------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
9 Missing After U.S. Sub Hits Boat
9 Victims of Collision at Sea Still Missing
Japanese Town Shocked by Sub Crash
U.S. Apologizes Again to Japan
9 Are Missing Off Pearl Harbor After U.S. Submarine Collides
Aussies protest entrance of nuclear waste shipment
Gays in the British Military: Ask, Tell and Then Move On
NUCLEAR INSPECTION
U.S. to ease missile defense fears
Bush Radio Address Focuses on Defense
Powell: US To Deploy Missile Shield
Poll: Americans Like Bush Proposals
Europe's Shifting Role Poses Challenge to U.S.
Bush challenges military leaders on nuke weapons cuts
Bush orders review of military and nuclear arsenal
Oversight of Biological Tests Cited
Nevada Town Wonders About a Cancer Cluster
U.S. Stockpile Size Affects Lab Workload
Bush Launches Diplomacy Offensive
. . . And the Bill for Defense
Bush to Seek $1.4 Billion Military Pay Boost

MILITARY
Colombia and Rebels Agree on Restarting Peace Talks
A Foolish Drug War
Antidrug Official's Son Is Guilty in Heroin Case
A Risky No-Fly Zone Over Iraq
Princeton Professor at U.N.
The Last Superpower Ponders Its Next Move

OTHER
New Report Backs Planting More Trees to Fight Warming
Despite Ruling, E.P.A. Insists That City Must Filter Water
Next Nest: Alaska
Commission Sues Railroad to End Genetic Testing in Work Injury Cases
2 Ex-Officers in Louima Case Get probation for Lying
Dismiss Charge Against Officer in Sexual Assault
A Leaner and Less Visible NSC
Russian Defector Was Spy, Not Diplomat, U.S. Officials Say

ACTIVISTS
Rising Numbers of Investors Make Social Goals a Priority
Staten Island Cottages Linked to Dorothy Day Are Demolished
PROTESTERS ARRESTED
China vs. the West
Crimes against capitalism?


-------- NUCLEAR

9 Missing After U.S. Sub Hits Boat

February 10, 2001
New York Times
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/10WIRE-HAWAII.html

HONOLULU (AP) -- The 35 people on board the 180-foot Japanese fishing vessel Ehime Maru heard a loud thump and felt a shudder. The lights went out and sea water flooded in, mixing with noxious diesel fuel as a U.S. submarine crashed into the hull from the depths of the Pacific.

Those who could, scrambled to the decks and jumped into the choppy 77-degree waters to save their lives. The 26 who made it crawled into automatically inflated life rafts floating in a field of debris as their ship sank in 1,800 feet of water 15 miles southeast of Pearl Harbor.

On Saturday, Coast Guard and Navy search crews sought other survivors among the nine still missing, including three crewmen, two teachers and four high school students who'd taken the voyage to learn how to fish.

A search of 1,453 square miles by Saturday morning had turned up no sign of survivors, said Lt. Greg Fondran, spokesman for the U.S. Coast Guard.

`We're treating this search and rescue case as if they're out there and we're going to find them,'' he said.

The nuclear-powered attack submarine USS Greeneville was on a routine one-day training mission Friday afternoon when it surfaced underneath the Ehime Maru, splitting it open and sinking it within 10 minutes.

The survivors, many soaked in diesel fuel, were rescued by two Coast Guard boats that responded to an emergency locator signal activated when the boat sank.

They were taken to the Coast Guard's Sand Island base in Honolulu Harbor, and several were treated at hospitals for minor injuries and exposure to the fuel.

A dozen stayed overnight at a hotel, emerging Saturday morning for breakfast. Having lost everything, they still wore blue jumpsuits issued at the Coast Guard base.

``While it's not yet clear how the accident occurred, it is both tragic and regrettable,'' said Adm. Thomas Fargo, commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. ``I want to express my apologies to those involved in the incident, their families and the government of Japan.''

The Navy and National Transportation Safety Board are conducting investigations of why the submarine surfaced without noticing the boat.

The Ehime Maru left Japan on Jan. 10 with 20 crew members to fish for tuna, swordfish and shark. The two teachers and 13 students on board were from the Uwajima Fisheries High School in the southwestern Japanese state of Ehime.

``Most of the people were below deck in the rooms or galley,'' said Coast Guard Petty Officer Michael Carr, who interviewed the survivors. ``After the lights went out, everyone started yelling that the water is coming into the ship. That's when most of the people we saw started fleeing.''

Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke with Japanese Foreign Minister Yohei Kono Saturday morning to convey his regrets and apologies and the president's regrets and condolences, said David Denny, a State Department spokesman.

It was the second time in three days that the United States has apologized for an incident between the U.S. military and Japanese civilians.

On Thursday, the top U.S. Marine in Japan personally apologized for calling Okinawan officials ``a bunch of wimps'' in an e-mail to his staff. Lt. Gen. Earl Hailston's remark was related to an Okinawan court ruling that ordered a U.S. Marine arrested last month for allegedly lifting a high school girl's skirt and snapping photos.

In Uwajima, concern for the missing was mixed with anger as townspeople huddled around television sets in restaurants and shops to watch news updates.

The Ehime state government set up a crisis center to assist families. School and government officials were expected to arrive in Honolulu on Saturday. Family members were to arrive on Sunday.

``It's a bit chaotic right now,'' said Uwajima municipal official Masanori Mori. ``There's a great deal of shock.''

The Greeneville stayed at the search scene overnight and returned to port under its own power Saturday morning, Fargo said. The submarine's rudder and port side showed scrapes from the collision, he said.

The Greeneville was commissioned in February 1996. It is 360 feet long, has a diameter of 33 feet and displaces 6,900 tons submerged.

---------

9 Victims of Collision at Sea Still Missing

February 10, 2001
New York Times
By JOHN H. CUSHMAN Jr.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/10/national/11SUBM.html?printpage=yes

WASHINGTON, Feb. 10 - Navy and Coast Guard ships and planes searched the waters off Hawaii through the night, but as dawn broke today rescuers had not found nine people missing from a Japanese boat that sank after a collision with a United States Navy submarine.

Among the missing were four high school students who were on the fishing vessel to learn commercial fishing, along with two of their teachers and three crew members, a Coast Guard official said. Shortly after the 191-foot ship sank on Friday afternoon, the Coast Guard rescued 26 survivors, 12 of whom were hospitalized, said Lt. Greg Fondran, a spokesman for the 14th Coast Guard District in Honolulu.

Two Coast Guard cutters patrolled the area all night, with a Navy cruiser and a Navy salvage ship. Helicopters and reconnaissance aircraft joined in the search, Lieutenant Fondran said.

The submarine, the U.S.S. Greeneville, a 362-foot attack submarine, left the scene once rescue operations were in full swing and was on the way to Pearl Harbor, the Navy said.

Lieutenant Fondran, in a telephone interview, said, "Unfortunately, we have not found any of the nine who are missing." He said that searchers had seen debris, life rafts and fishing gear in the water, but "no personal effects, no sign of them."

Even as search and rescue efforts continued, the Coast Guard began to interview the officers, crew members and other survivors of the Japanese boat to try to learn what happened. Preliminary reports said that the Greeneville hit the Japanese boat, the Ehime Maru, as the submarine surfaced about 10 miles south of Honolulu.

Lt. Conrad Chun, a spokesman for the Pacific Fleet, said the investigation into the cause of the collision would begin immediately on the submarine's return. Crew members are expected to begin meeting with investigators today, he said.

In addition to the Navy, the accident will be investigated by the Coast Guard and the National Transportation Safety Board.

The collision occurred at about 1:45 p.m. Hawaii time (6:45 p.m. Eastern daylight time) on Friday, when the submarine surfaced and struck the trawler, ripping the engine room open. Survivors said that water then flooded the vessel and that it sank within minutes into 18,000 feet of water.

Shortly after the collision, the Coast Guard was notified by the Navy that a submarine had hit a ship, and at the same time an emergency beacon on the Japanese boat sounded a distress signal that the Coast Guard picked up, Lieutenant Fondran said. It took 30 minutes for rescue vessels to arrive at the scene, by which time the Japanese boat had sunk, he said. Within 15 minutes of arriving the rescuers had picked up the survivors from life rafts, he said.

The Ehime Maru left Japan on Jan. 10 with 20 crew members, 2 teachers and 13 students from a Japanese fisheries school in the southeastern Japanese prefecture of Ehime. The ship had been scheduled to return to Japan next month.

Navy spokesmen said there was no visible damage to the nuclear- powered submarine, which would normally carry a crew of 133. It has Tomahawk cruise missiles and torpedoes but carries no nuclear weapons.

At the time of the collision, most of the people aboard the Japanese trawler were below deck.

The Japanese government said officials in Ehime had set up a crisis center for families. In Tokyo, the Associated Press quoted Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori as saying that he had received an official apology from the United States. "The United States extended its apologies and promised utmost efforts to find the missing," Mr. Mori said.

The survivors were taken to a Coast Guard station at Sand Island in Honolulu Harbor, and those who were not injured were housed in a local hotel. The Associated Press said that while some of the injured were carried on stretchers, others were able to walk on their own. Dressed in blue jump suits, the survivors linked up to make phone calls to their families in Japan on a phone made available to them at the base.

---

Japanese Town Shocked by Sub Crash

February 10, 2001
New York Times
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Submarine-Worried-Town.html?printpage=yes

UWAJIMA, Japan (AP) -- Anxiety was yielding to anger and despair in this rural Japanese town as night fell Saturday without word of four high school students and two teachers missing since a U.S. nuclear submarine surfaced under their fishing boat off Hawaii.

After an agonizing day seeking information on nine people still missing after Friday's accident, including three crew members, the mayor of Uwajima vented his frustration.

``Common sense dictates that the rising submarine should have been watching for what was above it,'' Hiroshi Ishibashi said.

The families of the 17-year-old students gathered at the Uwajima Fisheries High School, and expressed fears that U.S. officials were not doing enough to find their loved ones.

Ehime Prefecture Gov. Moriyuki Kato relayed their concerns to the United States, prefectural official Yoshikatsu Matsuoka said.

For the townspeople who huddled around TV sets in restaurants and shops to watch news updates, concern for the missing mingled with anger.

``Come on, it's a nuclear submarine. They have to know what's going on around them,'' said company worker Fukushi Hamada, 63. ``My goodness, what carelessness!''

Thirty-five Japanese were aboard the 499-ton Ehime Maru when the nuclear-powered sub, the USS Greeneville, surfaced under it on Friday off Waikiki, sinking the training vessel within minutes. Twenty-six people were rescued. The search continued for the rest.

The accident comes amid an uproar in Japan over sex crimes by U.S. servicemen on Okinawa. This past week, animosities were fueled when the top Marine in Okinawa, Lt. Gen. Earl Hailston, was reported to have sent his staff an e-mail calling Okinawa legislators ``nuts and a bunch of wimps.'' Hailston later apologized.

At the high school, which regularly sent students to Hawaii on training missions, sadness reigned.

``I had sent them off hoping that this would be a valuable learning experience, so I can't believe that this has happened,'' said vice principal Kazumitsu Joko, his voice shaking and his eyes tearing up.

Town officials were trying to coordinate a response to the accident and Ehime Prefecture set up a crisis center. Uwajima is about 420 miles southwest of Tokyo.

``It's a bit chaotic right now,'' municipal official Masanori Mori said. ``There's a great deal of shock.''

The U.S. government apologized to the parents through the Defense Agency on Saturday evening, Joko said.

``The families are suffering terribly,'' Joko added. ``If it's true as they say on TV that this was a blunder, then what I feel is anger. But it's too early to tell.''

The last word they got from the boat came on Feb. 6, he said -- a telegraph reading, ``All on schedule. Everybody's fine.''

---

U.S. Apologizes Again to Japan

February 10, 2001
New York Times
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Japan.html?printpage=yes

WASHINGTON (AP) -- For the second time in three days, the United States has apologized for an incident between the U.S. military and Japanese civilians. This time, the regret was for the sinking of a Japanese fishing vessel after a Navy nuclear-powered attack submarine collided with it off Hawaii.

The Navy and Coast Guard continued to search on Saturday for nine missing people, including four high school students and two teachers from the town of Uwajima who were on a fisheries training voyage.

Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke with Japanese Foreign Minister Yohei Kono on Saturday morning to convey his regrets and apologies, as well as condolences and regrets on behalf of President Bush, said David Denny, a State Department spokesman.

Bush was informed Friday night of the incident by his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, while he was at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland, spokesman Ari Fleischer said. Bush expressed his concern and made sure that the State Department and the Pentagon were handling the matter, Fleischer said.

In Uwajima, concern for the missing was mixed with anger as townspeople huddled around television sets in restaurants and shops to watch news updates.

``Come on, it's a nuclear submarine. They have to know what's going on around them,'' said Fukushi Hamada. ``My goodness, what carelessness!''

On Thursday, the top U.S. Marine in Japan personally apologized for calling Okinawan officials ``a bunch of wimps'' in an e-mail to his staff. Lt. Gen. Earl Hailston's remarks were apparently about an Okinawan court ruling that ordered a U.S. Marine arrested last month for allegedly lifting a high school girl's skirt and snapping photos.

About 47,000 U.S. military service people are stationed in Japan, nearly two-thirds of them in Okinawa, 1,000 miles southwest of Tokyo.

In a meeting with the Japanese foreign minister last month, Powell was said to have stressed the importance of the U.S. military presence on Okinawa to regional stability, while acknowledging the need to minimize disruptions to civilian life on Okinawa.

Okinawans long have complained about crimes linked to the American military presence there. In 1995, three U.S. servicemen raped a 12-year-old girl, and tens of thousands of Okinawans marched in outrage.

---

9 Are Missing Off Pearl Harbor After U.S. Submarine Collides With Japanese Vessel

February 10, 2001
New York Times
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/10/national/10HAWA.html

WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 - A Navy submarine collided with a Japanese vessel near Pearl Harbor this afternoon and sank it, leaving nine people unaccounted for, a Navy spokesman said.

The accident occurred at 1:45 p.m. Hawaii time, when the submarine Greeneville surfaced about nine miles south of Diamond Head, said the spokesman, Cmdr. Greg J. Smith.

The stern of the 360-foot-long submarine struck the other vessel, the Ehime Maru, a fishing boat exactly half its length, which carried 13 students and 2 teachers from a fisheries vocational high school in southwestern Japan and a crew of 20, Japanese public television reported.

Four students, two teachers and three crew members were missing, The Associated Press reported.

As the Japanese vessel sank, life rafts were deployed and 26 of the people on board were rescued, Navy officials in Hawaii said.

A Coast Guard helicopter, the cutter Assateague, and a patrol boat were searching tonight for the nine missing people from the Japanese boat. The crew of the submarine, which was not damaged in the accident, was also helping in the search, Commander Smith said.

The Navy was hampered in assembling facts about the incident tonight because rescuers were unable to speak Japanese, Commander Smith said.

"There's a definite language barrier," he said.

The Greeneville, a Los Angeles- class attack submarine, is equipped with Tomahawk cruise missiles. The submarine, which was commissioned in 1996, carries a crew of 126 sailors and 16 officers.

The weather in Pearl Harbor, where the Greeneville is based, was overcast but mild today. Searchers dealt with 3- to 5-foot seas and "fair to poor" visibility because of a light haze, according to Lt. Michael Wessel of the Coast Guard.

"We expect to continue the search through the night," he said.

The Ehime Maru set out from Misaki port in Tokyo Bay on Jan. 10, and was scheduled to return home March 23, according to Japanese press reports. The students and crew were fishing for tuna, the reports said.

Japanese boats carrying students are common in Honolulu Harbor and the neighboring islands.

President Bush was notified of the incident, said the White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer.

Japan's top foreign ministry official for relations with the United States, Ichiro Fujisaki, contacted the American Embassy in Tokyo to encourage the American rescue efforts, said a spokesman for the Japanese Embassy, Kazuo Kodama.

Mr. Kodama said the high school- age students came from a school that shared their trawler's name, Ehime Maru, on Shikoku Island. Relatives of the passengers were still awaiting word about the rescue, he said.

"We hope that the rescue operation will find everybody," Mr. Kodama said.

The town where the fisheries school is located, Uwajima, has a population of 65,000 and is on the Japanese island of Shikoku, in an area famous for pearl cultivation.

[In Japan, television showed students and family gathered at the school, watching live footage of the rescue effort.]

The ship that was hit is 180 feet long, according to the school's web page. Its capacity is 67 passengers.

Naval procedure for surfacing a submarine is typically a very careful process, officials said. The submarine rises first to periscope depth, about 55 feet below the surface, and raises the periscope. Meanwhile, sonar monitors seek to detect any noise in the vicinity, listening especially for the sound of propellers.

Once a 180-degree periscope search confirms the area is clear, the submarine rises, usually within minutes, after sounding an internal alarm.

"You listen and you look, that's the standard," Commander Smith said.

In November 1990, the nuclear- powered submarine HMS Trenchant snagged the fishing nets of the trawler Antares, a Scottish boat, dragging four of the smaller vessel's crewman to their deaths. And in 1995, the U.S. nuclear submarine Drum collided with a Panamanian-registered freighter in Hong Kong waters. No one was injured in that accident.

-------- australia

Aussies protest entrance of nuclear waste shipment

01/02/10
Earth Times
By MARK SCHULMAN
http://www.earthtimes.org/feb/environmentaussiesprotestfeb10_01.htm

SYDNEY--Hundreds of anti-nuclear protesters blocked the entrance to Sydney's Lucas Heights nuclear last week in an attempt to stop a shipment of nuclear waste.

Four Greenpeace activists chained themselves to a trailer blocking the entrance after erecting a banner that read: "Nuclear reactors waste the planet." Several other activists used neck locks to attach themselves to the facility's front gate.

Seven activists were arrested. Two police officers were slightly injured during the demonstration.

Despite the protest, authorities managed to transport over 300 spent nuclear fuel rods to an awaiting cargo vessel at Port Botany in south Sydney. The nuclear waste was then shipped to France for reprocessing, only to be returned to Australia for disposal in the near future.

"Greenpeace has taken action to stop this dangerous nuclear waste from being transported through the streets of Sydney," said Stephen Campbell, a nuclear campaigner with the international environmental organization.

The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization (ANSTO), which is responsible for running the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor, confirmed in a statement that a shipment of 360 of these used fuel elements were loaded at Port Botany onto a special purpose vessel for transportation to COGEMA (la Compagnie Générale des Matières Nucléaire), a nuclear waste reprocessing plant in La Hague, France.

Environment Australia, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, the Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office, and Australia's nuclear regulator, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, each approved arrangements for the shipment.

"This transport is part of the increasing traffic of nuclear materials that is being facilitated and condoned by the Australian government," Campbell said.

In addition to the shipment of fuel rods, Greenpeace has received information that two vessels carrying plutonium fuel will travel this month from Europe to Japan via southern Australia, the Tasman Sea and the South Pacific.

According to ANSTO Chief Executive Officer Helen Garnett this was the fifth shipment of spent fuel from Lucas Heights and the third since September 1997, when the Australian government announced it would provide funding to ANSTO to ship overseas its inventory of spent fuel.

"It's important to understand that the shipment is part of a planned process aimed at meeting the expressed desires of the local community for the reduction in spent fuel stored at the Lucas Heights site," Garnett said.

"The shipments are safe," she reassured the press. "You're handling solid material in very solid containers inside shipping containers."

Built in 1958 as a research reactor to produce medical radioisotopes, Lucas Heights is Australia's only nuclear reactor. The aging facility has produced more than 1,800 spent fuel rods.

Most nuclear reactors are powered by fuel rods that contain uranium-238 and uranium-235. The spent rods are highly radioactive and can have extremely long half-lives. If not stored properly, they can be detrimental to human health and the environment.

Despite calls from environmental groups to close down the reactor and to prevent the further transportation of spent fuel rods and other nuclear waste, the Australian government has recently approved the construction of a new, $250 billion reactor to replace the old facility.

"These transports will be repeated many times over the next 40 years if Australia is bloody-minded enough to build a new reactor at Lucas Heights," Stephen Campbell said.

"These are all situations Greenpeace and the community aim to prevent," he added. "The object of our campaign is to alter Australian investment in nuclear technology. We would like to see Australia nuclear-free."

-------- britain

Gays in the British Military: Ask, Tell and Then Move On

February 10, 2001
New York Times
By SARAH LYALL
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/10/world/10BRIT.html?pagewanted=all

PLYMOUTH, England - For the last year it has been perfectly legal for Chief Petty Officer Rob Nunn, who is openly gay, to serve in the Royal Navy. But there have inevitably been awkward moments, like the time someone jokingly asked, using slang for homosexual, why he was "standing around like a poof."

"The senior guy who was there said, `That's probably because he is one,' " recalled Petty Officer Nunn, 45, who in 1992 was discharged from the navy for being gay, but who re- enlisted last year after the military lifted its ban on gays. "I didn't mind - I'm not at all P.C. - but the guy was mortified. He spent the next month apologizing."

For many of the submariners stationed at his base in Cornwall, near Plymouth, Petty Officer Nunn is the first gay person they have ever knowingly met, and certainly the first in a navy uniform. But what is perhaps most surprising about his presence here is how little disruption it has caused, even among the aggressively heterosexual men he serves with.

"When you're locked in a tin for months and months at a time, you have to really get along, and it's easy to think gays would disrupt that," said Chief Petty Officer Andrew Reid, a friend of Petty Officer Nunn's. "We thought Bob would be a catalyst for trouble and discord. But since I met Bob, my whole outlook's changed. He's just a bloke like the rest of us."

It would be hard to overstate how surprising such a response has been in the British military, whose rationale until last year was much the same as that of the uneasy American "don't ask, don't tell" policy adopted under President Bill Clinton. The existence of openly gay personnel in the ranks, the argument went, would weaken morale and foment division by leading to gay cliques and provoking antigay prejudice and violence from heterosexuals.

"Homosexual behavior can cause offense, polarize relationships, induce ill discipline and, as a consequence, damage morale and unit effectiveness," the British Defense Ministry said then in its guidelines on the subject.

But contrary to most expectations, Petty Officer Nunn's experience seems to be the rule rather than the exception in Britain's newly inclusive military. Even the Defense Ministry, which fought hard to keep gays out, has acknowledged an unexpectedly smooth transition. In a report last fall, it said there had been "widespread acceptance of the new policy" and "no reported difficulties of note concerning homophobic behavior" among service personnel.

"Before the lifting of the ban, many senior officials predicted that military performance would suffer," said Aaron Belkin, director of the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military at the University of California, Santa Barbara, which recently published a report about the British experience. "But we found that there has been no problem in terms of morale or discipline or recruitment."

Interviews with current and former members of the armed forces and with military officials and academic experts tell a similar story: at least so far, the presence of openly gay personnel has caused minimal disruption.

"At a personal level it's been absolutely fine," said Lt. Cmdr. Michael Griffiths, 37, a Royal Navy warfare officer who is gay. "Among the people I'm living and working with, it does not appear to have caused any problem at all."

And Claire Clarke, an air force electronics technician who is straight, said the presence of an openly gay man in her unit had not been an issue, except perhaps to stifle traditional military jokes about the feebleness of others.

"People think they have to be a little more careful with jokes, with ribbing someone by saying, `Oh, you big girl's blouse,' " Technician Clarke said, using a British term for wimp.

"For the first week or so people edited what they said around Andy, but then it became obvious that he didn't mind if we said, `Oh, you great big girl,' " she added. "I would lift things and say, `I'm more of a man than you are.' He'd take them as the lighthearted jokes they were."

The government never kept count of how many people were discharged when its ban was in place, but campaigners for gay rights estimate that as many as 4,000 people have been forced to leave over the years. (There are now about 205,000 people serving in the British armed forces.)

Before the policy changed, people suspected of being gay were often investigated in elaborate operations that could include surveillance, interviews with friends and acquaintances, interrogations and searches of personal items.

"Targeting and uncovering homosexuality was a large part of what the military did," said Edmund Hall, a broadcaster who wrote "We Can't Even March Straight: Homosexuality in the British Armed Forces," after being discharged from the navy in 1988 for saying he was gay.

Despite the hard-line stance - and despite a 1996 survey in which a majority of personnel said they did not want to serve with gays - it was clear by the mid-1990's that change was in the air. In 1998, four highly decorated gays who had sued the government after being discharged won their case when the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the antigay policy violated the fundamental right to privacy.

The government officially scrapped the ban in January 2000, bringing its policy on gays in line with that of most NATO countries, including France, Germany and Canada.

In contrast, the policy fashioned for the American military under President Clinton was not so much a lifting of the ban as a studied and often stilted avoidance of the issue. Gays are allowed to serve, as long as they keep their sexual orientation secret and do not engage in homosexual acts.

In practice, the policy has been confusing and difficult to enforce. Advocates for gay men and lesbians in uniform have complained that there is still widespread harassment in the ranks and, in the worst cases, violence. In response to the 1999 bludgeoning death of an Army private suspected of being gay, the American military ordered new training to explain the policy more clearly to personnel.

Since Britain lifted the ban, its military says, there have been no reported incidents of harassment.

In announcing the changes here, the military issued a new code of conduct that applies to heterosexual as well as homosexual relationships. It stresses that harassment will not be tolerated, but also emphasizes that sexuality is a private matter and that offensive or overly demonstrative behavior is inappropriate in the armed forces.

The new code is meant to make it clear that the service role is all important, said a senior military official. "The criterion we use is, has the behavior of the person brought the service into disrepute?" he said.

As far as gays go, "our policy is that it's not an issue," he said, adding: "Officially, whatever side a person bats for, it's all the same. But people have to respect other people's orientation and be discreet."

If the United States policy is "don't ask, don't tell," said Christopher Dandeker, who heads the war studies department at Kings College London, Britain's can be described as "don't fear it, don't flaunt it."

"The crucial thing for gay personnel is that they have to be service personnel first and gay second," said Professor Dandeker, who teaches military sociology. "The team comes first. They are not to let their own sexual identity undermine the service identity."

The real test, he said, will come when more people enter the service and undergo training as openly gay personnel, and when gays come out in army combat units and other traditionally macho areas. "Just because there are no problems now does not mean there are none to come," he said.

And even in the newly relaxed climate, it seems that relatively few gays have publicly come out so far. Others have come out only to select groups of friends.

"Even though the ban's been lifted, some people aren't entirely happy about it," said a lesbian who is a captain in the Royal Army and who asked that her name not be used because she has not come out fully at work. She has some 100 people under her command, she said, but has revealed her sexuality only to a handful of people she trusts - including, recently, her commanding officer.

"The other day, she asked me what my boyfriend does," the captain said. "I said, `I don't exactly have a boyfriend, but I've been seeing someone for four years now.' She was very polite about it, not nasty or overly inquisitive, and she said, `Well, whatever makes you happy.'"

It helps, experts say, that people who have come out so far are already well established in their careers and respected by their colleagues.

Petty Officer Nunn, who has spent more than 20 years in the navy - during which he got married, had a child and left his wife after he realized he was gay - certainly fits that description. But even he takes care not to flaunt his sexuality, and has not yet introduced his partner to his friends.

"My private life has never been embroiled in my working life," he said. "If I'm asked, I'll answer, but I don't walk around with a big flag saying, `I'm gay.'"

That's not to say that his friends don't tease him mercilessly - and that he doesn't tease them back - in classic naval humor that involves homing in on one another's vulnerable spots and pounding them into the ground.

At Christmas, for instance, each person in the mess gives a gift, after drawing the recipient's name out of a hat. This year, Petty Officer Nunn got a tiara and a fairy wand. "The mess was determined to get me to say `fairy lights,' " he recalled, using the usual British term for Christmas lights. "But I kept saying `sparkly lights' and `bright lights.'"

By the same token, his friend Petty Officer Reid, whose wife recently left him, got a pack of condoms and a book of pickup lines.

Petty Officer Nunn's friends ask him questions about what it is like to be gay, of course. But mostly they marvel that a gay man can be so similar to them, joining so enthusiastically in their pointed humor and hard-drinking weekend social life.

"Most people would think of a homosexual as an effete person," said Chief Petty Officer Nigel Crocker. "But he's not, and that's why he's so accepted."

Some people on the base still don't know about Petty Officer Nunn's sexuality. But when they ask questions, his friends are the first to defend him.

"We're quite a close-knit group, so nobody would be able to say anything negative to us," said Petty Office Reid. "If we were out and someone said, `Bob Nunn's a big poof,' we'd say, `He is, but so what?'"

-------- czech republic

NUCLEAR INSPECTION

February 10, 2001
New York Times
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/10/world/10BRIE.html?pagewanted=all

CZECH REPUBLIC: The International Atomic Energy Agency will start safety checks on Monday at the Temelin nuclear power plant, about 30 miles from the Austrian border, to try to reach a diplomatic compromise between the Czech Republic and Austria. After several incidents at the Soviet-style plant, Vienna has threatened to block Prague's bid to join the European Union. Victor Homola (NYT)

-------- missile defense

U.S. to ease missile defense fears

February 10, 2001
CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/02/10/poweel.missile/index.html

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. has reiterated it will press ahead with missile defense technology but has promised talks with nations wary of the plan.

Secretary of State Colin Powell denied criticisms that the technology -- to shoot down ballistic missiles in flight -- would spark off a new arms race.

Russia, China and a number of European Union countries, including the UK and Germany, have all expressed reservations about the National Missile Defense (NMD) initiative.

To develop the system Washington would have to either rip up the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty -- which outlaws NMD -- or persuade Russia to accept alterations to the treaty.

Powell said: "We are going to consult with our allies to hear their concerns.

"But we are not going to be knocked off the track of moving in this direction as long as the technology points us in that direction."

Moscow warning

Russia has strongly criticized Washington's NMD plan.

It has warned that not only does Moscow already have technology that would pierce NMD but also if the U.S. does develop the system it would spark a new arms race.

Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev said old Soviet technologies developed in the 1980s to oppose Ronald Reagan's Star Wars plan could easily penetrate the NMD system.

UK Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said NMD plans should only be implemented in a way that does not increase tension with Russia.

During a visit to Washington this week, Cook stressed the need to respect the terms of the 1972 treaty. German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said NATO was the right forum for consulting on any moves.

He said: "The tight net of treaties of nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation must be retained, strengthened and built up."

There are also domestic U.S. opponents to NMD, with Senator Joseph Biden, a Democrat from Delaware, saying that a U.S. missile defense program would prompt China to increase its missile program, which in turn would lead to India and then Pakistan building up missile programs.

Powell's support for NMD came as President George W. Bush ordered a review of the U.S. military including how to reduce its nuclear arsenal.

Russian military sources, quoted by Interfax news agency, said Moscow still opposed any changes to the treaty, but were ready for talks with Washington on co-ordinated arms cuts.

"We are ready to start immediate talks with the United States on further arms reductions and seek constructive ways to maintain a strategic stability," Interfax quoted the sources as saying.

----

Bush Radio Address Focuses on Defense

Saturday, February 10, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A53303-2001Feb10?language=printer

President Bush turned to defense and international issues in his weekly radio address Saturday, promising the American military a pay raise and U.S. allies "a clear, consistent and decisive" foreign policy.

Calling national security "the most basic commitment" of a president, Bush, who has ordered a fundamental reevaluation of the military and the U.S. defense posture, added: "Whenever America acts in the world, our principles must be certain, our intentions beyond doubt, our strength be unchallenged."

In a reference to his determination to develop a highly controversial National Missile Defense over bitter objections from Russia and China and questions raised by Washington's European allies, Bush said the United States must make sure it is "protected from attack from ballistic missiles and high-tech terrorists."

---

Powell: US To Deploy Missile Shield

February 10, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bush-Nuclear-Weapons.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration will consult U.S. allies, Russia and China beforehand, but it will go ahead with deployment of a missile defense system if the technology checks out, Secretary of State Colin Powell says.

At a news conference Friday, Powell outlined the administration's stand on an expensive system that critics say will not work and will touch off an arms race.

``We are going to consult with our allies to hear their concerns,'' he said. ``But we are not going to be knocked off the track of moving in this direction as long as the technology points us in that direction.''

A national missile defense is banned under the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union. The theory is that being exposed to deadly retaliation deters an aggressor from launching an attack.

The administration hopes to persuade Russia to change the treaty to allow a U.S. missile defense program, and it is offering to share defenses with the allies.

Allied leaders are responding politely to the U.S. initiative. They are voicing misgivings quietly out of respect for a new president getting his feet wet in foreign affairs.

But in the ministries and corridors of national capitals, many are distressed with Washington's attitude.

There are critics at home, as well.

Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., told reporters this week that a U.S. missile defense program would prompt China to increase its missile program, to which India would respond with its own buildup, and Pakistan, in turn, would react the same way to India.

He said the administration should clarify the kind of missile defense it wants. ``We are talking about trillions of dollars' difference,'' depending on how expansive it is, said Biden, ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Among administration options are to supplement a ground-based missile defense system, which is being tested, with a sea-based system that could provide wider coverage but would take longer to deploy. As foreseen by the Clinton administration, the ground-based system would protect all 50 U.S. states against a small-scale attack by missiles with relatively unsophisticated decoys.

Powell said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will make an assessment after he ``gets his team in place.''

``I can't tell you how long that will take,'' said Powell, but he implied it will take time because Rumsfeld ``will have to take a good, hard look at that.''

In the meantime, Powell said, ``the rest of us'' will discuss with Russia, China and U.S. allies what the administration has in mind and its overall strategy.

President Bush said Friday he was ordering Rumsfeld to conduct a ``top-to-bottom'' review of the military: its strategy, missions, modernization priorities and other aspects.

Included in the review is a look at how much further the nuclear arsenal could prudently be reduced, officials said.

---

Poll: Americans Like Bush Proposals

February 10, 2001
New York Times
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bush-Poll.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Americans like most of President Bush's major proposals, but many want to see the federal surplus used to pay down the national debt and oppose opening up protected Alaskan wilderness areas for oil exploration, a Newsweek poll finds.

The poll, released Saturday, said 73 percent of Americans like Bush's education proposals and 65 percent approve of his idea to use federal funds for services provided by religious organizations.

The president's plan to reduce federal income tax rates across the board won support from 67 percent of the respondents, but 65 percent said they would prefer that the federal surplus be used to pay down the national debt and make Social Security and Medicare more financially solvent.

The poll said 52 percent of Americans want Bush to seek more limited tax reductions than his 10-year, $1.6 trillion plan.

Also, 60 percent of respondents said they approve of Bush's plan to develop a national missile defense. But only 43 percent approve of his support for oil exploration in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, while 48 percent disapprove.

The telephone poll, conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates, was based on interviews with 1,000 adults on Feb. 8-9. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

---

Europe's Shifting Role Poses Challenge to U.S.

February 10, 2001
New York Times
By ROGER COHEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/10/world/11EURO.html?pagewanted=all

BERLIN, Feb. 10 - A little phrase from Rudolf Scharping, the German defense minister, recently caused American military commanders to shudder: "As the European Union develops its security and defense policy and becomes an independent actor, we must determine our security policy with Russia, our biggest neighbor."

The specter of Europe - and particularly its central power, Germany - adopting a more independent stance from NATO and paying close heed to Russia is chilling for the United States, and hard to reconcile with the Atlantic alliance that has preserved Europe's stability and advanced American interests for more than a half-century.

The alliance is not about to fall apart: too much is at stake for that, not least the peace of mind of the many Europeans who still believe this continent is inherently unstable unless America is present. But as Mr. Scharping's words suggest, something fundamental has shifted in the transatlantic relationship.

The 15-member European Union, long a mere trade bloc ultimately protected by American power, has begun to develop into a grouping with its own serious military and strategic ambitions. Where exactly such ambitions are directed remains uncertain, but this much seems clear: the scope of Europe's quest for an altered balance of power in its post- cold war ties with Washington is not yet fully appreciated by the Bush administration.

Addressing the allies for the first time last week in Munich, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld did not use the words "European Union" once.

It was this omission - as much as Mr. Rumsfeld's stark warning to the Europeans to avoid "actions that could reduce NATO's effectiveness by confusing duplication or by perturbing the transatlantic link" - that was noted in European capitals.

"It appeared that the European Union was not yet on Mr. Rumsfeld's radar screen," said Wolfgang Ischinger, a senior official in the German Foreign Ministry. "Of course, it was not a factor the last time he was in office. But the fact is the development of the Union's defense identity is an accelerating process that it would be a mistake to oppose."

Already, the European Union has set up a military planning staff, established a so-called political and security committee and is readying a 60,000-member rapid reaction force. At the same time, most of the Union is less than a year away from the fast-forward to a European identity likely to occur when the euro becomes the currency on the streets of Barcelona, Brussels and Berlin. The euro was always a political project; its politics involve forging a united Europe as a counterweight to American dominance.

How the Europeans finesse their challenge to American superpower assumptions has yet to be defined. France, for example, wants Europe's new military arm to be "independent" from NATO, or at least equipped to be so; Britain rejects such ideas as destabilizing Gallic dreams. But Europe has clearly decided to create the embryo of an army because it has determined that this is in its interest, because it believes that this is the only way to convince skeptical electorates of the need to increase defense spending, and because it views the development as an essential complement to economic and political integration.

It wants to be treated as a bloc and as an equal within the alliance, so ending the relationship of a single superpower to a bunch of far smaller allies. For Joschka Fischer, the German foreign minister, such European integration amounts to a "historical process" and, as such, is unstoppable - even by America.

The parallels are obvious to another development portrayed as unstoppable and inevitable by President Bush: the American construction and deployment of a system of national missile defense of which Europeans remain suspicious.

As these two projects - Europe's rapid reaction force, America's missile shield - confront each other, a profound change in transatlantic relations seems clear. At other times of post-war tensions, like the resistance in Germany, Italy, Britain and elsewhere to the deployment of new medium-range missiles in the early 1980's, the arguments centered on a European reaction to an American- directed policy.

This time, however, both Europe and the United States are pushing ideas they perceive to be in their inviolable interests. Neither is ready to budge. Each will have to accommodate the other. In this sense, the European Union has become an "actor" - unwieldy, underfunded - but still a body that acts as well as reacts.

Across the broad range of European-American differences - from subsidies for the new Airbus "Superjumbo" aircraft to what diplomats now call the "social conflicts" over issues like gun control, the death penalty and the use of genetically modified food - this growing European coherence weighs heavily.

The issues may prove especially intractable because, as Mr. Ischinger noted, "We now have a different thinking about power and structures."

Europeans have just traded in a lot of their national sovereignty for the euro and so view the world very much in multilateral terms. The United States remains fiercely attached to its sovereignty; the new administration wants to bolster national defense as it questions automatic recourse to multilateralism.

As at any time of strategic flux, there seem to be real dangers of misunderstanding. "Increased European capabilities are a political imperative for both sides of the Atlantic," said Gen. Wesley K. Clark, the former NATO commander in Europe who retired recently. "But the evolution of European capabilities should not distance the European Union from NATO. Europe must not become a middle ground between NATO on the one hand and Russia on the other."

A lot of thinking has already gone into ensuring this does not happen. NATO and the European Union are going to meet at ambassadorial level six times a year and at ministerial level at least once a year to ensure that, to use Mr. Rumsfeld's phrase, Europe's new defense plans do not end up "injecting instability" into the alliance.

These meetings will involve bizarre overlapping - 11 of NATO's 19 members are also members of the European Union - but reflect a determination to avoid misunderstandings. Still, many American questions remain.

What missions exactly is the new European force to serve? When, if ever, would Europe want to act militarily without the United States? Will scarce resources not be diverted from NATO? Is duplication not inevitable?

American officials also ask whether it would not be better to increase defense spending - a mere 1.4 percent of gross national product in Germany compared to about 3.5 percent in the United States - rather than paying for new institutions. And they wonder why Congress should approve funding for NATO if Europe has its own defense structure.

"The danger is that the Europeans will set up the European Union as a competitor and alternative to NATO," said one American military expert. "Then they say to the Russians, `Don't worry, work with us, we know the United States is too forceful.' At that point, different geography and different interests become impossible to contain within NATO."

The Europeans dismiss such concerns. They point to the fact that the United States - most recently in the Balkans - has repeatedly called on Europe to become more capable of projecting force and acting coherently. They recall the Kosovo war, where the European contribution was compromised by the continent's technological arrears. They say a strong alliance for the 21st century must be a balanced one.

At present, there are only about 50 centralized European military planning staff - compared to more than eight times that at NATO military headquarters. Britain, backed by Germany, argues for planning to remain essentially under NATO's control.

But France wants Europe to have a large and independent military planning staff. Meanwhile, Turkey - an alliance member angered at being excluded from the nascent European forces - has balked at allowing NATO to plan for the Europeans.

In the end, however, it seems clear that Europe needs America - for the practical military reason that only America has the airlift, reconnaissance and intelligence equipment to make a mission feasible, and for the strategic reason that in a Europe where America is no longer a power, German power becomes uncomfortably conspicuous.

And Mr. Bush may find that he needs the Europeans for his national missile defense system - for the practical reason that a deep transatlantic rift would be very costly in trade and other areas, and strategically to preserve alliances.

For now, the Europeans seem ready to adopt a wait-and-see approach to Mr. Bush's idea. Their resistance is real and their concerns serious: what if, for example, China increases its missile force, exports missiles and thus goads India into following suit?

Mr. Bush's plan now seems to be part of a general military reassessment that could involve large unilateral cuts in the American nuclear arsenal. As such, it is certain to be more palatable to the Europeans.

"On missile defense, we have decided on a soft approach combined with pressing questions," said Mr. Ischinger. "But the Americans must understand that no real military threats are perceived by most Germans and there is no way we can sell a larger defense budget unless we push forward the creation of a European force."

Such "understanding" still has to be reached in Washington. "Weaken NATO and we weaken Europe, which weakens all of us," Mr. Rumsfeld said in Munich, at the gathering where Mr. Scharping alarmed Americans with his glimpse of other defense options. The fact is that a stronger, more united, less vulnerable Europe, with no enemy at its door, no longer sees its interests in such straightforward terms.

One senior NATO official likened the adjustments now needed in the alliance as a result of Europe's growing cohesion and ambitions to "brain surgery - important, essential, doable, but if it goes wrong, a disaster."

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

Bush challenges military leaders on nuke weapons cuts

01/02/10
Lincoln Journal-Star
The Associated Press
http://www.journalstar.com/nation?story_id=3511&date=20010210&past=

WASHINGTON - In directing the Pentagon to consider further cuts in nuclear weapons, President Bush is testing military leaders' views that reductions beyond those already planned would undermine their ability to deter war.

Bush said Friday he is ordering Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to conduct a "top-to-bottom" review of the military - its strategy, missions, modernization priorities and other aspects. Included in the review is a look at how much further the nuclear arsenal could prudently be reduced, officials said.

The president also affirmed that he would not ask Congress for an "early supplemental," or an add-on to the current $297 billion Pentagon budget. That leaves open the possibility - considered a high probability by many in the Pentagon - that he will seek a supplemental in the spring or summer.

Bush said he would talk about defense spending issues next week when he travels to military bases. He specifically mentioned his campaign promise to spend an extra $1 billion on military pay raises.

Three House Democrats influential on defense issues sent a letter to Bush on Friday urging him to reconsider his decision not to immediately fill the $7 billion spending gap the joint chiefs of staff have identified.

"We believe that addressing these glaring needs immediately should be a top priority and must be included in your budget before we can responsibly consider trillion-dollar tax cuts," the letter said. It was signed by Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee; Rep. Norman Dicks of Washington, a member of the House Appropriations Committee's defense panel, and Rep. Martin Frost of Texas, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus.

The United States has about 7,000 strategic nuclear weapons. Under the START II agreement with Russia, that number will fall to between 3,000 and 3,500. In 1997, President Clinton and President Boris Yeltsin agreed in principle that a follow-on treaty should drop the numbers to 2,000 to 2,500.

Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to go even lower, to 1,500 warheads. In their latest assessment, last year, the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended against going below 2,000, on grounds that it would make the existing nuclear targeting plan untenable and undermine the bomber force.

Echoing the view of the military chiefs, former Defense Secretary William Cohen said last May, as the chiefs were completing their review, that going below 2,000 warheads would trap the military in a "tyranny of numbers."

"You could find yourself in a situation where you're forced to "use it or lose it,' which is something we don't want to be in position to do," Cohen said. "It may force you to change your strategy as far as targeting not strategic assets but humans, which we don't want to do."

Under current law, the president cannot reduce nuclear warheads below the 6,000 level called for in the Reagan-Gorbachev era START I treaty until the Pentagon has done an analysis of nuclear weapons requirements, an assessment known as a "nuclear posture review." That is set to begin this spring. It is separate from the internal study Rumsfeld has undertaken.

Bush has said repeatedly that he believes the United States can unilaterally reduce its nuclear force, although he has not said by how much. His emphasis has been on unilateral cuts - not waiting for Russia to agree to make comparable reductions, since its economic pinch already is eroding its nuclear force.

In a Jan. 14 New York Times interview, Bush said when asked directly how low he believed the nuclear force could go, "That's what we are going to find out." On Jan. 26 he told reporters at the White House he intended to reduce nuclear weapons "commensurate with our ability to keep the peace."

Shrinking the nuclear arsenal could help Bush win allied support for his national missile defense plan. It also would save money, a goal Rumsfeld has acknowledged will help the administration pay for its defense priorities.

Rumsfeld has been even less specific about nuclear cuts than Bush.

On Feb. 3 Rumsfeld was asked if he believed there was room to make deep cuts. "I would be reluctant to start prejudging, I mean, the world has changed," he said. "It is a different world, we know that."

At his Senate confirmation hearing, Rumsfeld said, "I don't know whether we can reduce or not."

--------

Bush orders review of military and nuclear arsenal
He may be testing waters for more arms cuts

Saturday, February 10, 2001
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
By ROBERT BURNS
http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/national/mili101.shtml

WASHINGTON -- In directing the Pentagon to consider further cuts in nuclear weapons, President Bush is testing military leaders' views that reductions beyond those already planned would undermine their ability to deter war.

Bush said yesterday he is ordering Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to conduct a "top-to-bottom" review of the military -- its strategy, missions, modernization priorities and other aspects. Included in the review is a look at how much further the nuclear arsenal could prudently be reduced, officials said.

The president also affirmed that he would not ask Congress for an "early supplemental," or an add-on to the current $297 billion Pentagon budget. That leaves open the possibility -- considered a high probability by many in the Pentagon -- that he will seek a supplemental in the spring or summer.

Bush said he would talk about defense spending issues next week when he travels to military bases. He specifically mentioned his campaign promise to spend an extra $1 billion on military pay raises.

Three House Democrats influential on defense issues sent a letter to Bush yesterday urging him to reconsider his decision not to immediately fill the $7 billion spending gap the Joint Chiefs of Staff have identified.

"We believe that addressing these glaring needs immediately should be a top priority and must be included in your budget before we can responsibly consider trillion-dollar tax cuts," said the letter. It was signed by Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee; Rep. Norm Dicks of Washington, a member of the House Appropriations Committee's defense panel, and Rep. Martin Frost of Texas, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus.

The United States has about 7,000 strategic nuclear weapons. Under the START II agreement with Russia, that number will fall to between 3,000 and 3,500. In 1997, President Clinton and President Boris Yeltsin agreed in principle that a follow-on treaty should drop the numbers to 2,000 to 2,500.

Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to go even lower, to 1,500 warheads. In their latest assessment, last year, the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended against going below 2,000 because it would make the existing nuclear targeting plan untenable and undermine the bomber force.

Echoing the view of the military chiefs, former Defense Secretary William Cohen said last May, as the chiefs were completing their review, that going below 2,000 warheads would trap the military in a "tyranny of numbers."

"You could find yourself in a situation where you're forced to 'use it or lose it,' which is something we don't want to be in position to do," Cohen said. "It may force you to change your strategy as far as targeting not strategic assets but humans, which we don't want to do."

Under current law, the president cannot reduce nuclear warheads below the 6,000 level called for in the Reagan-Gorbachev era START I treaty until the Pentagon has done an analysis of nuclear weapons requirements, an assessment known as a "nuclear posture review." That is set to begin this spring. Bush has said repeatedly that he believes the United States can unilaterally reduce its nuclear force, although he has not said by how much. His emphasis has been on unilateral cuts -- not waiting for Russia to agree to make comparable reductions, since its economic pinch already is eroding its nuclear force.

In a Jan. 14 New York Times interview, Bush said when asked directly how low he believed the nuclear force could go, "That's what we are going to find out." On Jan. 26 he told reporters at the White House he intended to reduce nuclear weapons "commensurate with our ability to keep the peace."

Shrinking the nuclear arsenal could help Bush win allied support for his national missile defense plan. It also would save money, a goal Rumsfeld has said will help pay for administration defense priorities.

Rumsfeld has been even less specific about nuclear cuts than Bush.

On Feb. 3 Rumsfeld was asked if he believed there could be room to make deep cuts. "I would be reluctant to start prejudging, I mean, the world has changed," he said. "It is a different world, we know that."

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

Oversight of Biological Tests Cited

February 10, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/10/health/10ap-testing.html

WASHINGTON -- Experiments with lethal viruses and bacteria conducted at federal weapons labs lacked required oversight and controls, raising concern about potential risk to workers and the public, an Energy Department report finds.

The investigation by the department's inspector general uncovered potential safety and health concerns involving a $90 million annual program created to better prepare and develop countermeasures to possible attacks involving biological agents.

The activities, spread across eight federal research labs, have ``lacked organization, coordination and direction,'' the report made public Thursday found. It cited other shortcomings, including a lack of ``appropriate federal oversight,'' lax reporting and communications, and inconsistent policies and procedures when it came to handling biological materials.

The yearlong investigation found no evidence of harm to an employee or the public. But the lax procedures raise ``the potential for greater risk to workers and possibly others from exposure'' to deadly biological agents, the report said.

The experiments involve handling some of the most lethal biological agents and materials known, including organisms that cause anthrax, the plague and botulism.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta controls the handling of these materials, including their shipment and the safeguards required at the facilities.

But Energy Department investigators found that some laboratories did not follow the CDC's strict requirements for registering the biological materials.

Others did not properly screen biological agents received at the facilities, establish proper procedures for handling damaged packages, or inform Energy Department officials that experiments were being conducted.

At the Brookhaven lab in New York, botulinum toxin, which is fatal if inhaled or absorbed through the skin, was ``routinely removed from its containment'' in an area not approved by the CDC for work involving the material.

``As many as 30 individuals, some at work stations located only six to eight feet away, could have been working on other projects (in the area) when the botulinum toxin was removed,'' the report said. Investigators found no evidence of anyone being harmed during the experiment.

Officials at the Energy Department's office in Albuquerque, N.M., did not know that biological experiments were being conducted at two of the labs, Sandia and Los Alamos in New Mexico, the report said. The biological activities at the labs ``fell through the cracks,'' one official told investigators.

Darwin Morgan, a spokesman for the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Agency, said most of the deficiencies were ``procedural'' and that many have been corrected or are in the process of being fixed.

``It goes more to the paperwork issues,'' said Morgan. ``We have been working to make sure we get those things corrected. We have taken corrective action to begin getting this done rights.''

The investigation, which covered a period from July 1999 to this past January, involved experiments under way at the following national labs and facilities: Brookhaven in New York; Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory in Idaho; Sandia, in both California and New Mexico; Lawrence Livermore and Lawrence Berkeley, both in California; Oak Ridge in Tennessee; and Los Alamos in New Mexico.

-------- nevada

Nevada Town Wonders About a Cancer Cluster

Saturday, February 10, 2001
Associated Press
By Angie Wagner
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52091-2001Feb9?language=printer

FALLON, Nev. -- A blur of sagebrush, along what's called the loneliest road in America, leads to this small farming and military town that boasts of its simpler way of life. A barber is giving $9 haircuts and there's talk of the annual Hearts O' Gold Cantaloupe Festival.

But soon, the talk turns to the children. To 11 kids, all stricken with leukemia that some fear might have something to do with living in the self-proclaimed "Oasis of Nevada."

For 5-year-old Dustin Gross, it started like the flu. Then came the bruises, and his lips turned translucent.

"You can see it in his eyes," Dustin's father said. "When they really start turning dark."

Acute lymphocytic leukemia is the most common childhood cancer, but still rare. Just 2,000 new cases are diagnosed annually in the entire United States.

What puzzles people is that 11 of those cases since 1997 have been in and around Fallon, a town of 8,300. Eight cases were diagnosed last year.

This is a cluster, the state health department says. A chance occurrence, perhaps? Or something else that may never be known.

The uncertainty has forced the state to ask for help from national experts. While they look for answers, the residents worry.

Mayor Ken Tedford Jr. has lived in Fallon, 60 miles east of Reno, his whole life. His granddaddy was mayor, and his uncle too.

"We're just kind of a small town," the mayor said. "People worry about each other a lot."

At the downtown Ideal Barber Shop, which doubles as a motorcycle parts shop, former police officer Lyndell Smiley mentions the water as he talks of the kids.

"Nothing wrong with the water, Smiley," barber Joe Rando responded.

Water is a common topic in Fallon: It has arsenic levels 10 times the federal standard, and the city has been ordered to clean it up. Arsenic is a naturally occurring chemical that in high concentrations is poisonous. It's sometimes used as an insecticide or to kill weeds, but has never been linked to leukemia.

A byproduct of the area's soil, the arsenic has been around so long that many doubt it would be making people sick now.

Besides, the children drank from different sources -- city water, well water and bottled water.

The arsenic is so accepted that residents don't seem to mind. "Some more arsenic water?" a waiter at Angelica's Steakhouse asks a customer. A square dance club calls itself the Arsenic Swingers.

Tammi Beardsley has gone over it repeatedly in her mind.

"You relive those days. What did I feed him? Where did we go? That's what you do when you're a mom and you're desperate."

Her 5-year-old son, Zac, was No. 9, diagnosed in November. He is too sick this day to have visitors or go outside. Too much risk for infection.

Zac was born in Canada, but spends summers and part of each winter in Fallon. He never drank tap water, only bottled.

Of course, Zac's cancer might have nothing to do with what he drank or how he lived. Cancer results from mutant genes. But what causes the mutations? The seeds of Zac's disease could have been there since birth, written into his genetic blueprint.

The survival rate of this type of childhood leukemia is 80 percent. None of the children here has died.

From 1961 to 1982, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention investigated 108 cancer clusters in 29 states and five foreign countries. No clear cause was found. Since the mid-1980s, no CDC staff have been dedicated full time to investigating cancer clusters.

"At this point, we're not finding things that are strikingly in common," state epidemiologist Randall Todd said. "We're beginning to look for other sources of information. What has changed in this community?"

Health officials are looking for a link among the children, who ranged in age from toddlers to 19-year-olds when diagnosed. Each family was asked about their habits and medical history. The only common characteristic: All the children live or have lived in this area.

Is something spreading though the community? Or is it a statistical anomaly -- just a coincidence, like flipping a coin 11 times and having it come up heads each time?

Often the cause of clusters cannot be found because science cannot yet identify what triggers them, said Michael Thun, head of epidemiology at the American Cancer Society. "It is extremely rare in a community to pin down a cause or to exclude chance with confidence," he said.

The state has asked for help from the CDC, the National Cancer Institute and outside epidemiologists. Legislative hearings and town meetings are planned. Sen. Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) is sending top staffers from the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee to investigate.

There's concern about nuclear weapons testing near Fallon in the 1950s. Epidemiologists say ionizing radiation is a risk factor to leukemia, but tests for radioactive substances in the water proved negative.

Some residents blame jet fuel dumped by military aircraft at the nearby Naval Air Station. Or agricultural chemicals. Or something from industrial plants. Or, of course, the water.

Thun said there have been studies of this cancer and its relation to pesticides and chemical exposures to parents, but nothing is conclusive.

The Navy said it has no reason to believe the base is doing anything to lead to the illnesses.

Some residents don't want to hear any more about it.

"I think it's a bunch of bull," said Madeline Rando, co-owner of the Ideal Barber Shop. "I think it's just a freak thing."

But restaurant workers say they've noticed more customers asking for bottled water. Some parents have brought in water jugs for their children's school classrooms so they can avoid city water.

Dustin showed a picture of himself with no hair. "Leukemia," he said.

A softball tournament to raise money for Dustin's medical bills has become the annual "Dustin Gross Fun Day."

For now, a community waits. Waits to see if epidemiologists can find a link among the children. Waits to see if any more children will become sick. And waits for its young victims to heal.

Floyd Sands and his daughter moved away from Fallon, but were drawn into this mystery when she was diagnosed with the leukemia in 1999. She was 19 then, and learned of her condition on her son's first birthday.

"It's worse than looking for a needle in a haystack," the father said from his home in Mehoopany, Pa. "First you have to find the haystack."

-------- new mexico

U.S. Stockpile Size Affects Lab Workload

Saturday, February 10, 2001
Albuquerque Journal
By John Fleck
URL: http://www.abqjournal.com/news/247102news02-10-01.htm

Fewer U.S. nuclear weapons would reduce the number of plutonium bomb parts that would have to be built at Los Alamos National Laboratory, according to a veteran U.S. government adviser.

A Bush administration review of the size of the U.S. stockpile, announced Friday, could lead to reduced pressure on Los Alamos to expand plutonium manufacturing operations, said Sidney Drell, a California physicist and longtime adviser to the U.S. nuclear weapons program.

Much of the nuclear weapons research at Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories would be unchanged by a reduction in stockpile size, according to Drell.

"I don't think there's a difference there," he said.

That is because the work, which involves research into the effect of aging on U.S. weapons, is not directly linked to the size of the stockpile.

But the number of new plutonium pits, the explosive cores of nuclear weapons, depends on the size of the stockpile, Drell said.

Los Alamos is the only place in the United States capable of making pits, but that capability is extremely limited.

There has been pressure on the lab and the Department of Energy to increase the lab's pit-making capacity, something that has been strongly resisted by anti-nuclear groups.

-------- us nuc politics

Bush Launches Diplomacy Offensive

February 10, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bush-Card.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush has launched a ``personal diplomacy'' offensive that will be the hallmark of his foreign policy, calling scores of foreign leaders and planning his first trip abroad this week, White House chief of staff Andrew Card says.

``He will respect the rules of diplomacy, but he won't be afraid to (build) personal relationships that help facilitate America's position in the world,'' Card said in an Associated Press interview. ``He will practice personal diplomacy because he knows that it can make a difference.'' Card made the comment at the end of his third week in office, pausing during another 16-hour work day to discuss a wide range of topics -- from his colorful first impression of Bush, to his role in the ``care and feeding'' of the president and his demands for dignity in the White House.

Chatting for 45 minutes in his critical-corner West Wing office, Card displayed an easygoing charm that marked his work as deputy White House chief of staff and transportation secretary under Bush's father -- or ``No. 41,'' as he calls the elder Bush, distinguishing him from the current (and 43rd) president.

Before a single question was asked, Card offered a testimonial to his boss. ``He is hardworking. He does read his briefing papers. He is extremely attentive to both the written word and verbal word,'' Card said, offering out of reflex a response to critics who questioned Bush's intellect and work habits during the presidential campaign. ``He's also early to rise and stays working right up until the final gun goes off to go to bed.''

The interview itself focused on the style and substance of his job. Card said, for example, that there are three ``relatively crass categories'' of White House staff duties:

--``The care and feeding of the president.'' He said it is vital to make sure Bush is well fed and well rested, that his car and helicopters arrive promptly and that he has time for the most basic human demands: ``to get a haircut and ... to go to the bathroom.''

--``Policy formulation.'' Card makes sure foreign, domestic and economic policies are coordinated.

-- ``Marketing and selling.'' In other words, good public relations. His staff must make sure ``the right people understand (the president's) decisions at the right time,'' Card said. ``The audience varies from interest to interest. It could be a special interest. It could be Congress. It could be a foreign leader. It could be the American people.''

Card has demanded that aides show proper respect for the president and the White House. ``He is `Mr. President.' This is not a casual relationship,'' Card said. And he has ordered male staffers to wear coats and ties during week days. Women, too, are told to be ``appropriately dressed.''

Such formality is a far cry from the first time Card laid eyes on the president -- years ago when the elder Bush was U.N. ambassador and had invited Card to the family's Maine retreat. ``I fully expected to see Yale'' in the younger Bush, ``and I got West Texas,'' Card said.

``He was wearing jeans. He had on a wrinkled tattered shirt, cowboy boots. A little brown drool (was) coming out of his mouth because he was chewing tobacco,'' Card said with a laugh. ``He was holding a Styrofoam cup that he was spitting into. And I'm thinking to myself, `THAT'S George Bush?''

It's the same man who heads to Mexico on Friday for his first foreign trip; who made 29 calls to foreign leaders in his first three weeks as president; and who plans to reach out to even more leaders in April at the Summit of Americas, Card said, and make relationship-building the focus of his early foreign policy.

Bush can practice ``diplomacy in the formal sense'' but he has a knack for building what Card called ``relationships through diplomacy, which can make a difference.''

The president will play ``an active role'' in the Middle East, though Card suggested that not much can be expected out of the peace process until Israel's new leader, Ariel Sharon, builds a government.

Card said the world is filled with trouble spots, from the Balkans to the Korean peninsula.

``Russia is not the same as other countries because Russia has nuclear weapons,'' Card said. ``Countries that have nuclear weapons ... rise to a different level of concern.''

-------

. . . And the Bill for Defense

Saturday, February 10, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52607-2001Feb10?language=printer

THE BUSH administration has launched a broad and potentially bold review of America's defenses, ranging from the deployment of offensive nuclear weapons to the structure and procurement plans of the individual armed forces. The strategic review starts with the ambitious aim of moving beyond the Cold War pattern of managing offensive nuclear weapons -- and the defenses against them -- according to arms control agreements. Meanwhile, one of the Pentagon's most unconventional thinkers has been charged with outlining reforms for the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines. While the review goes on, administration officials say, Mr. Bush will not propose any significant increase in defense spending.

Both the review and the temporary spending freeze are worthy. The Cold War nuclear standoff between the United States and Soviet Union is over, new threats are emerging from rogue states and terrorists, and U.S. strategic doctrine and deployments should be adjusted to fit this reality -- though this should not lead to the abrupt abandonment of existing arms control agreements or the rejection of multilateral arms control. Similarly, experience in the Balkans and elsewhere has shown that U.S. conventional forces are not well deployed or equipped for the conflicts of the post-Cold War world. They face important choices about technology and cost-effectiveness as they begin to replace aging arsenals of guns, ships and planes. With unrivaled power and facing no serious conflict, the armed forces can afford to take time for a thorough review, and a parallel pause in budget planning will allow more options to be explored.

No matter how bold the thinking, one outcome to the process cannot be in much doubt: Defense spending is going to rise substantially in the next few years. A programmed increase by the Clinton administration of $112 billion over five years is already well underway, meaning that even if the Bush administration submits the Clinton budget unchanged, spending will rise from $295 billion to $310 billion next year. And a range of studies agree that to maintain anything like the current level of forces and deployments, much larger increases will be necessary: The Congressional Budget Office estimates $50 billion more a year will be needed to keep the military in a "steady state," while other estimates range up to $100 billion. That doesn't include the money for a missile defense system, which could cost $60 billion even if Mr. Bush sticks to the Clinton administration's relatively limited plan.

If the review is serious, it should also produce ways to save as well as spend money. Andrew W. Marshall, the analyst preparing recommendations for the Pentagon, is known to be a skeptic about heavy tanks and aircraft carriers as a continued foundation of land and sea forces. This would also be a good time to take a close look at a range of expensive new weapons, such as the F-22 fighter, the V-22 Osprey helicopter or the DD-21 destroyer, to see if they are needed or can be replaced by cheaper alternatives. More base closures are needed. And as the regular quadrennial defense review gets underway, the administration should consider whether the official readiness mission of U.S. forces must continue to be to fight two large regional wars simultaneously.

Unless the mission is radically revised, none of this will change the underlying trend; the cancellation of the F-22, for example, would save $3.8 billion a year, a big sum but not much compared with the $30 billion to $40 billion increase in procurement being talked about last year by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Most likely, when the reviews are done, the administration will quickly abandon its restraints on defense and ask Congress for increases that will mount into the hundreds of billions over three or four years. Much of that spending may be necessary; most of it will probably win approval. The Bush administration apparently hopes to pass its massive tax increase before delivering this bill. But Congress should not forget that it is coming.

----

Bush to Seek $1.4 Billion Military Pay Boost

Saturday, February 10, 2001
Washington Post
By Edward Walsh and Walter Pincus
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A51135-2001Feb9?language=printer

President Bush plans to propose a $1.4 billion across-the-board pay raise for members of the military next week, a higher level than what President Bill Clinton included in his final budget but apparently no more than what's required under a law enacted in 1999.

White House communications director Karen P. Hughes said yesterday that the pay raise for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1 will amount to 4.6 percent. She said Bush will also discuss improvements in military housing and in schools attended by military dependents next week, when he will travel around the country visiting military bases.

During last year's presidential campaign, Bush accused Clinton of neglecting the military and said that one of his first priorities would be to improve the pay and living conditions of members of the armed forces.

Chris Ullman, spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget, said that, in addition to the across-the-board pay raise, Bush will also propose spending $1 billion for pay incentives, such as bonuses for highly skilled personnel.

The White House said this week that apart from the extra money for the pay increases, there are no plans to raise defense spending in the next fiscal year above the $310 billion Clinton proposed.

"I have sent the message that I think it's very important for us to not have an early supplemental" budget request for the Pentagon, Bush said yesterday. "It's important for us to do a top-to-bottom review to review all missions, spending priorities."

Before revising the defense budget, the administration plans to complete three separate but overlapping reviews: of overall defense strategy, of U.S. nuclear forces and of military quality-of-life issues. All three are being overseen by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

The president left for Camp David yesterday without signing directives to undertake the studies, but the Pentagon has begun them and results are due by mid-summer.

Rumsfeld has asked Andrew W. Marshall, an iconoclastic thinker who heads the Pentagon's internal think tank, to conduct the review of overall strategy, which will weigh who America's likely adversaries are, how many wars U.S. forces should be prepared to fight at once and what weapons the armed forces should buy.

Marshall, a longtime Pentagon official who worked for Rumsfeld when he was defense secretary during the Ford administration, has antagonized many senior officers by arguing that the Pentagon is mired in the Cold War, is buying the wrong weapons and is insufficiently prepared to face the threat of a rising China.

Retired Adm. David Jeremiah, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will lead the study of quality-of-life issues, including pay, housing and morale.

For reasons that are not clear, Clinton's final budget proposal sought only a 3.9 percent military pay raise, less than what the military could expect under a formula Congress adopted in 1999. The Bush pay plan is more generous but does not appear to exceed what is called for by the formula.

Under the 1999 law, military pay is to increase yearly by the amount of the annual rise in the Bureau of Labor Statistics' employment cost index (ECI) plus half a percentage point. The ECI tracks pay raises in the private sector. Military pay raises are based on how much the ECI has risen during the 12 months ending on Sept. 30.

According to Congressional Budget Office figures, the ECI rose 4.1 percent last year. Coupled with an additional half of a percentage point, that would result in a 4.6 percent pay raise, exactly what Bush is proposing.

Ullman said Bush could have left the across-the-board portion of the pay raise at the lower level set by the Clinton administration but decided to add $400 million to match the full increase in the ECI.

During the first two years that the congressional formula was followed, military pay rose 4.8 percent in fiscal 2000 and 3.7 percent in the current fiscal year. Military pay raises generally take effect in January of the fiscal year for which they are enacted, which means that the Bush pay raise would begin reaching members of the military next January.

The leader of the nuclear review has not been named. A White House official said Rumsfeld himself may head that study, which will consider major cuts in the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

The Bush administration would like to change or, if necessary, scrap the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to allow a national missile defense system.

Partly to entice Russia to accept changes in the ABM Treaty, the Bush administration may offer to cut the U.S. strategic arsenal even below the level of 2,000 to 2,500 warheads contemplated in 1997 by Russia and the United States as a target for the third round of the strategic arms reduction talks, or START III.

The United States spends $35 billion annually to maintain about 7,500 strategic nuclear weapons on land-based missiles, submarines and bombers. They are aimed at an estimated 2,200 Russian targets, as well as at China, North Korea, Iraq, Iran and so-called non-state actors.

During the presidential campaign, Bush talked of revising U.S. nuclear strategy, possibly including a unilateral reduction similar to the one ordered by his father in 1991. That statement was "arguably his biggest foreign policy idea of his campaign and certainly the most radical," according to one of Bush's advisers.

In November, before Condoleezza Rice was appointed as Bush's national security adviser, she described the U.S. nuclear relationship with Russia as "antiquated." Along with building missile defenses, she said, the United States could consider "de-alerting" its strategic forces and rethinking "what size the arsenal needs to be for deterrence."

De-alerting refers to taking missiles off the hair-trigger status that allows them to be launched almost instantly in the event of an attack.

"One important factor is that conventional weapons are now so precise that they can achieve the same results as nuclear ones required a few years ago," said Richard Perle, an adviser to the Bush campaign.

But Perle warned that bureaucratic and congressional hurdles rise up every time significant changes are contemplated in the U.S. nuclear force. Unless the Bush administration's review is completed quickly, he predicted, "it won't result in anything getting done."

-------- MILITARY

-------- colombia

Colombia and Rebels Agree on Restarting Peace Talks

February 10, 2001
New York Times
By JUAN FORERO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/10/world/10COLO.html

LOS POZOS, Colombia, Feb. 9 - President Andrés Pastrana and the leader of the country's largest rebel group announced today a broad agreement aimed at restarting formal peace talks that have been suspended since November.

Sitting side by side at a news conference here in rebel-held territory, Mr. Pastrana and the leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Manuel Marulanda, announced details of a 13-point plan that averts, at least for now, the possibility of all-out war. The two leaders, who had met for 15 hours over two days, said negotiations on resolving the 37-year-old conflict would resume on Wednesday.

"We talked about all the themes, all the themes that we had to debate," Mr. Pastrana said. "We talked about what we've advanced on, what we hadn't advanced on, what errors we committed, how we can overcome them.

"It was two days of much work, two days of great use. And I think the conclusion, as I've said, is that we've revived the process of peace in our country."

Mr. Marulanda, who began fighting the government in the 1950's and helped found the rebel force known as FARC in 1964, was more reserved as he sat before the cameras, an unusual gesture for a man who avoids publicity. Asked several questions, the leader - dressed in his trademark camouflage uniform, with a sidearm hanging off his belt - reaffirmed his support for the accord.

Earlier in the day, however, he was asked about the $1.1 billion United States aid package to Colombia, most of it in military hardware and efforts to denude the vast coca fields. "Instead of investing the money in war, it should be invested in social programs," Mr. Marulanda said as he waited for Mr. Pastrana's helicopter to arrive from elsewhere in the rebel zone.

The accord today was vague. It declared that both sides "ratify their will" to continue talks and called on all Colombians to "rally around this common effort that could allow us to overcome the conflict that affects us."

Called the Los Pozos Accord, named for this southern hamlet in the heart of the rebel area that was the site of peace talks for two years, the agreement creates a commission to resolve problems that might lead to ruptures in talks.

Another commission, made up of "national personalities," would formulate recommendations on dealing with right-wing paramilitary groups, who are generally thought responsible for most massacres. The government's lack of control of the paramilitary forces was the reason the rebels gave for breaking off talks on Nov. 14.

The document reaffirmed that the vast swath of territory around Los Pozos that Mr. Pastrana ceded to the rebels in 1998 for peace talks was "exclusively" for negotiations, a point that the government wanted included because of allegations that the rebels had used the zone to fortify themselves, recruit child guerrillas and commit other abuses. The accord said a mechanism would be created before the end of next week to evaluate periodically how the rebels use the territory.

The government's lead negotiator, Camilo Gómez, disputed assertions that the plan failed to include substantive measures. He said negotiations would cover topics like a cease- fire and an end to kidnappings, proposals that have not been discussed in detail before but that the government favors. Mr. Gómez also said the government and the rebels had advanced in talks that would permit an exchange of sick rebels held by the government for ailing soldiers held by the rebels.

"What we've done today permits that we advance on points of discussion in a more concrete way," Mr. Gómez told reporters. "We have dates, specific points to deal with. We have concrete steps to take to advance."

The talks were held after weeks in which Mr. Pastrana was under enormous pressure. He had to decide whether to continue with efforts to jump-start formal negotiations or to begin an offensive aimed at taking back the land that he had ceded. Mr. Pastrana won the presidency in 1998, pledging to bring rebel groups to the peace table.

"If the peace process ends, so does the Pastrana government," Hernando Gómez Buendía, a columnist, wrote this week in Semana, a newsmagazine. "Peace, in effect, has been his flag, his international calling card and almost his only focus of attention in these last 30 months."

In the end, the president decided to meet Mr. Marulanda, the third meeting between the two. "I am convinced of what I have been doing," Mr. Pastrana told the nation on Jan. 31 in proposing a meeting with the rebel commander.

Mr. Pastrana has been criticized by many here for being indecisive and too generous with concessions. But in the last week, he has placed himself squarely in charge of efforts to jump-start the peace talks. He also embarked on a well-publicized tour aimed at reaching out to residents in rebel-controlled territory.

Last weekend, he took a whirlwind tour of the region, visiting ordinary villagers and even taking over driving duties from his chauffeur. The president's aides said his take- charge attitude was evident in the talks.

"The president was very direct, very frank about the difficulties," Mr. Gómez said. "He firmly maintained his position."

-------- drug war

A Foolish Drug War

February 10, 2001
New York Times
By ANA CARRIGAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/10/opinion/10CARR.html

TOLIMA, Colombia -- Secretary of State Colin Powell recently affirmed the Bush administration's support for Plan Colombia - the plan inherited from the Clinton White House that pledged $1.3 billion to fight drugs in Colombia. But this plan - based almost entirely on military strategies - could well lead to America's next proxy war in Latin America.

In Putumayo, the province with about half of the coca crop, recent aerial spraying of herbicides has already caused social and environmental havoc. In Strasbourg, France, last week, the European Parliament, worried by the human rights consequences of America's support for this approach and for an army that maintains links to drug-financed paramilitaries, voted 474 to 1 to reject Plan Colombia.

But there are workable alternatives being developed by local governments in Colombia that are on the front lines of this drug war. In six southeastern Colombian provinces where some 80 percent of the Colombian drug crop is grown, new governors have proposed several promising initiatives.

The governors oppose Plan Colombia because they fear their provinces will be overwhelmed by its traumatic impact. They also say no one in the region was consulted when it was designed by officials in Bogotá and Washington. The governors want to use manual eradication of the coca crops rather than widespread fumigation. And, most important, they are identifying pragmatic ways to help peasant communities with livelihoods now tied to drug crops.

These regional leaders know military approaches have not worked. Parmenio Cuéllar, a former justice minister and the new governor of Nariño Province, said in a recent interview: "We all want this plague to be eradicated. But in 20 years, Colombia's anti-narcotics policies have not reduced, much less eliminated, drug production. We have to recognize that the problem of drugs in Colombia is tied to the poverty of the peasants."

Manual eradication with the voluntary labor of the peasant growers uproots crops peacefully, without environmental harm. Persuading these growers to eradicate their drug crops is the easy part because they are sick of drug-related violence and scared of the fumigation and mass displacement that follow.

But alternative eradication methods do not address the central economic problem that is driving coca production. Colombia's traditional rural economy is in crisis. Take coffee, for example. Since Colombia opened its agricultural markets in the early 1990's, the coffee harvest has been reduced almost by half. Ten years ago, agricultural imports to Colombia were 700,000 tons, and today they are 7 million tons. One million rural jobs have been lost during the past decade. A quarter of a million peasants have turned to coca production. Any long-term solution has to provide sustainable crops or employment.

Recently, two of the governors held exploratory talks with European diplomats in Bogotá to discuss the kinds of programs they intend to present to European governments in Brussels this spring, when Europe will decide how to spend $800 million over five years. There are a few infrastructure projects on their list: a highway linking Tolima, Huila and Nariño to the Pacific coast; improvements to the Pacific port of Tumaco. They have identified competitive products for export: rubber, African palm, cocoa, and wood. And they say milk production, tropical fruits and cotton could be linked to microenterprises in rural towns. One small town near the Narino-Ecuador border, for example, currently employs 1,000 people producing specialty foods for Japan.

As for the war, the governors have reason to believe that once peasant communities have some economic alternatives to coca production, the guerrillas in the region will not be able to oppose the citizens' collective will.

Last week, Plan Colombia's operations in Putumayo were temporarily suspended, in part because of local protests. The Bush administration now has an opportunity to evaluate this project's performance. There is still time to turn this ill-conceived plan around and get behind the development proposals of the local governors. With American support, their integrated vision of a drug-free, more peaceful Colombia is still possible.

Ana Carrigan, who writes from Colombia for The Irish Times, is the author of "The Palace of Justice: A Colombian Tragedy."

---

Antidrug Official's Son Is Guilty in Heroin Case

February 10, 2001
New York Times
National News Briefs
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/10/national/10NATI.html

MIAMI, Feb. 9 (AP) - The teenage son of a top Colombian antidrug official has been sentenced to nearly six years in a United States prison for trying to smuggle heroin.

The youth, Andres Felipe Lafaurie Restrepo, 19, pleaded guilty and was sentenced on Jan. 24.

Mr. Lafaurie's mother, Maria Restrepo, heads the Colombian agency that helps create new livelihoods for farmers who agree to stop growing coca and poppy plants used to make cocaine and heroin.

Mr. Lafaurie arrived at the Miami airport on a Nov. 22 flight from Colombia with 7.3 pounds of heroin taped to his legs.

-------- iraq

A Risky No-Fly Zone Over Iraq

Saturday, February 10, 2001
Washington Post
By Jim Hoagland,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52051-2001Feb9?language=printer

For the first time since the Persian Gulf War ended a decade ago, Iraqi anti-aircraft units seriously endangered the lives of American and British pilots enforcing no-fly zones over that Arab country.

Concern over a small but abrupt rise in Iraqi surface-to-air missile batteries and a recent change in tactics by Iraqi gunners reaches from the top of the Pentagon down to the crews operating out of Saudi Arabia and Turkey, according to U.S. and foreign military officers.

The pilots and their commanders are stuck with flawed strategy and tactics developed under the Clinton administration. The fliers follow orders to attack targets of little military significance in Iraq, primarily for symbolic reasons, while operating in an increasingly dangerous environment.

The Bush administration recognizes Iraq as an urgent foreign policy issue. But it needs to move more quickly to minimize the risk that Saddam Hussein will seize the initiative in a new Gulf crisis by knocking down a U.S. or British warplane with an SA-6 missile.

President Bush chaired a White House meeting earlier this month devoted to Iraq. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has instructed his staff to rethink strategy on Iraq and may hope to make the Pentagon the lead government agency charting Iraq policy. He has a strong case for that move.

But much of the initial attention in Bush II has been misdirected to shoring up sagging international support for economic sanctions against Iraq, a problem that requires sustained diplomatic work over the next year rather than a quick fix.

In redesigning Iraq strategy to meet the new threats, the administration confronts one timing handicap of its own making -- the slowness in making appointments to key working-level positions in foreign policy and national security -- and another imposed by Congress, which severely restricts the work senior appointees can do before they are confirmed.

The result is that Clinton era holdovers who helped develop and implement the strategy of ineffectual aerial pinpricks against Saddam's forces still hold important jobs and sit in on key planning sessions on Iraq. The Senate should help correct this anomaly by putting aside formalities and letting the new Bush people get to work.

The Clinton administration essentially gave up on trying to get U.N. weapons inspectors back into Iraq and on bringing Saddam down, after staging three days of limited air raids in late 1998 during Operation Desert Fox.

Saddam's refusal to let U.N. inspectors search for his missiles and weapons of mass destruction puts Iraq in breach of the cease-fire that ended the Gulf War. That provides a legal basis for new coalition military campaigns against Iraq.

But after Desert Fox, the Clinton White House went the other way. It issued to the Pentagon highly restrictive rules of engagement for the pilots patrolling over Iraq's northern Kurdistan region and south of the 33rd parallel.

Frustration quickly set in as pilots understood they were taking risks over Iraq for no real military purpose. Britain, the last ally willing to fly with the Americans over Iraq, quietly passed the word to Washington recently that a new, more focused and effective strategy was needed to justify continued military action.

The concern over pilot safety jumped even more in Washington and London after Saddam staged a display of new military hardware in the New Year's Eve parade in Baghdad.

U.S. military planners concluded that Iraq's inventory of SA-6 missile batteries had jumped from "a number you could count on two hands" to three dozen or so, said one planner. Intelligence reports identify Serbia and Ukraine as sources of the new missile batteries smuggled into Iraq last year.

Iraqi gunners have had years to watch the flight patterns of U.S. and U.K. warplanes on patrol and have developed effective ways of using the SA-6 radar to guide the missile after it has been fired. This sharply decreases the time available to a pilot to evade the Iraqi rocket or to fire on the attacking battery.

Pilots will adapt their tactics of evasion, and the new SA-6 batteries do not change the U.S.-Iraqi military balance. But the new risks show that the Bush team does not have a minute to waste in reassessing the cost-benefit ratio of the military effort it has inherited in Iraq.

That effort has not achieved results worth the potential sacrifices it asks pilots to make. The time for symbolic military action against Saddam is over. The British are right: We are at a crossroads. It is time to get real, or to get out.

-------- israel

Princeton Professor at U.N.

February 10, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/10/world/10NATI.html

UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 9 (Reuters) - A Princeton professor and writer on international affairs has been named a senior adviser to Secretary General Kofi Annan, a United Nations spokesman said today.

The professor, Michael Doyle, director of the Center of International Studies at Princeton, succeeds John Ruggie, who is taking up a post at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

Mr. Doyle, who will work with Mr. Annan on policy analysis and strategic planning, was educated in France and Switzerland, qualified as a parachutist in the United States Army and received his bachelor's, master's and doctorate degrees from Harvard University.

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

The Last Superpower Ponders Its Next Move

February 10, 2001
New York Times
By KURT M. CAMPBELL
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/10/arts/10HEGE.html?pagewanted=all

President George W. Bush's order for a sweeping review of American military strategy was the first signal that the White House is serious about re-evaluating the fundamental assumptions behind the nation's role in the world.

Although many on Capitol Hill and at the Pentagon were concerned about what that means for the size of the military budget, the comprehensive rethinking was welcomed by a group of academics who have been pondering what they say is an unprecedented development in the modern world: the unrivaled rise of American power.

"This is an extraordinary moment in modern history that in many ways is absolutely unique, where one country, the United States, has overriding power in all aspects of international life, from unmatched military prowess, unprecedented economic dynamism, to an unrelenting cultural appeal," said G. John Ikenberry, a professor of government and international affairs at Georgetown University. "There is now a dedicated sub- group of theorists who are consumed with a central and powerful line of inquiry, namely, What are the consequences of American hegemony?"

Although the perception of American supremacy - what the theorists call hegemony - has grown steadily since the fall of the Soviet Union a decade ago, the degree and the durability of that power have been fiercely debated. Is the United States going to remain the world's pre-eminent power for the foreseeable future, or is it just a matter of time before a region like Europe or China throws down a challenge? Should the United States do everything possible to maintain its top-dog status or use its influence to build up global institutions and other democratic nations?

"The international saga of the United States since World War II is like a variation on the script from the movie `The Gladiator,' " said Jeffrey W. Legro, a professor of political science at the University of Virginia. "We entered the arena reluctantly but once inside vanquished all challengers. Now we stand alone inside the Coliseum, victorious and sword in hand but with little idea now about what to do with Rome. What's more, we're not even very sure where the exit signs leading out of the Coliseum are located."

For the past two years, Mr. Legro, Mr. Ikenberry and a handful of other professors have been meeting regularly in Washington to figure out not only where the exit signs are, but also which exits to take. Sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson Center, these 15 or so academics, awkwardly named the Working Group on Hegemony, plan to publish the product of their gatherings later this year.

William C. Wohlforth, a professor of government at Dartmouth who has traveled to Washington for the meetings, argues that the United States will maintain its leading edge for decades because its allies have a vested interest in keeping things that way. Although Europe and Japan often resent American power, it has meant smaller defense budgets for them, as well as a more stable and prosperous world. Japan and Europe have little to gain from disputing American hegemony, Mr. Wohlforth said, and that coalition will help stave off challenges from a disgruntled China or Russia.

To Mr. Ikenberry, whose book "After Victory" (Princeton University Press, 2000) explores the choices facing great powers, America's democratic character is what differentiates it from other global winners in history. To remain true to its ideological roots, the United States has no choice but to share power with other democracies and participate in international organizations like the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

"The U.S. is not a 19th-century imperial power," he said, "and because America's power is derived in part from its values, it must work to strengthen the institutions of world order for the betterment of others rather than hoarding power."

Others scoff at the idea that the United States should run from its position as the world's only superpower. Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and William Kristol, once the chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle and now the editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, are not members of the working group but have been prominent advocates of the idea that the United States should continue to act as the world's policeman.

"Since today's relatively benevolent international circumstances are the product of our hegemonic influence," they wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine, "any lessening of that influence will allow others to play a larger part in shaping the world to suit their needs. American hegemony, then, must be actively maintained, just as it was actively obtained."

These recommendations echo a controversial plan that Paul D. Wolfowitz, who was nominated this week to be deputy secretary of defense, drafted in 1992 when he served in the Pentagon under President Bush's father. In it, he argued that the United States should use its military might to discourage any potential contenders.

Rather than looking at external threats, Joseph Nye, the dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government, said the biggest problems might come from within. Mr. Nye, who is writing a book on American power, said that "much of the hegemony discussion has focused on potential competitors on the international scene, but one of the most difficult challenges facing the U.S. will be sustaining domestic consensus for carrying the inevitable burdens associated with American power in the world."

Of course, not everyone agrees that the United States is going to remain king of the hill for long. Charles Kupchan, a professor at Georgetown University, disagrees with most of his colleagues in the working group. "Europe's efforts at economic integration and military cooperation outside of NATO raise the prospect of a power center that could one day soon challenge American primacy," he said.

One of the people who has been chosen to help conduct the Bush administration's review of military policy is Andrew W. Marshall, a longtime Pentagon official who has closely followed the debate over America's status in the world and the use of its power.

If there is one area where international strategists have fared poorly in the past, however, it is in making judgments about who is going to rise and fall. Few strategic thinkers predicted the collapse of the Soviet empire or Japan's economic malaise.

As Mr. Legro said: "The hegemony debate is extraordinarily rich but far from conclusive. I'm not sure you'd want any of us picking stocks."

-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

New Report Backs Planting More Trees to Fight Warming

February 10, 2001
New York Times
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/10/science/10CLIM.html?pagewanted=all

In influential panel of scientists is preparing to endorse two strategies for curtailing global warming that have been major points of contention between the United States and Europe in efforts to complete a climate treaty.

In a report scheduled for next month, the panel concludes that by protecting existing forests and planting new ones, countries could blunt warming by sopping up 10 to 20 percent of the heat-trapping carbon dioxide that is expected to be released by smokestacks and tailpipes over the next 50 years.

It also says the cost to industrialized countries of a global climate plan could be cut in half if they were allowed to buy and sell credits earned by those that make the deepest reductions in carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gases.

The conclusions could bolster the position of the United States when negotiations over details of the treaty resume this summer. But some experts involved in the talks stressed that a scientific analysis of untested climate-control strategies says little about whether such efforts would prove effective.

"The big question is whether real programs in the real world will work," said Dr. Daniel A. Lashof, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, a private environmental group. "The devil's in the details."

The report was written by a working group within the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a network of hundreds of scientists who advise governments on climate issues under the auspices of the United Nations. The group plans to release it at a meeting in Ghana.

A final draft was recently sent to governments for comment, and a copy was given to The New York Times by an American official.

The panel's findings are closely watched by governments as a barometer of mainstream scientific thinking on global warming.

A report by another working group last month concluded that the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities are responsible for most of a one-degree rise in average global temperatures measured in the last 50 years. This was the first time the 12-year-old panel found that human actions were the dominant force behind the recent warming.

The climate treaty, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, would require 38 industrial countries to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by 2012 to 5 percent below emission levels in 1990. It has been signed by more than 100 countries but lacks fine print and has not yet been ratified.

Negotiations over details broke down at a tumultuous meeting in November in The Hague when the European Union rejected an American proposal calling for trading in credits for emissions reductions and granting credit for planting forests and crops.

The report lends some new credence to the American positions. According to the panel, "Forests, agricultural lands and other terrestrial ecosystems offer significant, if often temporary, mitigation potential."

Even if the carbon taken from atmospheric carbon dioxide is eventually released again from plants or soil, the report said, "conservation and sequestration allow time for other options to be further developed and implemented."

The scientists added that if the rules for such living carbon reservoirs were right, they could also preserve endangered species and improve water quality.

The European Union and some private environmental groups have opposed giving credit for forest planting, saying it could take the pressure off industrial countries to cut emissions from the source: vehicles, power plants and industry.

In The Hague, the United States scaled back the amount of credit it sought for farm and forest changes, but American negotiators and many representatives in Congress say this remains an essential component of the final Kyoto treaty.

Trading of emissions credits is equally contentious. Such trading is a way of encouraging the greatest cuts in pollution where they can be done most cheaply. In theory, under such a program the United States or another wealthy country - either directly or indirectly - could get credit toward greenhouse-gas targets by investing in new, efficient power plants in, say, Eastern Europe.

The new plants would represent a big leap in performance over old, pollution-belching plants there, proponents of trading say. Building similar plants in the United States would cost more and would result in a smaller improvement in emissions.

According to the new report, a variety of economic models predict that a climate plan without trading among industrialized countries would result in a range of losses to their gross domestic products of anywhere from two-tenths of 1 percent to 2.2 percent. Under a climate plan with emissions trading, the range of losses could be cut in half.

Over all, the report says, even in the middle of this range of possible losses, costs of adjusting power plants and other sources of greenhouse emissions would be small enough that no substantial economic harm would result. On one point, the scientific panel, some environmental groups and some industry officials all agree: To make emissions trading work, there must be clear, enforced rules and an accurate way of measuring changes in gas emissions.

"If you don't have a system that's legitimate and verifiable, there's tremendous potential for gaming the system," said Dale E. Heydlauff, senior vice president for environmental affairs of American Electric Power, a $12-billion-a-year energy company that supports trading under the climate treaty.

But some environmental groups insist that there is a moral obligation for countries to make a significant amount of their emissions reductions at home.

"From the European perspective, we think that should be a priority," said Frances MacGuire, the climate change policy director in the London office of Friends of the Earth. "There is a place for trading, but it shouldn't be without limit."

-------- environment

Despite Ruling, E.P.A. Insists That City Must Filter Water

February 10, 2001
New York Times
By AMY WALDMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/10/nyregion/10WATE.html

The Environmental Protection Agency said yesterday that it would not reconsider its order requiring New York City to build a plant to filter water from the Croton watershed.

On Thursday, the State Court of Appeals ruled that the city could not build the plant in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx without approval from the State Legislature, which is considered highly unlikely. The city is under federal court order to build a filtration plant by 2007.

City officials said earlier that they would appeal the state court ruling. But they also said that given the change in presidential administrations, they would consider asking the E.P.A.'s new administrator, former Gov. Christie Whitman of New Jersey, for permission to forgo filtration in favor of protecting the watershed at its source.

"We will pursue every avenue with the federal government," said Charles G. Sturcken, chief of staff at the city's Department of Environmental Protection. Other elected officials and neighborhood and environmental advocates said they, too, believed filtration could be avoided, and they hoped the agency would consider reopening the consent decree it had negotiated with the city.

Dart Westphal, a board member of Friends of Van Cortlandt Park, which filed a lawsuit to stop the plant's construction, said yesterday: "We should all say, `Let's wait, let's stop the clock on the deadlines.' We can't come up with something overnight."

Mr. Westphal, who opposes filtration, pointed out that the water from the Croton watershed meets all federal health standards. The city has been ordered to filter in expectation of more stringent standards planned for the future.

City Councilwoman June M. Eisland, who represents the area where the plant was to be built, said she hoped to go to Washington to ask Mrs. Whitman to consider options other than filtration, given the difficulties in finding a site and what she said were improved technologies that could protect the watershed.

But an E.P.A. spokeswoman in New York had a quick, and blunt, answer: Not a chance.

"Our bottom line is that the Croton watershed must be filtered in order to protect public health," said the spokeswoman, Mary Mears. "That bottom line isn't one that comes from any particular administration."

She added that the city needed to filter its water to comply with the federal Safe Drinking Water Act. "It's a matter of federal law, a matter of federal regulation," Ms. Mears said. "That's not going to change."

Mr. Sturcken said that left city officials "back to square one."

The city is under an expensive gun. If the decision by the appellate court is not overturned, New York City becomes liable for some $5 million in fines, retroactive to mid-1999.

Mr. Sturcken said the city agency would reconsider its original list of possible sites for the filtration plant. That list includes the Jerome Park Reservoir in the Bronx, which was the city's choice, but rejected because of community opposition. Opponents said that site would probably face the same legal problems as the Van Cortlandt site. The list also includes several sites in Westchester County, where the city has said it would be far more expensive to build.

Yesterday, an official in one Westchester town, Greenburgh, said his community would still be willing to talk with New York City officials. Paul Feiner, the town supervisor, said that in return for allowing construction of the plant, Greenburgh would want New York's help acquiring parkland.

Mr. Sturcken said Greenburgh was a possibility, but that that site might face public opposition, too.

In January, the city announced it had hired a company to develop a management strategy to protect the Croton watershed. Some advocates and officials said yesterday they hoped that step would help persuade the federal government to reconsider its determination to require filtration.

Ms. Mears, however, said taking steps now to protect the watershed was "a little like closing the barn door after the horse has left."

The area around the Croton watershed has already been heavily developed, she said, and she reiterated the agency's position: "Is there any possibility that we will say water does not need to be filtered? The answer is no."

---

Next Nest: Alaska

February 10, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/10/opinion/L10BIR.html

To the Editor:

Re "Field Guide? Check. Binoculars? Check. Lobbyists? Soon." (front page, Feb. 4):

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge's coastal plain is famous for its enormous herd of caribou. But it is also the destination of tundra swans, which migrate more than 3,000 miles from wintering grounds in the Chesapeake Bay. Red-throated loons fly in from the East and West Coasts, while American golden plovers log 10,000 miles from Central and South America. Bird lovers can enjoy these and some 120 other species during the winter and migration seasons.

But if Congress allows the oil industry to turn the refuge's coastal plain into an industrial complex, what happens to the natural qualities that lure and sustain these millions of birds?

Leaving this sanctuary just as it is would pay off for grizzly bears, polar bears, musk oxen, caribou, birds and other wildlife, as well as for all of us whose lives are enriched by them.

WILLIAM H. MEADOWS President, Wilderness Society Washington, Feb. 5, 2001

-------- genetics

Commission Sues Railroad to End Genetic Testing in Work Injury Cases

February 10, 2001
New York Times
By TAMAR LEWIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/10/national/10GENE.html?pagewanted=all

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission yesterday filed its first court action challenging genetic testing by an employer, the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway Company.

The commission asked a court to order the railroad to end what it called the company's nationwide policy of requiring all union members who claim work-related carpal tunnel syndrome to provide blood samples for a DNA test for a condition that may predict some forms of carpal tunnel syndrome.

According to the court papers filed in Federal District Court in Sioux City, Iowa, the railroad's employees were asked for blood samples but not asked to consent to their use for genetic testing, and at least one individual who refused to provide a sample because he suspected it would be used for genetic testing was threatened with discharge if he did not submit it.

The railroad said that it had not sought blood tests on every worker who filed a claim for carpal tunnel syndrome, and that it had not tested any employees without their consent.

"According to my understanding, there were 125 claims filed for workers compensation for carpal tunnel syndrome since March 2000, and 18 instances in which we sought genetic testing," said Richard Russack, a railroad spokesman. "I'm under the impression that all 18 said yes, and were tested. And my understanding is that we have not threatened anybody with disciplinary action, or taken any disciplinary action."

Mr. Russack said that neither the employment commission nor the rail workers union, the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees, had ever contacted the railroad about the issue or sought mediation, and that the railroad first heard of the genetic-testing issue yesterday, from a reporter. The railroad is a unit of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corporation, which is based in Fort Worth.

One worker named in the court papers, George Avary, contended that a month after he filed a claim for work-related carpal tunnel syndrome last October, the railroad told him that he had to provide a blood sample. The papers said that he refused to do so, and that in January, the railroad told him he would be subject to discipline for his refusal.

Two other workers named in the court papers said that they had allowed blood samples to be taken, but that they did not know the samples would be used for genetic testing. The union has also brought charges on behalf of all its members.

Carpal tunnel syndrome, which can cause pain and numbness in the hands and arms, is usually caused by repetitive motion, but in some cases may have a genetic component.

"The affidavits we have tell of workers threatened with losing their jobs because of genetic testing," said Ida L. Castro, the chairwoman of the employment commission.

"Individuals, without their knowledge or consent, were being subjected to genetic testing that was not job- related, not necessary," Ms. Castro said. "The only conceivable explanation is that the railroad wanted to use the genetic testing to argue that they would have gotten carpal tunnel anyway, so they shouldn't get workers' compensation." The commission acted quickly, Ms. Castro said, "to protect workers confronted with such an egregious violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act."

Just two weeks ago, Paul Miller, one of the commissioners, sent out a letter saying that the commission's policy was that genetic discrimination in the workplace violated the Americans with Disabilities Act, and that the commission would investigate and prosecute violations.

"Recent studies indicate that an increasing number of individuals with genetically related illnesses and conditions believe that they have been subjected to discrimination in the workplace based on their genetic information," the Jan. 24 letter said. "However, while research suggests that employers have unlawfully used such information, few charges of genetic discrimination have been filed. The E.E.O.C. wants to ensure that individuals with genetically related conditions are aware of their rights under the law."

Yesterday, however, Ms. Castro said the letter had nothing to do with the railroad case, which she said was brought to the commission's attention by the union. The current commissioners are holdovers from the previous administration.

"The commission takes the position that basing employment decisions on genetic testing violates the A.D.A.," Commissioner Miller said yesterday in the agency's news release. "In particular, employers may only require employees to submit to any medical examination if those examinations are job-related and consistent with business necessity. Any test which purports to predict future disabilities, whether or not it is accurate, is unlikely to be relevant to the employee's present ability to perform his or her job."

But legally, the question of whether the federal disabilities law covers workers with a diagnosed genetic condition, but no symptoms, is still murky. And in several recent opinions not involving genetics, the United States Supreme Court has taken a narrow view of who is covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act.

About half the states have enacted laws against employment discrimination on the basis of genetic information, and last year, President Bill Clinton signed an executive order prohibiting the federal government from using such information in employment decisions. Efforts to pass federal genetic protection legislation, however, have failed.

Just how much attention the problem of genetic discrimination warrants is open to debate.

"I can understand people who say we should guard against future problems, but there is no evidence that there's a problem of any magnitude now," said Dr. Phil Reilly, a clinical geneticist and lawyer who now heads Interleukin Genetics Inc., a biotechnology company in Waltham, Mass.

"For all the debate about genetic discrimination in the workplace over the last decade, there have been virtually no cases involving real people," Dr. Reilly said. "My concern is that well-meaning people are making too big a deal of this, alienating people from the good in genetic tests and conveying concern that you should be scared your employers will use them against you."

-------- police

2 Ex-Officers in Louima Case Get probation for Lying

February 10, 2001
New York Times
By ALAN FEUER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/10/nyregion/10LOUI.html

Two former police officers who lied to federal investigators about the Abner Louima brutality case avoided jail time yesterday when a federal judge sentenced them both to probation.

One of the former officers, Rolando Aleman, was sentenced in Federal District Court in Brooklyn to two years of probation. The other, Francisco Rosario, was sentenced to three years of probation, the first three months of which he will serve confined to his home.

In April, Mr. Aleman admitted to making false statements to federal agents who interviewed him about what he knew of the assault on Mr. Louima, who was sodomized with a broken broomstick by an officer in the restroom of the 70th Precinct station house on Aug. 9, 1997. Mr. Aleman had been charged with concealing that he was in the arrest room of the station house when Mr. Louima, bleeding and moaning, was brought in and placed in a cell.

After a two-week trial that ended in June, Mr. Rosario was convicted of similar charges. He took the stand in his own defense, telling the jury he had lied to investigators because he was frightened that appearing in court to testify against other officers in the case would jeopardize his family and his career.

The sentencings yesterday closed the voluminous book on the bitter criminal prosecution of the Louima case, which has resulted in guilty pleas or verdicts involving four other police officers in the last two years.

Justin A. Volpe, who admitted to attacking Mr. Louima in the grimy restroom, is serving 30 years in prison.

Charles Schwarz, who was convicted of restraining Mr. Louima during Mr. Volpe's attack and then of trying to cover up his part in the assault, is serving a 15-year term.

Thomas Bruder and Thomas Wiese, both found guilty in the cover-up plot, were sentenced to five years each.

During the hearing, Mr. Aleman told Judge Eugene H. Nickerson that he was sorry for his crimes.

"I don't blame anyone else for the fact I'm here today," Mr. Aleman said. "It's my own fault."

All that remains of the case is Mr. Louima's federal civil lawsuit against the city and the police union. He is seeking $155 million in damages.

Negotiations between Mr. Louima's lawyers, the city, the Police Department and the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association have been bogged down for several weeks.

Sanford Rubenstein, a lawyer for Mr. Louima, said that although he was disappointed that Mr. Aleman and Mr. Rosario avoided jail time, the prosecution of their cases sent a message to all police officers.

"If they lie to investigators in an attempt to cover up acts of police brutality and attempt to perpetuate the blue wall of silence," he said, "they will be convicted of crimes themselves."

---

Nassau County District Attorney to Dismiss Charge Against Officer in Sexual Assault

February 10, 2001
New York Times
By AL BAKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/10/nyregion/10COP.html

HAUPPAUGE, N.Y., Feb. 9 - The Nassau County district attorney confirmed tonight that he would move to dismiss a criminal charge that a county police officer forced a woman to have oral sex a year ago while the officer was on duty. The decision was disclosed earlier at a news conference here called by the officer's lawyer, who said his client had a consensual relationship with the woman.

But the officer, Matthew Murphy, still faces a criminal charge that he sexually attacked a different woman while on duty in August, officials said. And, Officer Murphy, 36, who is on suspended duty without pay, still faces administrative charges in both cases, his lawyer and Deputy Inspector Peter A. Matuza, a police spokesman, both said.

Paul Gianelli, Officer Murphy's lawyer, called a news conference at his law office tonight to discuss the dropped charge. He said his client was a good police officer who would ultimately be found innocent of all criminal and administrative charges. Officer Murphy and his wife, Kathy, sat in the office holding hands, but they declined to comment.

Mr. Gianelli said Philip L. Tomich, a prosecutor from the office of Denis Dillon, the district attorney, phoned him at 1 p.m. today with the news. The police had said that a woman told them that in December 1999 Officer Murphy ordered her to follow his police cruiser in her car to a wooded area in West Farmingdale, where he forced her to perform oral sex. A witness saw the two go into the woods, the police said.

But Mr. Gianelli said Officer Murphy had a consensual sexual relationship with the woman that had lasted three years before it ended in 1999. The lawyer played a tape-recorded interview with a man he described as a friend of the woman and Officer Murphy. The lawyer said the decision to drop the charge came after the police interviewed the man, who was not identified.

"She liked Murphy very much," the man on the tape said, "and she said he's very tall and very handsome and had blue eyes. And, you know, she fell in love with him."

Mr. Gianelli declined to say whether Officer Murphy had sex with the woman while on duty. It is a violation of department rules to have sex while on duty.

Reached at home tonight, Mr. Dillon confirmed that his office would move in court on Wednesday to dismiss the first-degree sodomy charge against Officer Murphy in connection with the Dec. 18 incident. "I don't want to speak about the reasons," the prosecutor said. "I don't want a judge reading about it before it is brought up from our mouth."

Mr. Gianelli had said the woman should be charged with filing a false report, but Mr. Dillon said officials had no intention of charging the woman criminally.

A law enforcement official said the woman now says the relationship was consensual. There was apparently a misunderstanding between the woman, an immigrant from El Salvador who speaks broken English, and the officers who first interviewed her, the official said.

Mr. Gianelli lashed at the Police Department. "It is unforgivable," he said, "that an individual would be treated in this particular way. The Nassau County Internal Affairs Department decided it was more important that they bring you a scalp, in the name of Matt Murphy, than to do a good police investigation."

Police departments on Long Island and in Orange County have been struggling with complaints by women who say officers sexually assaulted and harassed them. In Suffolk County, for example, an officer has been accused of forcing several drivers to undress.

The arrest of Officer Murphy in the December incident came as the Nassau department was investigating a woman's claim that she had been forced to perform oral sex on a plainclothes officer on Aug. 8 in exchange for her release after a drunken-driving stop.

The woman said the officer flashed a badge and forced her to lie in his unmarked car, before taking her to a wooded area in Farmingdale near the site of the December incident. The complaint by the woman, a topless dancer, languished for five months, and officials now say it was mishandled.

Six days after he was charged in the first case, Officer Murphy was charged with first-degree sodomy in the other incident.

John F. Nash, a lawyer who represents the woman who filed the report from August, said his client stood by her identification of Officer Murphy in police lineups. Mr. Gianelli declined to answer questions about that case except to say that Officer Murphy was working in full dress uniform on the day in question.

-------- spying

A Leaner and Less Visible NSC

Saturday, February 10, 2001
Washington Post
By Karen DeYoung and Steven Mufson
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50937-2001Feb9?language=printer

The Bush administration has substantially restructured the National Security Council during its first three weeks in office, providing an early indication of how the new White House plans to handle foreign policy and promote its strategic priorities.

Armed with memos and staffing lists drafted last fall, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice cut the NSC staff by a third and reorganized it to emphasize defense strategy, including national missile defense, and international economics. In a White House first, Rice has expanded her regular meetings with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to include Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill.

The consolidation of offices once dealing separately with Europe, Russia and the Balkans has reflected not only a smaller-is-better view, but also Bush's desire to decrease U.S. involvement in the Balkans and signal to Russia "that this administration is not going to treat Russia as a special case," said one Russia expert.

Other notable changes have been the elimination of divisions handling international environmental and health issues, and of the NSC's communications and legislative offices.

Bush still has not issued the traditional presidential directive formally spelling out his national security structure -- a document his two immediate predecessors signed their first day in office. But the reorganization of the NSC reveals how Rice envisions her relationships with other powerful administration personalities such as Vice President Cheney, Powell and Rumsfeld.

Rice has made it clear she will not be a policy initiator or implementer, and that she expects to be seen and heard far less than her predecessor, Samuel "Sandy" Berger. Several administration officials said she sees her task as making sure Bush is briefed and staffed to play his role in foreign and security matters, advancing his strategic agenda while thinking through big issues such as guidelines for foreign intervention, and serving as an honest broker of differences among the major policy players.

Rice's vision of a lean, strategically focused operation, closeted from public view, stands in stark contrast to the Clinton years, when the NSC ballooned in size, functions and visibility to become the center of foreign policy action -- often at the perceived expense of a weak and demoralized State Department.

State Department sources said they have been told they now will run interagency meetings that focus on single countries or regions, while the NSC will chair meetings dealing with "cross-cutting issues" that are less regionally focused or where no one agency has a lead role. "What's new is not that the NSC is smaller," said a senior official. "What's new is what's behind the sizing. It's a view about what the NSC staff ought to be for this president."

Rice has defined it as "working the seams, stitching the connections together tightly . . . provid[ing] glue for the many, many agencies and instruments the United States is now deploying around the world."

Since it was established in 1947, the NSC has been the White House staff that reflects the president's worldview while helping manage competing interests on the cabinet. While the influence and power of national security advisers have varied from one administration to the next, they often have become embroiled in troubled relationships among presidents, their White House foreign policy staffs and their cabinet secretaries.

Rice's mentor and model is one of the notable exceptions to this pattern: Brent Scowcroft, who served as national security adviser to Bush's father. President George Bush. Hailed by all sides as a paragon of modesty and effectiveness in crises from the collapse of the Soviet Union to Operation Desert Storm, Scowcroft's NSC was strictly an inside operation, while not interfering with the work of the cabinet secretaries.

Rice "believes we shouldn't have two secretaries of state," said a senior administration official.

For some Washington skeptics, the real question is not how many secretaries of state Bush will have, but how many national security advisers. The administration has several 800-pound gorillas working on foreign policy, and Rice, who served as provost at Stanford University after holding a senior staff position on Scowcroft's NSC, is junior in experience, rank and age to all of them.

Cheney, a former defense secretary and presidential chief of staff, is assembling a mini-NSC on his own staff and is expected to play an important foreign policy role. Powell, national security adviser to Ronald Reagan and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under the senior Bush and during Clinton's first year, brings far more heft to the job than his predecessor, Madeleine Albright. The strong-willed Rumsfeld is doing his second stint as defense secretary.

Bush has said he expects Cheney and the vice presidential advisers to be full participants in national security policy. The stated plan is that the NSC and Cheney's staff will be treated as one, with what a senior official called "maximum communication and transparency."

For the moment, comity is facilitated by the fact that, while many of the senior players across the administration have well-known differences on some issues, most of them learned to work together in previous administrations. And there is a strong desire, emanating from the top, to avoid public controversy.

But these are early days, and a rare period with virtually no immediate foreign policy crises. When the going gets tough, "it takes a very strong president to insist that these people get along," Walt Rostow, who served as President Lyndon B. Johnson's national security adviser, told the Brookings Institution, which is compiling oral histories from NSC veterans.

Since 1947, the council has been reinvented under each administration to reflect the president's style and needs. It has been large -- 74 staffers under Eisenhower, and more than 100 during Clinton's second term -- and it has been small. John F. Kennedy slashed it to 12 members. Richard M. Nixon wanted to "run foreign policy out of the White House," he said in his memoirs, and adviser Henry A. Kissinger assembled a 50-person staff to do it. President Jimmy Carter cut that number in half.

President Ronald Reagan -- who ran through six national security advisers in eight years -- left the NSC largely on its own. The result, among other things, was the staff-initiated Iran-contra operation under Oliver North.

Although the Bush team promises it will be different, "tensions between the national security adviser and the secretary of state seem to run through every administration," Reagan security adviser Frank C. Carlucci told Brookings. Feuding between Carter adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and secretary of state Cyrus Vance eventually led to Vance's resignation.

Some veterans of Washington's foreign policy wars are betting that Rice will be quickly overshadowed and outmaneuvered by the administration's big guns. Even Scowcroft has observed that no matter what the structure, a successful national security adviser needs a president who is engaged in foreign policy, something that remains unclear in Bush's case.

Others insist it is "madness," as one official in cabinet department put it, to think that the genie of NSC dominance can or should be put back in the lamp.

The vision of a smaller NSC has become fashionable among foreign policy experts, recommended by a series of think tank and special commission reports to the new administration. Brzezinski, Carter's activist adviser, supports a more limited NSC role. "For every 200 decisions made every day in foreign affairs, maybe only 10 should be presidential level," he said.

But Anthony Lake, Clinton's first term national security adviser, argued that the nature of foreign policy today calls for a major NSC role in governing, not just in advising the president.

"Increasingly, almost every issue has economic dimensions, security dimensions and classic diplomatic dimensions. And that means that no agency can take the lead and expect the other agencies that have an interest to follow it," Lake said, "because State simply won't do what Defense says and Defense won't do what State says."

Last September, Rice asked Philip Zelikow, a fellow staffer on the Scowcroft NSC and now head of the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs, and arms control expert and Republican State Department veteran Robert Blackwill, to draft memos on organizing the NSC along Scowcroft's lines. Edited by Rice and others, the memos were further refined when Rice's deputy Stephen Hadley came on board, and Zelikow and Blackwill became part of the transition and were free to roam the halls of the Clinton NSC operation.

In keeping with a lower profile, NSC legislative and communications functions were returned to the main White House staff. The press and speechwriting components were slimmed from three to one official each. While reporters routinely called the Clinton NSC, including Berger, for policy information, callers are now referred to the White House and State Department press offices.

A new post of deputy economics adviser, reporting to both Rice and chief economics adviser Lawrence B. Lindsey, reflected a desire to enhance the role of economic considerations in foreign policy. Although no official appointment has been made, trade specialist Gary Edson, deputy to former U.S. trade representative Carla Hills, is expected to be tapped for the post.

Clinton's NSC Nonproliferation and Export Controls Office has become Bush's Nonproliferation Strategy, Counter-proliferation and Homeland Defense office -- the locus for national missile defense. At its head is Robert G. Joseph, an advocate of missile defense who served in the Reagan and senior Bush administrations.

Rice has turned to experienced hands rather than ideologues for most jobs. New Europe/Eurasia director Daniel Fried is a career foreign service officer with long experience in Central Europe and the former Soviet Union. From 1993 to 1997, he served in the Clinton NSC, where he played a major role in NATO enlargement. Franklin C. Miller, director of the Defense and Arms Control directorate, served in the Defense Department and co-authored the Clinton nuclear targeting guidelines.

Rice and her team redrew much of the regional chart, moving countries to where they seemed to make more geographic and policy sense. Southeast Asia, paired with the Near East under Clinton, has rejoined Asia under director Torkel Patterson, a Japan expert who served in the Scowcroft NSC and whose selection sidestepped the rift in the Republican Party over the direction of China policy.

North Africa has been combined with the Near East in the directorate still temporarily headed by Clinton holdover Bruce Reidel. The new director for the rest of Africa is former Rice student, Harvard professor and transition aide Jendayi Frazer, who also did a stint on the Clinton NSC. Heading the Western Hemisphere directorate is career foreign service officer John Maisto.

Still up in the air is what to do with the NSC office of Transnational Threats, initiated and headed under Clinton by Richard A. Clarke. Clarke has remained in place while the administration decides what to do with the office.

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Russian Defector Was Spy, Not Diplomat, U.S. Officials Say

February 10, 2001
New York Times
By JAMES RISEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/10/world/10INTE.html

WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 - A Russian intelligence officer working under cover as a diplomat at the United Nations has defected to the United States, say several American officials familiar with the case.

The intelligence officer, identified by the officials as Sergei Tretyakov, defected in October with his wife and other family members and has undergone extensive debriefings by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency, officials said.

Mr. Tretyakov's defection was disclosed in late January. At the time, though, American officials described him only as a diplomat and senior aide to Russia's United Nations ambassador, Sergey V. Lavrov.

While Mr. Tretyakov's public title was first secretary in the Russian mission, he was in fact an officer in the S.V.R., Russia's foreign intelligence service, successor to the Soviet-era K.G.B., American officials said.

Several current and former United States officials say defections of Russian intelligence officers have become relatively rare in recent years, partly because American intelligence agencies have become more selective in which Russians they consider to be of interest.

Since Moscow is regarded as less of a threat to the United States now, the market value of Russian spies has declined since the height of the cold war, experts say.

Officials provided few details about Mr. Tretyakov's case, but several current and former officials said his acceptance as a defector when Washington and Moscow were no longer direct adversaries indicated that he had information that the United States considered significant.

Officials refused to say whether Mr. Tretyakov had worked as a spy for the United States while he was still at the United Nations before his defection. If he did so, his direct access to senior Russian officials and secret documents could have increased his value as a defector.

Several experts added that if Mr. Tretyakov was formally accepted into the United States under the laws that govern the C.I.A.'s official defector resettlement program, then he has met fairly high standards in terms of his value to American intelligence.

For instance, it is possible that Mr. Tretyakov would be able to provide American counterintelligence officials with information about some Russian espionage operations under way in the United States.

Mr. Tretyakov's defection has come while Russia has sharply increased the number of intelligence officers it has placed in the United States, officials said.

After being cut nearly in half in the early 1990's after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the ranks of Russian intelligence officers have now returned to nearly their cold war levels, American officials say.

It appears that the United States has not increased its presence in Moscow to a similar degree, officials said, adding that Russia has more intelligence officers in the United States than the United States has in Russia.

For the most part, Russian intelligence officers are based at the Russian Embassy in Washington, the Russian Consulate and United Nations mission in New York, and the Russian Consulate in San Francisco, officials say.

American officials have tried in recent years to persuade Moscow to reduce its intelligence presence here, but without success.

"There was an understanding that there would be a decline in their intelligence presence, but there hasn't been," said one former senior United States official. Some intelligence officials complain that the Clinton administration did not press hard enough or make the matter a priority in United States-Russian relations.

The rise in the numbers of Russian intelligence officers stationed here has also come as the F.B.I. has been shifting some of its focus to new targets, like terrorism, and some officials say the bureau does not have the same number of counterintelligence squads deployed to watch Russians as it did during the cold war.

American intelligence officials say President Vladimir V. Putin, a former K.G.B. officer himself, is in the process of reviving Moscow's security services, and an increasingly assertive Russian presence in the United States seems to fit that pattern.

In December 1999, for instance, the F.B.I. arrested a Russian intelligence officer outside the State Department and uncovered a listening device hidden in a department conference room. American officials also say Russian intelligence has been behind serious attacks on computer systems at the Pentagon and other government sites.

Still, some officials caution that the increased Russian intelligence presence in the United States does not mean that Moscow is winning any new spy war.

In fact, some American officials say it is possible that some Russian intelligence officers have been transferred to this country as a reward and view their assignments here largely as a time to enjoy a pleasant life away from Moscow.

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Rising Numbers of Investors Make Social Goals a Priority

February 10, 2001
New York Times
By DANNY HAKIM
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/10/business/11FUND.html?pagewanted=all

For years, John Rempel struggled to find investments that did not make him feel guilty.

Mr. Rempel, a 56-year-old Mennonite minister, had some false starts, once discovering that a mining company in his portfolio did business with a South American dictator. But he was thrilled to find a group of mutual funds designed by Mennonites for Mennonites that shuns military contractors, tobacco companies and casino operators.

Socially responsible investing, as it is called by many investors no matter what their ideology, has been around for decades. But now, as it grows far more popular, it is becoming increasingly Balkanized, with offerings customized to many faiths and beliefs. Three companies now offer Muslims mutual funds or customized stock accounts that do not invest in banks because charging interest runs counter to Islamic principles. Some of the funds will not even buy bonds.

A fund for Christian Scientists does not buy the stocks of drug manufacturers, medical equipment makers, biotechnology companies or hospital chains. Some funds aimed at socially conservative Christians will not invest in companies that sell alcohol, tobacco or pornography or own casinos, or in medical companies with ties to the performing of abortions. There are also funds for Catholics, Lutherans and Seventh- day Adventists.

One mutual fund will invest only in companies that support gay and lesbian rights; another shuns such companies.

Salomon Smith Barney, owned by Citigroup, even runs a fund for animal lovers, disdaining companies that do not meet Humane Society standards for testing that uses animals, that make hunting and trapping equipment and that sell meat and other animal products. And most such funds avoid tobacco companies.

The new standards have entered almost every conceivable field of investment. There are socially responsible funds offering high-yield junk bonds, technology stocks and international stocks, not to mention the stocks of small, medium-size and large companies. There are socially responsible personalized accounts, annuities and money market and venture capital funds.

Clients can use the accounts to pursue their social issues, down to excising a specific stock that makes them uncomfortable. And for investors lacking the minimum amount for a customized private account, there is Foliofn, an Internet start-up that sells a half-dozen customized socially responsible portfolios.

The many new opportunities are a big change from past decades, when socially responsible investing usually meant avoiding nuclear power producers, companies deemed to discriminate against minorities and weapons makers.

Executives of the financial institutions now jumping in say that socially responsible investing can also produce stronger returns, though some experts find the evidence at best inconclusive. "There is a correlation between good practices and good investment results," said Philip Angelides, the state treasurer of California and a board member of Calpers, California's $165 billion public employees pension fund and the nation's largest investment fund of any kind. "People in the investment industry often want to put up a wall between the two things, but they are related."

In the last six months, Calpers has become a gargantuan version of a socially responsible fund. It has agreed to shed tobacco companies and recently decided to avoid investments in countries that restrict press and political freedoms and lack protections for workers' rights (though the Clinton and Bush administrations have often favored economic engagement to promote civil liberties). Calpers has also created funds that invest in inner cities and urban areas.

"Smart investors don't blind themselves to the way social values and practices affect investment returns," Mr. Angelides added.

Socially responsible funds are more widely available now than ever before. In the last year, companies like Ford Motor, Hewlett-Packard and Gap have added the $1.4 billion Domini Social Equity fund, one of the older such funds, as a choice in their retirement plans. At the same time, two investment industry giants have started their own socially responsible mutual funds: TIAA-CREF, which already runs about $4 billion worth of social funds in its retirement plans for teachers, and the Vanguard Group, the nation's second-largest manager of mutual funds.

John Brennan, chief executive of Vanguard, said the company had been studying socially responsible investing for several years but only recently decided to enter the field. "It has seasoned as a concept and that makes managing one more practical, as opposed to it being an issue du jour," Mr. Brennan said. "We come out with products that we expect to endure forever."

Most of the growth has taken place in the last few years. Between 1997 and 1999, portfolios screened for social responsibility grew to $1.5 trillion from $529 billion, mostly in private stock accounts, according to the Social Investment Forum, a trade group that surveyed several hundred investment firms. Though that number seems optimistic to some industry watchers, almost everyone agrees that the movement has grown significantly.

The concept traces its recent roots back to the Vietnam era, and the creation, in 1971, of the Pax World Balanced Fund, a mutual fund that avoids the military industry.

But today's funds go far beyond the traditional pacifist and environmental concerns. The Timothy Plan, an investment firm based in Winter Park, Fla., that takes its name from a letter written by the apostle Paul, is one of several that cater to what they call conservative Christians.

The Timothy funds, with $56 million and more than 5,000 shareholders, avoid alcohol, tobacco, gambling and pornography stocks, and any involved with abortion. "We won't own hospital chains that perform abortions," said Arthur Ally, the president and founder of the Timothy Plan.

Mr. Ally's flagship fund, the Timothy Plan Small Cap Value, invests in small companies that have fallen from favor. It performed near the bottom of its category for several years after its founding in 1994, according to the fund-tracking firm Morningstar.

Many investors stayed with Mr. Ally, but others were not so forgiving. "There were those that thought if they invested in Timothy they'd have top returns, that the Lord would bless them," he said. "When that didn't happen, some of them went to better-performing funds."

The fund's performance has improved in recent years under new managers. Mr. Ally, meanwhile, has started three stock funds, a bond fund, a money market fund and two funds meant as all-in-one investments. "Now we're a one-stop shop," he said, adding that he expected Christian funds to eventually outdraw their more secular cousins.

Not that they cannot sometimes agree. Both Microsoft and Intel show up in the Meyers Pride Value fund, which invests only in companies that oppose discrimination against gays and lesbians, and the Noah Fund, which aims to uphold what it calls strict Biblical values.

Socially responsible funds have historically concentrated on screening out companies they will not buy, then choosing freely among the rest.

Now, however, more firms are seeking out companies that fit their ideals. The Domini fund family of New York favors companies that have good relations with unions, generous retirement benefits and strong pollution-prevention programs.

All this extra work costs money. For Domini, 21 analysts screen companies according to various social criteria. As a result, the Domini Social Equity fund has fees that are somewhat high for an index fund, though lower than most socially responsible funds.

Despite those fees, the Domini fund has slightly beaten the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index over the last five years. Social investing advocates argue that eliminating a few hundred companies out of thousands is not much of a handicap, and that responsible companies are more likely to be profitable.

"The previous doubt was that you couldn't do it without giving up returns, but funds like Domini show that you can," said Catherine Hickey, an analyst for Morningstar.

Costs, however, can be a greater concern for other funds, since they are often too small to absorb their added expenses easily. Vanguard and TIAA-CREF, both known for having minimal expenses, are likely to further increase the pressure on these funds.

For some investors, like Mr. Rempel, the choice is easy. The average investor, after all, might not have a framed poster of the 16th-century Dutch humanist and Catholic theologian Erasmus over his desk, near a worn copy of "The Essential Erasmus."

"I began having questions about what you were endorsing if you bought stocks in certain companies back in the early 1980's," said Mr. Rempel, who grew up in Kitchener, Ontario, a former Mennonite settlement west of Toronto, and now serves as his faith's representative to the United Nations.

When he told his stockbroker what he had learned, from a newspaper, about the South American activities of the mining company he held, the broker was sympathetic, but said, "You can't be in stocks if you're going to ask moral questions."

He withdrew his money from the market and bought farmland with other Mennonites. "It was a fiasco," he said. "I ended up losing all of my father's inheritance."

In 1989, when he moved to Manhattan to become minister of the borough's only Mennonite church, he did not have much left. "The job here was on a subsistence salary," he said. "Then, when I started earning a little more money, I started wondering what to do with it."

In 1994, MMA/Praxis, an independent arm of the Mennonite church, started its own mutual fund. Today, the group has $300 million in four mutual funds and what some in the industry refer to as a double bottom line: to make money and to invest morally.

"It sounds hokey," Mr. Rempel said recently, "but this was what I was looking for."

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Staten Island Cottages Linked to Dorothy Day Are Demolished

February 10, 2001
New York Times
By SHERRI DAY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/10/nyregion/10STAT.html

Several cottages that were used by Dorothy Day, a founder of the Catholic Worker movement, were bulldozed yesterday on Staten Island, despite the opposition of preservationists who had fought a developer's plans to knock them down.

The cottages were destroyed as preservationists were still holding out hope that they would be declared landmarks because of their tie to Ms. Day, who is under consideration for sainthood by the Vatican because of her work for the poor.

Before she died in 1980, Ms. Day lived in one of the modest cottages, built in the late 1940's and situated in a bungalow community known as Spanish Camp, on the South Shore neighborhood of Annadale near Raritan Bay.

But developers bought the property and began tearing down the more than 70 cottages that made up the camp, a community of people who were united by their culture and their interest in vegetarianism. A group formed in 1998, called Friends of Dorothy Day Cottages, tried to save at least the three cottages that had once been owned by the Catholic Worker organization, which sought to help the poor and homeless.

As late as last week, the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission was in talks with John DiScala, who owned the property. But the commission had not set a date for a landmarks hearing. Mr. DiScala said he grew tired of waiting.

"They never landmarked the cottages," Mr. DiScala said. "They never even had a hearing on it. They had four years to do this."

He also said the bungalows had been a liability because teenagers had begun to gather inside them to drink alcohol.

"It was a business decision, because if somebody gets hurt in there, I'm subject to lose everything I've worked so hard for," he said.

Terri Rosen Deutsch, chief of staff of the Landmarks Commission, said that although the organization had not set a date for a landmarks hearing, she believed the procedure had been imminent.

"We had a firm commitment from him to donate these structures to a not-for-profit organization that was established for the very purpose of these cottages' preservation and maintenance," she said. "We were working with him on a plan for public access to the cottages. We're just horrified at the news that the cottages had been demolished."

Mr. DiScala said he planned to build 37 houses on the property near the space where the bungalows stood. He cannot build on the site of the former bungalows themselves because zoning laws prohibit it.

David Goldfarb, who is a board member of Friends of Dorothy Day Cottages, said he had thought that the bungalows were safe from demolition because the Landmarks Commission was preparing to grant them landmark status and it usually notifies the buildings department of its plans. In this instance that apparently did not happen.

Paul Wein, a spokesman for the buildings department, said that Mr. DiScala had received permits to demolish three cottages but that the department was investigating whether Ms. Day's house was one of them.

"Nothing on our records indicated that this is the house in question," Mr. Wein said. But Mr. DiScala has not disputed that the bungalows that were demolished had belonged to Ms. Day. And those who had worked to protect the cottages said they knew that the ones that were destroyed were once occupied by her. They were treasures, they say, that can never be replaced.

Mr. DiScala, who said he had nothing against the legacy of Ms. Day, insisted that the cottages did not belong on the property with the luxury development he planned.

"I'm sure she was a good woman and she helped the poor," he said. "But my father was a good man and helped the poor. Nobody is landmarking his property."

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PROTESTERS ARRESTED

February 10, 2001
New York Times
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/10/world/10BRIE.html?pagewanted=all

IRAN: The police and members of a paramilitary squad arrested dozens of anti-government protesters and used tear gas to disperse hundreds more from a Tehran park, witnesses said. The official news agency said there were only 300 protesters, mostly young people demanding freedom of expression. Witnesses put the number at about 1,000. (AP)

CHINA: VICTIMS STABLE China said self-immolation victims whose actions intensified a drive to discredit Falun Gong were in stable condition, but that only one had renounced the banned group. The official New China News Agency said interviews with four who survived a group suicide attempt showed two were still "die-hard" believers. By stressing their continued faith, China seemed to be trying to refute Falun Gong statements denying the victims' links to the group. (Reuters)

INDONESIA: CONCERN OVER PROTESTS President Abdurrahman Wahid toured his home province of East Java as fears grew that increasingly angry protests by his supporters there were hurting Indonesia's fragile shift to democracy. And in a veiled public attack on the man who outmaneuvered her for the presidency 15 months ago, Vice President Megawati Sukarnoputri, above, said Indonesia was in its worst state since independence in 1945. (Reuters)

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China vs. the West

February 10, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/10/opinion/L10CHI.html

To the Editor:

Re "China Steps Up War on Sect, but Some Denounce Attacks" (news article, Feb. 7):

I find it incredible that the Chinese government accuses the Falun Gong, something that couldn't be more Chinese, of being the pawn of Western forces seeking to vilify and destroy China.

These Communist despots have blamed Western forces for every disaster that their own policies have created. Honestly, is this a government whose words can be trusted?

It is equally incredible that the Clinton administration regarded such an unstable, anti-Western regime as a "strategic partner." It is high time for President Bush to make good on his campaign promise to correct this mistake.

HUEY HUANG Houston, Feb. 8, 2001

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Crimes against capitalism?
Oregon Legislator Seeks Sweeping Hate Crime Laws

February 10, 2001,
AP staff
http://www.kgw.com/kgwnews/oregonwash_story.html?StoryID=13946

An Oregon legislator has introduced a bill that could make it a hate crime to smash a Starbucks window or sabotage a timber company. While the bill would expand hate crimes to include eco-terrorists, Sen. Gary George, R-Newberg, says his real target is political correctness.

"Even the Scriptures tells you not to judge a person's thoughts but their actions," George said, "and that's what's always bothered me about this crime. . . . It seems to be the ultimate in political correctness."

The bill calls for an additional five years in prison for an offender whose crime is motivated by "a hatred of people who subscribe to a set of political beliefs that support capitalism and the needs of people with respect to their balance with nature."

The idea for the bill came from Eric Winters, a Portland lawyer active with a group of Libertarians called the Mainstream Liberty Caucus. He took his proposal to Richard Burke, the 1998 Libertarian candidate for governor who is now on George's staff.

"You should be punished for the harm you cause, and you shouldn't be punished extra just because you don't like someone's racial background," Burke said. "We shouldn't put people in jail for being bigots or for being environmentally conscious or for not liking the WTO."

Randy Blazak, a Portland State University sociology professor who will speak at the Oregon Hate Crimes Conference, counters that society routinely takes into account an accused criminal's intent. "The fact is, we punish people for what they are thinking," he said. "We do that already. We say, 'Did you plot to kill this person or were you drunk?'"

Copies of George's bill were circulated through the Capitol on Friday, two days before a statewide conference on hate crimes is scheduled in Eugene. The keynote speaker will be Judy Shepard, the mother of Matthew Shepard, the gay Wyoming college student beaten to death in 1998. Two young men received life sentences in 1999 for Shepard's death, which led to demands for tougher state and federal hate-crime laws.

Oregon has a series of laws covering hate crimes. People accused of crimes such as vandalism and assault can face tougher penalties if the crimes were based on a person's perceived "race, color, religion, national origin or sexual orientation."

George, a hazelnut farmer, says if criminals can be singled out for crimes motivated by racism or anti-religious sentiment, he sees no reason not to include crimes against capitalism.

"I think this is a growing problem, and we thought there needed to be a vehicle to discuss the issue of eco-terrorism."


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