------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Embassy bombings trial witness says bin Laden wanted uranium
Bush should delay missile defense plan until questions considered
Shield Would Give U.S. Alternative to Nuclear Arms
Russia to Blame for U.S. Missile Defense, Canberra Says
CIA: Iran, Iraq Pose Challenges
News, on missile defense systems:
Cell phones are safe
Joint U.S.-Russia exercises heighten fears of espionage
Powell backs plan for European force
Canada sets ties to North Korea
British Leader Pushes Defense Talks
China's Qian plans early U.S. visit
Powell Meets S. Korea Counterpart
Putin Presses Diplomacy as the Best Defense
Russia ready for arms race over missiles
Asian Stock Markets Close Mixed
Missile Defense Test Planned
Raytheon: May Miss 2002 Earnings Forecast
Celebrating the Birthday and Legacy of Reagan
Bush Won't Seek Defense Increases
Serious about missile defense Helle Bering
ABM may get bombed
USEC says government may owe it for tainted uranium inventory
GOP Senators to pitch energy bill

MILITARY
Powell: China poses no danger in canal
Argentina Won't Compete in Arms Race
Colombian rebel to meet president
Taliban Seem to Be Making Good on Opium Ban, U.N. Says
Authorities crack down on new drug in Kentucky
Ex- Drug Dealer Gets Help in Keeping a Legal Job
Space shuttle launch successful
Senate approves payment of U.N. dues
Smart Start on Defense Budgeting
Bush Administration Holds to Clinton Budget for Pentagon in 2002
Sailor Presumed Drowned Found Alive
E-MAIL FUROR
The U.S. Army is running out of bullets.

OTHER
Power crisis energizes fuel-cell industry
Environmentalists expect to win fight against Oregon power deregulation
Rare Salt-Water Camel May Be Separate Species
Changing pipes may cost $1 trln
PCB CLEANUP
States
Hawaii
Iranian judges reject Jews' appeal
CIA Chief Cites Proliferation, Terrorism Among Top Threats
Ex-Aide to bin Laden Describes Terror Campaign Aimed at U.S.
Former Terrorist Says He Warned U.S.
Witness: I worked for bin Laden
Convicted Lockerbie bomber launches appeal

ACTIVISTS
Protest at Solana's Belgrade visit
GAINS FOR ENVIRONMENTALISTS
Thousands March in Kiev Over Political Crisis
China Steps Up War on Sect, but Some Denounce Attacks
Seven members of Falun Gong reported dead
States


-------- NUCLEAR

Embassy bombings trial witness says bin Laden wanted to buy uranium

February 7, 2001
CNN
Phil Hirschkorn and
Correspondent Deborah Feyerick
http://www.cnn.com/2001/LAW/02/07/embassy.bombing.02/index.html

NEW YORK (CNN) -- In his second day of testimony, a key government witness in the trial of four men accused of conspiracy in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa said Wednesday he had once attempted to purchase uranium for Osama bin Laden, the alleged mastermind of the bombings.

The witness, Jamal Ahmed Mohamed Al-Fadl, described a 1994 effort to buy uranium for al-Qaeda, the organization led by bin Laden, for whom Al-Fadl said he worked for nine years. Uranium is a key component in nuclear weapons.

Al-Fadl said he was told the price for the uranium, which came in a two-to-three-foot cylinder, was $1.5 million. He said engravings on the cylinder and documents indicated the uranium's source was South Africa.

What happened to the uranium and whether the transaction was completed was left unanswered. The witness' last information on the deal was that al-Qaeda sought to test and verify the contents with a machine being sent from Kenya.

Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald then turned to another subject.

Al-Fadl, a 37-year-old man from Sudan, told the court Wednesday he worked for bin Laden until mid-1996, when he had a falling out with the group over money.

Al-Fadl said he had stolen $110,000 by taking unauthorized commissions from sales of palm oil and sugar by bin Laden's Sudanese-based companies.

Al-Fadl, who used the money to buy four parcels of land and a new car, said he tried to return the money when he was caught but could only come up with $25-$30,000.

"There is no forgive (sic) until you pay it back," bin Laden told him in a private meeting, Al-Fadl testified. "Go do your best and pay the money back."

Al-Fadl testified that he decided to leave al-Qaeda after that incident. He told the court he fled to an unspecified country and approached the American embassy there, eventually telling FBI and U.S. Justice Department officials he had information on people who want to "make war against your country."

Five years ago, Al-Fadl reached a deal with prosecutors to plead guilty to terrorism charges, in particular for moving weapons and explosives. After 18-months to two years living in FBI custody, he is now in the federal witness protection program and still awaiting sentencing.

He told the court he had asked for a reward for his information but was giving nothing more than a $20,000 loan to help resettle his family in the U.S.

The alleged effort to obtain nuclear and chemical weapons and their components, while supported by Al-Fadl's public testimony, has long been alleged in the government's indictment.

Until now, he was known only in court documents as "CS-1," for "confidential source number one." His main value to the government's case has been to provide an insider's history on bin Laden's organization, which he joined as one of its first members in the late 1980s. He will face cross examination beginning next Tuesday, when the trial resumes.

The August 7, 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya killed 224 people, including 12 Americans, and injured thousands. The bombings are the main part of a 308-count indictment naming 21 individuals for participating in an alleged decade-long conspiracy to kill Americans and destroy U.S. government property.

In his two days of testimony, Al-Fadl cited 10 of the alleged conspirators named in the sweeping indictment, most of whom are fugitives not on trial at this time. Bin Laden, the lead defendant, is believed to be living in Afghanistan.

Of the four men standing trial, Wadih el Hage, a naturalized American from Lebanon, was the only one identified by Al-Fadl. He described knowing el Hage, 40, as someone who worked in al-Qaeda's offices in Sudan in the early 1990's.

El Hage is accused of terror conspiracy charges but not direct participation in the embassy bombings. His attorneys concede he worked for bin Laden's business interests but deny any connection to violent acts.

The three other men on trial are alleged Kenya embassy bombers Mohamed Sadeek Odeh, a 35-year-old Jordanian, and Mohamed Rashed Daoud al-'Owhali, a 24-year-old Saudi; and alleged Tanzania embassy bomber Khalan Khamis Mohamed, a 27-year old Tanzanian.

---

Bush should delay implementing missile defense plan until questions considered

Wednesday, February 7, 2001
Pioneer Planet
Sen. Joseph R. Biden Commentator
http://www.pioneerplanet.com/seven-days/tod/opinion/docs/039736.htm

For years, Republicans have demanded a ``robust'' national missile defense. Now President Bush must turn that slogan into coherent policy and strategy with full attention to the technological challenges, the potential consequences for arms control, and the concerns of our allies.

Before going any further, the administration must consider these questions:

Whom shall the system protect, and against what?

Last May, Bush proposed ``to protect all 50 states and our friends and allies and deployed forces overseas from missile attacks by rogue nations, or accidental launches.'' That's a tall order.

Protection ``from . . . accidental launches'' means intercepting advanced Russian warheads, not just simple warheads from North Korea, Iran or Iraq. So far, we can't even combat the simple ones with confidence. Protecting ``our friends and allies and deployed forces overseas'' requires either multiple defenses or a worldwide system like Ronald Reagan's space-based laser. A senior defense official was quoted recently as saying this would take ``decades.''

How will Russia respond?

During the campaign, Bush said, ``I will offer Russia the necessary amendments to the ABM Treaty. . . . If Russia refuses the changes we propose, I will give prompt notice . . . that the United States can no longer be a party to it.'' That sounds like an ultimatum. Will it work?

Or will Russia suspend arms reductions, or even increase its nuclear forces? Will Russia ally itself with China, or with anti-American states seeking weapons of mass destruction? Will our allies still follow America's lead on these issues? Will countries lose faith in international nonproliferation regimes?

If Russia will deal, what sort of agreement do we want?

Could the president's defense be verifiably limited? Is a combined limit on offensive and defensive systems workable?

Is a ``robust'' national missile defense consistent with the administration's goal of substantially reduced nuclear forces? Can mutual deterrence be maintained at low force levels, if one side has a national missile defense? Can ``de-alerting'' measures deny both sides the ability to mount a disabling first strike? In order to maintain an effective retaliatory capability, would each country target its remaining missiles on the other's cities? Do we want that?

A defense against accidental Russian launches could also intercept a small purposeful attack. That raises the bar for initiating a strategic nuclear war. Will it therefore make tactical nuclear weapons more usable? If so, is that a problem?

The START II treaty bans multiple-headed ICBMs. Would a U.S. missile defense lead Russia to retain those ``use it or lose it'' missiles? Could Russia put two or three multiple-headed missiles on its mobile ICBMs without impairing crisis stability? How verifiable would such limitations be, if the missile had both mobile and silo-based variants?

How would China respond?

Would a boost-phase intercept system, deployed only near ``countries of concern,'' permit China to maintain nuclear deterrence at low force levels? Alternatively, could we accept China increasing its strategic forces from 18 warheads to 200 or more, and putting multiple heads on its ICBMs? Would an arms race follow between China and India, then India and Pakistan?

Would a ``robust'' national missile defense strip away China's deterrent capability? If so, would China decide to attack Taiwan before our defense was completed? Are we prepared for that?

These are serious and complex questions that warrant careful review. They underlie my concern that the world might not be ready for President Bush's missile defense, even if the technology were.

President Bush has a perfect opportunity before him. Congress ordered the executive branch to conduct a ``Nuclear Posture Review'' this year, the first since the mid-1990s. President Bush should fold the issues I have outlined into that review, and postpone major missile defense decisions until the review has been completed and its lessons absorbed.

Biden is a U.S. senator from Delaware and the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Readers may write to him at 221 Russell Building, U.S. Capitol, Washington DC 20510. Distributed by KRT News Service.

---

Shield Would Give U.S. Alternative to Nuclear Arms, Envoys Say

Wednesday, February 7, 2001
International Herald Tribune
Joseph Fitchett
http://www.iht.com/articles/9870.htm

MUNICH Henry Kissinger put it starkly here last weekend to an audience of Europeans and representatives of Japan and China: No American president can neglect an alternative to using nuclear weapons against a small nation poised to launch a ballistic missile at the United States.

The alternative, he said, is missile defense, whose technologies for intercepting incoming missiles promise now to be able to offer some protection against limited nuclear attacks.

The former secretary of state's plea was perhaps the most emotional in a weekend that represented the Bush administration's first real effort to sell Europe - and perhaps sway critics in Russia and China - on its plan for an expensive system to defend against missile attacks.

When Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld later argued that it was "a moral issue" for the United States to try to build a missile defense system, even the skeptical Europeans, who were numerous among the defense ministers and experts at the Munich Conference on International Security, understood that the new administration would not easily be swayed from the controversial plan.

Realists on the European side are already talking about trade-offs - such as American support for a stronger European defense role - in exchange for their acquiescence in a missile-defense program they vehemently oppose but are beginning to suspect is inevitable.

Even if Washington and Moscow ultimately agree to cut their long-range arsenals to 1,500 nuclear warheads, they said, it would leave Russia with more than enough missiles to be confident of overcoming any foreseeable U.S. defense.

A formula for accommodation with China looks more difficult because Beijing's nuclear intercontinental arsenal contains only a few hundred warheads.

But the problem may be susceptible to a political solution because Chinese leaders' main concern is to ensure that any missile shield is not used to promote independence for Taiwan, experts said in Munich.

The Bush administration has no intention of abandoning nuclear deterrence as an ultimate insurance policy for the United States and for its allies, officials said in Munich. But it does want to proceed with systems that will afford some protection to the United States - and its allies - from being attacked or intimidated by a country or terrorist group with a handful of long-range missiles and nuclear warheads.

In his speech Mr. Rumsfeld did not cite North Korea, frequently named in the past as a country liable to threaten the United States soon with missiles. Instead, the thrust of his statements was that the Bush administration was wholly committed to defensive technologies, implying that new research, unfettered by previous restrictions designed to respect arms control treaties, will enable the United States to find and phase in systems that can intercept a handful of incoming missiles - a form of protection that does not exist today against even a single ballistic missile.

In urging allies to rethink their own objections to the Bush administration's decision to build a shield against limited nuclear attacks, Mr. Kissinger said that "total vulnerability should not be the price the United States is asked to pay" for trans-Atlantic solidarity.

The thrust of these presentations, backed by similar pleas from U.S. senators of both parties, was that the post Cold War world must change the old rules of deterrence, notably the theory of mutual assured destruction, in trying to cope with the most alarming current threats.

Those doctrines, and the arms control apparatus accompanying them, were credited with preventing a nuclear strike between the superpowers. But they are no longer adequate, U.S. officials say, in an era when the threat is liable to come from a suicidally reckless foe, perhaps a defeated leader ready to lash out with a nuclear weapon even if it might expose his country to annihilating retaliation.

Mr. Rumsfeld is personally committed to missile defense: He headed a high level U.S. commission three years ago that shook up American views that so called rogue states were a remote nuclear threat. The commission's view, that such a state could catch the West off guard in this decade, started a groundswell of support in Congress for missile defense on the grounds that the threat effectively exists now.

"No U.S. president can responsibly say that his defense policy is calculated and designed to leave the American people undefended against threats that are known to exist," he said in Munich.

He evoked the dilemma of a U.S. leader in a crisis and facing a few hostile nuclear missiles beyond the reach of ground troops. "He would be in a position where he had no choice but preemption," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

In other words, a nuclear strike could be brought on by American weakness in failing to develop anti-missile defenses. If there was at least some protection for American cities and for American forces in combat theaters, he suggested, U.S. leaders would have more room for maneuver short of a nuclear strike.

Russia - and until now the European allies - has shunned the subject of missile defense as an expensive new challenge and one that could shake up the scaffolding of arms curbs based on the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

By barring effective anti-missile defenses, the treaty encouraged Washington and Moscow to limit and finally start reducing their offensive arsenals because each side was confident that its rival remained vulnerable to attack.

---

Russia to Blame for U.S. Missile Defense, Canberra Says

Feb 7, 2001
Russia Today
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=284014

CANBERRA -- (Reuters) Australia has dismissed Chinese concerns about U.S. plans for a missile defense system and blamed Russia for making the project necessary.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Moscow, a fierce critic of the U.S. National Missile Defense (NMD) program, was partly responsible for the proliferation of missile technology to "rogue states", which made the system worth developing.

"A lot of the debate here is directed at the United States," Downer said in his first comments on the NMD program since President George W. Bush came into office.

"I frankly think an awful lot of the debate should instead be directed not only towards those countries that have got or are developing these missile systems, but the countries that have been transferring that missile technology to thosecountries," he told ABC television on Tuesday night.

"For example, Russia expresses concern... But Russia is a country that has been involved in the proliferation of missile technology. If there were no missiles there would be no need for a missile defense system." A transcript of the interview was issued on Wednesday.

OPPOSITION DISMAYED

The opposition Labor party reacted with dismay to what it deemed as a hardening of Prime Minister John Howard's backing of U.S. plans to develop NMD, which is opposed not only by Russia but also by China and many of Washington's European allies.

Critics argue that Australia, which has very close ties to China because of extensive trade, should take a nonpartisan stand on NMD and resist being drawn into any kind of confrontation as an ally of the United States.

Northern Australia is also the base of a joint Australian-U.S. monitoring station at Pinewood that would provide early warning in case of a nuclear attack, and would presumably become a key part of a U.S. missile defense system.

Opponents argue that Australia would become a prime target in a nuclear war because of its role as the "eyes and ears" of the American forces.

Labor's foreign affairs spokesman Laurie Brereton said Downer's comments "leave little doubt that the Howard government is prepared to subordinate its strategic thinking to that of the Bush administration".

"Missile proliferation is a serious problem, but pushing ahead with National Missile Defense will leave the world less rather than more secure," Brereton said. "The Howard government's stance fails to weigh NMD's negative implications for Asia-Pacific security."

NOT A BIG ISSUE IN AUSTRALIA-CHINA TIES

Downer dismissed China's misgivings, saying the missile defense program was not against China but against small states that had got their hands on missile technology.

He also brushed off comments from Beijing that China's reaction to NMD would be to increase its relatively small stock of 18 to 20 intercontinental ballistic missiles.

The foreign minister said China had already stated it would modernize its ballistic missile capacity no matter what.

"That presumably means to expand it," he said. "I think we're arriving at a point where it's not entirely clear that their (China's) concerns are going to be very valid."

A spokesman for Downer said Canberra had held various talks with Chinese officials and felt "it's not going to be a big issue in our relations".

The foreign minister said he had not yet discussed NMD with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell but would "in time."

---

CIA: Iran, Iraq Pose Challenges

February 7, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-CIA-Global-Threats.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Iran and Iraq are likely to pose major security challenges to the new Bush administration in their illicit pursuit of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and in Iran's growing support for terrorism, the CIA director told Congress on Wednesday.

Summarizing the CIA's assessment of security threats around the world, George Tenet said international terrorism is the most immediate worry, and foremost among the threats is the Muslim extremist network of Osama bin Laden, the exiled Saudi who has declared holy war on America.

``Osama bin Laden and his global network of lieutenants and associates remain the most immediate and serious threat,'' Tenet told the Senate Intelligence Committee. He said bin Laden's organization is developing surrogates to carry out attacks ``to avoid detection, blame and retaliation.''

Bin Laden is wanted by the FBI in connection with the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 224 people, and he is suspected of having a hand in last year's terrorist attack on the USS Cole in Yemen that killed 17 American sailors and nearly sank the $1 billion ship.

Tenet also addressed other global threats, including:

--Iran: It has one of the largest and most capable ballistic missile programs in the Middle East and could test an intercontinental-range missile capable of delivering a small weapon to the United States in ``the next few years,'' he said. Over the past two years, Iran has increased its support of terrorist groups opposed to the Middle East peace process, and prospects for positive political change in Iran are fading.

--Iraq: ``We are likely to see greater assertiveness'' by President Saddam Hussein over the next year, Tenet said, as the Iraqi leader attempts to wriggle free of the U.N. economic sanctions and finance the rebuilding of his military. Saddam has grown more confident of his ability to hold onto power, although U.S.-British enforcement of ``no fly'' zones over Iraq has constrained his military.

--India and Pakistan: Relations between the South Asia rivals are volatile, ``making the risk of war between the two nuclear-armed adversaries unacceptably high.'' Tenet said there is a ``good prospect'' of another round of nuclear tests by India and Pakistan, and following India's test of an Agni medium-range missile last month, ``Pakistan may respond in kind.''

--Russia: Its future under President Vladimir Putin looks dim. ``There can be little doubt that President Putin wants to restore some aspects of the Soviet past,'' he said, including its status as a world power. One of his goals is to improve ties with China and other regional partners to check U.S. influence.

--North Korea: After nearly 10 years of decline in capability, the North Korean military has stabilized. It also is expanding its short- and medium-range missile arsenal, ``putting our allies at greater risk.''

Tenet, who has been CIA director since 1997 and has been asked by the Bush administration to remain in the post, said terrorist groups are becoming more decentralized, which makes them harder to identify.

``Terrorists are also becoming more operationally adept and more technically sophisticated in order to defeat counterterrorism measures,'' he said. As the United States has strengthened security around government buildings and fixed military facilities, terrorists are seeking out ``softer'' targets such as private businesses.

Tenet also emphasized the importance of threats from the spread of ballistic missile technologies.

``We continue to face ballistic missile threats from a variety of actors beyond Russia and China -- specifically North Korea, probably Iran and possibly Iraq,'' he said.

The overall challenge to American security is more complex than ever, Tenet said.

``Never in my experience,'' he said, ``has American intelligence had to deal with such a dynamic set of concerns affecting such a broad range of U.S. interests. Never have we had to deal with such a high quotient of uncertainty.''

---

News, on missile defense systems:

February 7, 2001
Associated Press
Here are excerpts from editorials in newspapers in the United States and abroad:
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Editorial-Rdp.html?pagewanted=all

Feb. 3
The Goshen (Ind.)

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov is trying to lure President George W. Bush away from his commitment to continue the development of a defensive anti-missile shield. Bush should politely turn down the offer and see that the new technology is developed.

While the proposed anti-missile defense system is far from being perfected, work should continue on the project so that at some point in the future the United States will be able to defend citizens from ballistic missile attacks.

What Bush needs to do is to clearly outline why he wants the anti-missile system developed; and then he must offer to share the technology worldwide so that the threat of ICBMs can be eliminated forever.

The end of the Cold War only reduced the chance of nuclear war, it did not eliminate it. The next step to getting rid of one aspect of the Cold War weaponry is for the United States to develop its anti-missile technology, and then share it, even with former enemies.

Feb. 5
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Frankfurt, Germany, on missile defense:

But Russia's leadership should take a look at the past before reviving something that would clearly exceed its capabilities: Reagan's space-based missile shield never became reality, but the concept shocked Moscow's leadership to the core. We all know where their search for countermeasures led. Overtaxing the military also contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union. Russia should thus carefully consider its response and abandon its belief that U.S. President George W. Bush's plans would fundamentally alter the strategic balance.

This is not so; the system would be useless against a Russian nuclear attack. Moscow should negotiate calmly with Washington on amending the ABM Treaty to fit present-day security threats -- and maintain its political status as an equal.

---

Cell phones are safe

2/7/2001
InfoBeat News
http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=9a56mouu3ct50

WASHINGTON (AP) - Scientists who tracked the health of 420,000 Danish cell phone users found no sign the devices increase cancer risk - the biggest study yet to provide reassurance about the phones' safety, but one that won't end the controversy. The study, published in Wednesday's Journal of the National Cancer Institute, concluded cell phone users are no more likely than anyone else to suffer brain or nervous system cancers, leukemia or salivary gland tumors, cancer types that have worried critics.

It won't end the debate. Several thousand Danes had used their phones for more than 10 years, the time it can take a slow-growing brain tumor to appear, but the majority had used them for only about three years.

Federal health officials insist there's no real evidence that cell phones used by 97 million Americans cause health hazards beyond car crashes caused by people yakking while driving. Yet no health or government agency gives the popular gadgets a definitively clean bill of health, either.

Unable to give a clear answer, the Food and Drug Administration tells worried consumers they can simply use an earphone device that keeps the phone's antenna away from the head.

Cellular phones work by beaming radio-frequency energy, low-powered radiation.

Most research - including two recent U.S. studies that examined 2,400 people, some who had used cell phones for five years - has found no risk.

---

Joint U.S.-Russia exercises heighten fears of espionage

February 7, 2001
Washington Times
By Bill Gertz
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-200127222716.htm

The Pentagon is conducting joint missile defense exercises with the Russian military in Colorado, raising concerns among defense analysts that Moscow will gain valuable information on U.S. war-fighting tactics.

A Pentagon official said the computer simulation exercises at the National Training Facility in Schriever Air Force Base, Colorado, grew out of a summit meeting between President Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin in 1999. The military cooperation was reaffirmed at a summit in September with current Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The first phase of the current exercise scenario involves American and Russian forces working together against an unidentified third country that attacks with ballistic missiles, said the official who spoke only on the condition of anonymity.

The two sides will then coordinate communications, warning and control information for shooting down incoming short-range missiles.

A later phase will take place at Fort Bliss, Texas, in January 2002 using hardware in what the defense official said were "limited field-training exercises."

The 30 Russian officers now working in Colorado will pretend to be operating Russia's S-300 anti-missile systems and some 70 U.S. military officers will practice using Patriot anti-missile systems.

The exercise is being paid for by the Pentagon, and the first phase will cost $735,000 when it is completed Sunday. It is the third joint U.S.-Russia exercise.

"It's all designed for us to work together in a theater so that we can protect our forces and objects," said the defense official.

The American and Russian soldiers will practice "how to coordinate and communicate in engaging targets in a theater of operations."

The exercises have prompted fears that Moscow will obtain war-fighting data that could be passed on to Russian clients like Iran.

"This seems to me to be typical of the type of thing arranged by the last administration that should be suspended until the new administration has a chance to review it," said William Van Cleave, director of the Center for Defense and Strategic Studies at Southwest Missouri State University in Springfield, Mo.

The idea of cooperating with the Russians may have some merits, he said in an interview. "But there are lot of problems sharing information and technology with the Russians," Mr. Van Cleave said. "With our long experience with the Russians, there is usually an intelligence-gathering objective of meetings of this type."

Defense officials said the Russians used their access to U.S. military missile warning technology in Colorado during a joint year 2000 rollover exchange in December 1999.

At that time, Russian military forces fired Scud missiles against Chechen rebels in southern Russia at the same time its officers were posted at a missile warning center in Colorado.

U.S. intelligence officials believe the Russians fired the Scud so the Russians in Colorado could gauge how well U.S. space sensors track missile firings. By learning the sensitivity of the sensors, the Russian military can then develop the means to hide the missiles or deceive U.S. spy satellites.

A congressional defense aide said the joint exercise is "one more bad idea from the Clinton administration that will haunt the Bush administration."

"It is a good example of the kinds of problems [Defense Secretary Donald H.] Rumsfeld is going to have to root out," the aide said. "The idea of joint action with the Russians against Russian clients is not even a bad joke."

Russia has stepped up military cooperation with Iran following disclosure in December of a secret agreement between Vice President Al Gore and Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin.

The agreement called on the United States to avoid sanctioning Russia for arms sales to Iran in exchange for an end to the sales in December 1999. Russia continued dealing arms and has stepped up transfers in recent months, U.S. intelligence officials have said.

U.S.-Russia relations have soured in recent months over plans for a U.S. national missile defense system, which Moscow opposes. Moscow also has raised U.S. and NATO concerns by moving tactical nuclear weapons to the Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad, U.S. officials said. Moscow denied the claim.

Rep. Curt Weldon, Pennsylvania Republican and a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said the missile defense exchanges seem "very ill-conceived."

"I support engagement, but not engagement that is not totally thought through," Mr. Weldon said. "I would hope Secretary Rumsfeld is fully briefed on these programs."

The defense official dismissed suggestions that the exercises will benefit Russian's intelligence services and said security arrangements call for using "generic" battlefield information to avoid compromises.

"They are not going to see how we tactically deploy," he said.

---

Powell backs plan for European force

February 7, 2001
Washington Times
By Ben Barber
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-200127214524.htm

British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook and Secretary of State Colin Powell stood shoulder to shoulder yesterday in support of the proposed European defense plan and sanctions on Libya, while they downplayed differences over missile defense.

Mr. Cook discussed with Mr. Powell at the State Department the European plan to set up a 60,000-man rapid-reaction force independent of NATO - a plan that was criticized last week by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld as potentially weakening NATO.

"We both agreed that an increase in Europe's rapid reaction capability could strengthen NATO, and we are both determined that this new European capacity should be firmly anchored in NATO," said Mr. Cook in a joint press conference with Mr. Powell.

Mr. Powell said the Bush administration has "a very good understanding of what the European Security and Defense Initiative is all about - an effort on the part of our European friends to increase their capability for rapid reaction in Europe and wherever else the need might arise - and we support that goal."

Mr. Powell said the new force would allow Europe to act when NATO or the United States decided not to engage.

On the Bush administration plan to develop and deploy an anti-ballistic missile system, Mr. Cook voiced some concerns.

Mr. Cook said yesterday the best way to defend against attacks by rogue states such as North Korea, Iraq and Iran - the main aim of the national missile defense - might be to stop the spread of missile technologies.

"We both share a deep concern for the proliferation of missile technology," said Mr. Cook.

He said he "welcomed the commitment of the U.S. to consult with its allies and with Russia" and would work with the United States to tighten "the international regime against missile technology proliferation and to develop a coordinated counterproliferation strategy."

Several European allies as well as Russia and China have said the national missile defense would upset arms-control agreements and spark a new arms race.

[In Moscow yesterday, Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev dismissed a proposed U.S. national missile defense as ineffective, saying it could easily be defeated by the old Soviet technologies developed in the 1980s to oppose President Reagan's proposed missile defense.

["We had three mighty programs to asymmetrically counteract U.S. national missile defenses during Reagan's 'star wars,' " Mr. Sergeyev was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency. He did not offer details.]

The United States says the new system - designed to protect against small numbers of missiles launched by terrorists or rogue nations - should be of no concern to Russia, which has more than enough missiles to overwhelm it.

Mr. Cook said that despite Britain's decision last year to restore diplomatic relations with Libya, he backed the U.S. demand for continued sanctions following last week's conviction for the bombing of a Pan Am aircraft over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.

Mr. Powell also touched on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying that the new administration is prepared to help the new Israeli government and Palestinians reach peace after they have reached the decisions needed for a settlement.

"We have a role to play. We have to see what the Israeli people say through this election process. We are not going to be standoffish but, at the same time, we want to make sure that the search for peace - the quest for peace is seen in a broad regional context so that the quest doesn't stand alone in and of itself."
---

Canada sets ties to North Korea

February 7, 2001
Washington Times
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-200127212420.htm

OTTAWA - Canada said yesterday it has established diplomatic ties with North Korea, the isolated impoverished communist state that is slowly opening up to the outside world.

Canada becomes the fourth member of the Group of Eight powerful nations - after Russia, Italy and Britain - to recognize the state, which has launched a diplomatic offensive after five decades of self-imposed isolation.

Foreign Minister John Manley said that Canada believed forging closer relations with Pyongyang is the best way to contribute to security, nonproliferation and humanitarian challenges in the region.

-------- britain

British Leader Pushes Defense Talks

February 7, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Britain.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Britain's foreign secretary urged the Bush administration Wednesday to talk to the Russians before taking a decision on a missile defense system.

Foreign Secretary Robin Cook told reporters over breakfast at the British Embassy that the administration needs time for talks with Russia and also to decide on the kind of missile program to be built.

``It should be possible to persuade Russia that this is not in any way destabilizing to Russia and should go ahead on the basis of an accommodation with Russia,'' Cook said.

He cautiously refused to endorse the program directly. Critics of the anti-missile idea say such a system could touch off a deadly arms race, will cost trillions of dollars and probably won't work.

Cook said ``there is no perception'' in Britain of a threat from North Korea, Iran and Iraq, states often cited by advocates of the program as threatening the United States with attack by long-range nuclear missiles.

Bush administration officials have said a U.S. anti-missile shield would be available to defend allies and friendly governments as well as the United States.

A 1972 U.S.-Soviet treaty, a landmark arms-control accord, banned national missile defenses. The theory was that a potential aggressor would not strike the first nuclear blow if deadly reprisal was probable.

Having met with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Vice President Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser, Cook said he did not get ``any sense of how long'' it would take the administration to choose a program.

On Monday, the European Union's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, said the United States cannot be deterred from deploying a national missile defense despite misgivings among the allies and Russia.

``The United States has the right to deploy,'' Solana told reporters before meetings with Powell and Rice.

On another touchy issue, Europe's determination to create its own military corps to respond to crises, Cook said, ``At every step, this force will be linked to NATO.''

In fact, he said, ``It is a very real added value to the capacity of NATO.''

Critics have suggested an independent European force would undercut NATO and could set in motion the dissolution of the U.S.-led military alliance.

Later, after he met with Rice, Cook told reporters outside the White House that British relations with the new government were ``off to a flying start.''

Cook's visit was designed to prepare for Prime Minister Tony Blair's Feb. 23-24 trip to Washington to see President Bush at Camp David in Maryland's Catoctin Mountains.

Cook said his own visit ``has identified the common interests of the United States and England and our common approach'' on world trouble spots like the Middle East.

Cook said both countries are committed to working together to ensure that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein ``does not emerge as ... a menace'' with renewed capability to produce weapons of mass destruction.

He said Russia should not be threatened by Bush's plans to build a missile defense system and echoed the president's views on the Ariel Sharon election as Israel's prime minister.

``We respect the choice they made and will work with Sharon to take forward the peace process,'' Cook said.

-------- china

China's Qian plans early U.S. visit

February 7, 2001
Washington Times
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-200127212420.htm

BEIJING - China's top foreign-affairs official, Qian Qichen, will travel to the United States next month in the first visit by a senior Chinese official under the George W. Bush administration, diplomats said yesterday.

The visit by Vice Prime Minister Qian, a veteran who oversees China's policies toward Taiwan, was seen as a key gesture by China in maintaining continuity in bilateral ties after Mr. Bush moved into the White House last month.

Mr. Bush is not expected to meet his Chinese counterpart, Jiang Zemin, until October, when China hosts an informal summit of Asia Pacific leaders in Shanghai.

Hanging over bilateral ties, however, are a host of perennially thorny issues, including Taiwan and human rights, as well as U.S. plans to build an anti-missile shield in the face of strident opposition by China, Russia and others.

-------- korea

Powell Meets S. Korea Counterpart

February 7, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-US-Koreas.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration said Wednesday it supports South Korea's policy of reconciliation toward communist North Korea.

But only two weeks in office, the administration is still mulling its own policy toward Pyongyang, including exactly how to follow through on initiatives inherited from the Clinton administration.

Secretary of State Colin Powell and South Korean Foreign Minister Lee Joung-binn said following a meeting Wednesday that they had agreed to continue ``close coordination'' on their policies for the Stalinist state.

And Lee told reporters he had Powell's ``full support'' for Seoul's ``sunshine'' policy of engagement with the North, which won South Korean President Kim Dae-jung the Nobel Peace Prize.

Briefing reporters later, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the pair didn't talk in detail about how the new administration might proceed with its own policy toward the North -- specifically on the question of negotiations on Pyongyang's missile program.

The Clinton administration sought to conclude an agreement with North Korea on curbing that country's development and export of ballistic missiles. A hoped for Clinton trip to Pyongyang late in his term to conclude an agreement never came about because he ran out of time, but Clinton said he thought the Bush administration could finish the talks.

``What the secretary has said in his confirmation hearings was he was very mindful of the work that had been done and looked forward to moving forward from there,'' Boucher said Wednesday. ``And that's generally the tenor of our discussions here.

``But there was no specific discussion at this point (with Lee), nor announcements that I have to make about how and when and in exactly what format we intend to pursue that work,'' Boucher said.

The United States has worked in recent years to coordinate policy toward Pyongyang with Japanese and South Korean allies.

Powell had already met with his Japanese counterpart, so his meeting with Lee Wednesday was portrayed by State Department officials as another step in consultations needed before a Bush strategy is designed.

Powell said at his Senate confirmation hearing last month that the administration would move ahead ``without any sense of haste'' to establish normal relations with North Korea.

And he said: ``We are open to a continued process of engagement with the North, so long as it addresses political, economic and security concerns, is reciprocal and does not come at the expense of our alliance relationships.''

Seoul has said it was worried that while continuing to engage North Korea, the new U.S. administration might adopt a more demanding and conservative stance that could slow momentum on Seoul's efforts.

The joint statement from Powell and Lee said they were working to set up a meeting between Kim and President Bush as soon as possible.

Despite extensive negotiations, the United States and North Korea have failed to reach a deal on curbing Pyongyang's missile program, and North Korea is among seven countries on a U.S. list of nations that sponsor terrorism. In 1994, it froze its nuclear program in exchange for a deal under which a U.S.-led consortium agreed to build two nuclear reactors to ease energy shortages and to supply millions of tons of oil. Delays have plagued the project and, in addition, critics say a better system for verifying North Korea's compliance is needed.

They also want North Korea to curb its conventional threat, noting hundreds of thousands of troops and much of its artillery is deployed near the Demilitarized Zone at the border, forcing the United States to keep 37,000 troops in the South.

-------- russia

Putin Presses Diplomacy as the Best Defense

Wednesday, February 7, 2001
International Herald Tribune
New York Times Service
Patrick E. Tyler
http://www.iht.com/articles/9922.htm

MOSCOW President Vladimir Putin plans to play host to the presidents of North Korea and Iran in Moscow this spring, Russian officials say, as part of his campaign to demonstrate to Western leaders that diplomacy and arms control may go a long way toward eliminating the ballistic missile threat that is driving the Bush administration to develop an anti-missile system.

After a weekend in which senior Bush administration officials made a series of appearances on television and at a European security conference in Munich to reaffirm their intention to press forward with testing and deployment of an anti missile system, Russia responded Monday with a warning that it was prepared along with other nations - China presumably among them - to resort to an arms race to ensure that its own strategic deterrent force would not be weakened.

And Mr. Putin, by signaling his plans to meet the leaders of two of the three "rogue" nations that most concern Washington, is positioning Russia to play a constructive, if also self-interested, role in addressing the post-Cold War security issues on which the Bush administration has centered its national security strategy. At the same time, Mr. Putin is playing on the deep skepticism in Europe over Washington's determination to rearrange the strategic landscape.

The deployment of a missile shield would violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

Russia is promoting its own proposal to make further deep cuts in the nuclear arsenals while cooperating with Europe and the United States to develop regional missile defenses that could be brought to bear against threatening nations.

The Russian campaign will play out over several months in advance of the summit meeting of leaders from the largest industrial countries, who will convene in July in Genoa, where Mr. Bush will make a diplomatic debut.

President Mohammed Khatami of Iran is due in Moscow next month for discussions on trade and military cooperation.

Mr. Putin notified the Clinton administration last autumn that Russia would not adhere to a private agreement made with Al Gore when he was vice president to end conventional arms sales to Tehran, which is rebuilding its military in the face of a resurgent Iraq. But Iran's secretive ballistic missile program, which has received help from Russian scientists, and Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program are of greatest concern to Washington.

It is not yet clear how Mr. Putin might allay Washington's concerns about Iran's long-term intentions.

After Mr. Khatami's visit in March, the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, plans to arrive in Moscow in late April, diplomats have said. Mr. Putin made a surprise visit to the North Korean capital last summer and opened negotiations to persuade Mr. Kim to give up his quest to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile that could threaten Japan and the United States. Mr. Kim has offered to forgo further ballistic-missile development in return for Western assistance in launching civilian satellites.

It remains to be seen whether the negotiations will result in a concrete reduction of ballistic-missile threats. But speaking in Munich on Sunday, Mr. Putin's national security assistant, Sergei Ivanov, said: "Restraining the so-called rogue nations - to use the American terminology - may be carried out more effectively from the standpoint of both cost and effectiveness by means of a common political effort. The situation in North Korea is the obvious example, which a year ago seemed much worse than it does today."

Mr. Ivanov's remarks followed those on Saturday by the U.S. defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, who sought to allay European concerns by offering to help extend any anti-missile shield to Europe. Mr. Rumsfeld also pledged that the Bush administration would undertake extensive consultations with its allies and with Russia before taking any decision to pull out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which bans national missile defenses.

Though Mr. Rumsfeld seemed satisfied that he had given European leaders a reasoned set of arguments that the United States was seeking no advantage in pursuing missile defenses and that Washington was determined to be a master of its own security, a number of senior congressional Republicans worried aloud on the return flight to Washington that the United States had isolated itself while driving Europe and Russia closer together.

As Mr. Putin was preparing his diplomatic moves, the Russian defense minister, Igor Sergeyev, made a number of pointed comments Monday on the military implications of the Bush administration's planning.

Marshal Sergeyev, the former commander of Russia's strategic rocket forces labeled the American anti-missile proposal "son of 'star wars.'" Marshal Sergeyev also predicted, in remarks to the Swedish defense minister, Bjorn von Sydow, that the Bush administration would not be able to persuade most Western nations to abandon "the entire system of agreements which has led to strategic stability in the world" and to support American actions that would cause "those agreements to be scrapped."

Russia has asserted that if the United States withdraws from the 1972 treaty that bans nationwide anti-missile defenses, all of the strategic arms accords negotiated over the past 30 years would be invalid because they were based on the common principle of prohibiting an arms race in defensive weapons.

Marshal Sergeyev indicated that Russia in the meantime was making contingency plans to respond, not with a new missile buildup, which it cannot afford, but with "asymmetrical" technologies that would penetrate any missile shield.

"We had three mighty programs to asymmetrically counteract the national missile defense systems of the United States during the period of Reagan's 'star wars,'" the Russian defense minister said.

"A lot of money was invested in those programs," he told the Interfax news agency, before they were abandoned at the end of the Cold War, "but we still have them and can take them up again."

Though U.S. officials have repeatedly asserted that an anti-missile of 100 interceptors would not be initially directed at or effective against Russia's large arsenal of 3,000 or more strategic delivery systems, the Russian military establishment continues to express doubt that any American anti-missile shield would remain a limited system.

But Konstantin Cherevkov, a senior missile scientist at the Russian Space Academy, said last week in a newspaper commentary that "Russia considers the American position deceptive."

"There is reason to believe that the fielding of national anti-ballistic missile infrastructure would allow for a subsequent increase in its capabilities, to a level that would fully block our retaliatory capability," Mr. Cherevkov said.

--------

Russia ready for arms race over missiles

Wednesday 7 February 2001
The Age
By PATRICK TYLER
http://www.theage.com.au/news/2001/02/07/FFXL2EFGUIC.html

Two days after US officials told their European counterparts that the United States intends to push ahead with the development of a national missile shield - but only after extensive consultations - Russia responded yesterday with a warning that it would resort to a new arms race to insure its strategic rocket forces will not be undermined.

At the same time, President Vladimir Putin was said to be preparing a diplomatic offensive to meet the leaders of two of the so-called rogue nations whose ballistic missiles are of most concern to the US.

President Mohammad Khatami of Iran is expected here next month for discussions on trade and military cooperation. Diplomats here and in Teheran said the leaders would discuss ways to control the spread of ballistic missile technology.

The US has long expressed concerns about Russian assistance to Iran's ballistic missile program.

Then, in late April, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il is expected to come to Moscow. Mr Putin made a surprise visit to the North Korean capital last year and opened negotiations to persuade Mr Kim to give up his quest to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile that could threaten Japan and the US.

Mr Kim has offered to forgo further ballistic missile development in return for Western assistance in launching civilian satellites, but these statements have yet to be set down in a binding accord.

As Mr Putin was preparing his diplomatic moves, Defence Minister Igor Sergeyev said Russia was making plans to respond to the Bush administration's anti-missile plans. He said Russia was not planning a new missile buildup, which it cannot afford, but "asymmetrical" technologies that would penetrate any missile shield.

"We had three mighty programs to counteract asymmetrically the national missile defence systems of the United States during the period of Reagan's Star Wars," he said. "A lot of money was invested in those programs" before they were abandoned at the end of the Cold War, he told the Interfax news agency.

"But we still have them," he said, "and can take them up again."

Mr Sergeyev, the former commander of Russia's strategic rocket forces, labelled the US anti-missile proposal "son of Star Wars" and predicted that the Bush administration would not be able to persuade its allies to abandon "the entire system of agreements, which has led to strategic stability in the world" and support US actions that would cause "those agreements to be scrapped."

The Defence Minister's statements and Mr Putin's diplomacy were another effort to play on the deep scepticism that already exists in Europe over the US determination to rearrange the strategic landscape.

A US national missile shield would violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which the Bush administration wants to amend and which Moscow now calls the "cornerstone of strategic stability".

Russia is promoting its own proposal to make further deep cuts in the nuclear arsenals, while cooperating with Europe and the US to develop regional missile defences that could be brought to bear against threatening states.

NATO Secretary-General, Lord George Robertson, has expressed concerns about the European Union's plans to set up its own 60,000-strong rapid reaction force, describing the project as "very complex and full of risks". - NEW YORK TIMES, TELEGRAPH

-------- taiwan

Asian Stock Markets Close Mixed

February 7, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Asian-Markets.html

HONG KONG (AP) -- Asian stocks were mixed Wednesday, with Tokyo and Hong Kong prices higher but most smaller markets falling.

Tokyo shares snapped a four-day losing streak as investors big and small sought bargains.

The benchmark 225-issue Nikkei Stock Average gained 96.16 points, or 0.72 percent, to close at 13,366.01. On Tuesday, the average finished down 115.67 points, or 0.86 percent.

In Hong Kong, shares ended higher in a session that saw few incentives for investors beyond the trading debut of a mainland airline ticketing company that surged by 16 percent.

Hong Kong trading generally lacked direction.

``It's a tug of war between bulls and bears,'' said Ben Kwong, associate director at KGI Asia.

The blue-chip Hang Seng Index ended up 136.23 points, or 0.86 percent, at 16,049.47. On Tuesday, the Hang Seng rose 82.40 points, or 0.5 percent.

In currency trading, the U.S. dollar rose against the Japanese yen. The dollar bought 115.24 yen in late trading, up 0.36 yen from late Tuesday in Tokyo and also above its late Tuesday level of 114.75 yen in New York.

Elsewhere:

TAIPEI: Shares ended 2.7 percent lower on a gloomy earnings outlook for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and continued political infighting over a nuclear power plant. The Weighted Price Index of the Taiwan Stock Exchange closed down 155.48 points at 5,693.58.

MANILA: Philippine shares finished lower amid a lack of fresh buying incentives. The 30-company Philippine Stock Exchange Index ended down 4.98 points, or 0.3 percent, at 1,659.25.

WELLINGTON: New Zealand shares ended generally higher. The benchmark NZSE-40 capital index was at 1,988.01, up 0.94 points, or 0.05 percent.

SYDNEY: Australian shares closed slightly lower. The All Ordinaries Index fell 0.4 percent, or 13.5 points, to 3,262.8.

SEOUL: South Korean shares closed lower. The Korea Composite Stock Price Index closed down 1.8 percent, or 10.39, to 576.19.

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian prices finished lower. The Composite Index lost 3.71 points, or 0.5 percent, to close at 729.10.

SINGAPORE: The Straits Times Index fell 5.12 points, or 0.26 percent, to 1,942.65.

JAKARTA: Indonesian shares ended lower as violence erupted at demonstrations by supporters of President Abdurrahman Wahid in the country's second largest city. The JSX Composite index ended down 1.3 percent, or 5.777 points, at 444.333.

BANGKOK: Thai shares closed higher Wednesday on bargain-hunting in banking and finance stocks. The Stock Exchange of Thailand's SET index ended up 4.35 points, or 1.4 percent, at 327.51.

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

Missile Defense Test Planned

February 7, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Missile-Defense.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A Bush administration offer to help European allies field their own defense against missile attack reflects ideas in a little-noticed report outlining ways to overcome skepticism abroad over U.S. missile defense plans.

The policy paper, published last September by the private Atlantic Council of the United States, was co-authored by Stephen Cambone, now a close adviser to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, and Stephen J. Hadley, the deputy national security adviser to President Bush.

Most European allies, and Canada as well, have expressed reservations about a U.S. national missile defense, in part because it could mean the demise of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, which Rumsfeld considers outmoded but which the Europeans see as a cornerstone of global security.

At a European security conference last Saturday in Germany, Rumsfeld sought to ease European concerns about U.S. national missile defense. He said the administration is prepared to ``assist friends and allies threatened by missile attack to deploy such defenses.'' He did not elaborate.

In the Atlantic Council report, Cambone and Hadley said interviews with a broad range of European officials made clear ``there is a growing recognition'' that as the threat of ballistic missiles spreads this decade ``the case for a more robust missile defense capability of Europe will become more compelling.''

Europeans doubt, however, that the United States is willing to exchange enough missile defense technology with European governments to enable them to build a defensive shield of their own, the report said.

In an assessment that Rumsfeld apparently shares, the report said that while the Europeans see ballistic missiles as less of an immediate threat to the United States and to Europe than the Americans do, ``the dynamic is towards a narrowing of that gap and towards a greater similarity of views'' on missile defense.

It recommended a fuller and deeper consultation with the Europeans on missile defense -- exactly the approach Rumsfeld and the Bush administration are taking. Secretary of State Colin Powell, for example, discussed the matter Tuesday with British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook. Rumsfeld last week consulted with many European officials, including his Italian, French, British and German counterparts, last Saturday.

Cambone, the report's principal author, has been a behind-the-scenes adviser to Rumsfeld since he took office Jan. 20. Last year, Cambone headed the staff of an advisory commission on U.S. national security interests in space, and in 1998 he held the same role on a commission that assessed ballistic missile threats to the United States. Rumsfeld was chairman of both commissions.

Bush's national security team has not yet decided what kind of missile defense to pursue, although the Pentagon office in charge of the project is preparing to test a critical new component as early as next month.

The Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization also is planning another attempt to shoot down a mock nuclear missile in space, probably in May or June, using the same technologies that produced a spectacular failure last July, officials said Tuesday. Two of the last three attempted missile intercepts failed.

Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. Craig Quigley said Rumsfeld has met three times with Ronald Kadish, the Air Force general who runs the missile defense office. Rumsfeld gave Kadish no indication he should change direction.

``His guidance to General Kadish is, `press on,''' Quigley said.

Among the administration's options are to supplement a ground-based missile defense system -- as is currently in testing -- with a sea-based system which could provide wider coverage but will take longer to deploy. The ground-based system, as foreseen by the Clinton administration, would protect all 50 U.S. states against a small-scale attack by missiles with relatively unsophisticated decoys.

Kadish's office is preparing for the first flight test of a prototype for the rocket boosters that would be based in Alaska and would carry aloft the warhead-busting ``kill vehicle,'' which is designed to find its missile target in space and destroy the target by slamming into it at high speed.

Up to now the Pentagon has been using an older booster as a stand-in for the one being developed by Alliant Techsystems and Orbus.

---

Raytheon: May Miss 2002 Earnings Forecast

February 7, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/business-arms-raytheo.html

BOSTON (Reuters) - Raytheon Co., (RTNa.N) (RTNb.N) the No. 3 U.S. defense contractor, said on Wednesday its 2002 earnings could fall as much as 12 percent below current Wall Street estimates, prompting a sell-off of the company's stock.

The No. 1 U.S. missile maker also forecast slight declines this year in operating income and revenue at its key defense electronics systems unit.

This despite Raytheon Chairman Daniel Burnham telling reporters, ``I think it is highly likely, if not certain, that there will be an increase in defense spending ... An increase in the procurement and R&D (research and development) accounts that are so important to us and to other contractors.''

The maker of the Patriot missile said it expects to earn $1.70 to $1.85 a share next year. The executives gave their first financial forecast for 2002 during a Web broadcast.

About half of the 13 analysts who follow Raytheon had expected earnings of $1.94 per share in 2002, according to the research firm First Call/Thomson Financial.

Raytheon's Class A stock fell $1.66, or 4.72 percent, to end Wednesday at $33.50 in New York Stock Exchange trade, while its Class B stock slid $1.58, or 4.46 percent, to close at $33.81.

Burnham affirmed the company's guidance in December for 2001 earnings of $1.55 to $1.70 per share.

Lexington, Mass-based Raytheon estimated it would generate operating income of $1.72 billion in 2001, compared with $1.62 billion last year. Its revenue is expected to rise to $17.8 billion from $16.9 billion last year.

``The earnings guidance was unexpected,'' Deutshe Banc Alex, Brown analyst Christopher Mecray said. ``I think the overall communication was that they were not intending to downgrade the guidance ... I regard it as overly conservative.''

With earnings growing faster than revenue, Raytheon expected to reduce its net debt to $8.7 billion by the end of 2001 from about $9.1 billion at the end of December.

Burnham and Chief Financial Officer Frank Caine estimated that by the end of 2002 the debt load, which the company took on by acquiring Texas Instruments and Hughes Electronics several years ago, should be down to between $8.0 billion and $8.2 billion.

The goal is to reduce Raytheon's debt ratio to less than 40 percent of capital in 2003, they said.

DIVESTITURES

Raytheon said it will continue to divest noncore businesses, after selling off its engineering and construction unit to Morrison Knudsen, which has been renamed Washington Group International (WNG.N), and its flight simulation and training business to L-3 Communications Holdings Inc. (LLL.N). It also sold $800 million of aircraft loans and leases to debis Capital Services, a unit of DaimlerChrysler AG (DCXGn.DE)(DCX.N), in the past year.

Raytheon expects to book about $250 million from additional sales during 2001, including last month's sale of its recreational marine unit for $108 million. Caine said the company will use proceeds from the sales to pay investor dividends this year.

One of Raytheon's ``imperatives'' is to get final U.S. Federal Aviation and Administration certification for its Premier I business jet by the end of the second quarter. The plane is more than a year behind schedule.

Raytheon said it is also working through some $676 million worth of old defense contracts that are in the cash consuming stage but that Caine said would become ``growth programs.''

C3I, which books surveillance and intelligence contracts, will help Raytheon achieve growth in its total defense revenue of 5 percent in 2001,

``It's the first year of higher defense growth for us in many, many years,'' Burnham told reporters.

The company said the U.S. National Missile Defense program has the potential to generate $5.3 billion in revenue over a five-year span.

JSA Research Inc. analyst Paul Nisbet said Raytheon ''certainly has a better handle on what they're doing now than they had in the past...There were no real surprises.''

---

Celebrating the Birthday and Legacy of Reagan

February 7, 2001
New York Times
By PHILIP SHENON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/07/politics/07REAG.html?pagewanted=all

WASHINGTON, Feb. 6 - It sometimes seems as if he never left.

On the 90th birthday of Ronald Wilson Reagan, the capital he departed a dozen years ago is awash in debate over policies at the center of his presidency, from tax cuts to a missile defense shield, from free trade to the privatization of Social Security.

Mr. Reagan, his memories of Washington dimmed if not destroyed by Alzheimer's disease, was reported to have spent his birthday quietly at his home in Los Angeles, where he is recovering from a broken hip he suffered last month. "He's not in pain," Nancy Reagan said in an interview broadcast today on CNN. "He heals very quickly."

But on the opposite side of the continent, in the city that was both home to the movement known as the Reagan Revolution and to the government bureaucracy it sought to dismantle, memories of the 40th president were as vivid today as ever.

Among the army of Reagan supporters and the legions of his critics who still populate Washington, there was agreement that ideas championed by the movie-star-turned-governor-turned-president still dominate the political landscape, especially with Republicans in control of both the White House and the Congress.

"Very few things that were said during the last campaign by George W. Bush could not have been said by Ronald Reagan," said Martin Anderson, who was Mr. Reagan's domestic and economic policy adviser in 1981 and 1982 and was a campaign adviser to Mr. Bush.

'`If you look at rebuilding the military or missile defense - that's Reagan," he said. "If you look at Social Security and using some of the tax payments to invest in the private market - that's Reagan. If you look at educational vouchers - that's Reagan. If you look at tax policy and cutting marginal tax rates - that's Reagan."

Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, Mr. Reagan's United Nations delegate and now a professor of government at Georgetown University, said Mr. Reagan - along with Mikhail S. Gorbachev and Boris N. Yeltsin - deserved credit for ending the cold war. She rejected the argument often made by Democrats that the collapse of the Soviet Union had been inevitable, and that Mr. Reagan simply accelerated the process.

"I don't imagine that Ronald Reagan singlehandedly ended the cold war, no such thing, but I think his contributions were absolutely critical," she said, singling out his deployment of medium-range nuclear missiles in Europe and his advocacy of an antimissile shield.

Another politician who arrived in Washington along with Mr. Reagan in January 1981, Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, said the former president's legacy was found not in the long economic boom of recent years or the end of the cold war, but in the nation's continuing struggle with urban poverty, homelessness and AIDS.

"He got the government out of the business of helping people with housing, and today we have an exacerbated housing crisis because of it" Mr. Frank said. "He was terrible on race, he was terrible on gay issues, he ignored AIDS. He may personally have been a very nice man, but the policies - to the extent that they had an effect - were disastrous for vulnerable people."

And like many prominent economists, Mr. Frank said the Reagan legacy would forever be tarnished by the government deficits he piled up as a result of his tax cuts and military buildup. The total federal debt owed to the public rose during the eight years of his presidency from $712 billion to more than $2 trillion - debt that is still being paid off.

Mr. Frank was not invited to tonight's birthday celebration in Washington, which was being held at the gargantuan federal building along Pennsylvania Avenue named for Mr. Reagan.

The Reagan Alumni Association, a group of nearly 5,000 dues-paying veterans of the Reagan administration and his presidential campaigns, sponsors the event every year, and the $90-a-ticket, 90th birthday party was expected to be the biggest yet.

The guest list included newly appointed senior officials of the Bush administration, many of whom came to Washington 20 years ago because of Mr. Reagan. Some admitted they can sound a bit like cult members when they discuss the former president. More than a few have named children after him.

Grover Norquist, a conservative activist who helped lead the successful campaign to rename Washington National airport for Mr. Reagan, will probably recruit at the party for his next crusade: replacing Alexander Hamilton with Mr. Reagan on the $10 bill. "Hamilton was a great American, but it's time to move on," Mr. Norquist said.

Reagan Dunn, who recently arrived here from his native Washington State to take a job as a lawyer- adviser in the public affairs office of the Justice Department, is the 29- year-old son of Representative Jennifer Dunn, a Washington Republican and Reagan supporter from the early days of his political career.

Mr. Dunn was given the name to honor Mr. Reagan when he was still governor of California. "I wear it with great pride," Mr. Dunn said, adding that he saw many similarities between his namesake and the newest occupant of the White House. "George Bush has the same quality of integrity," he said.

President Bush - the son of Mr. Reagan's vice president and a man often compared to Mr. Reagan because of their shared policy goals, folksy disposition and occasional difficulty with extemporaneous speech - said in a statement that Mr. Reagan "changed the world." "You came to the White House when the cold war was real," Mr. Bush said, reading the statement on CNN. "You came here at a time when our country needed confidence. You told us we could be strong again, at home and abroad. And when you left, we were."

---

Bush Won't Seek Defense Increases

February 7, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Defense-Spending.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush will propose no immediate major increase in the Pentagon budget but probably will seek more money before the fall, after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld completes reviews of the services, administration officials said Wednesday.

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said Bush has no immediate plan to add to the defense budget for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30 but ``has not ruled out'' adding to it a little later.

Fleischer indicated the president plans to seek at least $1 billion more in the fiscal 2002 budget to cover promised military pay raises. He said that budget, which begins Oct. 1, otherwise will be essentially unchanged from the $310 billion place-holder budget the Clinton administration left.

A senior defense official said, however, that Rumsfeld foresees the administration asking Congress late this year to amend the 2002 budget proposal that will be submitted by early March.

The amendment, to seek additional funds, will be based on early results of several reviews Rumsfeld has undertaken to assess the Pentagon's weapons requirements, financial management and other issues. Among other important issues under study by Rumsfeld is national missile defense, which could require tens of billions of extra dollars in the next several years depending on the kind of system pursued.

The military services had been hoping the Bush administration, which made military readiness a major campaign issue, would come into office and quickly add several billion to the current and 2002 budgets.

Fleischer said, however, that by not seeking an immediate infusion into the Pentagon, Bush ``has sent a signal of fiscal discipline, that there will be no immediate supplemental'' 2001 budget.

The senior defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Rumsfeld has told Bush that while he foresees a money pinch in the weeks ahead, he is not yet certain whether a 2001 supplemental will be necessary.

``He told him, `There are some bills that will be coming due over the course of the summer that I don't know how I will pay,''' the official said. But Rumsfeld said he needs more time to figure out whether to seek a 2001 supplemental.

That is separate from questions about military spending for the 2002 budget year and beyond. Fleischer referred reporters to Bush's pledge during the campaign to increase defense spending by $45 billion over 10 years. But Fleischer did not say how that sum would be apportioned over the 10 years.

The spokesman said Bush would fulfill his campaign promise to add $1 billion to the military pay raise contained in the Clinton administration's place-holder 2002 budget. He also said Bush would add money for military housing improvements.

Beyond that, ``the existing budgets will be in place,'' Fleischer said, until Rumsfeld completes his reviews. Rumsfeld is assessing not only Pentagon programs but also the national security strategy that will form the underpinning of decisions about the military's future budgetary needs.

In remarks on Jan. 8, Bush referred to the need to do a Pentagon review before setting new budgets.

``First and foremost, our job is to make sure that we have a plan and a vision, and then the budget will follow,'' he said. ``And it's a plan and a vision that will actually reflect the threats that the country faces in the 21st century.''

---

Serious about missile defense

February 7, 2001
Helle Bering
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-column-20012720847.htm

With impeccable timing, the Bush administration launched the issue of national missile defense the very same week Ronald Reagan was in the news again, celebrating his 90th birthday.

It is surely not too much to say that were Mr. Reagan aware of the determination with which the new Republican administration is moving forward with this difficult and controversial issue, he would be very proud. In the 1980s, it was his own Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which finally convinced the Soviet leadership that they would never catch up with U.S. technological superiority, this by the account of no less than Mikhail Gorbachev himself.

Over the weekend, it fell to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, at the Munich Conference on International Security, to inform our European allies that the United States means business when it comes to missile defense, just as Mr. Reagan informed the Russians at Reykjavik. "The United States intends to develop and deploy a missile defense designed to defend our people and our forces against a limited missile attack," Mr. Rumsfeld said. Pointedly omitting the word "national" - usually part of the concept of "national missile defense" (NMD) - he also said that the United States "is prepared to assist friends and allies threatened by missile attack to deploy such forces."

And guess what happened? The sky didn't fall. Despite predictions that NMD would cause a fatal rift within NATO and cause the Russians to go ballistic (one way or the other), reality had a sobering and so far salutary effect, as it often has. By now, Americans are overwhelmingly convinced that in an unpredictable and well-armed world, a national missile shield is a reasonable idea. Our allies might yet come around, too.

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, also speaking in Munich, put the issue in stark terms. "Total vulnerability should not be the price the United States is asked to pay" for transatlantic solidarity, he said. Indeed. Mr. Kissinger also reminded his European audience that the deployment of defensive technologies is a far saner approach than the strategy of mutually assured destruction, a superpower-suicide pact, enshrined in the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty and said to have kept the peace throughout the Cold War.

Echoing Mr. Rumsfeld's argument that building a missile defense is a "moral issue" for the president, Mr. Kissinger remarked that no U.S. president today can allow a situation in which "extinction of civilized life is one's only strategy" when faced with a small nuclear attack from a rogue nation. (Or no president except Bill Clinton, one might ad, for that was precisely the status quo he allowed to exist during the eight years of his presidency.

It even appears that Europeans are reluctantly coming on board, as the Bush team always predicted they would when faced with the firm determination by the Americans to proceed. At the Munich Conference on International Security, realists were talking about possible tradeoffs such as American support for the planned European rapid reaction force, in return for European support on NMD.

It is also a fact that opinions in Europe have been fragmenting for some time. The British Conservatives, whose foreign policy spokesman Ian Duncan Smith will be discussing the subject in Washington next week, are in favor of NMD, as are conservatives elsewhere on the continent. One high-ranking European diplomat in Washington even suggested recently that the problem with national missile defense may be mainly semantic. If the name were nuclear missile defense, the concept might be more palatable, he suggested.

Particularly interesting has been the reaction of NATO Secretary General George Robertson, who suddenly has become a convert to NMD, provided it is done within a NATO context. Mr. Robertson even admitted there is a missile threat, so far unacknowledged by Europeans, that needs to be dealt with. His predecessor, Javier Solana, amazingly admitted that the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty "is not the Bible." Well. What a difference an election makes.

Meanwhile, Russia is taking its own precautions, evidently realizing that the Americans are serious. This week, Moscow announced that Russian President Vladimir Putin in the spring will meet with the leaders of North Korea and Iran - such lovely friends the Russians have. The idea allegedly is for the Russians to demonstrate their diplomatic influence with these countries to downgrade their missile programs, which is a bit of a hoot of course. Alternatively, Mr. Putin has hinted that some nations will have to revise their procurement programs in order for their missile force not to become obsolete. That would be Russia and China. However, you look at it, the Russians appear a good deal more frantic than they did six months ago when they were able to bully President Clinton into suspending his modest NMD program.

While U.S. national missile defense may not change the balance of power in the same way Ronald Reagan's SDI did, the reaction of friends and foes abroad leaves no doubt that NMD will be a strategic milestone. Imagine a world in which ballistic missiles are obsolete. Doesn't sound so bad does it?

E-mail: hbering@washingtontimes.com.

Helle Bering is editorial page editor of The Washington Times. Her column appears on Wednesdays.

--------

ABM may get bombed

February 7, 2001
Excite News
Michael J. Harrison Badger Herald U. Wisconsin
http://news.excite.com/news/uw/010208/university-7

(U-WIRE) MADISON, Wis. -- Although many Madison residents remain blissfully unaware, our city is currently threatened by no less than 14 different types of nuclear missiles capable of being launched by Russia, North Korea and China. According to the Coalition to Protect Americans Now, a Web site that allows users to determine nuclear attack vulnerability by simply typing in a ZIP code, Madison could be facing nuclear winter as early as tomorrow.

In truth, Madison, or any other U.S. city, is as likely to face a nuclear attack from one of those nations tomorrow as it is to face a conventional attack at the hands of its closest enemy, the Minnesota National Guard.

As organizations like the Coalition to Protect Americans Now continue to contribute to the fervor surrounding national missile defense, newly appointed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is doing his best to ruffle the feathers of nuclear adversaries, old and new. According to Rumsfeld, deploying NMD, a blatant violation of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, should be welcomed as a new era in nuclear security.

Asked about the importance of the ABM treaty, Rumsfeld told reporters: "That is really Cold War thinking in my view. ... The Soviet Union is gone. Russia is a different country. That period is over in our life; why don't we get over it?"

Let's analyze Rumsfeld's statements:

"Cold War thinking": Brilliant strategy of negotiation, collective security and deterrence that has kept the world's two nuclear superpowers from blowing the hell out of each other since 1945, the last time a nuclear weapon was used offensively. Rumsfeld should know and understand the important role the ABM treaty plays in nuclear politics: He was a counselor to President Nixon when the treaty was signed.

"The Soviet Union is gone": This is true. I cannot by any means argue with it.

"Russia is a different country": I disagree. Russia is the same country that was the largest and most influential member of the Soviet Union. Russia still controls the world's second-largest nuclear arsenal, next to that of the United States. Russia has only been non-communist for 10 years, and as recently as March 26, communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov received 29.2 percent of the Russian vote for president. Russia is struggling to adapt to capitalism and democracy, and the absolute last thing the United States should do is anything Russia sees as a threat.

"That period is over in our life": This statement is somewhat true -- one of those half-truths politicians say to appease their constituents. Rumsfeld should run for office. "That period" -- the Cold War -- lasted nearly half a century, and was pronounced "over" only 10 years ago. "That period" -- the nuclear era -- is still very much upon us. Ask the Coalition to Protect Americans Now.

"Why don't we get over it?": I, Mr. Rumsfeld, will tell you, along with President Bush, senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman, former Vice President Al Gore and former President Clinton, exactly why we don't ... can't ... shouldn't get over it: What kept the Cold War from culminating in the destruction of mankind were agreements like the ABM treaty that set rules for nuclear security.

The world as it existed between the end of World War II and the 1972 adoption of that treaty saw the Korean War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War and an unprecedented buildup of tactical nuclear weapons capable of inflicting immeasurable civilian casualties. Yes, the bulk of the arms race occurred during the 1980s, when President Reagan spent the Soviet Union into oblivion while racking up billions of dollars in debt that still hasn't been repaid.

Once the ABM treaty was in place, however, it became obvious that the only way to stave off a nuclear attack was to provide a credible threat of second-strike capability -- something the United States has been able to do to this day.

Following Rumsfeld's comments in Munich regarding NMD, Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Ivanov demonstrated strong concerns on the part of the Russians of a U.S. violation of the ABM treaty.

"... (T)he destruction of the ABM treaty, we are quite confident, will result in the annihilation of the whole structure of strategic stability and create prerequisites for a new arms race -- including one in space," Ivanov said.

I won't take the time to analyze Ivanov's statement; I'll only point out that one word he used scares the ever-loving bejesus out of me. That word is "annihilation." Not a pretty word, whether you're talking about the disappearance of a pizza at the hands of a crew of drunken frat boys, the end of a proven system of nuclear stability or the loss of millions of people to an unprovoked nuclear first strike.

I'm not saying we should fear the Russians. There is really no doubt in my mind that the Bush administration, along with many other supporters of NMD, are in it for the money. While the United States outspent the Soviet Union, we enjoyed a period of economic prosperity (even though we were heading further and further into debt) rivaled only by the 1920s.

Nearly every dime we spent went to government defense contractors, as will nearly every dime of the estimated $60 billion NMD will cost to deploy. If the Russians want another arms race, Rumsfeld and Bush are ready to give it to them, and defense contractors like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Boeing will return to receiving billions in government cash as they did during the height of the arms race.

What frightens me most is not Rumsfeld's brash disregard for U.S. and global policies that kept the Cold War from turning hot. Nor is it Ivanov's carefully chosen phrase, "the annihilation of the whole structure of strategic stability." What frightens me most is that if the United States deploys NMD, it will be putting millions of lives in the hands of technology that is questionable at best. So, to the Coalition to Protect Americans Now, take heart. Rumsfeld and the Bush administration may make your fears of nuclear attack very real very soon.

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

USEC says government may owe it for tainted uranium inventory

Wednesday, February 7, 2001
ohio.com
http://www.ohio.com/bj/news/ohio/docs/026321.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The company running the nation's two uranium enrichment plants wants the government to replace any contaminated uranium inherited in a 1998 transfer of operations.

The U.S. Enrichment Corp. was given government uranium inventories as part of the deal to privatize the nation's uranium enrichment operations. The two plants are in Piketon, Ohio, and Paducah, Ky.

The company notified the Energy Department in December that testing on ``limited samples'' of that uranium found some contamination with radioactive technetium.

How much of the uranium may be tainted is still to be determined, but the amount could be more than 24 million pounds, a third of the 74 million pounds of raw uranium the government turned over in 1998.

``USEC expects DOE to replace any non-conforming material once the testing program is concluded,'' the company said in a written statement.

The government intends to work with USEC to determine how much of its inherited uranium inventory is contaminated, the Energy Department said Wednesday.

DOE spokeswoman Lisa Cutler said she could not address questions of whether the government would be required to reimburse USEC for tainted uranium.

``We just don't know the scope of it at this point,'' she said.

The uranium enrichment plants were created to produce uranium for nuclear bombs and now produce fuel for nuclear power plants.

USEC intends to cease operations in Ohio in June, to cut costs.

---

GOP Senators to pitch energy bill

2/7/2001
InfoBeat News
http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=9a56mouu3ct50

WASHINGTON (AP) - Republican energy legislation to be introduced next week will focus on boosting clean coal technology, revitalizing the nuclear industry and finding new sources of oil and natural gas including drilling in an Arctic wildlife refuge, according to a draft of the bill.

Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, chairman of the committee that will take up the legislation, discussed the measure during an hour-long meeting Tuesday with Vice President Dick Cheney, who heads a presidential task force on energy. Murkowski said the meeting "revolved around the realization that we have an energy crisis in this country" and that ways must be found to produce more energy and rely less on oil imports.

The legislation will outline a goal of cutting foreign oil imports from the current 56% to 50% by 2010, said Murkowski. It would require an annual report to Congress on progress toward meeting the goal.

The Republican bill, parts of which will be met with stiff resistance from Democrats, is likely to be merged with a broad energy plan being developed at the White House.

Cheney told senators that plan is expected to be completed in 45 to 60 days.

But it is clear congressional Republicans and the White House are moving along parallel lines on the energy package, its importance magnified in recent weeks by the electricity supply problems in California and soaring natural gas prices nationwide.

While the GOP legislation will include some measures aimed at boosting renewable energy sources and energy conservation its focus will be on boosting energy production.

"It's a blank check to the oil, gas and nuclear industry," said Erich Pica, an economic policy analyst for Friends of the Earth

Among the bill's most controversial provisions will be opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas development.

Most Democrats and a handful of moderate Republicans oppose drilling in the Alaska refuge which is viewed by environmentalists as a national treasure needing protection.

President Bush has repeatedly called for developing the reserve's oil and gas resources, maintaining it can be done while protecting the environment.

-------- MILITARY

Powell: China poses no danger in canal

February 7, 2001
Washington Times
By Bill Gertz
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-200127222827.htm

Secretary of State Colin Powell said yesterday he is not concerned about China's influence in the Panama Canal but warned Colombia's president to be cautious about inviting Chinese agricultural assistance.

"The Chinese presence in the Panama Canal has been written about and spoken of, but it isn't . . . I have not found that the so-called 'presence' in the form of shipping companies and the like have created any danger to the Panamanian people, the Panamanian government, or to the canal itself," Mr. Powell said at a press conference.

Mr. Powell added: "Our interests are served. . . . I don't see anything that should cause me any great distress."

The secretary of state was asked about a recent visit to Beijing by a senior Colombian government official who was seeking Chinese assistance in agricultural development aid for northeastern Colombia. Mr. Powell said he was unaware of the request.

Mr. Powell offered this advice to Colombia's president: "President [Andres] Pastrana is free to seek advice where he finds it most useful. One always has to be careful that you're getting the advice you sought and nothing more, and I'm sure he will be careful."

He spoke to reporters following a meeting with British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook.

Concerns about Chinese influence in Panama were raised by the leasing of two ports near both ends of the canal by a Hong Kong-based conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa in 1997.

The company's chairman, Li Ka-Shing, has close ties to the Chinese government, according to declassified U.S. military intelligence documents.

A 1998 Army intelligence report stated that Mr. Li "is planning to take control of Panama Canal operations when the U.S. transfers it to Panama in Dec. 99."

"Li is directly connected to Beijing and is willing to use his business influence to further the aims of the Chinese government," one of the documents stated.

A U.S. Southern Command intelligence report from October 1999 called the leases of Balboa and Cristobal by Panama Ports Co., a subsidiary of Hutchison Whampoa, "a potential threat."

The Southern Command report stated that China is not likely to sabotage the Panama Canal but could use the port facilities as "a conduit for illegal shipments of technology" to China, or to "facilitate the movement of arms and other prohibited items into the Americas."

Pentagon officials have said China could use its access to the ports to disrupt shipping if a conflict erupts between China and Taiwan, and the U.S. military was called in to defend the island.

Organized Chinese crime groups are also using Panama as a base for the smuggling of narcotics, illegal aliens and arms, according to a U.S. Customs Service intelligence report.

China also has increased military ties with Cuba and has begun developing closer relations with the leftist government of Venezuela.

The issue of Chinese influence in Panama was raised in an August 1999 letter from Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott to the Pentagon. Mr. Lott, Mississippi Republican, stated that it appears that "we have given away the farm without a shot being fired."

The Pentagon dismissed his concerns about China's access to the strategic waterway and said there are no U.S. national security interests threatened by Hutchison Whampoa's ports. Other ports in Panama are operated by U.S. and Taiwanese companies.

-------- arms sales

Argentina Won't Compete in Arms Race

Wednesday, February 7, 2001
By Nora Boustany
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36500-2001Feb7?language=printer

Argentina isn't interested in a Top Gun arms race with Chile, Argentine Foreign Minister Adalberto Rodriguez Giavarini said yesterday. His country won't try to buy F-16C/D jets from Lockheed Martin Corp. even if a proposed $600 million sale of the planes to Chile goes through.

"We don't want to spend money we need for social welfare and better macroeconomic figures on such military gadgets," he told Washington Post reporters and editors.

South America's Mercosur trade zone and a free-trade agreement that is being negotiated for all of the Americas are "the civilized way of maintaining peace in the region," he said. But, being a diplomat, he pointed out that his opinion was "not a comment on the attitudes" or point of view of Chile.

"Balance has to do not only with guns, but with the transcendence of democratic institutions, the rule of law and an independent judiciary. We believe an arms race is really a bad thing. . . . We have learned that lesson in the worst possible way," Rodriguez said, alluding to Argentina's past military rule. Chile says the purchase of the jets, top-of-the-line F-16s, would be a routine modernization of aging equipment. If the deal goes through, it would effectively end a ban of more than two decades on the sale of sophisticated U.S. weaponry in Latin America.

In a letter to President Bush yesterday, nine Democratic senators raised concerns about the sale, noting that Chilean authorities were requesting such things as AMRAAM air-to-air missiles and the LANTIRN navigation system. Signing were Christopher J. Dodd (Conn.), Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.), Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), Edward M. Kennedy (Mass.), Paul S. Sarbanes (Md.), John F. Kerry (Mass.), Barbara Boxer (Calif.), Russell Feingold (Wis.) and Paul D. Wellstone (Minn).

"While we do not oppose providing our ally with safe, reliable aircraft for its defense, we believe the level of technology being discussed in this instance is unnecessary and potentially destabilizing," the senators wrote, urging instead the sale of "dependable, used F-16s to Chile while barring the transfer of power-projection technologies." There was no military threat, the letter noted, contending that the introduction of such technologies may "unnecessarily alarm neighboring nations."

John O'Leary, U.S. ambassador to Chile, said last month that the United States could not deliver such weapons as AMRAAM missiles to Chile until neighbors such as Peru and Argentina had similar firepower. It has since been reported that Chile has also been talking to Israel about obtaining advanced missiles and to Lockheed Martin about configuring the new aircraft to carry them.

Mine Clearing May Be Women's Work

Speaking of military gadgets new and old, did you know that in Kosovo 100 women are removing land mines as technicians for the Slovenian-founded International Trust Fund for Demining and Mine Victims Assistance?

"We are all surprised -- they are better, more careful, more disciplined and willing to follow the rules than the men," said ITF Director Jernej Cimpersek. Many locals, including former soldiers and fighters, have been recruited in the Balkans to clear the region of mines.

Cimpersek is in town with ITF Chairman Vojislav Suc to help raise the last $3 million of a $28 million pledge from the United States. Those funds will match an equivalent sum being provided by the European Union, individual governments, private organizations, companies and individuals.

Though peace is holding in the Balkans, countless thousands of mines that were seeded along the front lines continue to take a horrendous toll. Since 1995, they have killed 400 people in Croatia and injured 1,200. Since 1996, 900 people have been injured and 390 killed in Bosnia. The figures in Kosovo since 1999 are 400 injured and 100 killed.

The ITF was established by Slovenia three years ago, and two-thirds of all de-mining activity in the Balkans is carried out by the organization's staff.

There is no need to clear mines in Slovenia because it largely managed to avoid the recent wars in the Balkans. But the country has experience from clearing old munitions from its border with Italy, which was the World War I front line between the Austro-Hungarian empire and the Italian army.

Over the years, Slovenia's equivalent of the National Guard has cleared 20 tons of old mines and munitions from the border and continues to find more, Suc said.

De-mining is carried out as a business. Bidders compete for ITF tenders, and as companies learn to do it more efficiently, the cost has come down from $50 per square meter to $2 or $3.

"We are successful because we know the region, its languages and culture," said Cimpersek, who suggested that similar organizations should be formed in Africa and other regions to get rid of mines there. "This concept could be implemented as a model for the rest of the world," he said....

-------- colombia

Colombian rebel to meet president

2/7/2001
InfoBeat News
http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=9a56mouu3ct50

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - When President Andres Pastrana flies into guerrilla territory Thursday for a summit aimed at salvaging Colombia's peace process, he'll face a shrewd and battle-hardened adversary. Sitting across the table from Pastrana will be 70-year-old Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda, the chief of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), who has been confounding Colombian generals and presidents for decades.

Pastrana, who has been criticized for making many concessions to the FARC, hopes to resuscitate peace talks at Thursday's summit and show he can stand up to the rebels.

Marulanda is not expected to offer any major concessions at the talks, such as a cease-fire or calling a halt to kidnappings.

"It's going to be a very difficult meeting, because the president will have to do something he does not like to, which is to get tough with the FARC," predicted former Colombian Foreign Minister Rodrigo Pardo.

Pastrana said he is holding the meeting to gauge Marulanda's sincerity before making any long-term decision to extend FARC control over a 16,200-square-mile safe haven he ceded to the rebels two years ago to propel peace talks forward. Pastrana has renewed the safe haven several times - most recently last Saturday in order for Thursday's meeting to take place.

In accepting Pastrana's invitation to hold their third face-to-face encounter, Marulanda said he wants to discuss Pastrana's anti-drug war, which is backed by $1.3 billion in U.S. aid and is directed largely at the FARC. The rebels earn huge profits by "taxing" Colombia's cocaine-producing plantations in rebel-controlled territory.

-------- drug war

Taliban Seem to Be Making Good on Opium Ban, U.N. Says

February 7, 2001
New York Times
By BARBARA CROSSETTE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/07/world/07AFGH.html

UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 6 - Initial results from a survey of opium-growing areas of Afghanistan in recent days indicate that the Taliban may have succeeded in sharply reducing the annual poppy crop, astonished United Nations narcotics-control officials say.

Last year, Afghanistan was the world's largest producer of opium, which is derived from poppies and is the material from which heroin is made.

Poppies are now in bloom in the Afghan fields, allowing aerial and ground surveys to be done across large areas to test the ban on opium production by the Taliban, the hard- line Islamic movement that rules most of the country. The ban was announced last year to skeptical response from narcotics experts.

On Monday, the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention's regional office for Afghanistan and Pakistan said that surveys in the northern provinces of Nangarhar, Laghman and Kunar, which together contain more than 25 percent of the total land that had been devoted to the poppy crop, found no significant signs of cultivation this year. Similar reports are beginning to come in from Helmand, which had 52 percent of the land devoted to the crop last year. The survey ends on Feb. 10 and a final report will be issued sometime later.

Bernard Frahi, a French expert on narcotics and organized crime who led the survey teams in Afghanistan from Feb. 1-4, said in a report that his mission visited farmland known to include about 2,000 major pockets of opium production. The inspection was done by all-terrain vehicles and on foot. "Although it is hard to believe," Mr. Frahi, the regional director, wrote to his headquarters in Vienna, where the United Nations drug program is based, "No poppy field has been identified in the area."

Mr. Frahi said he was accompanied on his inspection tour by drug officers from Canada and Norway and one Pakistani agricultural expert attached to the narcotics affairs section of the American Embassy in Islamabad.

The narcotics experts found that Afghan farmers were trying to grow wheat, onions, garlic and other crops. Afghans told the inspection team, however, that they were very fearful about their livelihoods. Alternate crops require a steady supply of seeds, fertilizer and water - all of which are in short supply, and Afghanistan under the Taliban gets almost no foreign aid.

Moreover, in the last year Afghanistan has suffered the worst drought in half a century.

The World Bank warned today that the country was headed for a major famine. Up to a million people are in danger of starving, aid agencies say.

The United Nations issued an urgent appeal today to governments for clothing, blankets and tents for the 100,000 Afghans who have fled to the western city of Herat to escape the drought and fighting between the Taliban and an opposition force that is clinging to about 5 percent of the country.

About 500 people have frozen to death around Herat in recent weeks, United Nations officials say.

The United States, which under the Clinton administration led a campaign in the United Nations to impose sanctions on the Taliban for their refusal to hand over Osama bin Laden, the Saudi financier of Islamic militancy, said today that it would fly relief goods to the battered country.

Tents, blankets and some water supplies are expected to be flown by the United States Agency for International Development to Pakistan, where more than 150,000 new refugees need help, as well as to Afghanistan, American diplomats said in Islamabad. The plane is scheduled to reach Herat by Friday.

---

Authorities crack down on new drug in Kentucky

02/07/2001
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001-02-07-newdrug.htm

LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) - State and federal authorities arrested 201 alleged dealers in Kentucky in a two-day crackdown on a deadly new drug that produces a high similar to heroin.

Warrants were issued for six more dealers on charges of distributing OxyContin, a prescription painkiller whose use is said to be epidemic in the region.

The crackdown Tuesday and Wednesday was the biggest drug raid in Kentucky history, U.S. Attorney Joseph Famularo said.

The drug, known on the streets as Oxy or OC, is prescribed for cancer victims and others suffering severe pain. At least 59 people have died from Oxy overdoses in eastern Kentucky in the past year, Famularo said.

Eastern Kentucky is one of the first regions of the nation where abuse of the drug has caught on, said Gary Oetjen of the Drug Enforcement Agency.

The drug, produced by Purdue Pharma of Norwalk, Conn., is also popular in parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland and Maine, according to the Justice Department's National Drug Intelligence Center.

Authorities alerted hospitals in eastern Kentucky to be ready for an onslaught of people suffering withdrawal symptoms.

"The abuse and availability of OxyContin has become such an epidemic in eastern Kentucky," Famularo said.

"Had this been diphtheria or smallpox, we'd have been quarantined from the rest of the state," Hazard Police Chief Rob Maggard said. "It's become a terrible epidemic."

Last week, a doctor was arrested on charges of illegally prescribing the medication to patients.

OxyContin pills contain a synthetic morphine designed to be time-released. Abusers crush the pills into powder and snort it, or dilute it and inject it into their veins.

---

Ex- Drug Dealer Gets Help in Keeping a Legal Job

February 7, 2001
New York Times
By AARON DONOVAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/07/nyregion/07NEED.html

David Harris's drug-dealing friends knew they had a winner when he told them he had never been arrested. They asked him to help them sell drugs and assured him that if the police ever caught him, he would not go to jail. "My friends said, `David, you have no record,' " he recalled. " `How would you like to make some quick money and get high?' "

To Mr. Harris, a developmentally disabled man from the Bronx who had a young son, David Jr., but no job, it sounded like a good idea, though he had reservations. "I knew eventually I was going to get killed or get in trouble," he said recently.

Eventually he did get in trouble, but his friends who told him that he would not be given a prison sentence were right. When he was arrested in 1987 for drug possession, the judge gave him a few months' probation.

But he kept dealing drugs, and in 1989, when he was arrested a second time, the judge sentenced him to eight months on Rikers Island.

And when he was arrested for the third time, in 1995, he was given two to six years, which he began serving in prisons upstate.

"Every time I came home from prison, I always went back," Mr. Harris said, "because I had no help."

A prison staff member told officials of the State Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities about Mr. Harris, and they began to search for a program that could help him. They suggested that he be put in the Arthur Kill Correctional Facility on Staten Island to be closer to programs in the city and began telling nonprofit agencies about him in the hope that one would volunteer to help him.

Information about his case came to the attention of Caryn Sicignano, an intake coordinator for FEGS, formerly the Federation Employment and Guidance Service. FEGS, which specializes in job training for the unemployed, is a beneficiary agency of UJA-Federation of New York, one of the seven local charities supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund.

Ms. Sicignano visited Mr. Harris at Arthur Kill and told him that when he got out, FEGS would help him get a job and guidance. "She was like a mother to me," said Mr. Harris, 37. "For someone from the other side to come and visit me, it was like a joy. I will never forget her."

He was released last June into the custody of FEGS, which put him in supervised housing.

"They weren't going to let him out of prison into the street," Ms. Sicignano said. "He needed a 24-hour - or close to it - supervised setting."

He was also enrolled in a short- term job-training program. It teaches developmentally disabled adults the communications skills they need to get a job and how to travel by subway and bus, and puts many in short-term jobs working in soup kitchens and the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in the Bronx. "David was a very big help to us," said Nigel Nero, the job-training program supervisor. "He has a lot of abilities."

After days at the program, he returns home to a three-bedroom apartment in the Norwood section of the Bronx that he shares with two other men enrolled in FEGS programs. FEGS staff members visit daily to make sure the men are taking the medications they need, teach them how to cook and help residents get ready for work by waking them up in the morning and by supervising as they eat breakfast and get washed and dressed for the day.

On Monday, Mr. Harris got a job as a Manhattan foot messenger. Now that he has a job and is living in a stable environment, he can focus more attention on David Jr., 18, a freshman at Columbia who lives with his mother in Harlem. The two speak on the phone every day.

"I'm very proud for him to be the only one from the family that grew up to go to college," Mr. Harris said. "I couldn't believe it until I went on campus to see it myself."

-------- space

Space shuttle launch successful

02/07/2001
USA Today
http://usatoday.com/news/nphoto.htm

PHOTO: Space shuttle Atlantis. (NASA-TV)

CAPE CANAVERAL (AP) - Space shuttle Atlantis blasted off Wednesday with the most expensive and pivotal piece of the international space station: a $1.4 billion science laboratory.

Atlantis and its crew of five soared into a clear sky at 6:13 p.m., with a rising full moon in the background and the setting sun turning the exhaust trail a beautiful gold and peach.

"You got a good day to go fly," launch director Mike Leinbach told the astronauts moments before liftoff. "We wish you luck and deliver the heart and soul of the international space station. And have fun."

The future of the space station, Alpha, is riding on the 11-day mission, three weeks late because of the need to inspect wiring on the shuttle's boosters.

NASA's Destiny laboratory is the first of at least three research modules planned for the station. It is so expensive that the space agency could not afford to build a backup. If the lab is damaged or destroyed in flight, the space station will be set back for years.

"That's our crown jewel," said Mark Stephenson, a space station program director for Boeing, the prime contractor.

At the moment of Atlantis' liftoff, the space station and its three residents were soaring more than 220 miles above the North Atlantic just east of Newfoundland. Atlantis should catch up on Friday.

Until the very last hour, NASA feared rain and clouds at the overseas emergency landing strips might force a delay. But the weather in Spain and Morocco improved, clearing the way for the flight. A last-minute problem with a circuit board also went away.

The Destiny laboratory - 28 feet long, 14 feet in diameter and more than 30,000 pounds - is made up of 415,000 parts and 26 miles of wiring. It is loaded with 13 computers, with one more to be added on the next shuttle visit.

Without Destiny, astronauts and cosmonauts cannot do any major science work aboard the space station. No experiments are flying aboard the lab because the shuttle cannot handle the additional weight; the first one is due to arrive in March.

Destiny and its computers will enable NASA's Mission Control to take over control of the space station from the Russians.

Before Atlantis' astronauts can install Destiny, they will have to link up with the space station, move a docking port into position and then carefully lift the lab out of its tight berth in the shuttle payload bay.

"We have a lot of things that have to work together, a bunch of sequential miracles," shuttle commander Kenneth Cockrell said.

Destiny eventually will be the scene of round-the-clock, seven-day-a-week, month-after-month orbital research, something NASA hasn't done since Skylab in the 1970s. The experiments will involve fluids, metals, semiconductors, flames, plants and, perhaps most important, the human body.

NASA wants to learn more about the effects of radiation and weightlessness on the body before it sends astronauts to Mars.

Destiny will probably not be operating fully until 2006, given all the other space station construction still to be done.

However, the lab will provide a much-needed fourth room for Alpha's three-man crew, as well as air-cleansing systems, improved radio equipment and the capability to command the entire complex.

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

Senate approves payment of U.N. dues

02/07/2001
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-02-07-undues.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Senate voted Wednesday to release $582 million in dues owed the United Nations as part of a deal pushed by Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms to reduce the U.S. share of U.N. operating and peacekeeping costs.

Helms, R-N.C., a longtime critic of financial support for the United Nations, gave his blessings to the funding. "U.N. member states have come a long way on reforms and fairer assessment scales," Helms said.

Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, praised the conservative Helms for his tenacity in linking U.S. payments to U.N. reforms. "Just as only Nixon could go to China, only Helms could fix the U.N.," Biden said.

The 99-0 roll call, the Senate's first legislative vote of the new Congress, sends the bill to the House.

Helms and Biden crafted legislation in 1999 under which the United States would pay $926 million in U.N. dues if the organization streamlined its bureaucracy and reduced America's share of U.N. operating and peacekeeping costs.

In December 1999, the United States paid the first $100 million of that amount, needed to stave off suspension of U.S. voting rights in the U.N. General Assembly. The third portion of $244 million would be paid next year if the United Nations follows through on the agreement, including implementing budgetary improvements at the World Health Organization, International Labor Organization and other U.N. bodies.

Last December, in the first financial overhaul of the regular U.N. budget in 28 years, the General Assembly agreed that the U.S. share of the operating budget would drop from 25% to 22% and its share of the peacekeeping budget would be reduced gradually from 31% to 26.5% in 2003.

Key to reaching the deal was a one-time gift of $34 million offered by American media tycoon Ted Turner to cover the shortfall in the main U.N. budget created by the reduced U.S. contribution in 2001.

Helms said the peacekeeping share was still above the 25% cap set by Congress in 1994, but the deal would save American taxpayers some $170 million a year.

In Foreign Relations Committee debate on the legislation Wednesday, Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., urged Congress to consider lifting that 1994 cap so the United States will not build up more debt in the future.

He said about two-thirds of the money owed is for peacekeeping operations being undertaken in large part by U.S. allies because of American reluctance to send troops to foreign countries to enforce or monitor peace agreements.

Biden said he would seek to lift the cap in this year's foreign affairs bill. He said Secretary of State Colin Powell had told him he favors lifting the cap and paying the $77 million in new arrears that would accrue this year.

Helms said the United States should not pay more than a quarter of peacekeeping operations, however, and he would oppose such a move.

The United Nations contends that, even with payment of the full $926 million, the United States still will owe $500 million, mainly because the United States has paid only 25% of peacekeeping missions rather than the 31% billed by the United Nations. There's little support in Congress for that argument.

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

Smart Start on Defense Budgeting

February 7, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/07/opinion/07WED2.html

President Bush is right to defer any major increases in military spending until his administration has a chance to review America's real defense needs. By declining to load new weapons programs into the coming year's budget, Mr. Bush creates the opportunity for a wiser, more cost-effective use of future defense dollars.

Whether he makes good use of that opportunity will become apparent later this year, once the review has been completed and his first defense budgets are prepared. Mr. Bush and his defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, should resist pressure from the uniformed service chiefs and their Congressional allies to buy unneeded weapons systems.

Even in an era of projected surpluses, money for military modernization and pay increases will have to compete with other administration priorities. Mr. Bush's proposed $1.6 trillion tax cut and his desire to develop a missile shield that could cost as much as $100 billion will cut deeply into funds that are available for other military programs, not to mention domestic priorities like education.

Military leaders and their Congressional supporters have been calling for adding tens of billions of dollars to next year's defense budget to replace aging planes, ships and other equipment. But Mr. Bush wisely said yesterday that he would leave that budget essentially unchanged at $310 billion. It makes little sense to move ahead with weapons that may no longer fit America's needs. The United States today has clear technological superiority over any conceivable military rival. That gives Washington the chance to prepare for the new kinds of conflicts the country is likely to face in the 21st century.

The defense review ought to begin by examining the assumption that the United States should be able to fight two simultaneous regional wars, for example in the Persian Gulf and the Korean Peninsula. It would make more sense to plan for one conflict, and to rely on air power and the mobilization of reserves if a second set of hostilities breaks out. The review should also recognize that American forces are likely to be required to take part in international peacekeeping operations.

The administration should look hard at expensive weapons systems whose rationale may have disappeared with the cold war. Particularly deserving of scrutiny are the Air Force's $64 billion F-22 tactical fighter program, the Marine Corps's troubled V-22 tilt-rotor Osprey aircraft, which is expected to cost $30 billion if it goes into full production, and the Navy's DD-21 stealth destroyer. The price tag for a fleet of 32 ships is $24 billion.

During the campaign Mr. Bush called for raising defense spending by about $4.5 billion a year. That sets a realistic overall spending target. The administration must now find the political will to use the upcoming review to weed out unnecessary weapons projects and to invest the savings in modernization and pay increases.

---

Bush Administration Holds to Clinton Budget for Pentagon Spending in 2002

February 7, 2001
New York Times
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/07/politics/07PENT.html

WASHINGTON, Feb. 6 - President Bush has told top military officials that he plans to propose a Pentagon budget for the coming fiscal year that is essentially unchanged from the long-term spending plan outlined last year by his Democratic predecessor, Bill Clinton, senior Pentagon officials said today.

The $310 billion plan for the 2002 fiscal year that begins in October amounts to a rise of $14 billion, or 4.7 percent, over the Pentagon's current budget. It does not include as much as $10 billion in program costs that the Pentagon had hoped Mr. Bush would add, officials said.

The numbers released today signaled that, in pushing for his tax-cut proposal, Mr. Bush plans to hold the line on most other programs.

That is causing concern among Congressional Republicans and Pentagon officials who have urged Mr. Bush to raise military spending by tens of billions of dollars this year and next to make up for nearly a decade of what they consider debilitating reductions.

Even as the administration was tamping down expectations for next year's budget, Vice President Dick Cheney was telling Senate Republicans today not to expect the White House to request billions of dollars in more military spending for this year, Senate aides said.

The armed services have warned they may have to cut back training programs and maintenance if they do not receive an infusion of $8 billion in the next few months.

Mr. Cheney told the senators that supplementing the current Pentagon budget before Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld completes a review of military strategy would create a "Christmas tree" of unneeded spending, one person at the meeting said. That review, which just began, could take several months.

Senator John W. Warner, a Virginia Republican who is chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said Mr. Bush's tightened approach to Pentagon spending put him at risk of appearing to contradict the Republican pledge to strengthen the military.

"There was Cheney's famous statement to the military during the campaign, `Help is on the way,' " Mr. Warner said. "That could be conceived as a bit of a disconnect with what they're doing now."

Administration officials left open the possibility that later this year Mr. Bush might request a modest rise in military spending.

But some conservatives say Mr. Bush should push for military increases now. "Our view is defense increases should come before tax cuts," said Marshall Wittmann, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a conservative policy group. "With all the other political priorities out there, it is very easy for defense spending to be a victim. And that's what seems to be occurring."

---

Sailor Presumed Drowned Found Alive

February 7, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Missing-Sailor.html

NORFOLK, Va. (AP) -- A Navy sailor who vanished a week ago while aboard a guided missile cruiser and was presumed drowned off the Virginia coast had been hiding in a storeroom, the Navy said.

Petty Officer 2nd Class Kevin Corr, 27, emerged Tuesday night from the 12-by-8-foot room on the USS Cape St. George, sought out the ship's chaplain and was admitted to sickbay, the Navy said. He was reported in stable condition Wednesday.

A Navy spokesman would not comment on whether he had water, food or toilet facilities while he was in hiding.

``We're looking into how and why this happened,'' said Cmdr. Dennis Moynihan.

Moynihan said he did not know if Corr was in the storeroom the whole time. The room has a ventilation fan and is used to store boxes, the spokesman said.

Corr had failed to report to his duty station during a drill Jan. 31 about 20 miles off Virginia. More than 2,000 Navy and Coast Guard personnel aboard eight ships, two cutters and three helicopters searched for him for two days before giving up.

Corr's family in Troy, Mich., had started arranging a memorial service when Navy officers arrived to inform them that he was alive. His obituary appeared in Wednesday's newspapers.

``The first thing he said was, `Your son's alive,''' said Corr's father, Bobby Corr. ``Everybody was celebrating and hugging each other and there were about six cell phone conversations going on at once. We celebrated here well into the morning.''

His family briefly spoke to Corr on Wednesday morning.

``It was exchanging `I love yous' and just reassuring him,'' Bobby Corr said. ``Considering what he's been through, I thought he sounded pretty good.''

Corr's father said his son sounded tired and weak when he talked to him and that he was receiving IV fluids to treat dehydration.

Corr will be flown by helicopter Thursday to the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy, then flown ashore on Friday and transferred to the Naval Medical Center in Portsmouth, Moynihan said.

Officials would not comment on whether he faces any punishment.

``It would be inappropriate to comment on what may or may not happen until the facts are known. Right now we are focusing on getting him the proper medical attention,'' Moynihan said.

------

E-MAIL FUROR

February 7, 2001
New York Times
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/07/world/07BRIE.html

JAPAN: The commander of United States forces on the island of Okinawa aplogized for calling local officials "nuts" and "wimps" in e-mail sent to 13 fellow officers that was leaked to Japanese media. Lt. Gen. Earl Hailston was reportedly responding to a call by Okinawa's local assembly for a reduction in American troops. The assembly acted after the arrest in January of a Marine corporal for lifting a girl's skirt to photograph her underwear. (Reuters)

---

The U.S. Army is running out of bullets.

February 7, 2001
Washington Times
By Rowan Scarborough
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-200127224141.htm

A memo sent this week by Fort Hood, Texas, the Army installation with the largest population, says soldiers are suffering a worldwide shortage of 9 mm ammunition.

The 9 mm Beretta pistol is standard issue for many officers and certain enlisted ratings, such as military police (MPs) and tank crews.

The memo, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times, said range marksmanship training was being canceled except for police and soldiers about to deploy overseas from Fort Hood.

The memo is one of the clearest signs to date, Army sources said, that the military needs a quick infusion of cash to reverse a downward trend in combat readiness.

"Due to an Army worldwide 9 mm ammo shortage, all Fort Hood 9 mm ranges have been canceled except for 89th MPs and special deployment needs," says the memo circulated Monday among Army III Corps units. "This shortage is expected to last until something this fall. . . . Until further notice no units (active, reserve, National Guard) will get [9 mm bullets] based on their normal forecast except [MPs]."

Calling the situation a "critical shortage," the memo states that those units that still have 9 mm shells "should ensure they get maximum training benefit from it. . . . Units should micromanage [9 mm ammo] already in the hands of units."

"There's still an option. Personnel in the units that are deploying will be able to fire and train in the 9 mm," said Cecil Green, a spokesman at Fort Hood, home to the 1st Cavalry and 4th Infantry divisions. He declined further comment.

Army sources said the bullet shortages are another bad sign for a branch that was stretched thin this decade on global peacekeeping missions.

"This is indicative of a lot of other problems," said an Army source who asked not to be named. "We've been robbing Peter to pay Paul for years. What does this tell you? We don't have enough ammo to shoot. They keep demanding we do more with less. The situation is not healthy."

Maj. Tom Artis, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon, said the shortage stems from budget shortfalls as opposed to production problems.

He said decisions on whether to cancel Beretta firings are up to each base. He said the Army is fixing the shortage by reprogramming budget dollars into ammunition accounts.

"The guys who really need the ammunition are getting it," he said.

Col. Guy Shields, a spokesman for Army Forces Command in Georgia, said the command has passed the word to the 197,000 troops it oversees that a shortage exists for training rounds and to deal with it unit by unit.

An Army officer stationed at a base overseas said personnel have been warned of shortages of another bullet - that for the M16. He said Army regulations call for specified amounts of training ammo to be issued to each soldier.

A Senate Armed Services Committee report on this year's defense budget said the Army is short $242 million in its ammunition procurement account.

"For the past several years, field commanders have expressed concern regarding the inadequate stocks of ammunition to support their training and war reserve requirements," the committee said.

One Army official commented: "I wonder why they can't go down to WalMart and make a local purchase. Last I checked, they had plenty of 9 mm ammo." A box of 9 mm shells at WalMart costs about $7.

Congressional sources said yesterday the Army shortages of such a basic combat tool as bullets is evidence that Congress needs to pass a defense bill this spring to supplement the current Pentagon budget. The Army has submitted a $2.9 billion request.

The sources say the Bush White House is cool toward additional defense spending this year. But the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who already have sent a supplemental spending request to Congress, are adamant in saying the services need emergency money to shore up readiness accounts for spare parts, fuel, building repairs and ammunition.

Some staffers are working to keep the bill no higher than $7 billion. But they fear a rush by lawmakers to add "pork" projects would prompt the White House and congressional leaders to kill the legislation.

-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

Power crisis energizes fuel-cell industry

Wednesday, February 7, 2001
Environmental News Network
By Chris Clarke
http://enn.com/news/enn-stories/2001/02/02072001/fuelcells_41778.asp

Due to the electrical power crisis in California, many investors, especially those who want to promote sustainability, are eyeing the fledgling fuel-cell industry. Fuel-cell companies offer a remarkable opportunity for long-term growth, but that opportunity comes with substantial risk.

Fuel cells generate electrical power from fuel without combustion. They're very efficient at converting chemical energy into electricity and generate almost no emissions.

A wide range of uses has been proposed for this new power source. Experimental fuel cell-powered buses now roam the streets of several North American cities. Utility companies include fuel-cell generating plants in their plans to decentralize the electrical power grid. Electronics manufacturers foresee cell phones and PDAs that need only a drink of alcohol every month. In all likelihood, fuel cells will markedly change our lives, and for the better. And your investments just might help clean the air as your dividends roll in.

That's the good news.

However, fuel cell companies are several years away from mass production. Most will spend millions in research and development over the next few years while generating very little revenue. Plug Power (NASDAQ:PLUG), a New York company developing fuel cells for the home power market, spent 10 times as much on R&D in the first three quarters of 2000 than it took in in revenue. Even industry dreadnought Ballard Power (NASDAQ:BLDP), holder of development agreements with major utilities and auto manufacturers, spent twic its revenue on R&D in that same period.

To make things more complicated, there are a handful of competing basic fuel-cell designs under development, from solid oxide cells being studied by utility companies to "direct methanol" cells (which show promise for use in small electronic appliances) to Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) cells being touted by the likes of Ballard. Not all of the designs will prove practical for real-world use, and investors in companies with dead-end designs will probably lose their money.

The fuel used in fuel cells is another potential land mine for the long-range investor. Fossil fuels, biofuels such as ethanol or methane, and hydrogen are all candidates for fuel cell feedstock. Each type of fuel has advantages and disadvantages. Companies that challenge the drawbacks of a particular fuel merit attention from the serious investor.

Take hydrogen. Often touted as the ultimate green fuel because burning it produces nothing but water vapor, the available energy in a volume of hydrogen gas is much lower than in an equal volume of common fuel such as alcohol or gasoline. To fuel an internal combustion car with hydrogen gas for a three-hundred-mile drive, you'd need a gas tank that took up much of the passenger compartment.

Millennium Cell (NASDAQ:MCEL) may have a partial solution: a process in which hydrogen gas is dissolved in a compound of sodium and boron. The resulting liquid is inert until it touches a catalyst, at which point it releases the dissolved hydrogen. An energy-per-gallon ratio rivaling gasoline is the result.

Fuel Cell Energy (NASDAQ:FCEL) has another strategy to weather the storms of fuel uncertainty: Their fuel cells work with a range of feedstocks from natural gas to ethanol.

Nervous about betting on a fuel cell company? Take a look at component suppliers instead. Sustainable Energy Technologies Ltd., (Vancouver:STG.V) a Canadian firm that builds hardware for distributed power generation systems, may do well even if half today's fuel cell companies tank by Christmas.

Due to the uncertainty inherent in the industry in its early stages, traditional brokers often shy away from recommending fuel cell stocks. And nothing in this article should be construed as a recommendation to buy. But for the investor that doesn't mind a little financial risk in the service of a cleaner planet, the fuel cell and allied industries are definitely worth a closer look.

---

Environmentalists expect to win fight against Oregon power deregulation

Wednesday, February 7, 2001
Environmental News Network
The Oregonian
By Phil Kabler
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2001/02/02072001/krt_oreenviros_41870.asp

Legislative victories for environmentalists are few and far between, but they may have picked a sure-fire winner for the 2001 session.

On Monday, representatives of the state Environmental Council, Sierra Club and Citizen Action Group called on lawmakers to delay implementation of the state plan for electric power deregulation.

That puts them in step with the Legislature, which has called for a thorough study of deregulation before it gives final authorization to a plan adopted by the state Public Service Commission.

Lawmakers passed a resolution authorizing electric deregulation last session, but built in a one-year delay so that the effects of deregulation on state tax collections could be studied.

Last month, in light of California's power restructuring debacle, the Joint Committee on Government and Finance authorized hiring a consultant to study all aspects of deregulation. Privately, legislators said the study will give them an out to postpone final approval of the plan for a year.

Gov. Bob Wise has also called on lawmakers to move slowly on deregulation, saying he wants more than assurances from advocates that the state's plan won't result in soaring consumer prices.

"If we change West Virginia's electric industry, it should be for the better," Jim Sconyers of the state chapter of the Sierra Club said Monday. "This plan is not."

He said the current plan does not encourage development of renewable energy resources, and does not encourage energy conservation.

"We can take advantage of mistakes in other states," said Jim Kotcon, with the West Virginia Environmental Council. "We need to fix the current plan before it is implemented."

They provided a list of states that are slowing, postponing or trying to reverse deregulation plans.

-------- environment

Rare Salt-Water Camel May Be Separate Species

February 7, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/07/science/07reuters-camel.html
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-environ.html

NAIROBI - A rare breed of wild, salt water-drinking camels found in China and Mongolia are now thought to be a different species from their domesticated cousins, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

But the wild Bactrian camels, who apparently have hairier knee caps and a larger space between their humps than domesticated Bactrians, are threatened with extinction by hunters who plant land mines near water holes to butcher them.

Although the wild two-humped or Bactrian camel has been known about for years, scientists never realized it was genetically different from domesticated breeds until the animals were observed drinking salt water.

DNA tests have not yet been completed but U.N. environmentalists say other tests have shown there is a significant difference in the genetic make-up of the wild Bactrian from the domesticated.

``We cannot say we are 100 percent certain, but all the evidence seems to point toward it being a new species,'' Rob Hepworth, a senior biodiversity official with the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), told a news conference in Nairobi.

Scientists say there are only about 1,000 of the camels living in Asia, which would make the species more endangered than the Giant Panda.

But they believe that up to 600 of the rare breed live in an uninhabited area that was used by China for nuclear testing over the last 41 years and are threatened by hunters who have moved into the region since testing ended in 1996.

``We found land mines put by the salt water springs,'' said John Hare, leader of the expedition and founder of the Wild Camel Protection Foundation.

``So when the camels come to drink they step on them, BANG! They are blown to pieces and picked up as meat.''

There were also known to be about 300 more animals in Mongolia's Gobi desert and in 1999 a team of British and Chinese scientists found another 169 in the Kum Tagh sand dunes in northwest China near Tibet's Arjin Shan mountains.

---

Changing pipes may cost $1 trln

2/7/2001
InfoBeat News
http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=9a56mouu3ct50

WASHINGTON (AP) - Replacing old water and sewer pipes and upgrading aging treatment plants around the country could cost $1 trillion over the next two decades, federal officials say. Lawmakers are trying to get attention for the problem - and a lot more money for upgrades.

"There are significant unmet needs that require the federal government's immediate attention," Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, said Tuesday. He introduced legislation to let the government provide more money for wastewater discharge pipes and treatment facilities.

Last year, Congress created a $1.5 billion, two-year grant program to help municipalities deal with part of the infrastructure problem: combined systems that use the same conduits for sewage and rainwater.

Voinovich's bill would allow the Environmental Protection Agency to give states up to $3 billion a year to deal with other wastewater infrastructure improvements. That may be just a drop in the bucket.

A study commissioned by a group comprising sewer and water authorities, contractors, the U.S. Conference of Mayors and others estimated the overall cost of infrastructure needs - improvements to wastewater pipes, storm sewer pipes, the lines that carry clean water from plants to homes, the water plants themselves - at $1 trillion by 2020.

A study by the Environmental Protection Agency used different methodology but reached the same conclusion. Steve Allbee, the author of the EPA forecast, said there will be a gap of $23 billion a year over the next 20 years between what's spent on drinking water and wastewater systems and what's needed. He estimated that if customers alone pay the cost, their bills would increase an average of 6 percent a year over the two decades.

That would pose a particular hardship in cities with both old pipes and declining populations, which will mean fewer taxpayers to share the burden.

---

PCB CLEANUP

February 7, 2001
New York Times
Metro Briefs
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/07/nyregion/07MBRF.html?pagewanted=all

FORT EDWARD: A dozen communities along the Hudson River were named by the Environmental Protection Agency as possible sites where PCB-laden sludge could be dried out before shipment to a landfill. The agency had previously identified only the Port of Albany and a landfill in Moreau as possible sites. But sites in Rensselaer, Troy, Green Island, Van Schaick Island, Waterford, Mechanicville, Schaghticoke, the Thompson Island area, Fort Miller and Fort Edward also are being considered. (AP)

--------

USA Today
01/02/07
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Alabama

Mobile - Two organizations donated a 76-acre tract of rivers, marshes and wetland forests to the state, extending the 35-mile Mobile Tensaw Delta. The Nature Conservancy contributed $1 million, and Ducks Unlimited contributed $250,000. The delta is one of the largest wetland areas in North America, biologists said.

Conneticut

Bridgeport - The state has reached a deal with a water company to preserve more than 15,000 acres of woodland from development. The state will buy the land from Kelda Group for $90 million, with the Nature Conservancy pitching in $10 million. Officials said it's the state's largest land purchase.

Florida

Pensacola - Thousands of acres of isolated wetlands in the Florida Panhandle have been opened to development by a U.S. Supreme Court decision ending federal control. The ruling said wetlands not connected to navigable waterways should be regulated by states. Florida has no regulations on the Panhandle wetlands, so state lawmakers want local counties to impose controls over any projects.

North Carolina

Jamesville - Opponents of an ethanol plant proposed for Martin County object to increased barge traffic on the Roanoke River. The plant would distill sweet potatoes and corn to make a gasoline additive. Proponents say the plant would create 100 new jobs and bring new markets for farm products. The facility would ship ethanol and liquefied natural gas on barges.

-------- police

USA Today
01/02/07
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Hawaii

Honolulu - Two Honolulu police officers have been sentenced for their roles in the beating of a prisoner in 1995. U.S. District Judge Alan Kay sentenced Jesse Nozawa to 26 months in prison and Brian Punzal to six months in jail. Six officers were indicted in the beating of Richard Doolin. All pleaded guilty.

Kansas

Pratt - A Kansas Highway Patrolman found wounded last month shot himself four times with his own .45-caliber pistol, the patrol said. Investigators don't believe the suicide attempt was work-related. Second Lt. Tom Quinn is recovering at a Wichita hospital from wounds to the face, neck and chest. He was found Jan. 15 in a parking lot at Pratt Community College.

Kentucky

Oak Grove - An Oak Grove police officer has been charged with driving under the influence of alcohol - twice in two days. Randy Moore, 30, was intoxicated when he crashed his police cruiser 15 minutes after leaving a party at a county police officer's home, the department said. The next morning he was stopped again for DUI, according to jail records. Moore is on administrative leave.

Rhode Island

Providence - Two white patrolmen who accidentally shot an off-duty black officer a year ago have been cleared by the Justice Department of any civil rights violations. A state grand jury last year cleared the officers of criminal wrongdoing. Sgt. Cornel Young Jr.'s mother has hired O.J. Simpson lawyer Johnnie Cochran to file a $20 million civil suit against the city.

-------- spying

Iranian judges reject Jews' appeal

02/07/2001
USA Today
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001-02-07-iranjews.htm

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Three judges have rejected the final appeal of 10 Iranian Jews convicted of spying for Israel, state-run Tehran radio reported Wednesday.

The prosecutor general's office in Tehran said the judges who studied the appeal had decided against it, the radio said. No reason was given.

The ruling means the Jews, who were convicted last year in the southern city of Shiraz, have no further appeal.

The Jews had appealed their initial trial's verdicts and sentences. The appeal court upheld their convictions on the charge of cooperating with Israel, but found the 10 men innocent of belonging to an illegal spy ring and recruiting new agents.

The appeal court reduced their sentences, sentencing them to between two and 13 years in prison.

The U.S. State Department said it was disappointed the court did not overturn all of the convictions.

Israel denied the convicted men were its agents and criticized their prosecution, conviction and sentencing.

Countries such as the United States and France, as well as human rights organizations and Jewish groups, had urged Iran to ensure justice in a case seen as a show of power by hard-line clerics jostling with reformists in this Muslim country.

Iran has no diplomatic ties and bans any contact with Israel, which it considers an arch-foe.

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CIA Chief Cites Proliferation, Terrorism Among Top Threats

Wednesday, February 7, 2001
Washington Post
By Vernon Loeb and Walter Pincus
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39138-2001Feb7?language=printer

CIA Director George J. Tenet said today that Russian defense firms supplied ballistic missile technology to Iran, India, China and Libya and remained a key supplier to Iran's civilian nuclear program in ways that "could be used to advance its weapons programs as well."

"Russian state-run defense and nuclear industries are still strapped for funds, and Moscow looks to them to acquire badly needed foreign exchange through exports," Tenet told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Delivering the CIA's annual assessment of worldwide threats, Tenet also said Russian entities have supplied Iran with "dual use" biotechnology and chemical production means – information sought by various nations and terrorist groups as a means of producing biological and technical weapons.

Dwelling on the Middle East as a particularly volatile region, Tenet said Iraqi President Saddam Hussein "has grown more confident in his ability to hold on to his power." He offered a similarly bleak assessment of trends in neighboring Iran, saying that "prospects for near-term political reform are now fading" due to resistance from the nation's fundamentalist religious establishment despite the overwhelming popularity of reformist President Mohammad Khatami.

Tenet noted that Iran has also "increased its support to terrorist groups opposed to the [Middle East] peace process over the past two years."

But the CIA's concerns about the region were hardly limited to Iraq, Iran and the breakdown in the Middle East peace process. Tenet said leaders throughout the Middle East will face in the coming years extraordinary pressure from restive populations in the face of economic decline that has left large numbers of people out of work.

"Over the past 25 years, Middle Eastern economies have averaged only 2.8 percent GDP growth – far less than Asia and only slightly more than sub-Saharan Africa," Tenet said, adding that populations in the region are surging in the face of such economic collapse.

"One-fourth of Jordanians, for example, are unemployed, and annual economic growth is well below the level needed to absorb some 60,000 new labor market entrants each year," Tenet said. "In Egypt the disproportionately young population adds 600,000 new job applicants a year in a country where unemployment is already near 20 percent."

Propelled by these trends, Tenet said, a new volatility is readily apparent throughout the region. "The recent popular demonstrations in several Arab countries – including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Jordan – in support of the Palestinian intifada demonstrate the changing nature of activism of the Arab street," Tenet said. "Through access to the Internet and other means of communication, a restive public is increasingly capable of taking action without any identifiable leadership or organizational structure."

Hopscotching the globe, Tenet began his threat listing with the rise of "transnational" Islamic terrorist groups, with "decentralized leadership that makes them harder to identify and disrupt."

"Osama bin Laden and his global network of lieutenants and associates remain the most immediate and serious threat," Tenet said.

After terrorism, Tenet outlined numerous proliferation threats beyond Russia, listing Russia, China, probably Iran and possibly Iraq as nations capable of launching intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Tenet said China has increased its exports of missile technology in recent years to Pakistan, Iran, North Korea and Libya and now must be watched "carefully" to see if China's communist leaders abide by the terms of a non-assistance pledge they made last November.

Following proliferation, Tenet said narcotics trafficking remains a major global problem, with Colombia remaining "the linchpin of the global cocaine industry" and Afghanistan responsible for 72 percent of illegal opium production last year.

In Colombia, Tenet noted, the nation's largest insurgent group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia or FARC, vehemently opposes U.S. anti-drug assistance to the government of President Pastrana and could step up attacks against both Colombian and U.S. personnel in the region.

"Indeed, in early October FARC leaders declared that U.S. soldiers located in combat areas are legitimate 'military targets,' " Tenet said.

-------- terrorism

Ex-Aide to bin Laden Describes Terror Campaign Aimed at U.S.

February 7, 2001
New York Times
By BENJAMIN WEISER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/07/world/07TERR.html?pagewanted=all

A secret government witness emerged yesterday to tell a hushed federal courtroom in Manhattan how he helped the Saudi exile Osama bin Laden move money and arms to terrorist groups in Africa and the Middle East as part of a conspiracy aimed at the United States.

The witness, Jamal Ahmed Al- Fadl, was the first person called in the trial of four men charged with participating in a terrorism conspiracy led by Mr. bin Laden, which prosecutors say included the 1998 bombings of the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The blasts killed 224 people and wounded thousands.

Mr. Al-Fadl's identity has been a closely kept secret during the government's long investigation of Mr. bin Laden, when he was referred to in court papers only as CS-1, for confidential source.

Underscoring the potential danger to the witness, the judge, Leonard B. Sand of Federal District Court in Manhattan, ordered a group of illustrators seated in the heavily guarded courtroom not to sketch Mr. Al-Fadl.

After a full day of testimony yesterday by Mr. Al-Fadl, only the barest personal details had been revealed about him. He said he was born in 1963 in the Sudanese town of Rufa'a, which is south of Khartoum. He came to the United States in 1986 on a student visa, spending two years in this country, much of that time in Brooklyn. After that, he said, he went to Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union. Later, he went to work for Mr. bin Laden, and stayed with him until 1996.

On Monday, a prosecutor said that Mr. Al-Fadl had stolen money from Mr. bin Laden, been caught and escaped. "And in an attempt to save himself and his family," the prosecutor said, "he approached the American government and offered to provide information."

For the last five years, Mr. Al-Fadl has been under the protection of the United States government in an undisclosed location after pleading guilty to a terrorism charge in a secret proceeding in federal court in Manhattan.

Mr. Al-Fadl's testimony did not deal with the embassy bombings, which occurred two years after he left the group. But prosecutors are expected to use his account of the early years of Mr. bin Laden's group to show how the terrorism conspiracy evolved.

During his testimony yesterday, Mr. Al-Fadl was asked by a prosecutor to identify one defendant. Mr. Al- Fadl, wearing a white skullcap, open- necked shirt and blue jeans, stood and pointed at Wadih El-Hage, whom prosecutors have described as Mr. bin Laden's personal secretary and close confidant.

Mr. El-Hage had no visible reaction to Mr. Al-Fadl's identification of him.

Mr. Al-Fadl told the jury he had worked closely with Mr. bin Laden in Khartoum, and helped manage his payroll. That gave him access to files on each member of Mr. bin Laden's group, which showed their salaries and aliases. He also described Mr. bin Laden's global banking network, naming institutions in Sudan, Malaysia, Britain, Hong Kong and Dubai where Mr. bin Laden and his group kept money.

He also gave a detailed account of Mr. bin Laden's agricultural, construction, transportation and investment companies in Sudan, which prosecutors have said are fronts for his terrorist activities.

It was clear by the end of the day that Mr. Al-Fadl's testimony forms the basis of many of the prosecution's allegations that Mr. bin Laden engaged in a global conspiracy aimed at the United States and other Western targets, and which acted as a kind of umbrella organization for other terrorist groups.

Mr. Al-Fadl said that after American troops went to Somalia in 1993, Mr. bin Laden told several dozen people at a meeting: " `The snake is America and we have to stop them. We have to cut the head and stop them, what they are doing now in the Horn of Africa.' "

Mr. Al-Fadl described disputes within Mr. bin Laden's group, Al Qaeda, about the number of Egyptians among its leaders and the disparity in pay among the group's members. He described the roots of Mr. bin Laden's enmity toward the United States for its role in Somalia, and the group's cooperation with other terrorist organizations, like the Iranian-backed Hezbollah.

Mr. Al-Fadl said Mr. bin Laden sent fighters to Chechnya at a cost of about $1,500 per person, paid through a local relief organization. Mr. Al- Fadl said he carried money on behalf of Mr. bin Laden to leaders of other jihad groups, including $100,000 to one in Eritrea.

When traveling on false passports, Mr. Al-Fadl said, he was instructed to play down his Muslim appearance. He said he was told to shave his beard, wear Western clothes, and carry cigarettes, which were forbidden in Al Qaeda, and cologne to suggest that he was interested in women. If he was stopped, he said, he was told to be polite and "don't talk about religion, jihad, about anything belonging to Islam law or Islamic study."

Mr. Al-Fadl's journey into a position of confidence with Mr. bin Laden and his group had its roots, by his account, in Brooklyn, where he worked at the Al Farooq Mosque on Atlantic Avenue, helping to raise money and recruit fighters for the American-backed mujahedeen in the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980's.

At the time, Mr. Al-Fadl said, he worked closely with Mustafa Shalabi, an Egyptian who ran the recruiting office. Mr. Shalabi disappeared from the Brooklyn office in 1991 and was later found to have been killed, a case that remains unsolved.

During his two years in the United States, Mr. Al-Fadl said, he moved to Atlanta and North Carolina before returning to New York. He then went to Peshawar, Pakistan, he said, after Mr. Shalabi told him he should go to Afghanistan "to help the brothers over there."

Mr. Al-Fadl, under questioning by the prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, offered an intimate look at a network of guest houses and military training camps used by Mr. bin Laden's group. He said he joined Mr. bin Laden's group around 1990.

He said he took the oath of allegiance, called bayat, to Al Qaeda.

"I swear and I signed," Mr. Al- Fadl said, adding that he was the third person to sign the contract that made him a member of the group.

Mr. Al-Fadl said he began to take on broad responsibilities for Mr. bin Laden, and was present at a meeting in Peshawar where Sudanese officials visited Mr. bin Laden and promised to help his group if it moved to Sudan. Mr. Al-Fadl was sent to Khartoum on a kind of scouting mission.

After Mr. bin Laden moved his group to Sudan in 1991, Mr. Al-Fadl testified, its activities were greatly aided by Sudanese intelligence and by other officials.

Mr. bin Laden first worked out of an office in a building in Khartoum, Mr. Al-Fadl said. A secretary sat at the door, and Mr. bin Laden was in the next office on the left, he added.

Mr. Al-Fadl said that he helped Mr. bin Laden pay the employees of his companies and Al Qaeda, whose members received monthly checks of several hundred dollars, and that he was sent out to buy five farms in Sudan for the group to use as training camps.

He said one farm had cost $250,000 and another $180,000.

Mr. Al-Fadl described several arms shipments, including Al Qaeda's smuggling of Kalishnikov rifles into Egypt from Sudan on two separate occasions that involved about 50 camels each. He also recalled a midnight shipment of four large crates of weapons and explosives to an Islamic group in Yemen, carried on a boat owned by Al Qaeda and accomplished with the help of a Sudanese intelligence officer.

Mr. Al-Fadl said Mr. bin Laden was surrounded by a group of associates who participated on a ruling council and ran various committees on military, business and religious matters.

He said Mr. bin Laden and his associates, citing the American participation in the Persian Gulf war, began to issue fatwahs, or religious opinions, to his group, which sanctioned actions against American interests.

" `We can't let the American Army in our area,' " Mr. Al-Fadl quoted Mr. bin Laden as saying. " `We have to do something. We have to fight them.' "

He quoted one of Mr. bin Laden's advisers, Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, who offered a religious justification for the killing of innocent civilians. " `If you kill him, you don't have to worry about that,' " Mr. Al-Fadl quoted Mr. Salim as saying. " `If he is a good person, he go to paradise, and if he is a bad person, he go to hell.' "

Mr. Salim is in custody in New York City and is awaiting a future trial.

---

Former Terrorist Says He Warned U.S.

February 7, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/nyregion/AP-Embassy-Bombings.html

NEW YORK (AP) -- A former aide to Osama bin Laden testified Wednesday that two years before the deadly 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa, he warned American officials that terrorists might strike.

Jamal Ahmed Al-Fadl, testifying at the trial of four men charged in the twin bombings, said he told U.S. officials that he had heard talk that bin Laden's terrorist group would make bombs against ``some embassy.''

He did not name specific targets. In fact, Al-Fadl said he warned U.S. officials that attacks were possible within the United States, against U.S. military forces overseas and at American embassies.

Prosecutors have portrayed the 1998 blasts at U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, as part of a worldwide plot by bin Laden. Twelve Americans were among the 224 people killed.

Wahid El-Hage, 40, and Mohamed Sadeek Odeh, 35, could get life sentences if convicted of conspiracy. Mohamed Rashed Daoud Al-'Owhali, 24, and Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, 27, could face the death penalty.

Al-Fadl, in his second day on the witness stand, said he decided to alert U.S. officials after he was kicked out of bin Laden's organization for stealing.

Sometime in 1996, Al-Fadl said, he went to a U.S. embassy in an unidentified country and told officials he had ``information about people who want to do something against your government.''

Al-Fadl said he told embassy officials, and later the FBI, that militant Muslim followers of bin Laden were preparing to wage war against America.

Federal authorities have acknowledged that they were cautioned about terrorist threats and lax security before the nearly simultaneous embassy bombings in East Africa. A commission appointed by former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright criticized the State Department for not doing more to safeguard U.S. missions.

But Al-Fadl's testimony was another reminder that victims ``weren't told we were in harm's way,'' said Sue Bartley, whose husband, Consul General Julian Bartley, and son died in the Kenyan blast. ``That information had not been dispensed to our families.''

Al-Fadl, a Sudanese who lives in the United States, pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges in a deal that required him to testify.

He has already described the origins of al Qaeda, bin Laden's alleged terrorist group, and how the exiled Saudi millionaire declared a religious war on Americans in the early 1990s. He has also identified scores of bin Laden associates, including El-Hage, who allegedly worked as bin Laden's personal secretary.

Prosecutors hope to show the embassy bombings were the work of well-trained Islamic militants who were given new goals of terror by bin Laden after they forced the former Soviet Union out of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Al-Fadl said bin Laden started construction companies and other businesses in Sudan to raise money for his holy war, or jihad. He also testified that he was ordered to buy uranium on the black market in a failed bid to build a nuclear weapon.

After falling into disfavor with bin Laden for secretly pocketing $110,000 in ``commissions'' while trading oil and sugar for al Qaeda, Al-Fadl said he fled Sudan and approached U.S. officials.

---

Witness: I worked for bin Laden

2/7/2001
InfoBeat News
http://us.f23.mail.yahoo.com/ym/login?.rand=9a56mouu3ct50

NEW YORK (AP) - A former terrorist testified Tuesday that Saudi exile Osama bin Laden issued a series of religious decrees in the early 1990s urging Muslims to wage war against "the snake" - America.

The witness, Jamal Ahmed Al-Fadl, said bin Laden and his lieutenants told their troops to kill innocent people who happened to get in the way. "You should do it and not worry about it," he recalled being told.

Al-Fadl was the government's first witness at the trial of four men accused in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa. Twelve Americans were among 224 people killed when the bombs went off nearly simultaneously in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Prosecutors hope to show the bombings were the work of well-trained Islamic militants who did not want to put down their weapons after forcing the former Soviet Union out of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Al-Fadl provided a rare glimpse into bin Laden's organization, al Qaeda, and described himself as one of its first members. A Sudanese, he spoke in heavily accented English as he described moving to the United States in the 1980s to attend school. He spent time in Georgia, North Carolina and New York, where he attended a Brooklyn mosque actively recruiting people to fight in Afghanistan. He said he agreed to train at several camps in Afghanistan, where he met bin Laden. He said he fought on the front lines before going to more camps for training in explosives.

El-Hage, 40, and defendant Mohamed Sadeek Odeh, 35, face possible life sentences if convicted of conspiracy. Mohamed Rashed Daoud Al-'Owhali, 24, and Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, 27, could face death sentences.

By the early 1990s, Al-Fadl said, he had followed bin Laden to Somalia, where the wealthy exile started construction companies and other businesses to raise money for his jihad against the United States.

---

Convicted Lockerbie bomber launches appeal

02/07/2001
USA Today
http://usatoday.com/news/world/lockerbie/2001-02-07-lockerbie.htm

EDINBURGH, Scotland (AP) - A Libyan intelligence agent on Wednesday filed an appeal of his murder conviction in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which killed 270 people. A lawyer for Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi lodged the notice of intention to appeal at the Scottish High Court in Edinburgh, the Scottish Courts Service said. Al-Megrahi, 48, was sentenced to life in prison Jan. 31 for his part in the bombing of a New York-bound flight which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland on Dec. 21, 1988.

A Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands sentenced Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi to life imprisonment, with no possibility of review for 20 years, for planting the device that exploded in Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland on Dec. 21, 1988. All 259 people on board were killed, and the fiery wreckage plunging 31,000 feet killed another 11 in the small town below.

The court freed the second defendant, Lamen Khalifa Fhimah. On Thursday, Fhimah left aboard a Libya-bound Dutch military aircraft flying under United Nations authority from an air base outside Camp Zeist where the trial was held. His freedom ended nearly two years in detention and a nine-month trial.

The judgment handed down Wednesday concurred with the indictment that al-Megrahi was acting in the service of his country when he placed the bomb, concealed in a suitcase, on a flight in Malta that was transferred to Pan Am 103. In the verdict, the court referred to him as a Libyan intelligence agent "occupying posts of fairly high rank."

The Libyan ambassador to Britain, Mohammed Azwai, said in a radio interview Thursday his country would await the outcome of al-Megrahi's appeal before taking any action.

"We understand, and we said it before, that if our people are guilty we will pay any compensation at that time, but until that comes we believe as a legal matter it is still not final."

He said his country had for "now a long time not dealt with terrorism."

The U.S. and British governments said no action would be taken to lift U.N. sanctions imposed against Libya in 1992 until it met conditions set by the U.N. Security Council to compensate the victims and accept responsibility for the murders. The sanctions were suspended when the two men surrendered in 1999.

British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said the Libyan government "would have to issue an agreed statement of responsibility, and that is what we will be looking for."

He told BBC Radio Scotland, "It's not open to them simply to make whatever statements they wish on television or whatever in Libya, and then to say 'We've fulfilled our obligations.' They haven't."

However, China, another permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, called for sanctions to be lifted after the ruling.

Following an intricate trail of circumstantial evidence - from the purchase of clothing found in the bomb-laden suitcase to entry stamps in a false passport - the court said "there is nothing in the evidence which leaves us with any reasonable doubt as to the guilt" of al-Megrahi.

After the verdict was pronounced, lawyer William Taylor bent toward his client and then told the court that Al-Megrahi maintained his innocence. He has 14 days to appeal, but it could take months before a five-judge tribunal considers it.

The court said it found no convincing evidence that Fhimah, the former station manager for Libyan Arab Airlines in Malta, knowingly helped al-Megrahi place the suitcase in the international baggage system.

The judges did not address the question of motive. Before Libyan leader Col. Moammar Gadhafi agreed to hand over the two men, the United States and Britain signed off on a letter agreeing that the aim of the trial was not to "undermine the Libyan regime."

Prosecutors suggested the bombing was in retaliation for the U.S. air force raid against Tripoli in 1986 that killed Gadhafi's daughter. The strike was meant as punishment for Libya's alleged role in a terrorist attack at a Berlin discotheque that killed two American servicemen.

The conviction was likely to facilitate civil suits in U.S. courts against Libya for some $6 billion in damages brought by the families of the American victims.

Libya, an oil-rich Arab nation that has been at sharp odds with the United States since Gadhafi came to power in 1969, reacted to the verdict with unusually conciliatory statements and only a little of the fiery rhetoric that has been a hallmark of Gadhafi's Libya.

It said it would respect the verdict, honor financial claims arising from the conviction and expressed hope that, with the verdict, the Lockerbie affair would be consigned to the past.

Abdel-Rahman Shalqam, Libya's equivalent of a foreign minister, said late Wednesday that the question of compensation can be settled through international law but balked at the notion that Libya must accept responsibility for the bombing.

"Our people were bombed here and no one asked for evidence because it was obvious that your aircraft came here and bombed our innocent children," he said, alluding to the 1986 bombing.

Most Libyans had expected both men to be acquitted. Many Tripoli residents were puzzled by the split decision.

Al-Megrahi's mother, Fatima, collapsed on hearing the verdict and was taken to a hospital. Speaking from her hospital bed Wednesday night, she said: "I just cried and did not know where to direct my anger. I hope he comes back soon."

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Protest at Solana's Belgrade visit

February 7, 2001
CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/02/07/belgrade.solana/index.html

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana is due to arrive in Belgrade on Thursday just hours after hundreds protested against the visit.

Solana and other senior European Union representatives are due to meet Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica, Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic and Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic.

Street demonstrators on Wednesday burned an effigy of Solana dressed in prison clothing.

The protesters were reacting to the fact Solana headed NATO during its 1999 bombing campaign against Yugoslavia.

Many gathered outside government buildings in Belgrade, blocking city traffic, and later marched past the U.S. embassy, some throwing stones and eggs.

They carried banners such as "Solana - killer" and "Child killer - go to jail."

About 20 policemen stood in front of the embassy building to make sure the protesters did not come too close.

Some shouted "We will not give you Slobo" and "We love you Slobo" in support of ousted Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic. Other demonstrators set off bomb alert sirens, or held candles.

"He should be ashamed, he doesn't have any shame. How dare he come here," pensioner Desa Brenovac said.

A senior official of Milosevic's Socialist Party, Branislav Ivkovic, came and kissed people in the crowd. Former Serbian PM Mirko Marjanovic also attended the rally briefly. The Socialist Party, now in opposition, and its former allies the ultra-nationalist Radical Party called on Wednesday for the arrest of Solana, branding him a war criminal.

Solana was among 14 Western leaders sentenced by a Belgrade court last September, when Milosevic was still in power, to 20 years in prison for NATO's air war -- launched to halt repression of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority.

"The criminal returns to the scene of the crime," said an open call for the protest published in the Glas Javnosti daily and signed by the Patriotic Alliance of Yugoslavia and an "anti-NATO committee."

But new Serbian Justice Minister Vladan Batic, a member of the pro-democracy bloc that ousted Milosevic last year, has described the trial of the Western leaders as a farce.

---

GAINS FOR ENVIRONMENTALISTS

February 7, 2001
New York Times
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/07/world/07BRIE.html

MEXICO: President Vicente Fox said the government would review the cases of two jailed enviromentalists to see if "injustice has been committed." The national human rights commission has said the prisoners, Rodolfo Montiel and Teodoro Cabrera, who had fought illegal logging in the state of Guerrero, may have been framed. Meanwhile, Mr. Montiel received a award from the Sierra Club, which cited his "extraordinary courage." Tim Weiner (NYT)

SINGAPORE: LIMITS OF FREE SPEECH The head of a local civil rights group, Jim Gómez, said he had been summoned by the police over a rally he had organized on Dec. 10 to mark International Human Rights Day. It was the second summons of a member of his group for activities held at "Speakers' Corner," an open-air venue inaugurated last year to experiment with the idea of free public speaking in Singapore. Seth Mydans (NYT)

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Thousands March in Kiev Over Political Crisis

February 7, 2001
New York Times
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/07/world/07UKRA.html

MOSCOW, Feb. 6 - Thousands of protesters waving Ukrainian flags and chanting, "Ukraine without Kuchma," streamed into Kiev today in a mostly peaceful protest march demanding the resignation of President Leonid D. Kuchma, who is struggling to overcome a deepening political crisis.

The crowd, estimated at 3,500 to 5,000, tried to break through a police cordon around the presidential administration building but was turned away, witnesses said. Ukrainian television reported a number of scuffles among the protesters, the police and counterdemonstrators.

The crisis is being fueled by the continuing release of recordings of Mr. Kuchma's private conversations with senior aides and political figures in which his voice is heard ordering the abduction of a prominent journalist, threatening a judge and discussing how to protect the head of one of Ukraine's largest energy companies after he had reportedly "put a hundred million, at least" into his "pocket."

The demonstration today, as with those that blocked the center of the capital in December, signals a determined effort by opposition parties and their followers, many of them camped out in freezing temperatures.

Western officials and Ukrainian political experts said they were unable to predict the course of events in one of Europe's largest countries. The United States and European states have made a major investment in Mr. Kuchma, a former manager of a Soviet missile factory, since he came to power nearly a decade ago.

Ukrainian television reported tonight that the protesters began streaming into the capital at 8 a.m. from across the country. Some had marched for days from western cities, and they were joined by protesters in the capital who set up the tent city. They have promised to stay until Mr. Kuchma resigns.

The event that set off the crisis was the disappearance in September of Georgy Gongadze, a journalist whose Internet news site, Ukrainskaya Pravda, is a frequent critic of the corruption that has plagued the country in Mr. Kuchma's two terms as president. After Mr. Gongadze's headless body was found in November, an opposition leader, Oleksandr Moroz, produced the first recordings in which Mr. Kuchma's voice can be heard ordering Interior Minister Yuri Kravchenko to "get rid" of Mr. Gongadze.

A new batch of recordings was released last week that inflamed the controversy. On one of those recordings, Prosecutor General Mikhailo Potebenko reports a problem with a legal case against Sergei Salov, a lawyer in the Donetsk region who worked for the opposition in the parliamentary elections in 1999. Mr. Salov was charged with "spreading false information about the president" by handing out leaflets stating that Mr. Kuchma had died of excessive drinking. The judge hearing the case ruled that the charge should be changed to an "insult" against the president and that Mr. Kuchma should be called to testify.

On the tape, Mr. Kuchma telephones Gov. Viktor F. Yanukovich of Donetsk and says the judge should be tortured. It is not clear what action, if any, was taken against the judge.

In another recording, the head of the state tax administration, Mikhailo Azarov, reports that the chief of Naftohaz Ukrayiny, the state pipeline company, Igor Bakai, had been audited. "At a minimum, you put in your pocket a hundred million, at least," Mr. Azarov recounts from his conversation with Mr. Bakai. "I understand, of course, that I will not expose you. I give you two weeks, a month at maximum. Destroy all the papers."

Mr. Kuchma replies, "Good," and says he had spoken to Mr. Bakai, telling him that he could not expect to be protected forever.

Mr. Bakai resigned in the spring and is now a Parliament member.

---

China Steps Up War on Sect, but Some Denounce Attacks

February 7, 2001
New York Times
By ERIK ECKHOLM
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/07/world/07GONG.html?pagewanted=all

BEIJING, Feb. 6 - China's already shrill campaign to discredit the Falun Gong spiritual group reached a new pitch today, with the strongest accusations yet that the group is colluding with Western forces seeking to vilify and destroy the nation.

At the same time, some intellectuals here, including some Communist Party officials, are complaining that the heavy-handed propaganda blitz - which recalls Maoist campaigns of the 1950's and 60's - may discredit the party itself and harm China's interests abroad.

"Western anti-Chinese forces have spared no effort to engage in ideological infiltration to achieve their goal of overturning our socialist system and subverting our state," said a front-page essay in the Liberation Army Daily, the official mouthpiece of the military. "How closely this chimes with Li Hongzhi's political ambitions!," the article said, referring to the group's founder and theorist, who lives in exile in New York.

"We can say that whatever these Western anti-Chinese forces think is also in the minds of Li Hongzhi and his Falun Gong," the essay continued. "And what Li Hongzhi and Falun Gong are attempting is precisely what the Western anti-Chinese forces scheme at." The essay also compares Mr. Li to a notorious traitor who became a puppet for Japanese invaders earlier this century.

Another article, in today's Legal Daily, dredged up epithets from the Cultural Revolution, calling sect members "running dogs of foreign anti-Chinese forces."

Ever since it banned Falun Gong in July 1999 as an "evil cult," the government has kept up a drumbeat of attacks, appealing for support at home and abroad against a group that had drawn millions of Chinese to meditative exercises that are said to harness cosmic forces for one's well- being. But despite widespread arrests and harassment of members, with thousands shipped to "re-education through labor" camps, large numbers have continued practicing and have embarrassed the authorities with public protests.

In the last week, the campaign has shifted into overdrive. Trying to capitalize on public shock over the attempted self-immolation by seven apparent believers on Jan. 23, which left one woman dead and four others including a 12-year-old girl severely burned, the authorities have resorted to tried Communist methods.

In a typical news report today, 18 former believers described as government workers are quoted as saying their eyes were opened to Mr. Li's perfidy by months of "re-education," apparently in labor camps. Nearly every group in the country has been required to hold meetings and issue statements against the group; newspapers have featured a university psychiatrist's conclusion that believers in Falun Gong suffer from "delusion-like subcultural belief" and need psychiatric help.

Many people were repulsed by the attempted suicides and accept the government's assertion that the seven were Falun Gong protesters, despite denials by group leaders abroad. But many people have also been skeptical of the government contention that this meditation group - which was banned only after it showed an alarming capacity for illegal organizing - is such an overwhelming threat to the nation.

And now, some are distressed by the example the vitriolic campaign is setting in a country that is supposedly striving for the rule of law and more freedoms.

"The way they've used these people for ideological ends in such a crude way is really off-putting," said a Communist Party official. "Every time a problem blows up, the government reaches for the same old tricks. But it's unwise in the long run. You go too far and people get fed up."

An editor who is a party member said: "They have this mentality that the only worthwhile victory is a total one, with no survivors on the enemy side. But this isn't the civil war any more. These days things are much more complicated, society is so complicated."

"The propaganda leaders always want to take things too far," the editor continued, voicing the widely shared unhappiness with the Communist Party's powerful and conservative Propaganda Department.

The United States and other Western countries have not embraced Mr. Li's philosophy, but they have condemned the way China has bludgeoned followers who peacefully expressed their views, and the treatment of Falun Gong has emerged as a major human rights issue. To Beijing's frustration, the American government has refused China's request to extradite Mr. Li for criminal charges as a cult leader.

Just today, the Dutch foreign minister angrily postponed his imminent visit to Beijing because Chinese officials had warned a Dutch official not to meet with Falun Gong members in Hong Kong.

The Chinese government is also worried that Falun Gong protests could mar the visit later this month of International Olympic Committee officials, who are evaluating candidate cities for the 2008 games, for which Beijing desperately wants to be the host.

The essay today in the Liberation Army Daily charged that Western questioning of the crackdown on Falun Gong is based on lies and nefarious schemes.

Because Western enemies of China "have seen the value of exploiting Falun Gong," it said, "they have proved willing to turn black to white and confuse truth and error, making wild and outlandish accusations against the Chinese government's ban on Falun Gong, done according to the law."

"Any scum who betrays the interests of the state and people," the article said, referring to Li Hongzhi, "will ultimately never escape a despicable end of disgrace and ruin and ten thousand years of infamy."

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Seven members of Falun Gong reported dead

02/07/2001
USA Today
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001-02-07-falun.htm

BEIJING (AP) - A rights group Wednesday said seven more members of the outlawed Falun Gong meditation sect have died in Chinese custody, raising the death toll to 112 in the government crackdown on the group.

Four reportedly died in labor camps, including two who apparently were injured during force feeding, the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said. The family of a 28-year-old woman who had served eight months at a camp said she appeared to have been beaten, the Hong Kong-based center reported.

Another fell from the balcony at his home and died while trying to escape police who had come to arrest him, the center said. Two more were beaten at jails, the center reported.

The death reports come amid a renewed government campaign against Falun Gong, which Beijing considers an evil cult that cheats followers and has led some 1,600 to their deaths by discouraging modern medicine and driving them to insane self-destructive acts.

The Communist Party has seized on public revulsion over an attempted group suicide by purported Falun Gong practitioners on Jan. 23 - one person died and four were injured when they set themselves on fire in Tiananmen Square.

Falun Gong attracted millions of followers during the 1990s with a combination of gentle calisthenics and philosophies drawn from Buddhism, Taoism and the unorthodox ideas of its founder, Li Hongzhi, a former soldier and government clerk who lives in the United States.

Fearing the group's size and organization could challenge Communist Party rule, China's leaders banned it in July 1999. Core leaders have been sentenced to prison and rights groups claim thousands of rank and file members have been detained during the 18-month crackdown.

China does not comment on individual cases, but denies abusing sect members sent to labor camps or to counseling centers for deprogramming.


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USA Today
01/02/07
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Montana

Livingston - Michael Finley, superintendent of Yellowstone National Park since 1994, said he's resigning to become president of the Turner Foundation of Atlanta. The Turner Foundation, founded by media-mogul Ted Turner, supports grassroots environmental organizations. It awarded about $50 million in grants last year.

Nebraska

Grand Island - A U.S. Department of Interior report suggests that the central Platte River could be 25% narrower in 50 years. Studies indicate that the river was once much wider, shallower and had less vegetation than it does now.

Nevada

Fallon - Residents concerned about 11 childhood leukemia cases want state health officials to conduct more tests on air and soil contaminants. About 225 people met with state officials to hear what is being done to find the source of the leukemia cases in the Fallon area since 1996. Eight cases were diagnosed last year. Officials said they are analyzing data collected from the families.

------- Onelist (submissions from subscribers)