of its Cold War isolation and avoided a confrontation over Pyongyang's refusal to allow nuclear site inspections. The carrot he offered was Western assistance in building two safe nuclear reactors and humanitarian aid. In exchange, North Korea froze its nuclear energy program. The contacts eventually led to an Albright visit last fall and the outline of a second pact that could end North Korea's missile development and export programs.

Results of Many Policies Still Unknown

But many Clinton initiatives will not reach fruition for years, even decades, so evaluating results today depends on whether the beholder sees the glass as half full or half empty.

That was particularly evident in the use of economic diplomacy with Russia. A recent congressional study reported that tens of billions of dollars given by Western nations at the urging of the United States failed to generate much change, instead contributing to corruption and cronyism. Many old habits of state domination have yet to be broken.

In 2000, Russia produced only about one-third as much as it did at the end of Soviet rule in 1990. Moscow ignored repeated U.S. objections to its brutal war in Chechnya and its crackdowns on press freedoms.

At the same time, about 70% of the Russian economy is now in private hands, where it presumably will fare better than under state control. Washington brought Moscow into the Group of Eight industrial nations and APEC. Backed by economic incentives, the administration negotiated the elimination of nuclear weapons in three former Soviet republics, the departure of Russian troops from the Baltics and the deactivation or dismantling of more than 1,700 Soviet nuclear warheads, 300 missile launchers, 425 missiles and tons of weapon-grade uranium and plutonium.

"Managing transitions is a common theme of Clinton's presidency, and Russia and China have been preeminent examples," said Shahram Chubin, director of research at the Geneva Center for Security Policy. "Managing decline peacefully in Russia is as sensitive and difficult as allowing the peaceful ascendancy of China."

Economic diplomacy was also initially controversial in Vietnam, where Clinton orchestrated rapprochement by lifting the U.S. trade embargo in 1994, restoring diplomatic relations in 1995, signing a U.S.-Vietnam trade agreement this year and capping these accomplishments with his own triumphant visit.

Vietnam is one of the last bastions of tough communist rule. But over the last decade its exports increased sixfold, personal income rose almost 70% and 15 million people moved out of poverty. Oregon-based Nike is now the largest private employer in Vietnam.

The third policy shift was the Clinton administration's expanded interpretation of what constitutes a national security threat. No longer limited to foreign governments with hostile intentions or ideologies, the list of threats now includes transnational crime, contagious diseases such as HIV, and drug trafficking.

Under Clinton, America's international interests were no longer measured "by the single yardstick of superpower rivalry," Albright said. "Today, our agendas are far broader."

---

Democrats Facing Difficult Choices in New Congress

January 15, 2001
By ALISON MITCHELL
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/15/politics/15DEMS.html?pagewanted=all

WASHINGTON, Jan. 14 - Congressional Democrats enter a new political era this week, wrestling with an angry and energized liberal wing, and facing difficult and party-defining decisions over when to cooperate with George W. Bush and when to fight his most far-reaching proposals.

Despite the excruciatingly close balance of power resulting from the November elections, Mr. Bush's inauguration as the 43rd president on Saturday will be the first since 1955 when Democrats control neither the White House nor even one chamber of Congress.

Yet at the same time, the party has enough strength in the 50-50 Senate that the party's core constituency, enraged by the presidential standoff in Florida, is demanding muscular opposition to Mr. Bush. That sentiment has already been signaled by the challenges to some of the incoming president's most ideologically charged cabinet selections, notably his choice of John Ashcroft for attorney general.

The defiant mood is reinforced by Mr. Bush's status as the first president in more than a century to gain office while losing the popular vote. "If you lose badly and feel you're in the minority, you're demoralized," said Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts. But Democrats, he said, believe that "we won that thing," and "there are more of us than of them."

"It's a great energizer for us," Mr. Frank said.

So energized are the Democrats' core voters and liberal interest groups that Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the party leader in the Senate - the Democrats' most fortified redoubt - said in an interview that his greatest challenge may be "artificially high expectations of what we might be able to do under such circumstances."

He carefully noted the "sea change" that would take place when President Clinton leaves office: Democrats would no longer be able to count on the president's veto, or the president's megaphone, or federal agencies and cabinet secretaries. "This will be very, very difficult," Mr. Daschle said.

Mr. Bush takes office Saturday on an agenda of sweeping tax cuts, major changes to the Medicare and Social Security systems, school accountability, including private school vouchers, and a new military policy. In some cases his ideas intersect with Democrats'. In other instances they do not.

Mr. Daschle said he saw no reason to change the Democrats' agenda on education spending, overhauling campaign finance laws, Medicare prescription drug benefits, regulation of managed care benefits and modest tax cuts. "We believe we are in a very strong position both politically and substantively," he said.

In the House, where Democrats lost a fierce drive to regain the majority, Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, the minority leader, held a series of soul-searching sessions with Democratic members and has begun recalibrating the caucus's agenda.

"Look, we don't control any part of the Congress and we don't control the executive branch," Mr. Gephardt said. "Just by definition of things, we have to rethink everything we were out there on in the election, and think what our agenda should be now."

Some of his moves could help keep party conservatives in the fold, less apt to strike their own deals with Mr. Bush. Mr. Gephardt has signaled more support for larger tax cuts. House Democrats say they will put far less focus on gun control.

And Mr. Gephardt said he expected Democrats to emphasize national security issues and the needs of military personnel, while opposing Mr. Bush's call for a robust missile defense system as too costly. "A lot of our members both conservative and liberal are attracted to the personnel side of defense," he said, "and not the fancy weapons systems."

A critical question facing Democrats is when to compromise. Party leaders say they are wary about being seen as obstructionists, blocking a president who promised to end the gridlock in Washington. Newt Gingrich and his uncompromising Republican followers were punished at the polls when they were blamed by the public for the government shutdown of 1995 and for the partisan zeal of impeachment.

Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, the Connecticut Democrat who was Vice President Al Gore's running mate, said Democrats needed to reach out and work with Mr. Bush when they could.

"I think we have to be very careful about when there's an intersection of our ideas and the Bush administration's, of not being willing to occupy common ground," he said. "On the other hand, we have to be prepared to draw the line when there is no real agreement and not just reach an agreement for the sake of accommodation."

Yet at the same time Democrats do not want to extinguish the fires that could drive disgruntled minority voters and liberals to the polls in 2002 in a drive for Democratic control of Congress.

Indeed, President Clinton, who used his presidency to pull his party to the center, is leaving office stoking Democratic doubts about Mr. Bush's legitimacy. Mr. Clinton said recently of the Republicans that "the only way they could win the election was to stop the voting in Florida."

The first major test of the tone and balance Democrats will strike comes this week, when Senate confirmation hearings begin for former Senator John Ashcroft, Mr. Bush's choice for attorney general.

Mr. Bush's selection of an ardent conservative for the post has already reignited the nation's cultural clash over issues like race and abortion. Democrats are promising tough and pointed questioning about whether Mr. Ashcroft can enforce the law after a Senate career criticizing laws and regulations on abortion, gun control and affirmative action.

Some Democratic strategists say Mr. Ashcroft is ultimately likely to win 10 to 15 Democratic votes. But Mr. Daschle did not rule out the possibility that he could be confirmed solely on a party-line vote, with the new vice president, Dick Cheney, breaking the tie.

Mr. Daschle said his main concern was that the hearings stay fair and respectful.

"We've had occasions when there have been party-line votes when I think both sides felt the matter was handled fairly," he said. With Mr. Bush's allies suggesting that anyone who resists Mr. Bush is a partisan, Mr. Daschle said, Democrats will "make our best case to the American people" for any opposition to his policies or cabinet selections.

In a sign of the tugs and pulls within their party, Democratic senators who initially signaled that they were likely to support Mr. Ashcroft have since tempered their remarks, caught by surprise by the intensity of the opposition from liberal interest groups. Strategists note that Southern Democrats, who are usually considered centrists, rely heavily on black votes to win elections, creating pressures on them to oppose Mr. Ashcroft.

Representative Jesse L. Jackson Jr., an Illinois Democrat, has been warning senators that they ignore the strong feelings of the party's base at their own peril.

Noting that Mr. Ashcroft once said, "There are two things you find in the middle of the road, a moderate and a dead skunk, and I don't want to be either of those," Mr. Jackson said, "I'm in agreement with him on that quote - the only thing I'm in agreement with him on." He lambasted the Senate as "the only group in town talking of bipartisanship."

Yet if Democrats fight hard and then splinter significantly when they vote, some strategists say they risk sending an early message of weakness to Mr. Bush. Democrats say they are well aware that their only negotiating leverage with the president is their ability to use filibusters in the Senate to stop legislation.

"In the Senate we can stop anything, and they have to remember that," said Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts. "If we are unified, there has to be some bipartisan effort."

Senate Democrats said the euphoria over their election gains made them likely to hold together. "There's a yearning to be a part of governing," said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York. But, he added, "The initial reaction of Democrats is unity, especially when it's 50-50."

Cohesiveness could prove more elusive in the fractious House, where President Ronald Reagan in 1981 peeled off several dozen conservative "boll weevil" Democrats to pass a sweeping tax cut.

While Democratic House members on the left want the party to fight uncompromisingly against Mr. Bush, moderate and conservative Democrats are showing interest in working with him on education, tax and health care issues. Last year nearly a third of House Democrats voted to repeal the estate tax, an element of Mr. Bush's tax cut plan.

"We want to get things done," said Representative Ellen O. Tauscher of California, the new national vice chairwoman of the Democratic Leadership Council, the flagship organization of centrist Democrats. Still, she promised that Democrats like her would uphold Democratic values and not be "a bunch of mushy middle compromisers."

Since Democrats lost their House majority in 1994, Mr. Gephardt has worked hard to keep his caucus together. Conservatives and moderates are well represented in the strategy sessions he holds every evening the House is in session.

"The key thing is we actually talk to each other on a regular basis," said Representative Martin Frost of Texas, a member of the Democratic leadership. "With a Republican president, the president will try to pick off our members. We know that. But we have a better chance of keeping our members on the issues than we did in 1981."

-------- MILITARY

-------- arms sales

U.S. backs gun rights at U.N. summit

Washington Times
January 15, 2001
By Betsy Pisik
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-2001115214259.htm

NEW YORK - U.S. officials attending a U.N. meeting on the spread of illicit small arms have pledged to protect legitimate gun owners from international disarmament efforts.

Specialists from scores of nations are meeting here to develop a non-binding agreement aimed at halting the flood of illicit small arms and light weapons into the world's conflict zones.

Specialists hope that by choking off the supply of easily transported, easily hidden weapons, armed struggle ultimately will become less lethal and more difficult to prolong.

Because almost all illegal guns start out as legal guns, some observers are concerned that efforts to crack down on stolen or improperly transferred weapons ultimately will be felt by legitimate gun owners.

"We have a couple of key redlines," one State Department official said of the discussions. "Number one, for obvious reasons, whatever comes out of this conference should in no way impose controls on who owns firearms, or what types of firearms. We don't feel that anything that imposes on domestic private ownership is something we will sign on to."

The U.S. delegation at the conference includes representatives from the State, Defense and Treasury departments, as well as the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The National Rifle Association and other firearms-related organizations - both pro and con - are attending portions of the two-week meeting. So are international human rights monitors, children's advocates and similar nongovernmental groups.

The session is largely procedural, but the final conference, to be held in New York July 9-20, is expected to produce a document setting out clear goals regarding the permanent marking, recording, certification and transit of small arms, with the goal of keeping legal guns from going bad.

The proposed agreement would resemble a legally binding treaty on transnational organized crime that is being developed at U.N. offices in Vienna, Austria.

"Something we would not want to see happening is to have this forum undercut the treaty prospects in Vienna. We're working very hard to keep that exercise on track," said a member of the U.S. delegation, who acknowledged that some nations would rather handle thorny issues, such as permanent marking, in the non-binding New York forum.

Diplomats and observers alike caution against expecting much from the final agreement, which defines "small arms and light weapons" as including handguns, grenades, mortars, anti-tank guns and assault rifles.

Speakers in the opening days of discussion last week repeatedly urged delegates not to allow national interests and rich profit margins to dictate a toothless resolution.

Observers and diplomats say the African delegations seem to be pushing the hardest for a strong treaty, while the arms-producing nations - specifically the United States and other permanent Security Council members - are hitting the brakes.

Sub-Saharan African has been more affected by conflict than any other region. Internal conflicts are simmering ominously or openly raging in Angola, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi and Sudan. Many of these conflicts threaten to spill into neighboring, often unstable, nations.

"We have high hopes of the July conference but at the same time rather low expectations," said Joost Hiltermann, director of the arms division of Human Rights Watch. "We consider it unlikely in the extreme that the conference will accomplish anything more than very minimal objectives, if those."

Specifically, Mr. Hiltermann blasted the Security Council's five permanent members for undercutting disarmament efforts in the developing world.

He said Russia and China "are completely opposed" to a meaningful treaty, while France "slips weapons to its allies in African conflict zones . . . asserting its neo-colonial interests by other means."

The British approach to weapons exports "comes up short on ethics," he added.

Mr. Hiltermann said it was still not clear what position the incoming Bush administration would take on the treaty.

"We don't know where it stands," he said last week. "I would not be surprised if it was counting on Russia and China to torpedo this conference for it."

U.S. officials say they are committed to curbing the spread of illicit small arms, but they don't want to do it by creating new U.N. offices, authorizing a lot of global meetings or banning specific weaponry.

-------- colombia

Containing Colombia's Troubles

New York Times
January 15, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/15/opinion/15MON2.html

While the myriad problems of Colombia dominate the headlines from South America, most of Colombia's neighbors in the Andean region are experiencing less dramatic forms of turmoil. The problems are different in each nation and vary in their immediate causes. But all could be exacerbated by a spillover of the war from Colombia - and from Plan Colombia, Washington's new military aid program.

The Andean nations have always been troubled, and lag behind the Southern Cone of South America in developing efficient state institutions. The lack of rule of law has led to autocratic leadership in Venezuela, Bolivia and, until Alberto Fujimori's recent resignation, in Peru as well. Ecuador struggles with constant economic crisis and its fifth government in five years. Brazilian officials worry that they cannot fully control their thousand-mile Amazon border with Colombia. They have already begun to move police, river patrols and airplanes into the region.

The spillover from Colombia's war could gradually threaten the stability of its neighbors. Already, nearly two million people have fled battle zones to settle in the slums around Colombia's major cities. Now some are beginning to cross into other nations. Rebels have long crossed into Panama, Ecuador and Venezuela to resupply and rest, but Larry Rohter recently reported in The Times that fighting between Colombian guerrillas and paramilitaries has now surfaced in Ecuador. In October, Ecuador accused the Colombian guerrillas of kidnapping 10 foreign oil workers.

The cocaine trade that has fueled Colombia's war is also becoming more internationalized. Cocaine processing and coca growing have often shifted from nation to nation. When Bolivia and Peru began to have success in reducing coca under cultivation, the crop moved to Colombia, which now grows more than half the world's coca leaf. Cocaine processing is even more portable. In at least one border town in Ecuador, Colombians are buying land and the chemicals used to process cocaine.

New American-trained and equipped antidrug battalions in Colombia plan to enter Putumayo, the zone of southern Colombia that is both a battlefield and a coca-growing region. Their mission is to destroy labs and eradicate coca plantations. Ironically, the more successful they are, the worse the headache they are likely to cause for Colombia's neighbors.

Increased military action will likely intensify the war, producing more refugees. But if the plan is successful in reducing coca cultivation in Putumayo, coca will simply move to other areas of Colombia and to other nations. Peru and Bolivia may see areas they thought were coca-free go back under cultivation, and Ecuador, Venezuela and Brazil may see their first significant coca crop.

That would expose these countries to the destructive side-effects of coca production. Wealthy criminal groups are sure to move in, corrupting officials, killing off police and each other, and eroding the state's control. In anticipation of such a spillover and resistance from the other Andean countries, Plan Colombia contains $180 million for the neighbors. Just over half the money is in the form of security aid.

This aid is insufficient. Ecuador, where the police frequently cannot afford bullets for their guns, needs far more than $20 million. Drug trafficking, squashed in one region, simply pops up in another. The United States needs a regional plan - one that gives Colombia's neighbors more aid to strengthen their police and courts and help peasants stay away from coca.

-------- drug war

Air Force Academy hit by drug scandal

USA Today
01/15/01
By Tom Kenworthy
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-01-15-airforce.htm

DENVER - Like its sister service academies in Annapolis and West Point, the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs has been buffeted periodically by scandal since its founding nearly a half-century ago.

In 1965, more than 100 cadets were in a cheating ring. In the early 1990s, an investigation of sexual harassment of female cadets led to a series of courts-martial, resignations and disciplinary actions.

Now comes a third scandal: drugs.

The home to 4,000 prospective Air Force officers in the shadow of Pikes Peak finds itself in an embarrassing drug scandal.

Fourteen cadets are under investigation for allegedly using and selling illegal drugs, including Ecstasy, marijuana and LSD. Nine other cadets have been disciplined for knowing about the illegal activity but failing to report it.

Scandals at military academies with strict honor codes are hardly unknown. Within the past decade alone, 134 Naval Academy midshipmen were implicated in a cheating scandal in Annapolis, Md., (24 were eventually expelled), and two dozen midshipmen were charged with the distribution of marijuana and LSD. The U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., weathered a sexual harassment inquiry centered on some of its football players.

"Any time we have anything like this, even one incident of illegal drug activity, it's a concern to us," said Col. Brian Binn, the Air Force Academy's vice superintendent. "When we have a situation like this where we now have 14 cadets under investigation, then clearly it is disturbing and a much greater concern, even though it's a small percentage of the cadet wing."

The scandal began with a single incident in October, when cadet Stephen Pouncey tested positive in one of the academy's drug tests. The only individual named and formally charged so far, Pouncey awaits a likely court-martial that could lead to his dismissal and a prison term of up to 55 years.

Under current policy - similar to the Air Force as a whole - the academy tests 65% of its cadets during each school year for drugs. Late last week, officials decided to increase that percentage and do more testing on weekends, because some of the new recreational drugs, such as Ecstasy, pass through the body quickly.

Including Pouncey, the random urinalysis-testing program has produced just four positive results over the last five years, according to Air Force Academy spokesman Capt. John Elolf.

But the drug scandal has caught the attention of Colorado's congressional delegation. Sen. Wayne Allard , a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, asked for a congressional hearing.

"They are absolutely right to be concerned," Binn said. "We do owe them, when we finally wrap up things, a synopsis of what actually occurred and how to prevent its happening again."

In recent mass meetings with cadets, academy officials have reinforced the message that is sternly delivered when they arrive for their first year: Illegal activity will be dealt with severely.

Though unrelated to the current drug investigations, the Pentagon is in the final stages of a high-level review of the academy's honor code, under which cadets pledge not to lie, steal or cheat "nor tolerate among us anyone who does."

The review was undertaken following the overturning of a cadet's expulsion by the secretary of the Air Force last January.

Annual surveys of cadet views of the honor code have found that nearly half don't believe it is enforced by the cadets themselves and that a significant minority don't trust the honor code system.

---

USA Today
01/15/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Iowa

Cedar Rapids - A police dog was recovering at a veterinarian clinic after being attacked by a pit bull as police were making an arrest. Police said that canine cop Danny was injured when officers were arresting Shane Holton, 25, at his home on drug charges. Police said the pit bull bit Danny and wouldn't let go. An officer shot and killed the pit bull.

Kentucky

Louisville A state program to assist pregnant women and new mothers with drug or alcohol abuse problems had only 245 takers last year. Officials estimate that 5,300 of Kentucky's new mothers, or 10%, had substance-abuse problems. The program has nearly $2 million but has used only $150,000 since 1998.

-------- iraq

Iraq: US Pilot Killed Did Not Eject

Associated Press
January 15, 2001 Filed at 6:40 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq-Gulf-War-MIA.html

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- A search in 1995 of a U.S. warplane downed in Iraq's western desert during the Gulf War showed the pilot was killed without ejecting from the cockpit, though his remains were never found, a senior Iraqi official said Monday.

Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said Iraq cooperated fully with a U.S. team that visited the crash site for several day in December 1995, adding that there was no reason to believe Navy Lt. Cmdr. Michael S. Speicher survived the crash of his F-18 Hornet on the first night of the war, Jan. 17, 1991.

However, U.S. intelligence officials in Washington said there were unconfirmed reports in recent years that Speicher survived and was detained by the Iraqis. The U.S. government last week demanded an accounting of the case.

``All the indications were that he was killed while he was still in the cockpit,'' Aziz said when asked about the matter by a group of visiting American activists opposed to the international sanctions against Iraq. ``But there were no remnants of his body after several years in a remote desert environment.''

According to Aziz, the investigators were able to determine that the pilot had not ejected. Parts of his uniform were found at the site, the Iraqis and the Americans said.

Aziz did not indicate how the Iraqis would respond to the U.S. government's demands, but said the country had provided the Americans with full assistance during the inquiry.

Iraq was not aware of the crash site until the Americans notified Iraq, Aziz added.

Before the U.S. investigators arrived, digging at the site had been carried out by desert-dwelling Bedouins in the area, Iraq said, adding that the Bedouins took some parts of the plane.

``We have told the Iraqis that their statements to this point have either turned out to be inaccurate, misleading or incomplete,'' National Security Council spokesman P.J. Crowley said Sunday in Washington.

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.

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

---

Iraq releases details of MIA search

Washington Times
January 15, 2001
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-2001115211530.htm

BAGHDAD - Responding to U.S. reports about a missing American pilot from the Gulf war, Iraq yesterday 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 Lt. Cmdr. Speicher did not survive the downing of his plane. ----

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

U.N. Disaster Team Members Killed in Helicopter Crash

New York Times
January 15, 2001
By CHRISTOPHER S. WREN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/15/world/15CND-NATION.html

UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 15 - When disaster strikes, United Nations humanitarian agencies mobilize experts to assess the damage and coordinate the first international relief.

On Sunday, four members of a disaster team were killed and several others injured in a helicopter crash in a remote corner of Mongolia.

At the Mongolian government's request, the team members were examining the devastation wreaked by severe summer drought and winter snow, ice and subzero temperatures.

In all, nine of the 23 people aboard the Russian-made MI-8 helicopter were killed when it slammed into the snow-covered ground and exploded. The dead also included two Japanese journalists and three Mongolians.

The craft, chartered by the United Nations Development Program from Mongolia's airline company, had taken off from Malchin county in Uvs province, a mountainous region 600 miles northwest of Ulan Bator.

Among those killed was an American, Matthew Girvin, 36, a program officer for the United Nations Children's Fund. The others were Sabine Metzner-Strack, the German leader of the team, Gerald LeClair, a disaster management specialist sent by the British government, and a Mongolian employee of the United Nations Population Fund, identified as B. Bayarmaa.

Takahiro Kato and Minoru Masaki, television journalists based in Beijing for NHK, and Otgon Bileg, a member of the Mongolian parliament, also died.

All 14 of the survivors were injured and remained hospitalized. Fred Eckhard, a United Nations spokesman, said today they were in "relatively good condition." What caused the crash is not yet known.

Several more experts have flown from Geneva to help resume the assessment of the cycle of drought and blizzard that has left more than 55,000 Mongolian families in jeorpardy along with 9 million head of livestock. An estimated one-third of Mongolia's 2.4 million inhabitants depend on livestock for their living.

Carol Bellamy, the executive director of Unicef, said today in a statement, "I feel strongly that Matthew and his colleagues would have wanted us to forge onward."

Since the rapid response program was started in 1993, 76 disaster assistance coordination teams, as the volunteer missions are officially called, have been deployed. Drawing on experts available from 33 countries, the teams have investigated floods in Mozambique and Vietnam, toxic spills in Hungary and Romania, refugee flight in Eritrea and, most recently, the earthquake in El Salvador.

---

U.N. officials killed in helicopter crash

USA Today
01/15/01- Updated 05:36 AM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/world/nwssun01.htm

BEIJING (AP) - Investigators on Monday rushed to the site of a helicopter crash in remote northwestern Mongolia that killed nine people, including an American worker for UNICEF.

Fourteen others were injured when the Russian-made MI-8 spun out of control, crashed and exploded Sunday outside the town of Malchin, U.N. and Mongolian officials said.

The dead included four members of a U.N. team organizing relief for nomads whose herds - the mainstay of Mongolia's economy - have been decimated by frigid temperatures and heavy snows. Three Mongolians and two Japanese journalists were also killed.

Mongolian military, police and medical personnel flew to the crash site, 600 miles northwest of the capital, Ulan Bator, said a U.N. spokesman in Mongolia, Buren Bayir Chanrav.

He said members of Mongolia's parliament and five U.N. officials also went.

Mongolian aviation officials told the United Nations that the accident appears to have been caused by a technical problem, not foul weather, Chanrav said.

Chanrav identified the American as Matthew Girvin, 36, a UNICEF worker in Mongolia. The other three U.N. workers were from Germany, Britain and Mongolia.

The crash also killed Mongolian parliament member S.H. Otgonbileg, a photographer and a helicopter technician, U.N. officials said. The Japanese Embassy in Ulan Bator identified the Japanese journalists who died as Takahiro Kato, 33, and Minoru Masaki, 35, both of Japan's national broadcaster, NHK.

---

Helicopter crash kills U.N. disaster officials

Washington Times
January 15, 2001
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-2001115211530.htm

BEIJING - Investigators today rushed to the site in remote northwestern Mongolia where a helicopter carrying U.N. disaster relief officials crashed, killing nine persons including one American, a U.N. official said.

Fourteen others were injured when a Russian-made MI-8 helicopter spun out of control, crashed and exploded yesterday, U.N. and Mongolian officials said.

Four of the dead were members of a U.N. team sent to inspect heavy snows that have decimated herders' livestock and arrange a U.N.-led relief effort, officials said.

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

Army drops case against gay reservist

USA Today
01/15/01- Updated 10:54 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/2001-01-15-gay.htm

PHOENIX (AP) - The Army on Monday said it has dropped efforts to dismiss an Arizona lawmaker from a reserve unit because he said during a legislative debate that he is gay.

An Army spokesman said the case was dismissed after Rep. Steve May, a reserve lieutenant, agreed not to re-enlist once his current term expires May 11.

''Given my record of service, I should be allowed to complete my term, regardless of my sexual orientation,'' May said.

A military panel recommended in September that May be honorably discharged for violating the military's ''don't ask, don't tell'' policy.

Under that rule, gays are allowed to serve in the Armed Forces as long as they don't declare their sexual orientation. In turn, the military is barred from asking service members if they are homosexual.

May's appeal of the panel's decision was rejected in November. But his lawyer, Christopher Wolf, said the military decided on Saturday to drop the case.

Wolf said he discussed the issue last month with White House chief of staff John Podesta and on Friday with top military officials.

''I think it's vindication that we were right from the beginning,'' May said of the Army's decision. But Lt. Col. Bill Wheelehan, an Army spokesman, said the case was dropped because May agreed not to re-enlist.

''Time was going to run out in the next four months to get this man out,'' Wheelehan said. ''You can't (dismiss) an officer that rapidly when the officer is using everything at his disposal'' to appeal. The legislator said he never intended to serve another term.

May, a Republican who was re-elected in November, acknowledged his homosexuality during legislative debate in February 1999, while arguing for extending health benefits to same-sex partners.

He was an honorably discharged civilian reservist at the time but was called back to the Army a few weeks later, during the Kosovo crisis.

---

Overhaul of Army puts a premium on speed

USA Today
01/15/01- Updated 11:34 PM ET
By Dave Moniz, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/acovtue.htm

FORT LEWIS, Wash. - As Lt. Col. John "Mick" Nicholson drives his Humvee around this sprawling Army post, brush fires crackle across Training Range 87. Quickly, young soldiers stomp on the dancing flames with their boots. It's an apt metaphor for the world they'll soon patrol.

In the near future, Nicholson's infantry unit might be sent anywhere on a moment's notice to snuff out regional brush fires. Rapid deployment traditionally has been the preserve of the Marines and elite Army forces.

But not for much longer.

Nicholson's battalion is the leading edge of a movement to overhaul the way the Army trains, thinks and fights.

Known within the service as the "Transformation," the ground-shifting change launched a year ago is designed to convert the Army from plodding Cold War behemoth to swift New World dynamo.

Instead of sending columns of tanks to square off in the Iraqi desert against a massed enemy, the transformed Army might find itself moving lighter but equally lethal forces to Turkey to quell an ethnic uprising that threatens U.S. military facilities.

For what is undisputedly the world's best ground force, the Army's makeover signals other revolutionary changes.

One is a slow goodbye to the world's finest tank, the battle-tested Abrams. The Army is hoping to replace the 70-ton Abrams with a "smart" weapon that could shoot smaller projectiles at super speeds.

The Abrams tank likely doesn't figure in the next generation Army because it clashes with the service's new mantra: GI Joe has to get there fast.

Indeed, the Transformation is developing ways to move forces at heretofore unthinkable speeds: a combat brigade of up to 3,500 troops that can move overseas in four days and a division of 12,000 in five. Now it takes weeks, even months, to move that many troops and their heavy equipment.

To transport troops so quickly, the Army plans to merge its light infantry and heavy tank forces. Currently, lighter forces, such as the 82nd Airborne Division, can zoom overseas. But they are poorly protected and must await the arrival of slow-moving armored troops.

Such a radical change won't be cheap. Remaking the Army into a fleet-footed force could cost $60 billion over the next 10 to 15 years.

The presidential campaign debate over the future of the U.S. military suggests that the Army might have support from its new commander in chief. President-elect Bush says he'd like to skip a generation of new weapons to take advantage of emerging technologies. In announcing his nominee for secretary of Defense last month, Bush said military power "is increasingly defined not by size or mass but by mobility and swiftness."

Though the Transformation has generally been well-received within the Pentagon, some Marine Corps leaders are worried about the increased competition from a more nimble foot soldier. After all, the Marine ethos is built on a proud history of getting there first.

The Army says its new ideas won't threaten the Marines' role as the military's "911 force," especially in the world's heavily populated coastal areas. Even so, some military insiders say they worry about a new war erupting - a turf battle within the Pentagon's own walls.

Overdue changes

Nicholson, 43, a tall and lean graduate of the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., describes the Army's makeover as "long overdue."

Within his battalion headquarters at Fort Lewis is a blackboard covered with scribbled military book titles. One, Mark Bowden's Black Hawk Down, a chilling account of the deadly Army Ranger battle in Somalia in 1993, has become required reading for many officers. The Rangers arrived quickly in Mogadishu, Somalia's capital. But they were lightly protected, and their murky mission to capture a Somali warlord turned into a ghastly fight for survival that still haunts some quarters of the military.

The Army says a transformed force would be able to fight Desert Storm - and would be more likely to survive a deadly hornet's nest such as the one that left 18 soldiers dead on the streets of Mogadishu. The reason: Such forces would patrol in armored vehicles instead of vulnerable Humvees.

For an Army of 500,000 troops who revere firepower and tradition, the Transformation means changes that won't come easily. Last summer, commanders at Fort Lewis traded in their Abrams tanks, and Nicholson's soldiers are riding in much smaller armored vehicles that the Canadian army provided. They have white-and-blue Canadian license plates and sport monster truck tires instead of tank treads. These lighter, faster vehicles are scheduled to be produced in a few years.

As for the Abrams, whose occupants did not suffer a single death from enemy fire during the Gulf War, its future could be as a pile of razor blades. The kick in the pants: The still undefined "future combat system" that will replace it probably won't be a tank.

The M1 Abrams, which debuted in the 1980s, is a technological triumph of the industrial age. Known as "The Beast" and "Whispering Death," the 6,000 Abrams now in use are powered by a gas turbine engine and sprint down roads at 42 mph. The armor can stop just about anything hurled at it. Cost? $4 million each.

However, the Abrams is too heavy to cross most of the bridges in developing countries. It's also a gas hog and can gulp three gallons of fuel to move one mile, which necessitates a legion of support troops to keep it rolling forward.

The Abrams won't be retired for at least 10 years, and some of the tanks will survive the Transformation as an armor-plated insurance policy. But the logistics for moving such huge tanks and millions of gallons of gasoline are daunting.

Some strategists say the Abrams won't have a critical role in the future. Having learned the lessons of Desert Storm, adversarial countries won't provoke a tank war with the United States. "Speed is a condition of the future," says Col. Anthony Coroalles, who is assigned to Fort Lewis to help equip the new combat brigade. "The dilemma is, how do we get something with enough punch somewhere?"

At the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) near Washington, D.C., civilian and Army teams are working on some truly outside -the-bunker ideas.

Scientists have yet to find a lightweight substance that can protect tanks as well as today's heavy armor. So the Army's new weapon will have to rely on superb intelligence to plot enemy locations, reconnaissance aircraft and revolutionary defensive systems to confuse enemy gunners.

To meet the Army's request for a mobile weapon that's as lethal as those it now fields, DARPA is working on a design that doesn't require fossil fuels, steel and gunpowder.

In an early design phase, the combat system looks like something Star Wars villain Darth Vader might control from the Death Star.

One concept still being explored shows a flat infantry vehicle linked by a powerful wireless computer to a separate remote-controlled cannon that uses sophisticated sensors to locate enemy targets. Satellites and pilotless surveillance airplanes would provide battlefield intelligence.

The Army is also considering several untested technologies, including a "directed energy" gun that could shut down the engines of enemy vehicles, fuel-efficient hybrid electric engines and electromagnetic guns shooting high-velocity ammo without explosives.

"This quite logically is the next example of where leveraging a new collection of technology will take us," says Van Fosson, a tank officer who is project manager for the "future combat system." The Army Research Laboratory at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., has been testing such revolutionary ideas for much of the past decade.

Maj. Gen. Jim Dubik, who heads the Transformation at Fort Lewis, says he isn't concerned about relying on unproven technologies: "If you and I had a conversation two years ago about completing the map of the human gene, it would have seemed pie in the sky."

High price tag

Retired lieutenant general Bill Carter, who took part last spring in a Transformation war game set two decades into the future, says the biggest hurdle for the Army's makeover isn't developing high-tech guns or persuading crusty old tank soldiers to embrace change. It's the $60 billion cost.

"The issue is not whether this will succeed; the issue is to what extent the Army can transform given the resource problem," he says.

The Army's grand plan is competing with a long wish list of other expensive new weapons, from a national missile defense system to tilt-engine helicopters for the Marines.

The high cost of the Transformation only adds to the skepticism among some Army officers about the wisdom of trading in the best land weapon ever invented for uncertain technology.

Others worry about a light "interim vehicle" that General Motors and General Dynamics will build for the Army until a high-tech weapon is developed. They question whether the swift, but lightly armored, troop carriers would be sturdy enough to protect U.S. troops flung across the globe.

"We ought not to precipitously give up the capability the Abrams tank gives you in anticipation of some future vehicle," Carter says.

Despite such concerns, the Army's chief of staff, Gen. Eric Shinseki, has persuaded Congress to fund the early stages of the Transformation, which is his brainchild. But in later years, the hill gets steeper. Military analysts say the Pentagon would have to spend up to $50 billion more a year to pay for all the new weapons it wants.

Another big question: How adaptable will Army personnel be to yet another radical change? The last overhaul, fueled by painful introspection after the Vietnam War, came in the 1980s. It brought the Abrams, the Apache helicopter and, later, victory over Iraq.

Army leaders say the Transformation is more about building a new combat philosophy than futuristic weapons. That seems clear to both the young grunts at Fort Lewis and the veteran officers forced to learn new ways.

"We've got to be prepared to go quickly," says Lt. Colonel Skip Larsen, an artillery battalion commander here. Larsen's troops are learning advanced hand-to-hand combat techniques - unheard of for a field artillery battalion, which traditionally provides backup for the infantry.

In his mind's eye, battalion commander Nicholson sees a future engagement that might go like this: Soldiers arrive in a distant city to confront the enemy. GIs in combat vehicles dial up satellite images on their computers to pinpoint the opponents' location. They go online to check sewer maps and determine the cultural and religious composition of their foe. As surveillance aircraft circle overhead, they watch real-time pictures of enemy forces.

"We determine the time and place to attack," he says with a smile. "It will be at night. It will be a surprise. And it will be over before they know what hit them."

---

Risks of Aid for Africa

New York Times
January 15, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/15/opinion/L15AFR.html

To the Editor:

Re "How to Keep Peace in Africa Without Sending Troops," by Michael O'Hanlon (Op-Ed, Jan. 8):

President Clinton's Africa Crisis Response Initiative, which shifts resources to a few African militaries in the hope that they will take care of the region's humanitarian and peacekeeping responsibilities, has several risks despite its advantages.

Because the resources will go to some militaries and not others, American aid could create or exacerbate regional military imbalances and insecurity. Since there are few international military threats, much of the hardware the United States provides could be used for domestic repression. American aid and the mission of regional peacekeeping could be used to justify the militarization of economies that can ill afford the expensive military forces.

These risks can be lowered, and the problem of regional peacekeeping addressed, if the next administration chooses to do so.

NETA C. CRAWFORD Medford, Mass., Jan. 8, 2001 The writer is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

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USA Today
01/15/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Mississippi

Pascagoula - The USS Cole, damaged in a terrorist bombing in October, has been moved to land for repairs. Workers at Litton Ingalls Shipbuilding moved the 8,600-ton destroyer from a floating drydock to a construction bay by electrically-powered rails in a three-hour operation.

-------- OTHER

Hunger in America: A Mark of Shame

New York Times
January 15, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/15/opinion/L15HUN.html

To the Editor:

Re "U.N. Report Maps Hunger `Hot Spots' " (news article, Jan. 9):

Hunger does not plague only developing countries: it is a problem here in the United States.

America's Second Harvest, the nation's largest domestic hunger relief organization, reports that nearly 30 million Americans will go to bed hungry tonight.

The country's poorest citizens have remained largely untouched by the economic boom of the 1990's and are finding it increasingly difficult to obtain adequate food.

Hunger is tragedy for any nation, but it is unforgivable in a country as prosperous as the United States.

SHANNON MAYER Nashville, Jan. 9, 2001 The writer is annual giving manager, department of development, Second Harvest Food Bank of Middle Tennessee.

-------- environment

Save the pandas? Better: Save their habitat

USA Today
01/15/01- Updated 02:20 AM ET
By Adam Goodheart
http://usatoday.com/news/comment/ncguest1.htm

Early on a winter morning at Washington's National Zoo, things are mostly pretty quiet. A pair of zebras nose gently at a pile of hay. A family of prairie dogs emerges from its synthetic burrow, sniffing the chilly air. The few human beings in sight hurry past these animals with hardly a sideways glance.

But just around the corner from the prairie dogs, the madness begins. Thronging around a small, fenced enclosure is a crowd several people deep - a happy crowd, collectively giggling, ahhhhh-ing and bursting into rounds of applause. News photographers fiddle with their tripods; a television crew is interviewing the zoo's director. Signs announce corporate sponsorship: FedEx, FujiFilm. Before I can glimpse the animals that are causing all of this fuss, I pass a gift shop and souvenir stand selling thousands of replicas of them in every possible form: panda T-shirts, panda socks, panda golf balls, panda teapots, rinse-off panda tattoos.

There are more fake pandas, certainly, in that gift shop than there are real, live giant pandas in the entire world. Only about 1,000 remain in the dwindling bamboo forests of China, plus a handful more in captivity. Washington's pandas, Tian Tian and Mei Xiang, debuted before the public amid great fanfare last Wednesday - after the National Zoo agreed to pay the Chinese government $10 million to "lease" the animals for the next decade. Similar arrangements, amid similar hoopla, have brought pandas to Zoo Atlanta and the San Diego Zoo in recent years. And a number of other American zoos, including those in Memphis and Oakland, are trying to negotiate deals with the Chinese.

It's hard to find fault with something as undeniably adorable as a panda, and Tian Tian and Mei Xiang are just as cute as anyone could wish. But there's something more than slightly disturbing about the animals' international stardom. While the two pandas are being given the VIP treatment in Washington (President Clinton even came to visit them), thousands of species are slipping almost unnoticed toward oblivion - including many in Tian Tian's and Mei Xiang's native land.

Despite having some of the world's most draconian environmental-protection laws (for instance, panda-poaching is punishable by death), China also suffers some of the worst environmental degradation on earth - due in no small part to the deliberate policies of its government.

The South China tiger, still numerous as recently as the 1950s, now is either extinct or virtually so. The controversial Three Gorges Dam project, scheduled to begin filling with water in 2003, threatens numerous species, such as cloud leopards, white river dolphins and Chinese alligators. (It's not just animals that are endangered, either: Thanks largely to China's atrocious air pollution, one in four human deaths there are caused by lung disease.)

Part of the problem, according to some scientists, is that worldwide conservation efforts tend to focus on cuddly, charismatic animals such as pandas, to the detriment of other species - and of the threatened habitats that all of these creatures rely on to survive. There's no question that pandas are useful for raising public awareness, not to mention money: Not only does the World Wildlife Fund use the panda as its logo, but the address of its Web site is www.panda.org. Increasingly, however, it's becoming clear to experts that no species can be saved in isolation.

"Most biologists understand now that what you need to do is make sure the habitat is left alone, and then the species will flourish," says extinction expert Ross MacPhee of the American Museum of Natural History. "But that's not the message the public is getting. It's still always, 'Love the pandas; love the tigers.' That's not helpful."

Pandas, for example, spend up to 17 hours a day eating bamboo. They have disappeared as China's bamboo forests are cut down for firewood and farming. The problem can't be solved by breeding in captivity. Joshua Ginsberg, director of the Wildlife Conservation Society's Asian programs, notes that the worst way to breed pandas is to remove them from their native habitat and send them off in Noah's ark pairs - Washington's previous panda duo, Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing, famously refused to mate for more than a decade. And in any case, if pandas become a species viable only in zoos, they'll hardly be worth saving: merely sad curiosities to be gawked at, reduced almost to the status of the plush toys in the National Zoo's gift shop.

Ginsberg also worries that the huge cash incentives being offered to China might have a dangerous effect.

"If they can raise $10 million every time they send two captive-bred pandas overseas, there could potentially be a tremendous temptation to start tapping into the wild population, too," he says.

And while most of the National Zoo's fee - which was underwritten by private and corporate donors - is earmarked for Chinese panda research and conservation efforts, it's hard to be sure exactly where the money will end up.

Back at the National Zoo's panda "habitat" - recently refurbished at a cost of $1.8 million, with climate controls and hand-painted murals - I worked my way to the front of the crowd. The two animals were sitting on either side of a fake-rock grotto, propped up adorably with their short legs poking out, eating bamboo picked by their keepers. Then the spectators gasped in unison as Tian Tian ambled over to a wooden climbing structure and pulled himself up to a perch 10 feet or so above the ground. "Hey, you cost too much to be goin' up there," a guy behind me shouted.

I stood watching the pandas - magnificent creatures, even in this wintry captivity far from home. But I couldn't help thinking, also, of other encounters I'd had with animals, animals I'd met on their own turf, in the wild. A leopard in the South African bushveld, slipping silently through the grass in search of prey. A black bear eating mussels on a rocky Alaskan coast as I watched from my kayak a few yards offshore. On those occasions, I hadn't felt like a gawking spectator. I'd been, instead, a visitor to another world - an interloper in a place that was still theirs, not mine.

Adam Goodheart, a writer in Washington, D.C., is a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.

---

USA Today
01/15/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Alaska

Anchorage - The only Alaska caribou herd to share its range with oil facilities is growing. A state survey shows that the central Arctic caribou herd is at its largest since scientists began tracking it 23 years ago. The herd has swelled to 27,000, up 35% from 1997.

California

Los Angeles - Although it's still home to some of the most polluted air in the nation, Southern California may finally be getting the upper hand in its battle against smog. Year-end data has confirmed that four Southern California counties have ended the second straight year without a first-stage smog alert. Residents in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties have breathed easier without the first-stage alerts, which are called when ozone levels exceed .20 parts per million. That level of pollution can cause respiratory difficulties for some people.

Louisiana

Baton Rouge - Five state agencies tracking the quality of surface and ground water haven't consistently enforced state regulations, according to Legislative Auditor Daniel Kyle. However, Louisiana's drinking water is generally safe because of effective monitoring by the Office of Public Health, Kyle's report said.

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Our Campsite Is the Planet Earth

New York Times
January 15, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/15/opinion/L15GRE.html

To the Editor:

In "When the G.O.P. Was Green" (Op-Ed, Jan. 8), William Cronon rightly points out that many Republicans have lost touch with traditional conservative - and conservationist - values.

On my first Boy Scout trip, in the mid-1950's, I learned the basic environmental principle that we should leave the campsite as we found it. We were told that the next group of hikers deserved no less, and that in fact we should clean the site up if those before us had been careless.

I did not as a child understand that the campsite would be global or that the next hikers would include unborn generations. But surely it is time we grown-ups, Republicans and Democrats alike, remember and apply such a simple lesson. JOHN SITTER Atlanta, Jan. 10, 2001

•To the Editor:

William Cronon ("When the G.O.P. Was Green," Op-Ed, Jan. 8) frames the environmental debate in terms of party politics. Yet it is unlikely that Republicans will soon turn into Democrats, liberals into conservatives, environmentalists into champions of globalization, or business people into champions of regulation. Rather, a new understanding of the environmental challenge is required.

This challenge is reflected in unachievable demands for energy and water, in demands for consumer goods that threaten our forests and other natural systems, in the emergence of towns out of waste dumps, and in the presence of pollution clouds over the major cities of the world. We need to transform the way in which we go about economic activity - to shift to new understandings, approaches and technologies that will dramatically reduce environmental impact per unit of prosperity.

An environmental agenda built around concepts of efficiency and productivity would constitute a win-win framework for the environment and business, for Democrats and Republicans alike.

OWEN CYLKE Washington, Jan. 8, 2001 The writer is director of the Policy Group, U.S.-Asia Environmental Partnership.

•To the Editor:

William Cronon ("When the G.O.P. Was Green," Op-Ed, Jan. 8) hints at the key contradiction in the Republicans' approach to the environment. How can these self-styled conservatives claim that moniker when their agenda is to deplete the limited resources our country has remaining?

Remaining old-growth trees constitute only 3 percent of our forests. Is it conservative to cut them down to address this generation's job issues, ignoring the next generation's?

Oil supplies will be gone within a couple of centuries. Is it conservative to provide incentives to tap them at an increasing pace for the sake of this decade's economy?

Ralph Nader and the Green Party should stand up and tell the truth: They, not the Republicans, are the true conservatives.

STEVE ROTH Seattle, Jan. 9, 2001

---

A Vegetarian Solution

New York Times
January 15, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/15/opinion/L15VEG.html

To the Editor:

Re "Antibiotics on the Farm" (editorial, Jan. 9):

The obvious solution to the concern that unnecessary antibiotics are being ingested by eating animal flesh is simply not to eat any.

Eating a plant-based vegan diet is not only much healthier for people, it is also much better for the environment. It also eliminates the cruelty associated with the slaughterhouse and the factory farming of animals like pigs, cows, turkeys and chickens - the recipients of the 24.6 million pounds of antibiotics used each year just to promote growth and prevent infections.

ELIZABETH FOREL New York, Jan. 9, 2001

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Federalism and the environment

Washington Times
EDITORIAL • January 15, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-house-200111516591.htm

The usual gaggle of liberal groups are squawking about the nomination of Interior Secretary-designate Gale Norton. Her support of states' rights has been used to paint her as nothing less than a racist, an offensive and utterly unsupported charge. Indeed, Mrs. Norton should be confirmed in part because of her philosophy of federalism, which forms the foundation of a distinguished career of promoting partnerships and policies which foster environmental protection.

The fact is that states' rights was trumpeted by liberals scarcely a month ago in the prelude to Vice President Al Gore's swan song. As noted by the Los Angeles Times, Mr. Gore's attorney, Lawrence Tribe, "became a champion of 'federalism.' He defended 'each state's right to organize its election' without interference from Washington."

Now, Mrs. Norton has consistently supported states' rights because she believes that it is the level at which the environment can be best protected. Mrs. Norton has criticized practices spawned by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) for the same reason, "The original goal of NEPA and of many other environmental statues was to forge a federal-state partnership in protecting the environment," she stated before the House of Representatives Committee on Resources. Yet, "federal agencies, such as EPA often pay lip service to state primacy, but in practice, the agencies have mastered the art of 'mission' creep' using their budgets and authorities to micromanage the 50 states."

Her belief in the partnership between state and federal powers led her to clean out the government's own stygian stables of environmental noncompliance in Colorado. Calling the Federal government, "Far and away the worst polluter in America," she vigorously pursued the the cleanup of the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, a former chemical warfare and pesticide manufacture facility, despite the Army's legal trench warfare against her efforts. She was a partner with the Sierra Club in a winning lawsuit against the Department of Energy.

Mrs. Norton believes that the public and the private sector should be partners in environmental protection. This has led to her work on tax credits, emissions trading and environmental self-audits, which permit companies to conduct voluntary examinations to discover if they have fully complied with environmental regulations, without fear that they will be punished for discovered violations that are promptly corrected.

Mrs. Norton has made partners of many organizations to make positive gains for the environment including the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy. This paper recently quoted Tina Arapkiles, the Sierra Club's southwest regional representative who said, "She (Mrs. Norton) was always willing to discuss things with us.

Of course, this is not what you hear from the Sierra Club today when ideological warfare is the name of the game. The Sierra Club together with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and the AFL-CIO have launched a nationwide attack on Mrs. Norton. Brent Blackwater, President of Friends of the Earth said, "The nomination of Gale Norton amounts to a declaration of war on the environment," an absolutely absurd statement.

In her speech accepting the nomination, Mrs. Norton said, "I welcome the opportunity to work with President-elect Bush to preserve our wonderful national treasures, to restore endangered species and to help Americans enjoy the great outdoors."

Individuals who actually care more about protecting the environment than parading their political agendas should be pleased to support Mrs. Norton's nomination to be secretary of the interior.

-------- police

Broad Plan Aims to Improve Police Rapport With Public

New York Times
January 15, 2001
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/15/nyregion/15POLI.html?pagewanted=all

Concluding that crime reduction alone will not satisfy New Yorkers who often say that the police do not treat them with respect, Police Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik is planning sweeping changes in how the department - from officers on foot patrol to precinct commanders - interacts with the public.

The plan, which Mr. Kerik detailed in interviews last week, seeks to build rapport between officers and residents in several ways. Commanders will be ordered to attend a variety of community meetings, and to file detailed reports describing residents' concerns.

They will be expected to use a customer service model, similar to that used by Wal-Mart Stores, aimed at making precinct station houses more businesslike and accessible. To that end, officers will be assigned to greet people as they walk through station house doors. Mr. Kerik said he was also exploring installing A.T.M.-style information kiosks in each station house, and using incentives like days off to reward officers who work well with the community, just as they are now used sometimes to recognize officers who make significant arrests.

Mr. Kerik himself has promoted a former Queens precinct commander who is known for his development of strong community ties to review how effectively precinct commanders respond to local complaints. And he said he would hire a consultant to survey public satisfaction with the police.

The commissioner explained that he hoped to use the precinct commanders' meeting reports and the survey to measure how well the police respond to neighborhood issues, and thus hold commanders responsible for improving community relations, an area where progress has long been difficult to document.

This quantitative measurement would be a tool similar to the department's vaunted Compstat process, in which weekly crime statistics are used to measure the performance of police supervisors. "We've got to make certain standards of accountability at the precinct and then the borough command level," Mr. Kerik said, "to insure that those people out there are interacting with the communities and responding to the communities' needs, where they can."

With just 11 months left in his tenure, the commissioner is looking to put his own stamp on a department that gained widespread recognition for record crime reductions under his two predecessors, Howard Safir and William J. Bratton. Aides to Mr. Kerik said he was well aware he would not be seen as breaking any new ground if his only accomplishment was to continue the downward trend in crime.

Mr. Kerik's plan is also significant because it acknowledges the severity of a problem the department has long downplayed. Since the Brooklyn station house torture of Abner Louima in 1997 and the fatal shooting of Amadou Diallo in the Bronx in 1999, some critics have argued that the department has little understanding of the minority communities it serves.

Mr. Kerik's immediate predecessor, Mr. Safir, had argued that whatever breaches did exist between the police and these communities were largely a product of misperceptions fostered by the critics and the media.

But with this plan, Mr. Kerik appears to be acknowledging that the department shares the blame for public resentment of the police, and that a concerted effort must be made to address the problem and to change the department's culture.

"The culture change has got to come from the top," he said, "and has got to penetrate every ranking officer in the chain of command."

Although he said the department's main goal remains fighting crime, a draft outline of the new plan, which Mr. Kerik said he would present to commanders on Wednesday, notes that "any further gains in these areas will be hollow without the full support of the communities we serve."

Mr. Kerik said his plans differed from the widely publicized community policing effort under Mr. Giuliani's predecessor, David N. Dinkins, in several ways, including what the commissioner said was the earlier program's lack of standardization and performance indicators.

For his plan to succeed, Mr. Kerik will also need the cooperation of the department's more than 27,000 rank-and-file officers, many of whom are bitterly disaffected and feel underpaid and overworked.

Many also blame the Giuliani administration's quality-of-life crackdowns for straining community relations in the past. They question whether enforced attendance at meetings can repair damage done by zero-tolerance programs that often blanket neighborhoods with summonses for minor infractions and that, critics contend, single out minority youths.

Mr. Giuliani recently pledged an additional $100 million for the department's overtime program, known as Operation Condor, which funds additional quality-of-life sweeps and other anti-crime programs.

Mr. Kerik, however, said he thinks that improved community relations and quality-of-life enforcement can go hand in hand, arguing that aggressive enforcement improves neighborhoods for residents, and better relations help the police do their job by building trust and understanding between officers and residents.

He also said that improving officer morale was a key component of the new program, which he developed after meeting with hundreds of community leaders and clergy members and holding focus groups with officers and commanders.

In the focus groups, officers complained that they were often verbally abused by sergeants and lieutenants, which significantly affected how they treated the public. "You want the cops to treat people with respect," Mr. Kerik said in last week's interview, "then you better treat the cops with respect."

The plan also includes new training curriculum that focus on community relations for recruits and supervisors and guidelines for precinct commanders. Those commanders will bring patrol officers and those from specialized units like Street Crime, and narcotics officers who do not work undercover, to monthly meetings so residents can get to know the police who work in their area and learn what they do and why.

Michael E. Clark, who heads the Citizens Committee for New York City, which provides training to some 12,000 neighborhood, block, tenant and youth associations, said the groups he works with would welcome more regular input into how the department polices their neighborhoods. "Our hope would be that this doesn't just involve measuring how many times people attend meetings, but how many crime problems get solved in partnership with the community," he said.

One of the key elements of the plan is the requirement that all of the 76 precinct commanders attend their monthly Precinct Community Council meetings. The councils were formed more than 50 years ago to improve relations between the police and the communities they serve, and until now, the commanders could delegate a subordinate to attend the meetings. The commanders must also hold a monthly meeting with local clergy members and attend a monthly meeting organized by their local community board's district manager, which is held to review city services.

After each meeting, commanders must file a report listing the main community representatives at the meeting, their telephone numbers, the names of other police officers or supervisors who attended and whether they were introduced. The two-page report form requires them to detail individual issues raised at the meetings, with check-off boxes to indicate whether they are new or old, and if old, when an issue was first raised. There is also space for commanders to indicate any action taken in response.

Reports will be filed with the police commissioner's office, where, Mr. Kerik said, they will be reviewed by his staff, headed by Deputy Inspector James E. McCabe, who until recently commanded the 110th Precinct in Corona, Queens. Mr. Kerik said he brought Inspector McCabe to his office to oversee the new plan because as precinct commander, he had developed strong community ties.

If the same issues keep appearing on a precinct's report, Mr. Kerik said, the commander will have to explain why they have not been resolved.

Another of the plan's major components is the customer satisfaction survey that Mr. Kerik hopes will be conducted every month in each precinct to measure four or five leading indicators of citizen satisfaction with the police.

The deputy commissioner for policy and planning, Maureen E. Casey, who is overseeing much of the plan, including the design of a pilot survey, said about 100 people in each precinct would be questioned. Their names would be culled from the current 75 to 100 Police Department forms that require contact information, among them enforcement paperwork, like arrest reports, summonses and stop-and-frisk forms, as well as other routine documents.

Ms. Casey said the department planned to hire an independent marketing firm to conduct the surveys, which officials hoped would serve as an early warning of problems and concerns about local policing. She also said it would alert department officials to neighborhoods where satisfaction was on the rise, so that successful programs could be exported to other precincts.

Efforts to improve the way officers interact with the public are not new. In 1996, Mr. Safir unveiled a $15 million Courtesy, Professionalism and Respect campaign to improve the behavior of what he called the 1 percent of the force who did not act appropriately. Three years later, he updated the program with wallet-sized cards instructing officers to address people as "sir" or "ma'am."

While Mr. Kerik's plan is more ambitious, he acknowledged that the changes he sought would not occur overnight, or even in a few months. But, he said, "it should happen, because to create a better working relationship between the police and the communities, it's just a benefit to the entire city."

---

NYPD plans to reach out to communities

USA Today
01/15/01- Updated 10:52 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/2001-01-15-nypd.htm

NEW YORK (AP) - City police commanders will be required to attend community meetings and reach out to the public under a program announced Monday to improve relations between law enforcement and city residents, particularly minorities.

The 1997 police torture of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima and the 1999 shooting death of West African immigrant Amadou Diallo have heightened many minorities' distrust of police in the city.

Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik said the program would help restore the public's faith in officers and boost morale in the 41,000-member police department.

''I think this is a program that gives real promise to allowing the police to meet the needs that New Yorkers have, not the needs that they're told they have,'' Giuliani said.

The program's initiatives include rewarding officers who work well with the public and assigning officers to greet people entering precincts headquarters. Police may also hire a consultant to study public opinion about the department.

Many New Yorkers are likely to be wary of the plans, said police Lt. Eric Adams, co-founder of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care.

''I think there's going to be apprehension and concern because they've heard that dialogue before,'' he said. ''But we all win if we can move in this direction.''

Donna Lieberman, interim executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said nothing in the plan will require officers to follow through with the proposals.

The Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, which represents more than 27,000 rank-and-file officers, did not return a telephone call for comment Monday.

---

New York Times
January 15, 2001
Metro Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/15/nyregion/15MBRF.html

BROOKLYN: OFFICERS INJURED IN POLICE CAR

A 23-year-old Brooklyn man was charged with attempted murder yesterday after he threw a metal object at the window of a moving police car, the police said. The two police officers in the car suffered minor injuries when the object, which was thrown from the third floor of a building on Glenmore Avenue in Highland Park, broke one of the car's windows at 9:10 a.m., the police said. The suspect, Dominic Valdez of 534 Chestnut Street, was also charged with assault and reckless endangerment. A police spokesman said he did not know if Mr. Valdez was aiming at the car. Shaila K. Dewan (NYT)

NEWARK: WOUNDED OFFICERS STABLE

The condition of two Orange police officers wounded in a shootout with a robbery suspect on Friday night was upgraded to critical but stable yesterday, said Edyth Stroud, a nursing supervisor at University Medical Center in Newark. Officer Kenneth McGuire, 26, and Detective David Lemongello, 30, were wounded by the suspect, Shantez Everett, 23, of Orange, left, before he was killed by other officers after a stakeout at a gasoline station, the police said. (NYT)

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USA Today
01/15/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Vermont

Rutland - Faced with sharp growth in drug-related crime, city officials are trying a new method to boost the police budget fundraising. A construction company, Vermont's largest power company and other individuals and organizations have contributed.

-------- spying

Moscow 'Spy' Case Is Still a Mystery

New York Times
January 15, 2001
By DEAN E. MURPHY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/15/world/15POPE.html?pagewanted=all

STATE COLLEGE, Pa., Jan. 9 - Aside from his wife, Edmond D. Pope probably had no greater advocate proclaiming his innocence on charges of spying in Russia than Representative John E. Peterson.

In a telephone conversation, Mr. Pope described the congressman as "one of the two heroes" in winning his release in December after he was convicted of espionage. The other was his wife, Cheri.

Yet ask the congressman today whether Mr. Pope was spying, and the answer might be surprising. "I am going to be candid with you: I didn't know," said Mr. Peterson, a Republican former supermarket owner who represents the rolling woodlands here in central Pennsylvania where the Popes live.

"I checked with a lot of people, with the military and with the C.I.A., and everybody said he is not a spy," he said. "Personally, I don't think he is, but I don't care. If you were spying for the United States government, would you want us to desert you?"

Mr. Pope, 54, was pardoned by President Vladimir V. Putin and is back at home on the outskirts of this college town, where until 1997 he worked for a research lab at Pennsylvania State University that specializes in defense contracts.

A former Navy intelligence officer, Mr. Pope is only the second American in 40 years to be convicted of espionage in Russia. The first, Francis Gary Powers, the pilot of a U-2 spy plane that was shot down in 1960, was exchanged for a convicted Soviet spy.

Throughout Mr. Pope's ordeal, which began with his arrest in a hotel in Moscow last April, supposedly for trying to buy classified military information, American officials declared that he was an innocent businessman not interested in state secrets. They also insisted that his life was in danger because he suffered from a rare form of cancer that had probably worsened in prison.

A month after Mr. Pope's return home, considerable uncertainty surrounds both assertions. He is not dying. And although he may not have been a spy in the classic James Bond sense, he was a wheeler-dealer who was friendly with intelligence officials and who associates say would readily sell Russian military technology to the Defense Department if he could.

Among his biggest clients was a former employer, the Office of Naval Research, which coordinates technology needs for the Navy and the Marine Corps. "It is where business and espionage meet," an intelligence official in Washington said of Mr. Pope's Russian endeavors.

Mr. Pope acknowledged during two telephone conversations that his cancer, in remission for some time, had not recurred during his eight months in Lefortovo Prison, just as his Russian physicians had said.

He also indicated that he had not been mistreated in prison. "The media attention and public awareness is what saved me, not the State Department," Mr. Pope said, declining to give a broader interview.

Mr. Peterson acknowledged that no one knew during Mr. Pope's detention whether his cancer had returned, but that raising the likelihood was part of a strategy to win his freedom. "Having been a retailer, I know that good advertising is something boring, because you keep saying it until it becomes habit," Mr. Peterson said.

No American officials have suggested that Mr. Pope was employed by an intelligence agency as the Russians charged, but it is clear that the circumstances of his business dealings were not as free of suspicion as his supporters sought to portray them.

Since the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, there has been a push in the United States to obtain Soviet- era technology and to ensure that important Soviet military know-how does not end up in the wrong hands.

Military, intelligence and business people who deal regularly with Russia said Mr. Pope's interest in cutting-edge Russian military technology placed him in a murky world where business people and academics sometimes do the bidding of the American military for profit.

If the Russians were nervous about sensitive military research getting into Western hands, as many Russian analysts contend, cracking down on someone like Mr. Pope, who had visited Russia more than two dozen times and had a broad network of contacts, would send a chilling signal.

"You have to recognize that the boundary is increasingly blurred between technology which has primarily peaceful purposes and technology which is dual use, military as well as civilian," said Sam Wilson, a retired general and former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Mr. Pope's goal was to make money for himself and his contacts in Russia, associates said. And while he endeavored to work through approved channels, the nature of his dealings entailed walking a shifting line of authority.

His own lawyer in Moscow indicated that Mr. Pope could well have purchased classified information without even knowing it. Representative Peterson said he had received bizarre offers to assist Mr. Pope, including some from international armaments dealers.

It was not uncommon, one of Mr. Pope's partners said, for Mr. Pope to be inundated with 100 unsolicited proposals from scientists on his arrival in Moscow.

"The typical negotiation over there went like this," said Keith McClellan, a lawyer and business partner. " `We want a million dollars.' `We will give you $30,000.' `Sold.' "

Shortly before his arrest, Mr. Pope complained about being the object of pressure from the Russian mafia. And he was accustomed to being trailed by Russia's Federal Security Service.

Last year, one of Mr. Pope's companies, TechSource Marine Group, had a $178,000 contract with the Navy to study the propulsion system used in the Squall, a Russian torpedo. A spokesman said that the Navy was interested in the benefits for the military, but that Mr. Pope would be free to market his findings. Business associates said Mr. Pope was hoping to adapt the technology for passenger ferries.

Russian technology transfers had not yet amounted to a big money maker for Mr. Pope. Associates described his three firms as "virtual companies," with no permanent staff or offices and only a bare-bones budget for travel.

To keep afloat, Mr. Pope wore several hats during his Russian trips, negotiating deals for everything from titanium golf clubs to corrosion-resistant coatings. He even had a licensing agreement with Penn State to import Russian dolls with the college's insignia.

By the time he was arrested, Mr. Pope was pursuing information about an advanced fuel used in the Squall torpedo, which the Federal Security Service said crossed into the realm of state secrets. The information, associates said, related to a metal fuel that scientists believe could propel a variety of vessels - not just torpedoes - in oxygenless environments underwater or in space.

His client was the Applied Research Laboratory at Penn State, founded by the Navy after World War II and Mr. Pope's employer from 1994 to 1997. Last year the lab received nearly $70 million in contracts through the Office of Naval Research.

Throughout the eight-month campaign to free Mr. Pope, Representative Peterson said he had never spoken about Mr. Pope with officials at the lab, known as ARL. Mr. Peterson said he had not wanted to find out that Mr. Pope had been spying and thereby compromise his relationship with the lab or his efforts to free Mr. Pope.

"I represent ARL in the budget process in Congress and lobby every year for their contracts," he said. "They didn't contact me and I didn't contact them."

Was the research sought by Penn State classified? "I don't know that answer," he said.

The lab's director, L. Raymond Hettche, said Mr. Pope's mission had been to establish academic contacts for nonmilitary purposes, but he acknowledged that the lab was always on the lookout for technology with military uses. "The big thing now is spinning technology into the Department of Defense," he said.

Despite their long relationship, Dr. Hettche said, lab officials had no idea what else Mr. Pope was pursuing in Moscow. He said the university had not given Mr. Pope the money that the Russians said he had offered, on Penn State's behalf, to a scientist at the Bauman State Technical University in Moscow for classified research related to the Squall.

Dr. Hettche has on file four receipts signed by Mr. Pope, totaling $28,000, for technical reports purchased from Bauman, with titles like "Thermodynamic Analysis," but they are dated 1997.

One of the research lab's top scientists, Daniel Kiely, was with Mr. Pope when he was arrested. Dr. Kiely was questioned for several hours, and documents in his briefcase were confiscated. He was released only after he signed a statement in Russian, a language he does not speak. It was used against Mr. Pope in his trial.

"I knew a little of Ed's background and that stuff, and that the Russians probably think he is some kind of a suspicious character," Dr. Kiely said. "But I had no reason not to believe that everything we were doing was approved."

Mr. Pope is not talking about his ordeal. He has hired an agent and signed a book deal. He said on the telephone that the arrangement precluded him from speaking publicly about his experiences.

His friends say that the last year has exacted a heavy financial toll, and that Mr. Pope has one last shot at striking it big with his Russian connection.

"Right now, we all want to make sure his economic opportunities are optimized in getting this book published," Mr. McClellan said.

-------- terrorism

Panel Calls for Creating Counterterrorism Agency

Washington Post
Friday, December 15, 2000; Page A08
By David A. Vise Washington Post Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com:80/wp-dyn/articles/A7529-2000Dec14.html

A federal panel warned yesterday that the United States is vulnerable to terrorists wielding weapons of mass destruction, calling for the creation of a new counterterrorism agency and the loosening of restrictions on CIA agents that prevent them from recruiting confidential informants who have committed human rights abuses.

The panel, chaired by Virginia Gov. James S. Gilmore III, urges President-elect Bush to bolster U.S. preparedness against terrorist threats within one year.

"The United States has no coherent, functional national strategy for combating terrorism," Gilmore said. "The terrorist threat is real, and it is serious."

The panel says responsibility for counterterrorism is too diffuse and needs to be consolidated in one national office. The new agency, with a director appointed by the president, would give Congress a single point of contact on terrorism issues and would focus counterterrorism planning.

However, it would not have operational control over the Justice Department, the FBI, the Department of Defense, the CIA, the National Security Agency and other entities engaged in fighting terrorism.

FBI spokesman Steven Berry said "the FBI has worked with Congress to develop the best organized, equipped and coordinated capability ever. Recent events, as well as recent preventions [of terrorist acts] have demonstrated its effectiveness." The FBI declined further comment.

The release of the report comes as FBI agents and others continue efforts to solve the deadly suicide bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, which killed 17 sailors and injured 39.

In blunt language, the report says the United States has no clear counterterrorism program and argues for the adoption of dozens of changes on the federal, state and local levels.

"We are impelled by the stark realization that a terrorist attack on some level inside our borders is inevitable and the United States must be ready," Gilmore said. "It is truly a 'national' issue that requires synchronization of our efforts."

The report said "human intelligence" must be beefed up by rescinding the portion of 1995 guidelines issued by the CIA that prohibits the "engagement of certain foreign intelligence informants who may have previously been involved in human rights violations." Technology alone, the study said, is not sufficient to keep U.S. officials informed of threats.

"Certain procedures, well-intentioned when implemented, are now hampering the nation's ability to collect the most useful intelligence," the report said.

That recommendation drew sharp criticism yesterday from human rights advocates, who said the CIA must not legitimize torture and other abuses. Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said rescinding the 1995 guidelines would be "outrageous."

Roth noted that CIA agents, with special approval, remain able to recruit informants who have committed human rights abuses in the past. But he said rolling back the guidelines would be contrary to fundamental U.S. principles.

"When the U.S. government pays someone who is committing torture or executions, it sends the signal that these atrocities are okay so long as you periodically cough up some information," Roth said.

"We should not be trying to protect Americans by embracing people who are severely repressing their own people," Roth added. "The United States has to find ways of collecting information that don't leave us underwriting atrocities."

In calling for the change in CIA policy on informants, Gilmore said his panel was recognizing the need to do everything possible to protect Americans.

While emphasizing the need to protect privacy, the report also calls for other major changes in policies to enhance U.S. counterterrorism efforts. For example, the study says the Justice Department should establish mandatory reporting requirements on the domestic sale and purchase of certain equipment used to make and deliver cyber, chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons.

However, some other recent studies, including one by the Washington-based Henry L. Stimson Center, have said the threat of chemical and biological terrorism has been exaggerated.

Still, Gilmore's panel calls for vastly improving the readiness of health and medical organizations at the federal, state and local levels to respond to a terrorist attack.

"The continuing challenge for the United States is first to deter and, failing that, to detect and interdict terrorists before they strike," the report said. "Should an attack occur, local, state and federal authorities must be prepared to respond and mitigate the consequences."

---

On Jordan's Death Row,
Convicted Terrorist Says He Has No Regrets

New York Times
January 15, 2001
By JUDITH MILLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/15/world/15TERR.html

AMMAN, Jordan - In a prison in the barren hills on the outskirts of Amman, Khadar abu Hoshar waits with no regrets for the hangman. A 36-year-old father of four, Mr. abu Hoshar denies that he plotted to bomb tourist sites in Jordan. But he says he has devoted his life to the cause of jihad, or holy war, in hopes of bringing to power governments that follow the strict code of Islamic law.

"Our religion is completely different from that of Christians," he said in an interview at the Jouweideh prison late last year. "Our religion says that if someone slaps you on the right cheek, you shouldn't turn the other cheek. You should slap him on the right cheek."

A Jordanian court sentenced Mr. abu Hoshar to death as a ringleader of a plot to kill hundreds of tourists visiting Jordan for millennium celebrations in 1999, the second time in less than a decade that he has received Jordan's maximum penalty on terrorism charges.

Dressed in a navy blue track suit and black sandals made of discarded tires, Mr. abu Hoshar said that what the West calls terrorism - and he calls jihad - is a Muslim's "most important religious duty," warranted "whenever and wherever our rights as Arabs and Muslims are being denied."

Mr. abu Hoshar, a high school graduate, grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp in Amman. Though he was not particularly religious when he was young, he said, he was drawn to the Afghan cause. After a stint as a transportation worker in Amman, he said he saved up money to buy an airplane ticket for himself and a friend to Peshawar, Pakistan, in 1987.

Like many Arabs, he found his way to a guest house run by Abdullah Azzam, a fellow Jordanian who was legendary in his homeland as the founding father of the Arab holy war against the Soviet Union.

"There were people from all over the world staying there," he recalled, his penetrating hazel eyes filling with tears. "It was an exhilarating experience."

"I became converted to the belief that jihad is fundamental in Afghanistan," he said. "There are 500 verses in the Koran alone about the need to wage jihad."

A veteran of the Jordanian Army, Mr. abu Hoshar said he was trained for a month inside Afghanistan. "There was heavy emphasis on themes - like revolutionary doctrine," he said. "I also received training on light and medium weapons. My friend and I stayed together for the training. We both fought near the western border between Russia and Afghanistan."

Many of his comrades were shot and some were killed. "I went on many missions," he said. "But it was not only fighting. I opened schools, taught the Koran and Arabic, delivered medicine and food and made many humanitarian missions."

Mr. abu Hoshar said he left Afghanistan in 1989, just as the Soviet forces withdrew, only because his father was sick and the family needed another breadwinner.

He returned a changed man. Traditional interpretations of Islam require Muslims to accept the authority of a state ruled by Muslims. But Jordanian investigators say Mr. abu Hoshar and other Afghan veterans felt they had a right, even a duty, to overthrow King Hussein and install what they viewed as a true Islamic rule, governed by holy law.

Prosecutors say he joined a local radical group that plotted a terror campaign against the government. As a leader of the group, he was sentenced to death but later pardoned. He married and in 1993 moved to Yemen, where he forged ties to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a group dedicated to fighting Israel, before deciding to take his jihad home.

Appropriate jihad targets, he said, include "occupied Palestine," Bosnia, the Philippines, the United States and Saudi Arabia.

"There are no countries today that are truly Islamic states, he said. "If there were, they would have defended Muslim rights better than the Arab states have done."

---

Holy Warriors: Dissecting a Terror Plot From Boston to Amman

New York Times
January 15, 2001
By JUDITH MILLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/15/world/15JORD.html?pagewanted=all

After weeks of advanced training in explosives at one of Osama bin Laden's Afghan camps, Raed Hijazi, a onetime Boston cab driver, was ready for his mission. The chemicals for the explosives were stockpiled. The targets were selected, the homemade detonators wired.

Western officials say Mr. Hijazi, an American citizen of Palestinian origin who has since been arrested, recently described for Jordanian investigators the moment that followed: his induction by one of Mr. bin Laden's chief lieutenants into Al Qaeda, the group that Mr. bin Laden, a Saudi-born multimillionaire, founded 13 years ago to wage jihad, or holy war, throughout the world.

Mr. Hijazi told investigators that he had been given a piece of paper and had recited the words on it: "In the name of God the Merciful, the Compassionate. I promise to ally myself to Osama bin Laden for the sake of God."

It was late November 1999, and Mr. Hijazi was about to go from Afghanistan to Jordan where, Jordanian investigators say, he was planning to carry out what would be a devastating terrorist act: the killing of hundreds of Americans, Israelis and others who were visiting Jordan to celebrate the dawn of the millennium. Initial targets, Jordanian officials say, included the fully booked 400-room Radisson Hotel in downtown Amman, two Christian holy sites and two border crossings into Israel.

Under the plan, a second wave of attacks would follow.

Mr. Hijazi never reached Jordan. The Jordanians say they foiled the plot, arresting more than a dozen local militants. One by one, prosecutors said, the detainees described a conspiracy that had been years in the making and, until the bin Laden group's help in its late stages, mostly home-grown.

Jordanian and American officials say what nearly happened in Jordan is a case study of how Osama bin Laden and his deputies, isolated in Afghanistan, greatly extend their reach by aiding locally initiated terrorism.

The Jordanian plotters dreamed of striking a blow for Islam, and they financed their local cell, the authorities said, through the sale of forged documents, robberies and Mr. Hijazi's savings in Boston. Jordanian officials said the men had traveled to Lebanon and Syria to buy weapons, get military training and stockpile chemicals for explosives.

But according to Jordanian and American officials, their plans gained powerful support from Mr. bin Laden's Al Qaeda, which trained Mr. Hijazi in explosives, approved the targets chosen by the local cell, set the timing and blessed the operation as its own.

"If you want to understand the modern face of global Islamic terrorism and how it functions, look at Jordan," said Richard A. Clarke, the White House's senior counterterrorism official. "The Jordan plot is the template."

During the Jordanian trial last year, the defendants protested their innocence and said they had been tortured into confessing, an assertion that Jordan vehemently denies. In September a military court convicted 22 of the 28 men charged, sentencing 6 to death, including Mr. Hijazi, who was then still at large, and the man the Jordanians say inducted him into Al Qaeda.

In October, Mr. Hijazi was arrested in Syria and sent to Jordan, where this month he is to be retried on the same charges. His lawyer, Jalal Darwish, said Mr. Hijazi was not guilty and would be proven so in the new trial.

But Jordanian and American officials said Mr. Hijazi had given them new information about the plot and about its ties to Al Qaeda, including the account of his initiation, some of which came from Western officials familiar with his statements.

The American authorities, who get significant amounts of intelligence about Arab militants from Jordan, say they are persuaded that the Jordanians' account of a deadly plot is accurate.

A portrait of modern terrorism emerges in unusual detail from the confessions of those charged; the prosecutors' statement in court; and interviews in Jordan with investigators, two of the defendants, their families, friends and foreign officials.

The version offered by prosecutors and the court record has inconsistencies. Some of the defendants' statements are contradictory or vague. But the record suggests that the Jordanians were eager to join forces with Mr. bin Laden's group, which shared their vision of replacing secular governments with, as they define it, truly Islamic states.

Mr. Hijazi appreciated the mutual advantages of such assistance. When the attacks were completed, he boasted to the other plotters, according to accounts of their confessions, "there won't be enough body bags in all of Jordan to hold the dead."

The Plot:

A Long Trail in Several Countries

Jordanian prosecutors trace the plot's origins to May 1996, when Mr. Hijazi met Khadar abu Hoshar, a longtime foe of the Jordanian government, at a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria.

The two Palestinians were natural allies despite their different backgrounds. Mr. abu Hoshar, now 36, had fought with the Afghan rebels against Soviet forces in the late 1980's. Seared by the experience, he had returned home with a passion for Islamic fundamentalism and the conviction that even superpowers could be defeated by true believers.

"When I arrived back in Jordan, the intifada was at its peak," Mr. abu Hoshar said in an interview in prison late last fall. "The thinking about the fighting in both places was the same: Everyone in the world thought that powers like Russia which occupy Muslim land can only be removed from the land through force."

Mr. Hijazi, now 32, shared that conviction. Born in California to relative privilege, he had grown up mostly in Saudi Arabia and Jordan. He told prosecutors that he had been converted to the Islamic cause while studying business at California State University in Sacramento. Mr. Hijazi began attending a mosque and cultural group in Sacramento called the Islamic Assistance Organization. It was there, he told Jordanian investigators, that he met a Muslim from the Fiji Islands who schooled him in radical Islamic philososophy and persuaded him to go to Afghanistan.

The mosque, he told investigators, helped arrange his training at the Khaldan camp near Khost in eastern Afghanistan. Mr. Hijazi proved an excellent student, especially with mortars, a favorite weapon of the Afghans. He became known by his noms de guerre, Abu Ahmed the Mortarman and Abu Ahmed the American, according to Mr. abu Hoshar's statement to the prosecutors.

When the two men met in 1996 at the Yarmuk Palestinian refugee camp, a state-controlled camp in Syria, prosecutors say, Mr. abu Hoshar was trying to found a Jordan-based group of militants.

Mr. Hijazi had his own ideas about how to bring the jihad home. A burly, intensely suspicious man, Mr. Hijazi revealed little about himself. Accompanied at the refugee camp by his younger brother, Saad, prosecutors say, he was introduced to Mr. abu Hoshar only by his noms de guerre.

Although the two worked together closely during the next three years, Mr. abu Hoshar told investigators that he had never learned his associate's true name, and had not known that the younger man accompanying him that day in Syria was his brother.

According to the prosecutor, Mr. abu Hoshar and the Hijazi brothers discussed "the issue of jihad while agreeing on the necessity of training on rifles and explosives." Their intent, the prosecutor's statement continues, was "to carry out terrorist attacks against the Jews and American interests in Jordan."

Their plans suffered an early setback at the end of 1996, when the Jordanian authorities arrested Mr. abu Hoshar as he entered his homeland from Syria. He was jailed for 18 months.

In early 1997, Mr. Hijazi moved to Boston, where he had a friend from his years in Afghanistan. He has told Jordanian interrogators that he took a job driving a taxi to raise money for his military activities back home. He got a taxi license, records show, and drove for the Boston Cab Company. Prosecutors say he sent a total of $13,000 to his cell in Jordan.

The plot, Jordanian prosecutors say, appears to have resumed in earnest in 1998, soon after Mr. abu Hoshar's release from prison. According to the prosecutors, he and Mr. Hijazi, who traveled between Jordan, Boston, Turkey, Syria and many other places, recruited at least 10 others.

It was at this point, prosecutors say, that they made a crucial connection.

Mr. abu Hoshar asked an Algerian member of his group, Hussein Turi, if he knew anyone in Al Qaeda who could arrange training in Afghanistan for his cell. Mr. Turi told investigators that he had sent a message through an intermediary to Abu Zubaydah, the bin Laden aide responsible for contacts with Islamic militant groups around the world.

Abu Zubaydah was the nom de guerre for Zein al-Abideen Muhammad Hassan, a 27-year-old Palestinian and former Afghanistan veteran who had risen quickly in Al Qaeda's ranks. Middle Eastern and American officials describe him as a pivotal figure in the bin Laden network, a trusted militant who assigned candidates screened at his Peshawar, Pakistan, guest house to the dozen or so Afghan camps financed and run by Mr. bin Laden.

According to Col. Mahmoud Obeidat, the Jordanian chief prosecutor, Abu Zubaydah was a crucial link between local initiative and central command.

Abu Zubaydah sent back a fax to Mr. abu Hoshar, setting the rules for his dealings with the Jordanian cell, Mr. Turi said. Contacts with him must always be made through one person, who must vouch for those sent to be trained. No one should be coerced into a mission. And those sent to Afghanistan through Pakistan must never call him from the airport or their hotel. The cell readily agreed to the conditions.

With the training arranged, the plotters began to focus on the most difficult aspect of their mission: securing the explosives and detonators for their bombs.

In late 1998, Mr. Hijazi abruptly left Boston, leaving unclaimed his $150 deposit on his cab, a spokesman for the Boston Cab Company said. Using his American passport, he went to London and bought five Al Bico two-way radios at an electronics shop on Edgewater Road. The radios can be converted into remote-control detonators, investigators said.

Traveling to Jordan via Israel, prosecutors said, Mr. Hijazi chose a route through the Arava crossing, which allowed him to look over the border post there as a possible target.

He then began buying the acids and agricultural chemicals needed to produce powerful explosives. Using a forged Jordanian gold dealer's license, prosecutors said, he gradually accumulated sulfuric acid and 5,200 pounds of nitric acid, a substance that cannot be bought in Jordan without such a permit. When properly mixed, the chemicals can produce an explosive more powerful than TNT.

The group also rented a house in Marka, a poor suburb of Amman, and one of its members, skilled in construction, dug a large hole in the basement to hide the chemicals. The concealed chamber was more than 9 feet deep and 45 feet wide, bigger than the house's foundation. The chamber took two months to build, according to a statement from the cell member who built it, a Jordanian who had befriended Mr. Hijazi in Afghanistan in the early 1990's.

The group began experimenting with explosives. Following instructions on a computer disk that contained a 10-volume, 5,000-page guerrilla manual, the Encyclopedia of Afghan Jihad, Mr. Hijazi prepared samples on his family's farm about an hour's drive from Amman, his brother Saad told the police.

In June 1999, Mr. abu Hoshar told the police, he called Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan, using a cell phone as instructed, and said he was sending Mr. Hijazi and three others to Afghanistan for training.

The four men traveled to Turkey, each by a different route, to avoid detection. Then, together, they went on to Pakistan and into neighboring Afghanistan. Mr. Hijazi has told Jordanian prosecutors that he went to a camp operated by Mr. bin Laden that specializes in advanced explosives training. He also visited Kabul, where, he said, he met other members of Al Qaeda.

When his training was over in late November, Mr. Hijazi told investigators, Abu Zubaydah met with him privately to give him the oath of allegiance. Abu Zubaydah told him that from then on, he was authorized to act in Mr. bin Laden's name "anywhere in jihad territories."

He then traveled to Syria. Prosecutors say he planned to enter Jordan on Dec. 6, accompanied by three suicide bombers who would attack the border crossings and a Christian baptism site. The prosecutors said the plotters knew that the sites would be thronged "in light of the approaching millennium festivals."

It was also a religiously propitious moment for such an attack. Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of dawn-to-dusk fasting, began on Dec. 9. Under Islamic tradition, anyone martyred during that time is promised a prominent place in paradise.

In the early morning of Nov. 30, Abu Zubaydah called Mr. abu Hoshar. "The training is over," he said, according to Mr. abu Hoshar's statement.

The Investigation:

Preventing a Disaster in Millennium Day

The phone call came as no surprise to Jordanian officials. A year earlier, in 1998, Jordan's intelligence service had picked up a vague but menacing tip that Mr. bin Laden's group might be planning an operation somewhere in the region, perhaps Israel, perhaps Jordan.

The Jordanians now suspect that Mr. bin Laden's group might have gotten involved in the plot as part of its determination to retaliate for the worldwide crackdowns that followed the 1998 bombings of two American Embassies in Africa.

By the summer of 1999, investigators had determined that the plot was in fact aimed at Jordan. They began watching suspects, some of whom they knew only by sight.

The Jordanians were listening on Nov. 30 as Abu Zubaydah gave the orders to begin carrying out the plot, which he referred to as "al yom alfieh," or the day of the millennium. "We knew we could wait no longer," said Colonel Obeidat, the Jordanian chief prosecutor.

At 2 a.m. on Nov. 30, police squads raided several houses they had put under surveillance, arresting 16 people, among them Mr. abu Hoshar. He said later that he was on the phone with Abu Zubaydah when the raid began.

The Jordanian authorities said they had immediately began to question the suspects. Among the first to talk was Hussein Turi, the Algerian, who had a French passport.

Mr. Turi eventually disclosed that he was Algerian and that his passport was forged, the prosecutors said. He also told them that he had hidden material for the plot in his home in the Weidhat refugee camp in Amman.

Another suspect, Osama Sumar, who had built the underground storage chamber, disclosed the existence and location of a second safe house. On Dec. 5 at 2 a.m., the police raided the building, No. 24, a nondescript two-story house on a quiet street in the Marka neighborhood. In a convertible sofa in a small room on the first floor, the police said, they found fake Saudi passports and a book in English that they later learned Mr. Hijazi had brought with him from the United States. It was a how-to manual on disguises and altering one's appearance.

When they picked up a stereo and shook it, they heard a strange rattle. Inside were the five remote-control devices that Mr. Hijazi had bought in London.

On the far side of the room, the police said, was a freshly plastered strip of wall that appeared to cover what had been a long crack. But they could not find the storage chamber or any trace of the explosives that Mr. Sumar had described.

Two hours later, the police returned to the house, this time accompanied by Mr. Sumar, whom they had roused from his prison bed. "He took us in and pointed to a section of the floor," one policeman recalled. Four square cinder blocks had been perfectly cast to resemble the rest of the blocks on the floor, but they covered an iron hatch. Attached to its far side was a ladder leading into a basement chamber.

"When we opened the hatch, we couldn't believe it," said Kamel al-Naj, an explosives expert who accompanied the police that night and testified at the trial. "The smell was so foul we could hardly breathe. It burned my esophagus."

The chamber, its walls covered with thick plastic sheets, contained 71 large containers of acid, some dark green and some white. The dark green plastic containers held nitric acid; the white containers were filled with sulfuric acid. Several were leaking. The floor of the hidden chamber was two inches deep in flammable liquid.

"Only an hour before," Mr. Naj exclaimed, "we had all been walking around the house smoking! The house could have blown sky high had one of us dropped a match."

Attorneys for the defendants said the acids were intended to make fertilizer for the Hijazi family farm, but Mr. Naj disputed that assertion. He said he saw only one practical purpose for chemicals of that kind: to make explosives. And he estimated that the plotters had enough explosive ingredients to make the equivalent of 16 tons of TNT, which would flatten not only the Radisson but entire neighborhoods.

Other defendants, learning that Mr. Turi and another plotter had begun talking, also began to confess. Investigators found out that the group had planned a second wave of bombings against landmarks in Amman, including an airport in Marka and the Citadel, the popular tourist site that includes the Temple of Hercules, the Omayyad Palace and a celebrated Byzantine church.

Colonel Obeidat, the military prosecutor, said the attack would have been "the worst terrorist incident ever in Jordanian history."

Mr. Hijazi's lawyer said the convictions would be overturned. The defendants, he noted, were all acquitted of charges of belonging to Al Qaeda under a law that requires prosecutors to show that the group has a formal structure and membership on Jordanian soil.

Mr. Hijazi's father, Muhammad, said in an interview in Amman late last fall that both his sons were innocent. Interviewed by telephone last week, Mr. Hijazi asserted that Raed had been tortured into confessing.

Raed, Mr. Hijazi said, had gone to America to begin a new life that his wife and three children in Amman would some day join.

"What kind of anti-American terrorist," he said, "wants to move his wife and children to the United States?"

-------- activists

French police remove Cherbourg Greenpeace activists

Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Mon, 15 Jan 2001 12:00 ADST
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newslink/weekly/newsnat-15jan2001-40.htm

French police have removed several Greenpeace activists blocking a railroad leading to the commercial port of Cherbourg, from which plutonium is due to be shipped to Japan.

Police arrested the activists and used a bulldozer to remove fibreboards blocking the railroad.

Rail access to the port was reopened about 30 minutes later.

Cherbourg is the location of a reprocessing plant for spent nuclear fuel.

---

300 Rally in St. Louis in Opposition to Ashcroft

New York Times
January 15, 2001
By JOHN W. FOUNTAIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/15/politics/15RALL.html

ST. LOUIS, Jan. 14 - Outside the white stone courthouse here, where a slave sued for his freedom 154 years ago, a coalition of black preachers and local civil rights groups today protested the choice of John Ashcroft as attorney general.

Under a cloud-filled sky, just two days before confirmation hearings in the United States Senate, about 300 protesters made an emotional plea from Mr. Ashcroft's home state, where he served nearly three decades in public office, including two terms as governor.

Today's protest was organized by the St. Louis Metropolitan Clergy Coalition, an organization of 70 pastors of predominantly black churches. The Rev. Earl Nance, president of the coalition, said nearly two dozen other local organizations, including Missourians Against Handgun Violence, the Million Mom March and the N.A.A.C.P., were joining the fight against Mr. Ashcroft's confirmation.

The groups contend that Mr. Ashcroft is insensitive to blacks and other minorities and that his opposition to abortion and his religious beliefs have affected his political decisions and tarnish his ability to head the Justice Department.

On the eve of the national holiday honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the rally was just one barometer of the growing and increasingly intense opposition to Mr. Ashcroft's selection.

In New York City, Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton invoked the memory of Dr. King today to oppose the Ashcroft selection as well as that of Gov. Christie Whitman of New Jersey to head the Environmental Protection Agency.

Speaking at the Riverside Church in Manhattan, they said both were insensitive to matters important to blacks and other minorities.

"The Democratic senators must uphold the standards of civil rights and social justice in their votes," Mr. Jackson said. "They must not chose collegiality over civil rights, social justice, workers' rights and environmental protection."

To emphasize opposition to Governor Whitman, Mr. Sharpton said, cards reproducing a photograph of her frisking a black man in a police drug sweep in 1996 were sent to all the senators. That image, Mr. Sharpton said, showed that Mrs. Whitman was insensitive to concerns about racial profiling by state police.

In the St. Louis rally, opponents to Mr. Ashcroft for attorney general carried signs proclaiming "Ashcroft is racist" and "Too extreme to represent all Americans," hoping to send a strong message to Washington. A coalition of groups plans a town meeting for Thursday, officials said.

In rallying at the 19th-century courthouse in this city, organizers sought to strike a symbolic chord. It was here that Dred Scott sued his owner for his freedom in 1847. He lost his legal challenge to slavery in a landmark United States Supreme Court decision but was eventually freed. These grounds were also the stage for a 1999 rally by the Clergy Coalition to protest Mr. Ashcroft's successful campaign against the federal court nomination of Ronnie White, an African-American on the state's Supreme Court. Judge White is expected to testify at the confirmation hearing this week.

Like many others who oppose Mr. Ashcroft's confirmation, Mr. Nance stops short of calling Mr. Ashcroft a racist.

"If he's not one, he's walking on the fringe of it," Mr. Nance said in an interview.

The Rev. B. T. Rice, also a member of the Clergy Coalition, said: "Mel Carnahan won the race not because of the sympathy vote for his dear wife, but because the African-American community in particular went to the polls in record numbers to send John Ashcroft a message that we are not going to allow him to turn back the clock on civil rights and racial justice."

Mr. Rice was referring to the United States Senate race that Mr. Ashcroft lost to Gov. Mel Carnahan, who was killed in a plane crash weeks before the November election. His wife, Jean Carnahan, was appointed to the Senate seat.

"We voted him out," Mr. Rice said. "A dead man beat him. He was beat by a corpse. It's tragic for President-elect Bush to say, `O.K., we know that you kicked him out, but I'm going to kick him up.' That to me is in your face."

Mr. Ashcroft continues to draw fire for a 1999 speech at Bob Jones University, a conservative religious institution, and for an interview in the Southern Partisan, a neo-Confederate magazine. Locally, critics also cite Mr. Ashcroft's fight against school desegregation plans in St. Louis and Kansas City, Mo., when he was the state's attorney general.

There was also evidence of support for Mr. Ashcroft near the protest, including a man holding a sign that read: "We support John."

Rick Hardy, a political science professor at the University of Missouri in Columbia, explained why he believed Mr. Ashcroft was confronting such a swell of opposition.

"You can't be in politics that long in this state without creating enemies," Professor Hardy said.

"John Ashcroft has been a consummate politician," he added. "He is ethically a straight arrow. People have been trying to dig up skeletons on him for a long time, and they can't find any."

---

USA Today
01/15/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Arkansas

Fayetteville - Organizers of "Hate-Free Arkansas" hope the exhibit will drum up public support for state legislation against such acts. The display depicts a variety of hate crimes and includes 150 banners. Monticello, Texarkana and Jonesboro are other stops for the display, the Women's Project said.

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In Hong Kong, Mixed Signals on Falun Gong

New York Times
January 15, 2001
By MARK LANDLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/15/world/15HONG.html

HONG KONG, Jan. 14 - It has been a head-spinning couple of days in Hong Kong, where the sudden resignation of a top official and a politically sensitive meeting of the Falun Gong sect sent deeply contradictory messages about the former British colony's autonomy within China.

About 1,200 members of Falun Gong gathered in a government- owned concert hall today to share experiences and to protest China's crackdown on their spirital movement. Despite fierce opposition from pro-Beijing forces here, the meeting proceeded without interference.

While Falun Gong leaders thanked the authorities for allowing them to meet here, they protested that 11 of their members had been detained at the airport. "We are starting to worry that Hong Kong is no longer safeguarding the rule of law," said Kan Hung-cheung, a spokesman for the group.

Such fears are percolating elsewhere after the abrupt resignation of the territory's No. 2 official, Anson Chan, on Friday. Mrs. Chan, the director of the Hong Kong Civil Service and a forceful advocate of the city's independence, insisted that she was leaving for personal reasons. But her departure comes four months after she was chided by the Chinese leaders for not adequately supporting the Beijing-appointed chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa.

The obvious question is whether Mrs. Chan's departure is related to the meeting today. Some government officials cast doubt on that, saying Mrs. Chan did not approve the decision to rent the hall to Falun Gong. Yet the officials said the decision had drawn strong criticism from Beijing.

Hong Kong's generally hands-off treatment of Falun Gong has reinforced its reputation as a city with a greater appreciation of civil liberties than mainland China. "This decision tells people `one country, two systems' still exists in Hong Kong," said Martin Lee, a pro-democracy leader, referring to the formula under which the territory is to retain some autonomy for 50 years.

But the events of the last two days paint a murkier picture. The immigration department confirmed that it refused entry to 13 people who said they were members of Falun Gong, though it said it did so because they had improper travel documents.

And Hong Kong drew other lines in the sand. The sect was allowed to display a portrait of its spiritual leader, Li Hongzhi, but it was asked not to show inside the building photographs of reported attacks on its members by the police in China. "In a society that isn't feeling the pressure of Jiang Zemin and his followers, we wouldn't be subject to these kinds of restrictions," Mr. Kan said.

---

Sentences of Some Dissidents Are Quietly Reduced in China

New York Times
January 15, 2001
By ERIK ECKHOLM
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/15/world/15CHIN.html

BEIJING, Jan. 14 - A man who received a life sentence in 1989 for defacing the portrait of Mao Zedong looming over Tiananmen Square was quietly released on parole last September, Chinese authorities disclosed on Friday.

A partner who received a 20-year sentence for the same act of "counterrevolutionary sabotage" will be released two years early - in 2007 - because he has repented of his crimes during the ill-fated democracy movement of early 1989, the authorities said, not explaining the discrepancy in their treatment.

The officials reported the status of the two men and three others who were sentenced to long prison terms for "counterrevolutionary" activities. They were responding to a request from John Kamm, an American businessman who started a foundation to press China for information about little-known political and religious prisoners.

In May 1989 the two men - Yu Zhijian, a teacher, and Yu Dongyue, an art editor at a town newspaper, both in their 20's at the time - traveled to Beijing from Hunan and posted democratic slogans beside the portrait of Mao, then plastered it with eggs and black ink - an audacious act that led to harsh and well- publicized sentences.

Earlier this month Mr. Kamm inquired about 10 prisoners. The authorities answered with details about five, each of whose sentence had been reduced. But they said they had not had time to gather information on the others, so their status, like that of hundreds of other political prisoners, remains unclear.

The recent publication abroad of the "Tiananmen papers," apparently transcripts of the leaders' deliberations in the tumultuous spring of 1989, has drawn new attention to the decision to crush the movement with force. The cases described on Friday are a reminder of the activism that briefly flowered and the extraordinary sentences that were given to those labeled troublemakers.

One of the five prisoners, Yang Lianzi, had been conspicuous in Beijing in the weeks before the June 4, 1989, crackdown as a troubadour with a headband inscribed "wild man of China," who mocked the Communist leaders with poems and songs. According to records unearthed by Mr. Kamm's Dui Hua Foundation, based in San Francisco, Mr. Yang was given a 15-year sentence for his "heinous crime of counterrevolutionary propaganda and incitement."

The sentence of Mr. Yang, now 54, has reportedly been reduced by three years "because he sincerely expressed regret and a willingness to reform," and is scheduled for release this May.

In Fujian province in southeast China, Sun Xiongying, a schoolteacher, now 35, was arrested in 1989 for writing anti-Communist slogans and defacing a local portrait of Mao. He was sentenced to 18 years, but officials said that because of his repentant attitude his sentence has been reduced by two years and eight months, and will end in January 2005. The fifth man, Zhao Fengping, got a life sentence in 1984, but his sentence was also reduced and he was released last April, the authorities said.

As of the end of 1999, the Ministry of Justice said last year, 1,300 people were still in prison for convictions under the old "counterrevolution" statutes, many of them in connection with the 1989 movement.

Crimes of "counterrevolution" were erased from the books here in 1997, replaced in a new legal code by clauses on the "subversion of state power."

---

China punishes 242 Falun Gong leaders

USA Today
01/15/01- Updated 10:15 AM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001-01-15-falungong.htm

BEIJING (AP) - In a rare disclosure, China said Monday it has punished 242 organizers of the Falun Gong spiritual movement and sent an undisclosed number of followers to labor camps during an 18-month-old crackdown.

The government information appeared aimed at countering claims that thousands of sect followers are in jails or labor camps and came in the wake of a major weekend gathering of Falun Gong members in Hong Kong.

Since outlawing Falun Gong in July 1999, Beijing has infrequently provided figures on those punished by courts and never given an accurate tally of the numbers detained outside of the court system.

A Hong Kong-based rights group says at least 10,000 Falun Gong members are being held in more than 300 labor camps, with one camp for women in northeastern Changchun city holding 560. The Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy has also alleged 98 deaths of sect members, mostly at police hands, while in custody. Many sect leaders are known to have been imprisoned, with one organizer serving an 18-year jail sentence.

Under China's legal system, police have the authority to send suspects to labor camps for up to three years without trial. To combat the widely popular movement, China also set up special detention, or ''transformation,'' centers to force sect members to recant.

In comments released by the official Xinhua News Agency, a spokesman for China's Cabinet said 242 sect organizers have received ''criminal punishment'' from courts but did not say what those punishments were.

Most members sent to labor camps took part ''many times in disturbances, making trouble and disrupting social order,'' the spokesman said. None are in camps ''purely because they practiced Falun Gong.''

Authorities offered reduced sentences and early release to some of the detained to ''educate and save them to the maximum extent,'' the spokesman said.

The spokesman denied reports on Falun Gong Internet sites that a sect member was killed in Beijing's Tiananmen Square during a protest by hundreds of practitioners on Jan. 1. Chinese officials have previously admitted the deaths of some practitioners but attributed them to suicide, natural causes or hunger strikes.

Practitioners say Falun Gong's slow-motion meditation exercises and philosophies drawn from Buddhism, Taoism and the group's U.S.-based founder, Li Hongzhi, promote good health and moral living.

But China's government claims Falun Gong is a cult that threatens public order and communist rule. It also alleges the group led more than 1,600 followers to their deaths, mostly by encouraging them to eschew modern medical treatment. A massive Falun Gong protest on April 25, 1999, scared the government into ordering the crackdown.

Democracy campaigners have also faced harassment under the Chinese regime. On Monday, authorities detained five people who petitioned Olympics organizers to persuade Beijing to release jailed democracy campaigners as it bids for the 2008 Games.

One - Hu Jiangxia, the wife of veteran dissident Wang Youcai - said three plainclothes officers took her from her office to a police station and questioned her for three hours, warning her not to appeal to the International Olympic Committee again.

Four other people who signed the petition also were detained Monday in Hu's hometown of Hangzhou, in eastern China, she said. Hu said she knew that one of those detained was later released but she was unable to contact the other three.

---

Sect members on hunger strike

Yahoo! Hong Kong - News Hong Kong
Monday, January 15 8:33 AM SGT
http://english.hk.dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/hong_kong/article.html?s=hke/headlines/010115/hong_kong/scmp/Sect_members_on_hunger_strike.html

Four Falun Gong practitioners in detention at the airport started a hunger strike yesterday as more than 1,000 colleagues joined an international conference at City Hall.

The practitioners were among 12 sect members barred from entering Hong Kong to attend an international "experience sharing" conference. Authorities said the 12 had been detained because of irregularities in their travel documents.

Organisers yesterday described the City Hall meeting as a success that attracted about 1,200 Falun Gong followers from 21 countries. But they voiced concern at the detentions.

"We are pleased that the SAR Government approved our activity and allowed us to hold the sharing conference at the City Hall," said Hong Kong Falun Gong spokesman Kan Hung-cheung. "But we are regretful that at least a dozen of our followers were unable to be with us. The incident seems to suggest that human rights in Hong Kong are under threat."

The conference, lasting from 10am to 4pm, was orderly. Practitioners recounted on stage their spiritual experiences but also told of alleged persecution and torture on the mainland.

Zhou Zhong-ming, the husband of Australian hunger striker Zhang Cui-ying, 39, said his wife, who was wearing a Falun Gong T-shirt when she arrived in Hong Kong on Friday, was stopped by immigration officials. "She was dragged by her hair along a concrete floor and she was stopped from contacting the Australian Consulate for help," he said. The Immigration Department denied force was used. Ms Zhang was deported to Australia last night.

An American Falun Gong follower, speaking on behalf of the hunger strikers - who are protesting against their treatment - said the Government, under pressure from Beijing, was beginning to act against the group.

The department said the 12 were barred because they were believed to be holding forged travel documents; had failed to obtain a valid visa; or had a bad entry record.

The Government said it had not allowed members of the sect to distribute leaflets about alleged torture and killing of their colleagues on the mainland, because that would have breached the agreement under which the government-operated hall was hired.

It said it would review the event and take appropriate action if other regulations had been broken.

---

Pressure grows on Anson Chan to name names

Yahoo! Hong Kong - News Hong Kong
Monday, January 15 8:33 AM SGT
http://english.hk.dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/hong_kong/article.html?s=hke/headlines/010115/hong_kong/scmp/Pressure_grows_on_Anson_Chan_to_name_names.html

Anson Chan Fang On-sang is under growing pressure to name those she says tried to stir up distrust between herself and Tung Chee-hwa.

Mrs Chan, the Chief Secretary for Administration, announced on Friday that she had resigned for personal reasons and would leave the civil service in April after 39 years.

She denied having problems co-operating with Mr Tung, but said there were people who had sown discord in the hope of souring her relations with the Chief Executive.

Selina Chow Liang Shuk-yee, chairwoman of the Legco House Committee, is expected to ask Mrs Chan today to explain to the legislature why she resigned.

At RTHK's City Forum yesterday, Democratic Party chairman Martin Lee Chu-ming and Emily Lau Wai-hing of The Frontier said it was unusual for the Chief Secretary for Administration to quit so suddenly.

"She had promised to stay in office until June 2002," Mr Lee said. "In Hong Kong's history, none of our chief secretaries resigned during their tenure. Mrs Chan reiterates that there is no banquet which doesn't come to an end, but she leaves before having the main dish."

Mrs Chan's official retirement date was January last year, but she agreed in March 1999 to extend her term until June 2002.

Mr Lee warned that senior officials would not dare to speak against Mr Tung in future if Mrs Chan had been forced to go.

Ms Lau urged Mrs Chan to disclose the identity of the troublemakers. "It is a serious allegation and she should say clearly who did such things. It is a serious matter if she was forced to leave due to a power struggle," she said.

But Mr Lee said he would leave it up to Mrs Chan to decide whether to point out who had provoked the alleged disputes.

Tsang Yok-sing of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong said it was unfair to second-guess the reasons why Mrs Chan wanted to quit. He said it was the right of a civil servant to resign at any time. "And civil servants should not do anything to hurt the Government's reputation once he or she leaves," he said.

Professor Joseph Cheng Yu-shek, political scientist at City University, believed that the impact of "sowing discord" was little. But he said the incident reflected rows between senior officials and pro-Beijing politicians.

Allen Lee Peng-fei, a local deputy to the National People's Congress, said on Saturday that a number of local NPC deputies close to Mr Tung and the Beijing leadership were responsible for trying to provoke disputes.

Legislators urged Mr Tung to announce Mrs Chan's successor as soon as possible. Ms Lau and Mr Tang agreed that it would be better to select a candidate from the civil service. Financial Secretary Donald Tsang Yam-kuen is the frontrunner.

"I hope Mrs Chan's departure will not put pressure on her successor," Ms Lau said.

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