NUCLEAR
Concern Over British Nuclear Sub Deepens
Voyage of the Batfish
Kremlin Pleased with Putin's Asian Swing
UK Fires DU Munitions off Coast of Scotland
German Intelligence Reports on Iraq Nuclear Weapons
Iraq Hasn't Proved Weapons Claims
Resolve Against Iraq
North Korea Threatens to Scrap Missile Test Deal
Russia Presents Its Own Ballistic Missile Defense
Missile Defense is Bush's Idee Fixe
construction of a sea-based missile-defense system
Why the best offense is a good missile defense
South Korea Talks Missile Defense
We Can Beat ABM Defense
Air Force Project Has Flaws
Russia Official Denies Link to Spy
South Korea Now Pulls Back From Russia on Missile Shield
In Vietnam, Putin Finds an Old Ally in a New Role
Arguing Missile Defense
Kursk Tragedy Caused by Torpedo Misfire
Chronicle of the Kursk
NUCLEAR INSANITY
Hatch Asks Government to Pay Radiation Claims
Sub Saboteur Was on Drugs
Armed to Excess
The USS Ronald Reagan
For the Record
What is MOX Fuel?
Congress Seeks Progess on Hackers
Peter Eisler of USA Today Wins Stokes Award 107
PIKETON PLANT GETS A REPRIEVE
Ohio uranium plant gets federal funding

MILITARY
Putin Heads Home
Powell Goes on the Road and Scores Some Points
Senator urges aid for Saddam's foes
JAPANESE AID
U.S. Finds That Coca Cultivation Is Shifting Sharply to Colombia
Mandatory Drug Testing in Texas Is Overturned
TRASHY TABLOIDS
Drug war partners 'certified' by U.S.
Making the World Safe for Intervention
Navy Suspends Bombing of Vieques for the Month
NASA Seeks To Contact Pioneer 10
STAR WARRIORS (SPACE PATROL)
NASA pulls plug on shuttle successors
WAR IN SPACE
U.N. WARNING
HACKER STEALS U.S. SATELLITE CODES:
lifting the ban on gays in the military.
General Suspicion
Navy Probes Hacker Theft of Codes
Osprey Inquiry Focuses on Senior Marines
Pentagon Unveils Plans for a New Crowd-Dispersal Weapon
Pentagon's latest weapon: a pain beam
Greeneville probe
Osprey data reportedly seized

OTHER
Economist
Birds to be Charged with Flying Under the Influence
Scientist Looks to Beat the Carp Out of Wisconsin's Lakes
Drilling in the Cathedral
Upbeat Plan for a Dam in Belize Turns Nasty
Mrs. Whitman Stands Firm
Precautions Against Foot-and-Mouth Disease Continue
FOOT-AND-MOUTH MEASURES
FEAR OF MEAT DISEASES IMPACTS BRITS' LIVES:
Regulations without end
Green after all
How can a real gent tell the lady no?
Bush budget boosts EPA grants to states, tribes
New Worries of Planting Altered Corn
IMF inclined to grant billions to Turkey
Not All Criminal Cases Are Black and White
Attorney General Seeks End to Racial Profiling
Ashcroft demands profiling study
FBI agents to undergo more polygraphs
downfall of accused FBI double-agent
CIA's role in helping to topple the Milosevic regime in Serbia.
F.B.I. Agent Accused as Spy Had Active Swiss Bank Account
CIA Using 'Data Mining' Technology to Find Nuggets
Bush Reorganizes National Security Council
The Ultimate Surveillance System?
Israel Chooses New Defense Minister
Ambassador Tells of Bomb's Horror
Berenson retrial begins next week
Bin Laden applauds bombing of U.S. ship

ACTIVISTS
Price Anderson Act Up for Renewal
NAPF HAPPENINGS
Wagingpeace.org
Stop NAFTA for Central America.
Save the forests...
Greenpeace claims plutonium carrying ships nearing Tasmania
China Sentences 37 Falun Gong Sect
Ireland to Speak
Appeal for Trinational Conference Against Deregulation/NAFTA/FTAA
Canada mounts biggest-ever security operation


-------- NUCLEAR

Concern Over British Nuclear Sub Deepens

Fri, 2 Mar 2001
The Sunflower Newsletter
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sunflower-napf

Concern has deepened over the HMS Tireless, the British nuclear submarine that has been stranded in Gibraltar since May 2000 because of a fracture in its reactor cooling system. Although repairs are expected to be finished in March and the sub is expected to return to the UK in April, citizens and organizations alike continue to voice worries about radiation leaks contaminating Gibraltar's main water desalination plant.

Anxiety about radiation concerns has been reinforced by admission from the British Ministry of Defense that similar fractures have appeared in the cooling system of four out of 12 of the other nuclear submarines in the British fleet. Vaughan Starkey, a Ministry of Defense civil servant in Gibraltar, recently admitted that up to 90 liters of coolant water containing low levels of radiation was pumped overboard before the sub docked in Gibraltar last year.

The Environmental Safety Group in Gibraltar is considering taking legal action against the British Ministry of Defense. Additionally, ten Spanish Greenpeace activists were arrested in January for boarding the submarine in a non-violent action to raise awareness about the sub's presence in the British colony. Private opinion polls in Gibraltar estimate that between 50% and 70% of the population oppose the presence of the sub in the colony. (source: The Guardian, 27 January 2001)

---

Voyage of the Batfish: 50 days tailing Soviet sub

Friday, March 02, 2001
Seattle Times
Associated Press
By Pauline Jelinek
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis/web/vortex/display?slug=batfish02&date=20010302

WASHINGTON - They kept silent for 23 years. But yesterday, members of a U.S. submarine crew finally described a top-secret mission some believe may have hastened the end of the Cold War.

In the 1978 mission dubbed "Operation Evening Star," the nuclear-powered fast-attack submarine USS Batfish detected a Soviet submarine armed with 16 nuclear missiles and bound for America's East Coast.

The Batfish tailed the Soviet submarine for 50 days without being detected, collecting valuable information on how the Soviets operated, said retired Rear Adm. Thomas Evans, who commanded the Batfish.

"It was tedious at times," Evans said of the mission, which began in South Carolina on March 2, 1978, and lasted 77 days.

Though it wasn't the first mission to follow the Soviets, nor the last, it was one of the more successful, and information on it has been declassified by the Navy.

"We knew exactly where that submarine went on an hour-to-hour basis," Evans told a news conference at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. He said the mission tracked the Soviets' route and mapped the area the Soviets were patrolling.

The press conference was held by Smithsonian magazine, which publishes in its March issue the first story of the Batfish mission, by author Thomas Allen.

Détente was wearing thin

In the article called "Run Silent, Run Deep," Allen says the mission came when the Carter administration's détente with the Soviets was wearing thin amid concern about Soviet missile submarines cruising off both U.S. coasts.

Evans attributed the mission's success to the experienced crew, to the Batfish design that made it "extremely quiet" and to a then-new, extra-sonar system that was dragged behind the American sub, making its sonar detection superior to the less-advanced and noisier Yankee-class Soviet sub.

The U.S. technology meant the Batfish could get close enough to hear the Yankee, but not close enough to be heard by it, Evans said. He usually hung back 7,000 to 10,000 yards.

Fifteen days into the mission, on March 17, 1978, the Batfish detected the Yankee at the north end of the Norwegian Sea some 200 miles above the Arctic Circle.

Evans said that during the 50 days, the Batfish temporarily lost the Yankee only twice. Once was during a bad storm that kicked up wind and waves, creating too much background noise on the sensitive sonar.

Another time, Allen says, the distracting noise came from a fishing fleet that passed overhead with its rumbling diesel engines and whining hydraulic winches that are used to work the nets.

`Acoustic signature'

By then, Batfish sonar technician Daniel Lawrence had figured out the Yankee's "acoustic signature," and could relocate it without too much trouble after the distractions passed.

"Each submarine has its own acoustic characteristics," Evans said, like "when you hear Frank Sinatra over the radio you don't have to be told it's Frank Sinatra, but you know who it is."

Evans said the Soviets never knew they were followed until they learned it through espionage - the infamous Walker spy case.

Retired Navy Warrant Officer John Walker pleaded guilty in 1985. He admitted passing secrets to the Soviets while he was a shipboard communications officer and, after his retirement, by recruiting his son, brother and a friend to provide fresh information.

U.S. intelligence officials later came to believe that when the Soviets learned about missions such as Operation Evening Star, they realized their subs were vulnerable and embarked on a budget-draining attempt to catch up that eventually contributed to the end of the Cold War, Evans said.

The Navy last year declassified some information about the Batfish - and a similar 1972 mission - so the information could be used in an exhibit at the National Museum of American History honoring the centennial of the U.S. submarine force.

And what was his top-secret order, had the Batfish determined that Yankee was about to fire a nuclear missile?

"Only the captain had those orders sealed in his safe," said Evans, the captain. "And they remain classified today."

---

Kremlin Pleased with Impact of Putin's Asian Swing

March 2, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-vietnam.html?searchpv=reuters

HANOI (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin wrapped up a two-country Asian tour on Friday that Kremlin officials said had helped put Russia back on the map in the region.

Putin visited South Korea, Moscow's former Cold War enemy, and Vietnam, one of its staunchest allies in the Soviet era.

The aim of the trip was to boost Russia's profile in a part of the world Moscow had largely neglected since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and its trade and economic ties.

``Putin and our delegation departed with excellent feelings,'' a Kremlin official told Reuters just before the president headed back to Moscow on Friday afternoon after two days in Hanoi.

``The impression is very positive. We have made a considerable progress in Vietnam and South Korea.''

Putin started his tour in Seoul on Monday, carrying Moscow's promise of support for South Korean President Kim Dae-jung's Nobel Peace Prize-winning efforts to thaw ties with the North.

He also pledged to forge deeper economic ties, including a plan to build a railroad link between Russia's Trans-Siberian Railroad and South Korea through the territory of North Korea that could help bring peace to the divided states. In his visit to Vietnam, which started on Wednesday, Putin and his counterpart Tran Duc Luong declared a new strategic partnership covering military, trade and economic cooperation and Russia reported progress on resolving Hanoi's Soviet-era debt.

``An interesting thing about this tour is that it was rather economic,'' the Kremlin official said. ``We spent less time on politics.''

Putin, the first Kremlin chief ever to visit Vietnam despite close Cold War ties between Moscow and Hanoi, was pleased with his reception. Moscow's ITAR TASS news agency quoted him telling Luong before leaving for Moscow his visit had been ``beyond all expectations.''

Putin was warmly greeted by the Soviet-trained leadership of what is one of the world's last communist states and was given a rousing welcome when he spoke to thousands of Vietnamese students educated in the former Soviet Union.

OIL, GAS AND ARMS SALESMAN

Putin, who has been fighting since he became president a year ago to build an image as a pragmatic leader, discussed several energy projects with South Korea and Vietnam and also pitched weapons to Hanoi.

He praised the Russian-Vietnamese joint venture Vietsovpetro, which taps most of Vietnam's crude, as a rare success story in Russian oil projects abroad.

On Tuesday, South Korea and Russia agreed to boost cooperation on development of a major natural gas field in Siberia and oil fields on the east Russian island of Sakhalin.

South Korea has said it will take part in a huge gas pipeline project from the field in Siberia, which requires some $11 billion in investment and is to be developed by BP Amoco . It is designed to ship natural gas to China.

Seoul said last year it may buy some 10 billion cubic meters of Russian gas annually from the pipeline.

Putin said Russia and Vietnam planned to expand cooperation on electricity generation and confirmed a $100 million Russian state loan for a Vietnamese hydropower plant.

Russian officials said two countries were mulling four electricity projects and would soon start discussion on the possible construction of a nuclear power station, Vietnam's first.

Hanoi expressed support for Putin's stance on U.S. missile defense while the Russian president said Vietnam wanted to buy new Russian armaments.

Putin said Moscow was willing to sell advanced weapons to the Vietnamese military, which has long been depended on Russian equipment.

Talks were expected on the strategic naval base at Cam Ranh Bay, on which Moscow's lease expires in 2004.

But deputy head of Kremlin administration, Sergei Prikhodko, said it was not discussed and an existing agreement signed in 1979 gave Russia the right to use the facility without payment.

Vietnam does not object to Russia's presence at the base but wants it to boost lease payments. Analysts say Washington and Beijing eye the facility enviously for its strategic and commercial potential.

-------- depleted uranium

UK Fires DU Munitions off Coast of Scotland

Fri, 2 Mar 2001
The Sunflower Newsletter
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sunflower-napf

Despite increased international attention about the use of depleted uranium in munitions, the UK test-fired depleted uranium shells at a range off the coast of Scotland on 20 February for the first time since the munitions were linked to a possible risk of cancer. The UK insists, along with the US and some other NATO allies, that there is no proof the munitions pose any health risks.

The tests received criticism from surrounding communities. The UK Ministry of Defense justified the use of depleted uranium shells as the only ammunition the British forces have for penetrating modern heavy armor effectively. A spokeswoman for the Campaign Against Depleted Uranium stated, "We believe in precautionary principle. It seems the height of folly to still be test-firing them." (source: ENN, 21 February 2001)

-------- iraq

German Intelligence Reports on Iraq Nuclear Weapons Capability

Fri, 2 Mar 2001
The Sunflower Newsletter
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sunflower-napf

On 24 February, a German Intelligence report was published in German newspapers claiming that Iraq would have nuclear weapons capability within three years and would be able to fire a missile as far as Europe by 2005. The US and British forces conducted severe bombing raids on Iraqi radar sites on 16 February. Arab reaction to the bombings was greater than anticipated by the US Administration.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was visiting the Middle East when the German reports were released, used the opportunity to reiterate to neighboring countries the need for continued U.N. sanctions on Iraq. Powell noted that the weapons Sadam is developing would be aimed at the people of the region. Powell stated, "We have to make sure that we do everything we can to contain him, constrain him, to get inspectors back in under the terms of the U.N. resolutions." (source: Reuters, 25 February 2001)

---

Iraq Hasn't Proved Weapons Claims

March 2, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-UN-Iraq.html?searchpv=aponline

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Documents released by Iraq in an effort to prove it no longer has weapons of mass destruction shed little new light on the status of its disarmament, the chief U.N. weapons inspector said Friday.

In an interview Friday, Hans Blix said that the documents delivered this week by Foreign Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf contained ``very little new data.''

Al-Sahhaf provided the documents at the start of talks with Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the impasse that has kept U.N. weapons inspectors out of Iraq for over two years. Al-Sahhaf said the information proved Iraq had complied with U.N. demands that it destroy all its proscribed weapons.

U.N. inspectors must certify Iraq has destroyed its biological, chemical and nuclear weapons and long-range missiles used to deliver them before the Security Council will lift sanctions imposed after Baghdad's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

Blix said he would ``take to heart'' advice from an international advisory panel that he start prioritizing his outstanding questions about whether Iraq had indeed complied -- even though he said such a list could only be finalized once inspectors return to Iraq.

The advisers to Blix's U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission made the request during a Feb. 21-22 meeting in Vienna at which Blix presented a partial inventory of the ``unresolved disarmament issues'' in Iraq.

The inventory contains basically the same information as reports produced by UNMOVIC's predecessor, UNSCOM, that said Iraq still has to answer questions about its biological and chemical weapons programs and account for missiles.

The request for a new list came as Russia and France revived their calls this week for the Security Council to clarify precisely what Iraq must do to have U.N. sanctions suspended. Telling Iraq clearly what level of cooperation it must give inspectors could help Annan persuade the Iraqis to accept weapons searches, the two countries said.

Blix also signed a new contract with the United Nations on Thursday -- promising to stay on for another year in a job that he hasn't really been able to perform.

``It seems to me that the Iraqi position is very, very far at the present time from the Security Council position,'' Blix said. ``But nevertheless, there is an opening,'' he said, citing the U.N. talks and reviews in Washington on its Iraq policy.

``So there is some motion and we welcome that,'' he said.

---

Resolve Against Iraq

March 2, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/02/opinion/L02IRA.html

To the Editor:

Robert A. Pape ("Our Iraq Policy Is Not Working," Op-Ed, Feb. 24) writes that in the face of difficulty in preventing Iraq from acquiring weapons of mass destruction, "we must concentrate on keeping the coalition together." But that is not the correct order of priorities. Most important to the United States, and the world, should be limiting and destroying Saddam Hussein's weapons capabilities.

There has recently emerged a dangerous tendency to dismiss efforts to reduce the spread of weapons of mass destruction. We forget that in the early 1960's, it was assumed that every first- and second-world nation would acquire nuclear capability; arms control agreements stemmed the tide.

Our response to today's proliferation must be renewed resolve, not throwing up our hands in professed powerlessness. If we do not use diplomacy and military action to fight the spread of weapons now, we will surely regret it in time.

MATT FOLEY Chicago, Feb. 26, 2001

-------- korea

North Korea Threatens to Scrap Missile Test Deal

Fri, 2 Mar 2001
The Sunflower Newsletter
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sunflower-napf

On 22 February, North Korea threatened to discard a moratorium on long-range missile tests. North Korea agreed in September 1999 to suspend missile tests for the duration of negotiations with the US on the country's missile program and in exchange the US agreed to ease sanctions and provide assistance to the country's nuclear energy program.

The threats to disregard the missile test moratorium came after the Bush Administration announced it would take a "hard-line" policy with Pyongyang. A spokesman for North Korean foreign ministry stated, "The new US foreign and security team is making a fuss by saying it will take a hard-line stance on us. But this is an attempt to reverse the past course of conciliatory and cooperative relations between us and the United States, and break our will with force. We promised not to test-fire long-range missiles during the duration of talks on the missile issue, but we cannot do so indefinitely." (source: AP, 21 February 2001)

-------- missile defense

Russia Presents Its Own Ballistic Missile Defense System to NATO

Fri, 2 Mar 2001
The Sunflower Newsletter
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sunflower-napf

Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev presented Russian plans to build its own ballistic missile system to NATO Secretary-General George Robertson on 20 February. The proposed Russian system would be based on using existing theater-range weapons that can destroy ballistic missiles in their "boost-phase" which differs from US plans to intercept incoming ballistic missiles in space. According to NATO officials, the Russian system under consideration would likely fall within the limits of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. The ABM Treaty only permits the construction of anti-missile systems that would destroy incoming ballistic missiles with a limited range (3,500 km).

The Russian proposal was welcomed by US and NATO allies as it signified Russia's acknowledgement of missile proliferation threats. (source: Reuters, 22 February 2001)

--

Missile Defense is Bush's Idee Fixe

Definition of Idee Fixe from Dictionary.com: An idea that dominates the mind; a fixed idea; an obsession.

The reality of obsession-its incessant return to the same few themes, scenarios and questions; its meticulous examination and re-examination of banal minutiae for hidden meanings that simply aren't there; the cancerous way an idee fixe usurps other, more interesting thoughts-is that it is confining, not rebellious, and not fascinating but maddeningly dull. --Laura Miller, New York Times, 20 August 2000

In an attempt to win approval for US plans to deploy its controversial National Missile Defense (NMD) system, President Bush has called for a review to assess how deeply the US nuclear arsenal can be reduced. Although receiving opposition from the Pentagon, Bush has stated that the US can unilaterally reduce the number of offensive nuclear weapons in its arsenal. Reductions in the nuclear arsenal could help the Bush administration pacify Russia and China, who oppose the NMD system, as well as win support from skeptical allies.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has proposed further reductions for START III levels to 1,500 or below on each side. The Russian proposal, along with implementation of START II reductions, hinges on the fact that the US not deploy a national missile defense. NMD deployment would violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, a treaty that Russia considers a cornerstone for global arms control efforts.

In his "State of the Union Address" to Congress on 27 February, Bush stated, "To protect our own people, our allies and friends, we must develop and we must deploy effective missile defenses. And as we transform our military, we can discard Cold War relics and reduce our own nuclear forces to reflect today's needs."

---

construction of a sea-based missile-defense system.

Friday, March 2, 2001
Slate
By Maureen Cosgrove, Jeremy Derfner and Amanda Fazzone
http://slate.msn.com/OtherMags/01-02-26/OtherMags.asp?Show=2/28/2001

The left-wingers who say missile defense is too expensive and won't work are just recycling old anti-Star Wars arguments from the Reagan era. The right-wingers who support the system because it will protect America don't understand foreign policy. The real reason to back missile defense: It can be an offensive weapon that allows U.S. forces to intervene all over the world without fear of missile attacks. ... A piece says that by opposing campaign-finance reform, labor unions are setting themselves up as a scapegoat for pro-business money Democrats, who'd like to see McCain-Feingold killed. Unions don't like several of the bill's minor restrictions, but they would benefit greatly from its ban on soft money, because they raise relatively little of it. Meanwhile, dollar Democrats who quietly want to keep collecting soft money can use the unions as cover for their unpopular positions. -J.D.

http://www.tnr.com/031201/kaplan031201.html

---

Why the best offense is a good missile defense
Offensive Line

03.02.01
New Republic
By Lawrence F. Kaplan
http://www.tnr.com/masthead/kaplan.html
http://www.tnr.com/031201/kaplan031201_print.html

Thank God for missile defense. For Washington foreign policy types who spent the last decade snoring through panels at the Brookings Institution, the salad days are here again. Just when it seemed no one cared about national security issues, back comes missile defense, and it's as if the Star Wars debates of the 1980s never ended. Nuclear strategists whom no one's listened to for ten years walk with a bounce in their step. Congressmen who couldn't find North Korea on a map lecture about the moral imperative of protecting America from Kim Jong Il's missile arsenal. Sam and Cokie, characters on "The West Wing"-- everyone's talking about Star Wars again. That most of them don't have the slightest idea what they're talking about only adds to the déjà vu.

But what really makes it feel like the 1980s is that in an era when ideology has been banished from most foreign policy debates, ideologues have made this one their exclusive property. Overnight, all the Reagan-era battle lines have reappeared. On one side is the old Zabar's consensus, featuring the New York Times editorial page, The New York Review of Books, and a parade of New School professors. They've brought back all the Reagan-era arguments: Missile defense will destabilize the international scene and spur a new arms race, and it won't even work. On the other side, the loudest clamor for missile defense comes from a chorus of congressional yahoos who see in the program an opportunity to erect Fortress America. If we can build a shield to protect the United States from attack, the argument goes, we won't have to send troops abroad in search of dragons to slay. As it happens, all this ideological posturing bears little relation to the world in which we now live. In fact, the strategic logic of missile defense runs entirely counter to the claims of isolationist champions and liberal critics alike. The real rationale for missile defense is that without it an adversary armed with long-range missiles can, as Robert Joseph, President Bush's counterproliferation specialist at the National Security Council (NSC), argues, "hold American and allied cities hostage and thereby deter us from intervention." Or, as a recent RAND study on missile defense puts it, "[B]allistic missile defense is not simply a shield but an nabler of U.S. action." In other words, missile defense is about preserving America's ability to wield power abroad. It's not about defense. It's about offense. And that's exactly why we need it.

Frances Fitzgerald notwithstanding, the debate over anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems began not in the Reagan era but in the Roosevelt era, with the appearance of the first operational ballistic missile, the German V-2, late in World War II. (After being propelled outside Earth's atmosphere by rocket engines, ballistic missiles rely on gravity.) Within a year of the war's end, the Pentagon launched two programs to explore ways to counter the threat. By the mid-'50s, first the Air Force and then the Army had devised ABM proposals that would combine long-distance radar with nuclear-tipped interceptor rockets. The Army moved forward with its ABM program in the 1960s and by decade's end was set to begin construction. (A missile defense system was, in fact, briefly deployed--guarding a single missile site in North Dakota--before being scrapped in 1974.)

During the same decade, however, Robert McNamara, defense secretary under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, undermined the case for missile defense by enshrining in official policy a version of deterrence theory, Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), which held that the surest way to avert nuclear holocaust was for the Soviet Union and the United States to remain vulnerable to each other's arsenals. Consequently, MAD's defenders deemed anything that diminished this mutual vulnerability--particularly missile defense--a threat to stability. It was a curious argument, and not everyone bought it. Strategists like Albert Wohlstetter and Herman Kahn continued to make the case for missile defense, as did scientists like Edward Teller, who argued that it was better to "shoot at enemy missiles than to suffer attack and then have to shoot at people in return." Nonetheless, after years of bitter debate, much of it poisoned by the toxic residue of Vietnam, the McNamara logic prevailed. In 1972 the Nixon administration signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Moscow, effectively banning national missile defense (NMD).

The Star Wars debate of the 1980s, set off by President Reagan's proposal to build space-based defenses, basically amounted to a rehashing of "the great ABM debate" of the 1960s. But the technology had grown more sophisticated and the arguments more crude. Strategists and scientists faded into the background, supplanted by Republican revolutionaries and bien-pensant leftists. Nothing was ever deployed, which was just as well, since the technology wasn't there and, even if it had been, the Soviets could have easily overwhelmed it with their huge arsenal. And then the ussr crumbled, ending the argument. Now, with President Bush's pledge to deploy an ABM system, the debate enters its latest installment. Only this time something's different: the world.

Aside from the absence of Soviet communism, the main thing that's different is that more countries possess ballistic missile technology. In the past few years alone, India and Pakistan have set off a combined total of twelve atomic explosions; Pakistan, Iran, North Korea, and China have test-launched ballistic missiles; Iraq, Syria, and Libya have reportedly acquired missile components; and both China and Russia have continued to export ballistic missile technology throughout the Middle East. Still, U.S. policymakers have been slow to recognize the danger. As late as 1998, Joint Chiefs Chairman Henry Shelton averred that "the intelligence community can provide the necessary warning" if one of these countries was developing "an icbm threat to the United States." Alas, just a week after Shelton's pronouncement--and with no warning whatsoever from the intelligence community--North Korea demonstrated its intercontinental ballistic missile ICBM capability by launching a three-stage rocket over Japan. Intelligence analysts promptly dropped their sanguine assessment of the threat. "The probability that a missile armed with [weapons of mass destruction] would be used against U.S. forces or interests," a CIA-sponsored study asserted last year, "is higher today than during most of the cold war and will continue to grow."

The logic of the threat is simple. If we take North Korean, Chinese, and Iranian officials at their word, American "hegemony"--and, in particular, America's overwhelming military superiority--represents the single greatest challenge to their security. But, as the Gulf war showed, the United States can't be deterred with conventional forces alone. Ballistic missiles, by contrast, have proved they can do the job. There is, to begin with, the example of the Soviet Union, whose ICBM arsenal for decades kept the United States from confronting Soviet forces directly. More recently, North Korea's nuclear and missile programs have enabled that shambles of a country to blackmail the West into showering it with blandishments and concessions. Likewise, senior Pentagon officials say that China's repeated offers to incinerate Los Angeles linger in their calculations over how to respond to a conflict in the Taiwan Strait.

Nor have these examples been lost on states rushing to acquire long-range missiles: Their mere possession will put these countries "off limits" for U.S. intervention. "If [Americans] know that you have a deterrent force capable of hitting the United States, they would not be able to hit you," Muammar Qaddafi declared after the United States bombed Libya. "Consequently, we should build this [missile] force so that they and others will no longer think about an attack." Indeed, facing a dozen little Soviet Unions with even a theoretical capability of hitting America or her allies, the United States is vastly less likely to pursue a forward-leaning foreign policy. "[A]cquiring long-range ballistic missiles armed with a weapon of mass destruction probably will enable weaker countries to do three things that they otherwise might not be able to do: deter, constrain, and harm the United States," Robert Walpole, the national intelligence officer for strategic and nuclear programs, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1999. If, for instance, Saddam Hussein possessed even one ICBM, U.S. forces wouldn't be bombing Iraq routinely or stationing troops nearby. "The idea is to keep us out of [an opponent's] neighborhood and prevent us from coming to the assistance of our allies--it'll work, too," says a senior administration official.

Hence, when a missile defense opponent like Robert Reich writes in The American Prospect that the Bush team's plan exemplifies an "America-first policy" and "the new insularity," he has things exactly backward. The real argument for missile defense is that we need it to prevent adversaries from deterring us from the kind of interventions that liberals like Reich, even more than conservatives, spent the 1990s championing. Oddly enough, foreign critics, who carp that missile defense will cement U.S. hegemony and make Americans "masters of the world," grasp its rationale better than critics here at home. Missile defense, China's ambassador to the U.N. Conference on Disarmament complained recently, would grant the United States "absolute freedom in using or threatening to use force in international relations." He's right.

The fact that ballistic missiles, as a 1999 National Intelligence Estimate points out, "are not envisioned at the outset as operational weapons of war, but primarily as strategic weapons of deterrence and coercive diplomacy" points to another flaw in the anti-ABM argument. Missile defense opponents argue that long-range missiles (and defenses against them) have become passe since rogue regimes surely intend, as Clinton National Security Adviser Sandy Berger put it in a recent Washington Post op-ed, to deliver "weapons of mass destruction by means far less sophisticated than an ICBM: a ship, plane or suitcase." Maybe. But a suitcase makes for much less menacing satellite imagery than an ICBM--which is to say, it has virtually no worth as a deterrent, much less any domestic political utility. Besides, if ballistic missiles are yesterday's news, then why are the North Koreans and the Iranians building them in the first place? "How about we get rid of our aircraft carriers and B-52s while we're at it?" scoffs a senior Bush adviser when confronted with the man-in-the-van argument. "You defend against what you can, and to argue that these missile programs aren't threats, or that because there are other threats we should ignore this one, is just silly."

Opponents of missile defense also rely heavily on McNamara-era logic. As Berger puts it, "[T]he basic logic of the ABM [Treaty] has not been repealed--that if either side has a defensive system the other believes can neutralize its offensive capabilities, mutual deterrence is undermined and the world is a less safe place." He's half right. If the United States fields missile defenses, mutual deterrence will indeed be undermined. In fact, it will be entirely one-sided in America's favor. Not only would a credible missile defense system diminish the ability of rogue states to deter the United States, but, because these states have so few missiles, even a limited defense would, if anything, diminish their confidence in their arsenals. Deterrence and missile defense may have been inherently incompatible when the United States faced an adversary armed with 9,000 warheads. But when the point is to deter a group of states that, between them, possess fewer than two dozen ICBMs, enshrining defenselessness in official policy makes no sense.

The difference between an adversary armed with a single warhead and one armed with 9,000 isn't the only distinction critics like Berger refuse to grasp. They also fail to consider how proliferation undermines cold war deterrence theory. If MAD, as Henry Kissinger has written, was "barely plausible when there was only one nuclear opponent," it's certainly less so today. That's because, in an era of proliferation, the numbers have become much less favorable for the United States. Instead of betting that one adversary will think like Berger, we are now pinning our survival on the hope that six or seven will.

Which brings us to the nature of those adversaries, a subject about which the anti-missile-defense lobby is remarkably sanguine. "[E]ven fanatical, paranoid regimes are deterred by the prospect of catastrophic consequences," Spurgeon Keeny, then executive director of the Arms Control Association, advised in a 1994 New York Times op-ed. Never mind that recent history is littered with paranoid regimes that forgot to be deterred by catastrophic consequences. Before we send Keeny to hammer out a salt accord with Saddam, his ilk need to explain much more convincingly how missiles transform Third World dictators into rational choice theorists. Writing of "the `psychological' element in deterrence, on which all else depends," Jonathan Schell, dean of nuclear abolitionists, notes that a leader's "state of mind--his self-interest, his sanity, his prudence, his self-control, his clear-sightedness--is the real foundation of his country's and everyone else's survival. In short, he must decide that the world he lives in is not one in which aggression pays off." Sanity, prudence, and self-control, needless to say, are not the first qualities that leap to mind when you think of leaders like Saddam and Qaddafi. In any case, you don't have to be paranoid to miss the logic of MAD. Simple miscalculation will do.

Of course, there's more to U.S. foreign policy than relations with Iraq and other rogues. And, sure enough, the contention that missile defense will imperil America's relations with everyone else has become a favorite cliché of the anti-missile-defense chorus. The claim, though, is sheer invention. The Europeans have already rolled over. During his recent visit to the Continent, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld brusquely told them that America was going to build an ABM system and there was nothing they could do about it. In the weeks since, officials from the European Union, Britain, Germany, and even France have lined up to declare that the United States has the right to deploy. In fact, serious European resistance has all but collapsed.

Russia, too, has nothing to worry about--and its officials know it. Unlike their predecessors in the 1980s, today's proposed missile defenses, which are being designed to intercept a much smaller number of warheads, pose no threat whatsoever to Moscow's huge arsenal. Indeed, Boris Yeltsin and, just last week, Vladimir Putin have even proposed joining forces with the West to build missile defenses against rogue states. For all their recent bluster, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said on a visit to Moscow last month, "[i]n the end, the Russians are going to accept it." As for the ABM Treaty, the other signatory--the Soviet Union--no longer exists. And, even when it did, it never paid the treaty much heed. In fact, the Soviets ringed the country with anti-missile systems, which still shield Russia today. That doesn't mean the accord should necessarily be abandoned. But neither should U.S. policymakers grant Russia veto power over America's ability to defend itself against unrelated threats.

As for the suggestion that missile defense will provoke China into what a recent petition by American sinologists described as "negative steps that would undermine American security," it's too late. Those "negative steps"--including unchecked missile proliferation and an arms buildup--have been under way for over a decade. Indeed, just two weeks ago U.S. bombers had to avoid hitting Chinese personnel working to upgrade Iraq's air defense systems. As the NSC's Joseph wrote recently, "China is modernizing its missile and nuclear arsenal whether or not the United States deploys missile defenses." And members of the Bush team contend privately that China's exports of missile technology and the expansion of its own missile program helped create the imperative for missile defense in the first place. Even so, ICBMs aren't free, and China has only about 20. Multiplying that arsenal several times over would require huge trade-offs. "If they build up aggressively," argues a senior Bush administration official, "there goes their trade relations with us, their multilateral diplomacy, maybe even their economy."

The decision, in any case, has already been made--first by the Clinton administration and now by the Bush team: The United States is going to build a missile defense system. The question that matters is no longer if but how. Alas, here too the discussion has been a national embarrassment. Even though the systems under review today are limited and based on land and at sea, opponents of missile defense are still railing about what Washington Post hysteric Mary McGrory has revealed as "Bush's grandiose scheme for a real, all-out Star Wars scenario." Meanwhile, the right, too, has shown little interest in debating the competing merits of land- and sea-based missile defenses. Its approach is, instead, faith-based: Build it and it will come.

Within the U.S. government, however, a serious debate is under way. The ground-based option, slated for construction on a desolate Alaskan island, has the momentum. Unfortunately, it has few of the merits. In fact, all it has going for it is the ABM Treaty, which prohibits sea-based national missile defenses. To comply with the accord, the Clinton administration originally planned to erect a missile defense platform in North Dakota. Placing the system there had only one drawback: It offered protection to the continental United States but left parts of Alaska and Hawaii to fend for themselves. Ted Stevens, Alaska's senior senator and, more importantly, the head of the Senate Appropriations Committee, wasn't going to leave his constituents vulnerable to ballistic missile attack. So he went ballistic himself. By the time he finished, the Clinton White House had decided to relocate the site to Alaska.

The program, though, is a mess. First, it won't work. The problem isn't so much its well-publicized test failures (what failed in the most recent test was 50-year-old rocket technology that even North Korea has mastered) but a combination of flaws inherent in its design. The Alaska program can only intercept missiles well into their flight trajectories--that is, as they close in on the United States at a speed of about 15,000 miles per hour. Hence, the system would have only one shot at an incoming missile. Worse, that shot would likely have to maneuver through a cloud of decoys and countermeasures that ICBMs can deploy en route. Finally, the Alaska site will function reliably only against missile threats from East Asia. But a missile launched from, say, Iran or Iraq would be coming from the other direction. Given adequate time and resources, American technicians may solve these problems. Yet there's a conceptual defect they can never remedy--namely, that a U.S.-based missile defense amounts to just that. It abandons America's allies to their fates, offering Americans marginal protection but leaving countries like Israel and Japan defenseless.

In truth, few experts champion the Alaska program. One of the reasons derives from the realization--arrived at rather late in the debate--that water covers 70 percent of the Earth's surface. This simple fact has enormous strategic and technical implications. First, it offers a way around the problem of decoys and multiple warheads. Missile interceptors stationed on U.S. ships, which would patrol the coasts of rogue states, could shoot down missiles in their initial boost phase--that is, before they could deploy countermeasures and while their engines were still emitting an easily detectable plume of flame. Trying to destroy a missile as it lifts off, as opposed to when it's about to land on you, makes sense on several counts. Aside from solving the countermeasure dilemma, it's a lot easier to hit. As anyone who has seen a televised space launch knows, rockets travel relatively slowly during their initial ascent--much more slowly than when they streak back to Earth.

Equally important, a sea-based defense would offer the United States more than one opportunity to bring down an incoming missile. And, as physicist Richard Garwin points out, "It is much easier to put a lid on North Korea, a country the size of Mississippi, than it is to put an umbrella over the whole of the United States." If a missile did get through the first line of defense--or if it was launched from, say, China's vast interior, which no boost-phase interceptor could reach in time--American forces could conceivably have as many shots at it as there were ships stationed along the weapon's trajectory to the United States.

And, unlike a U.S.-based umbrella, a sea-based system wouldn't exclude America's friends. The mere fact that missile defense ships could be deployed to war zones as part of larger naval armadas gives them an immediately recognizable offensive dimension. Like aircraft carriers, such ships could project power in ways no concrete slab in Alaska could. If, as the Bush team insists, the strategic rationale for missile defense really is an internationalist one, then a sea-based system has all the advantages. The Alaska program, by contrast, follows the minimalist logic of Fortress America--that, as Alaska's Stevens wrote last month, "We can and we must defend our homeland!"

There's also a cost-benefit calculation. According to Congressional Budget Office estimates, the total cost of a ground-based program could run $60 billion. By contrast, the Pentagon has put the price tag of a sea-based defense at between $16 billion and $19 billion, while others have put it at half that. To be sure, when the cost of satellite-based sensors is factored into the equation, those projections may end up being too optimistic. Still, a sea-based system would build on an existing program: the Navy's Aegis air defense system, which has already been funded to the tune of $50 billion. And both the Clinton administration and the Pentagon report that one could be built with existing technologies.

What--you thought we were decades, if not centuries, from possessing the know-how to make missile defense work? In truth, NMD technology has matured well beyond what its detractors admit. The United States already fields a theater missile defense system, and current proposals aren't nearly as ambitious as the space-based plans of the Reagan era. In fact, the Clinton administration purposely slowed down the Aegis's interceptor rocket to ensure it would not be usable against ICBMs and thereby violate the ABM Treaty. And, as boost-phase proponents (and prominent 1980s Star Wars critics) like Garwin and MIT technology Professor Theodore Postol point out, because this type of missile defense system targets rockets while they are still moving slowly and before they can deploy countermeasures, it's far less daunting technically than the Alaska program.

Analysts estimate that, with a new, more powerful missile interceptor and other upgrades to Aegis cruisers, the United States could begin deploying a sea-based defense in about seven or eight years. That's too long for some. President Bush has pledged to construct a system "at the earliest possible date." And a popular consensus has emerged that an Alaska-based defense could be completed more quickly. Several Republican senators, as well as representatives from the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization who have been working for years on the ground-based plan, favor continuing the Clinton program.

Until recently, the Bush team argued otherwise. Rumsfeld's chief of staff, Stephen Cambone, and Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley publicly derided the Clinton program as ineffective. And Joseph, Bush's NSC missile defense point man, wrote that the Alaska program "has become so contrived that it will have only a minimal capability against near-term threats." Even Bush called it "flawed."

But that was then. According to members of the Bush team and senior Pentagon officials, the White House is now considering proceeding with at least an Alaska-based radar system and possibly more. "Sea-based is unquestionably the better option, and we're going to pursue it," says an administration official. "But there's been a lot of work done on [Alaska], none done on Aegis, and we may end up doing both. Also, it gives us near-term insurance against North Korea." Two missile defense systems, of course, offer more protection than one. But in practice building anything more than a radar facility in Alaska would exact a high opportunity cost. To begin with, it would divert resources from the more promising system. In return, it would achieve minimal, if any, gains for U.S. security--and none for America's allies.

Equally important, missile defense funding comes from the military budget. But, as it stands, the military is already underfunded by about $30 billion annually, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Exactly how the Bush team would fund not one but two missile defense systems while rebuilding America's conventional forces remains anyone's guess. "There's no free lunch," says Michael Vickers, a military budget expert at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. "NMD is an unfunded mandate, and you just can't do missile defense and much else at current costs." One solution, of course, would be to boost defense expenditures. But Bush insists there will be no new money for defense this year, and he has proposed a $1.6 trillion tax cut, which ensures there won't be much in the future either.

So where will the money come from? The Bush team says it plans to cut several major weapons programs and streamline the Armed Forces. Alas, the cuts Bush advisers privately suggest won't free up nearly enough money to fund their missile defense proposals, much less pay for their modernization plans. And there's only so much fat they can cut before they start bleeding the military's capacity to fulfill America's global commitments. Absent a substantial hike in defense spending, something has to give. Otherwise, America will have purchased an opportunity to wield its power undeterred at the expense of its actual capacity to do so. Which, needless to say, undermines the entire strategic rationale for missile defense.

Does Bush understand any of this? Probably not. But his advisers certainly do. They've spent years arguing that missile defense should respond to strategic imperatives, not political ones. Yet if they deploy a system whose purpose is to beat the clock rather than the missile threat, they will have done exactly what they've argued against for so long. The result will be a defense that encourages retrenchment while offering no security to our allies and very little to us. And, leftist critiques notwithstanding, that could be worse than none at all.

LAWRENCE F. KAPLAN is a senior editor at TNR.

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South Korea Talks Missile Defense

March 2, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-SKorea-US.html?searchpv=aponline

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- Ahead of a visit by President Kim Dae-jung to Washington next week, South Korean officials said Friday that they were sympathetic to U.S. motives for planning a missile defense system.

Washington views the plan as a way to thwart an attack by perceived ``rogue nations'' such as North Korea, which embarked last year on a reconciliation process with its old enemy, South Korea.

``I would characterize (the South Korean position) as a cautious but sympathetic understanding towards the U.S. thinking on this issue,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Kim Euy-taek told The Associated Press.

Despite months of international debate, South Korea has refrained from taking a clear-cut position on missile defense, possibly because it does not want to disrupt rapprochement with North Korea.

The communist North, which has a long-range missile program as well as suspected stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, is a fierce opponent of the U.S. plan. Russia and China are also against it, fearing it would undercut the role of their nuclear arsenals as deterrents against any U.S. attack.

Washington has tried to reassure Moscow and Beijing, saying a missile defense system could block isolated threats from smaller nations but would be unable to deflect a barrage of warheads.

In a meeting Friday with local reporters, Foreign Minister Lee Joung-binn said the demise of the Cold War a decade ago required a ``different approach'' to global security.

``Since then, new threats from certain countries have arisen,'' Lee said in comments that echoed recent remarks by U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. ``An answer to how to cope with these new threats should be provided by the United States.

``We have confidence in the leadership of President Bush as he pursues and develops this issue,'' Lee said.

Kim Dae-jung plans to meet Bush in Washington on March 7 to discuss his policy of engaging North Korea in order to bring peace to the divided Korean Peninsula.

Kim won the Nobel Peace Prize last year for his unprecedented success in reconciling with the North, but both Koreas remain on high military alert.

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We Can Beat ABM Defense

March 2, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-ABM.html?searchpv=aponline

MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia's Deputy Prime Minister said on Friday that his nation can penetrate missile-defense systems such as the one the United States is proposing to build.

The Kremlin vehemently opposes the proposed U.S. missile defense, arguing it would violate the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty and threaten to touch off a new arms race. The ABM treaty bans wide missile defenses.

Proponents of the U.S. system counter that it would be aimed at blocking attacks by small nations, and would not be effective against Russia's vast nuclear arsenal. Russia has argued that the system, once deployed, could be expanded.

Nonetheless, Russia has the technical know-how ``to overcome any ABM system,'' Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov said.

``It is theoretically possible to get through any ABM system, and the United States knows this,'' the Interfax news agency quoted him saying.

Also on Friday, a former chief of Russia's Federal Security Service, Nikolai Kovalyov, warned that if the United States builds such a system, it would intensify anti-American sentiments in Europe.

Such sentiments would lead to new coalitions, with Russia emerging as a leader of a ``multi-polar world,'' he contended.

``From the political point of view, this (missile defense) would be profitable to Russia,'' Kovalyov told a news conference.

Kovalyov, who is now a lawmaker in Russian parliament, also said the missile shield would be no protection from Russia's nuclear arsenal.

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Air Force Project Has Flaws

March 2, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Missile-Defense.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Air Force is at ``high risk'' of failing to meet either its time, cost, or performance goals for a new satellite system planned as part of a U.S. national missile defense, according to a new study.

The General Accounting Office study says the main flaw is that results of tests on the satellite's critical functions will not be available until five years after production of the system has begun.

The General Accounting Office is the investigative arm of Congress. It undertook the study at the request of Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., chairman of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee.

Lewis issued a statement Friday expressing ``grave concern'' over the results.

``It is essential that we know that any such system will work when needed and provide the most accurate information possible,'' Lewis said. ``Without this detection system, we cannot be fully protected from foreign threats.''

The $11.8 billion project is called the Space-based Infrared System-Low. The Air Force intends to put about 24 of the satellites into low Earth orbit, with the first scheduled to be launched in 2006. They would replace a constellation of surveillance and early-warning satellites, known as the Defense Support Program, which has been operating in low-Earth orbit for three decades.

The new satellite system would detect launches of ballistic missiles anywhere on Earth and track their flight paths. It also would provide data to a national missile defense system that would help intercepting American missiles distinguish between the incoming warhead and decoys deployed with the warhead.

The Bush administration has said it intends to build and deploy a national missile defense system, but it has not settled on a timetable or a specific plan.

The study by the General Accounting Office, dated Feb. 28, said the satellite project has high technical risks because some critical satellite technologies are at such an early state of development that they may not be available when needed. This puts ``program success in peril,'' it said.

The study also criticized the Air Force for not considering alternatives to the new satellite system.

In a written reply to the report, Arthur Money, assistant secretary of defense for command, control, communications and intelligence, said the Pentagon needs to complete its review of a timetable for national missile defense before it can reassess alternate approaches to the satellite system.

Money also said waiting for satellite test results to be determined before starting production would be more costly than the current approach of testing and producing at the same time.

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Russia Official Denies Link to Spy

March 2, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-Hanssen.html?searchpv=aponline

MOSCOW (AP) -- A former Russian security chief said Friday the country was too broke to afford the services of alleged FBI spy Robert Philip Hanssen and accused Washington of seeking to discredit Russia by claiming he was Moscow's agent.

According to the FBI, Hanssen received more than $600,000 in cash and diamonds, and an additional $800,000 had been set aside for him in an overseas escrow account as payment for 15 years of spying.

``Russia simply does not have that kind of money,'' said Nikolai Kovalyov, a former chief of Russia's Federal Security Service.

According to the FBI, Hanssen began spying for the Soviet Union in 1985, when the Communist government spent lavishly on its intelligence operations and agents.

Kovalyov, whose agency is the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, did not deny Hanssen had worked for Moscow, saying only that the FBI's evidence was too flimsy to justify the investigators' conclusions.

``His employers could have been anyone. Why is this assigned to Russia?'' Kovalyov said at a news conference.

Kovalyov claimed the Hanssen case was part of an elaborate plan by the Bush administration to make Americans forget about the turbulent election victory and expand his support base at home.

Kovalyov cited Washington's insistence on building a national missile defense system -- which Moscow fiercely opposes -- as another manifestation of the same plan.

``All these steps ... are steps by the new U.S. president aimed at strengthening his position in the country,'' Kovalyov said.

Hanssen is accused of passing to Soviet and later Russian agents 6,000 pages of secret documents that contained information about how the U.S. gathers intelligence, technologies used for listening, people who work as double agents and other highly sensitive matters.

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South Korea Now Pulls Back From Russia on Missile Shield

March 2, 2001
New York Times
By DON KIRK
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/02/world/02KORE.html

SEOUL, South Korea, March 1 - The government made a swift retreat today from what had appeared to be a decision by President Kim Dae Jung to support President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in opposing the missile defense program backed by President George W. Bush.

Pressed by United States officials for an explanation of Mr. Kim and Mr. Putin's joint statement on Tuesday, the Foreign Ministry drew a careful distinction between endorsement of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty of 1972 and opposition to national missile defense.

It was one thing to join with Mr. Putin, as Mr. Kim did after their meeting here, in defending the ABM treaty as a "cornerstone of strategic stability," a ministry official said, but quite another to conclude that Mr. Kim viewed national missile defense as inevitably violating the treaty.

The government appeared eager to reassure Washington that Mr. Kim had said nothing to Mr. Putin that would compromise South Korea's alliance with the United States, which supports the South with 37,000 troops here in case of an attack by North Korea.

The need to respond convincingly to a United States request for "clarification" of the statement on the missile treaty took on urgency, as members of Mr. Kim's staff, as well as Foreign Ministry officials, prepared for his meeting on Wednesday with Mr. Bush in Washington. Officials met today, a holiday that commemorates the 82nd anniversary of a revolt against Japanese colonial rule.

The public saw a three-paragraph Foreign Ministry statement that the ministry was "still carefully reviewing its position" on missile defense and had not "voiced any opposition to it."

The joint statement on Tuesday said nothing "indirectly criticizing or opposing" national missile defense, the Foreign Ministry said today, adding that news reports to that effect were misleading and did not "reflect the position" of the government. The care with which officials worked out the "clarification" delineated the problem as South Korea tries to carve out a foreign policy that satisfies all the major powers with immediate influence on the Korean Peninsula, China, Russia and Japan, as well as the United States.

Mr. Kim had hoped in his talks with Mr. Putin to enlist support in efforts at rapprochement with North Korea, while Mr. Putin sought to win Mr. Kim to his side in opposing the missile program.

South Korean officials, in briefings for local reporters, said the government had rejected a Russian suggestion for a clear expression of opposition to national missile defense. The statement, in which Mr. Putin and Mr. Kim said the 1972 treaty should be strengthened, could be seen as fulfilling that purpose, because the pact requires signers not to build national missile defense systems.

United States officials appeared to be satisfied with the South Korean explanation. "We asked them to clarify their position, and they clarified it," an American diplomat said. "We said, `Hey, this sounds as though you're opposed to national missile defense,' and they said they didn't mean it that way."

"We're all friends again," the American added.

One theory for why Mr. Kim joined in such a seemingly strong endorsement of Moscow's position was that he and his advisers were not aware of the possible repercussions. "They were trying to be nice to Putin," said a Western diplomat.

Mr. Kim, however, may have also wanted to signal his government's uneasiness with a plan that would compromise his "sunshine policy" of engagement with North Korea. China, North Korea's main ally, has opposed national missile defense, if anything more strongly than Russia, and the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, would undoubtedly take umbrage at any sign that Kim Dae Jung had adopted the American position.

Foreign Minister Lee Joung Binn of South Korea suggested last month that the United States should persuade the North to stop producing and testing missiles rather than focus on missile defense.

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In Vietnam, Putin Finds an Old Ally in a New Role

March 2, 2001
New York Times
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/02/world/02PUTI.html

HANOI, Vietnam, March 1 - The Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, today made his first visit to the capital of this old Soviet ally, which is fitfully trying to open its economy and catch up with the development boom in Asia.

From the Russian perspective, Mr. Putin had a good first day here on a tour that started in South Korea, though his motorcades through the bicycle-clogged streets attracted far less interest than did President Clinton's in November, which turned out large, enthusiastic crowds.

Mr. Putin made his mark by signing a "strategic partnership" with President Tran Duc Luong, and won for Russia the exploration rights on a 38-square-mile tract of Vietnam's oil-rich continental shelf in the South China Sea. He also opened talks to sell advanced Russian weapons and military equipment to Vietnam, as Mr. Putin tries to reinvigorate Russia's extensive military industries.

"Vietnam needs not just to maintain its existing weapons bought from the Soviet Union and Russia," Mr. Putin said at a news conference with Mr. Tran, "but it also needs modern weapons. Vietnam wants and can afford to buy new weapons."

No specific sales were mentioned, and Mr. Putin hastened to add that Russia would comply with international accords that prevent the sale of some technology, like long-range ballistic missiles. But one has only to taxi down the runway of Hanoi's airport, surrounded by fields of lush green rice shoots, to see the Soviet- era MIG-23 fighters, no longer serviced by Soviet and Chinese technicians, standing idle under concrete canopies and degraded by neglect and shifting national priorities.

Vietnam has clashed with China and others over claims to the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, and Russian officials say Hanoi wants to maintain its military punch.

One topic not on the agenda apparently is the future of Russia's naval presence at Cam Ranh Bay, the sprawling base built by the United States in South Vietnam. The rent- free lease, signed with Moscow in 1979, expires in 2004. Vietnam has indicated it will ask for hefty payments under a new lease.

Russia's deputy foreign minister, Aleksandr Losyukov, said last week that he expected "long and difficult talks" on the lease. It is unclear whether Mr. Putin, who is trying to cut the size but improve the ability of Russia's military, is willing to bear the cost to maintain far-flung bases.

Mr. Putin also succeeded today in crafting a joint statement with Vietnam opposing any American plans to erect a regional missile defense system in Asia to protect American and allied military forces. t said the deployment could harm "the stability and security in the region."

During the trip, the Russian foreign minister, Igor S. Ivanov, pointed out that in his address to Congress this week, President Bush referred to his commitment to build a "missile defense," without actually using the term "national missile defense."

"If that reflects the beginning of a correction of the plans to deploy a territorial missile defense system by the United States, we can only welcome that," Mr. Ivanov said.

But recently Mr. Bush has adopted the shorter term, partly in deference to Europeans, who object to the plan. The new term is meant to convey to allies that what Washington plans is not a purely national defense.

A spokesman for the National Security Council in Washington, asked about Mr. Ivanov's comments, issued a statement tonight saying: "The president is committed to the development and deployment of effective defenses against missiles at all ranges, designed to protect our territory, our forces abroad and our friends and allies."

The question of Vietnam's Soviet- era debt, $11 billion, was also put to rest today, officials said. In September, Moscow forgave 85 percent of it, and Mr. Putin's aides today said that the debt had been further reduced, to $1.5 billion to be paid over 23 years.

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Arguing Missile Defense

March 2, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/02/opinion/L02MIS.html

To the Editor:

Re "South Korea Takes Russia's Side in Dispute Over American Plan for Missile Defense" (news article, Feb. 28):

No proposition might seem more straightforward than that the United States government should do everything it can to defend American territory against attack by long-range ballistic missiles. Since even one nuclear explosion over a single city would be a catastrophe, no expense would seem to be too great to avoid such a disaster.

On the other hand, there still remains the array of technical, diplomatic and military obstacles. However high the passions run, it is helpful to remember that missile defense is an issue over which reasonable people can disagree; this is not simply a confrontation between Dr. Strangelovian warmongers and Chamberlainesque appeasers. No one, after all, ever said that making foreign policy was simple.

LEI YU Elmhurst, Queens, Feb. 28, 2001

-------- russia

Kursk Tragedy Caused by Torpedo Misfire

Fri, 2 Mar 2001
The Sunflower Newsletter
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sunflower-napf

A sailor on the Kursk reportedly left a note on the nuclear submarine charging that the ship was sunk by the explosion of a practice torpedo. According to the Izvestia, a Russian daily newspaper, the note was written by Lt. Rashid Aryapov. Russian Navy Officials have so far declined to comment on the claim, stating that the accident was likely caused by an internal malfunction, a collision with a foreign submarine or a World War II mine. However, most Russian and foreign experts agree that the accident was likely caused by misfiring a practice torpedo. (source: AP, 26 February 2001)

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Chronicle of the Kursk

March 2, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/02/opinion/L02SUB.html

To the Editor:

Re "Russian Sub's Officer Wrote of Torpedo Blast, Izvestia Says" (news article, Feb. 27):

The commitment to duty displayed by Lt. Cmdr. Rashid Aryapov of the submarine Kursk is a tribute to his country, his service and to submariners everywhere. In the face of certain death, he acted to bear witness to the tragic accident in the hope that the world would eventually know the truth of what happened. Russia should be proud to have such men.

DONALD J. HENRY San Francisco, Feb. 27, 2001

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

NUCLEAR INSANITY

Fri, 2 Mar 2001
The Sunflower Newsletter
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sunflower-napf

"Developing new defense technology and new weapons is a critical need for this country and great news for the economy of North Alabama." Bud Cramer, US Congressman Democrat-Huntsville

Javier Solana, the European Union's Foreign Policy Chief, on the ABM Treaty

"It's not a Bible.'' (5 February 2001, AP)

---

Hatch Asks Government to Pay Radiation Claims

Friday, March 2, 2001
Salt Lake Tribune
BY JUDY FAHYS
http://www.sltrib.com/03022001/utah/75969.htm

Sen. Orrin Hatch and other lawmakers are calling in the IOUs the federal government recently gave hundreds of people after a compensation fund for radiation victims ran dry.

Hatch also is a driving force in a new audit by the General Accounting Office to find out why the fund was emptied.

"This is wrong," said the Utah Republican, "and we are here today to begin the process of making it right."

Hatch is co-sponsor of two bills introduced Thursday by New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici to help people now ill from Cold War-era exposure to radiation. About 255 people have received IOUs because the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) Trust Fund ran out of money.

One bill seeks $84 million in emergency appropriations to cover those unpaid claims and claims likely to be approved through next September. The second bill would make future compensation payments automatic, not subject to annual White House budget requests or congressional appropriations.

"To the Americans who are now paying the price for their work to support our national security during the Cold War, the federal government must meet its commitment," said the New Mexico Republican.

Under the 1990 compensation law, the federal government pledged to help uranium workers, ore transporters, nuclear testing participants and people exposed to downwind fallout from the nation's nuclear testing program from the 1940s through the 1970s. So far, $266.4 million has been approved to cover 690 claims.

Last month, Utah Rep. Jim Matheson was one of three House Democrats who sent a letter to President Bush seeking funding for past claims and automatic funding in future years.

The move is certain to be applauded by thousands of Utahns and others in the Four Corners region who unwittingly found themselves affected by the federal government's atomic testing program.

"We need to get compensated," said Jeff Bradshaw of Leeds, who was exposed to testing fallout while growing up in St. George. "We have been fighting for this for 25 years."

---

Sub Saboteur Was on Drugs

March 2, 2001
New York Times
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/nyregion/AP-BRF-Trident-Sabotage.html?searchpv=aponline

SCOTIA, N.Y. (AP) -- A Navy missile technician accused of sabotaging cables on a Trident nuclear submarine was on LSD, cocaine and methamphetamine at the time, prosecutors said.

Petty Officer 2nd Class Ernesto G. Cimmino, 23, of Scotia, was arrested Nov. 26 as the USS Alaska sat at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard near Seattle. The sub was being overhauled to handle the larger and more powerful Trident II missiles.

Cimmino faces 23 counts for allegedly cutting 106 cables. Prosecutors say he confessed to damaging 20 cables so he wouldn't have to go to sea.

Defense lawyer Lt. Ryan McBrayer said there is no evidence his client did any additional damage.

At a recent Article 32 hearing, similar to a civilian grand jury, military prosecutors said Cimmino was using drugs when he either cut or nicked the cables.

Investigating officers are expected to recommend whether Cimmino should face a court martial, and on what charges, by March 6.

---

Armed to Excess

March 2, 2001
New York Times
By BOB KERREY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/02/opinion/02KERR.html

President Bush's announcement in his first address to Congress that it is time to "discard cold war relics and reduce our own nuclear forces to reflect today's needs" is an important step in the right direction.

The risk of a nuclear attack still poses the greatest single threat to our survival. Implementing steep cuts in global nuclear arms is essential to our national interest. But since 1991, when the treaty known as Start I was signed, reductions in Washington's and Moscow's arsenals of nuclear weapons have been stalled by a Democratic president who was afraid of the political consequences of "unilateral" reductions and a Republican Congress that changed federal law to prevent the president from going below Start I levels.

The result is that our arsenal is well beyond levels needed to destroy any nation that threatens the United States. We currently have 7,200 strategic warheads that could be launched against any potential enemy. Consider this: Just one of our Ohio class Trident submarines can deliver 192 separate warheads to individual targets in Russia, each of which is roughly 6 to 30 times as powerful as the atomic bomb that devastated Hiroshima at the end of World War II.

Maintaining excessively high numbers of strategic weapons is not only costly to American taxpayers, but it forces the Russians to maintain a strategic and tactical arsenal far beyond what they can afford to maintain. Russian military leaders have been urging their political leaders to reduce their arsenal to a thousand warheads or less for this very reason.

Part of the reason that Congress has not been pressing for steep reductions is that members of Congress have never seen the actual missile targeting plans developed by the military in response to presidential directives. For twelve years in the Senate - eight of which I served on the Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence - I tried without success to get this briefing. In fact, I was unable to find a single member of the Senate who had been briefed. Mr. Bush should order his military commanders to brief members of Congress on the targeting plans.

I have no doubt that President Bush would gain Republican and Democratic support if more were known about the details. A map of Russia that contained thousands of red circles each indicating a nuclear detonation would convincingly show the extent of the excess nuclear capability we have.

In addition to reducing the arsenal, Congress must also expand the Nunn- Lugar cooperative threat reduction program. This program has provided Russia with roughly $450 million a year to reduce unneeded nuclear materials in a safe and swift fashion. But the program has had only wavering support in Congress. That must end.

We should provide substantially more money to help Russia dismantle nuclear weapons and safely dispose of bomb-grade fissile materials. President Bush expressed support for this concept during the campaign. Now it's time to back up that commitment. If he delivers on an immediate and substantial reduction in the American nuclear arsenal and pushes to expand the Nunn-Lugar program, he will have done the nation and the world a great service.

Bob Kerrey, a former United States senator, is president of New School University.

---

The USS Ronald Reagan

March 2, 2001
Washington Times
Christopher M. Lehman
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-column-200132181720.htm

On Sunday March 4th, 102,000 tons of steel, wire and sophisticated electronics will come alive when our nation's ninth Nimitz-class aircraft carrier is christened by former first lady Nancy Reagan. The ship, with the crash of a champagne bottle, will change instantly from an industrial work-in-progress to a proud U.S. Navy ship bearing the name of our 40th president, Ronald Reagan.

The christening tradition has been around since the earliest days of the U.S. Navy, and a ship's name means a great deal to the crew that serves aboard the ship. The USS Ronald Reagan will soon join the ranks of other American aircraft carriers named for great American presidents. The USS George Washington, the USS Abraham Lincoln, the USS Theodore Roosevelt and the USS Harry S. Truman were all built as a part of Mr. Reagan's plan for a 600-ship Navy. It is fitting, therefore, that more than a decade after he left office, a new Nimitz-class ship will bear the name of Ronald Reagan, a true advocate of naval power and maritime supremacy.

This new Navy combat ship will carry more than 6,000 men and women as crew and will also carry a formidable mix of more than 80 military aircraft of various types. It will be capable of projecting American military power to any region of the world. It will be able to remain in any region for more than six months or move from crisis point to crisis point, if necessary. It will serve as a powerful tool of American diplomacy that can also transition readily to an instrument of war if our nation's interests so demand.

Mr. Reagan would be proud to know that America is honoring him by naming an aircraft carrier after him, for Mr. Reagan was an ardent champion of American military strength and a strong believer in naval power. He understood that American interests demand a strong Navy capable of operating anywhere in the world. As president, he did much to restore American military power, especially American naval power, in the 1980s.

We, as a nation, are enjoying the benefits of the Reagan military build-up, even to this day. These mighty ships-Nimitz-class carriers-are designed to last 50 years or more, and they represent a major investment of our nation's treasure. They are sturdy, adaptable and functional. And, much like Mr. Reagan, Lord willing, his ship will have a long life and will help preserve the peace for decades.

There are some other surprising parallels between aircraft carriers and Mr. Reagan. Some critics have declared, at one time or another, that both were old-fashioned and perhaps even obsolete, only to be surprised by their durability and survivability. Friends and allies have appreciated them in times of trouble, and enemies and terrorists have feared them both. The world remains a dangerous place as we look forward into the 21st Century, and the USS Ronald Reagan will be a strong and certain asset in a dangerous and uncertain world.

In the 20th century, America has been blessed by three great presidents who understood more than most the importance of naval power in preserving America's national security. Teddy Roosevelt was a strong advocate of naval power, and he built American naval power to a point in which it was second only to the Royal Navy of Great Britain.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt understood the importance of a strong U.S. Navy and was moving to restore America's naval power when the Pearl Harbor surprise attack occurred. Mr. Reagan was the third president of the 20th century to have a deep appreciation for the importance of naval power. Like Roosevelt, Mr. Reagan understood that a just man armed is a potent force for good. He told the delegates at an American Legion conference in 1987 that, to put Roosevelt in modern terms, we should: Speak softly, but keep the Battleship IOWA close at hand. Mr. Reagan understood that carriers are a reflection of U.S. conviction to the furthering of American principles.

In a national radio address on Armed Forces Day in 1982, President Reagan quoted from James Michener's book "The Bridges of Toko-Ri," in which an officer waits through the night for the return of planes to a carrier at dawn. And the officer asks: "Where do we find such men?" Well, I have to ask the same question. Where do we get such men as Mr. Reagan? He was a great American president, and I am joyful that such a mighty ship will bear his name.

Christopher M. Lehman served as a special assistant for national security affairs to President Reagan 1983-1985

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For the Record

Friday, March 2, 2001
Nation:
by William D. Hartung
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A11730-2001Mar1?language=printer

George W. Bush's mid-February directive ordering the Pentagon to review and restructure the U.S. nuclear arsenal is a wake-up call for supporters of arms control and disarmament. Under the guise of revising nuclear policy to make it more relevant to the post-Cold War world, the Bush administration is pushing an ambitious scheme to deploy a massive missile defense system and develop a new generation of nuclear weapons. . . .

Some elements of his approach . . . sound sensible. Bush implied that if elected president, he would reduce the nation's arsenal of nuclear overkill from its current level of 7,500 strategic warheads to 2,500 or fewer. . . .

Unfortunately, Bush also committed himself to deploying . . . a missile defense system capable of defending "all 50 states and our friends and allies and deployed forces overseas." Unlike the $6 billion Clinton-Gore national missile defense scheme . . . Bush's enthusiasm for a new Star Wars system knows no limit. . . .

It's not as if we haven't been down this road before. In the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan rode into Washington with guns blazing, pressing for a massive nuclear buildup and a Star Wars missile defense system, the international peace movement helped roll back his nightmare nuclear scenarios and push him toward a policy of nuclear arms reductions, not mutual annihilation.

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

What is MOX Fuel?

Fri, 2 Mar 2001
The Sunflower Newsletter
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sunflower-napf

MOX, or mixed oxide plutonium, is an experimental fuel in which plutonium, usually from dismantled nuclear weapons, is mixed with uranium for use in commercial nuclear reactors. The MOX projects require transporting plutonium by rail, ship or truck. The use of plutonium MOX fuel creates serious security threats as the transportation of plutonium increases the possibilities for theft and/or diversion of plutonium.

In a study conducted in 1999, the Nuclear Control Institute determined that a severe accident at a civilian reactor powered by plutonium or MOX fuel could cause twice as many fatal cancers as an identical accident at a reactor that uses uranium fuel. MOX plutonium fuel produces more radioactivity than does uranium fuel.

The use of plutonium MOX fuel also greatly exacerbates the problem of storing and disposing high-level radioactive waste. The use of plutonium in a nuclear reactor will not get rid of plutonium, which is an impossible goal. The idea behind using MOX plutonium, rather, is to render it less approachable by terrorists or "states of concern" because, mixed with outer high-level radioactive substances, it is so lethal.

For more information about MOX fuel, please visit the Nuclear Information Resource Service at http://www.nirs.org

Do you have a question about nuclear issues that you would like answered? Send your question to abolition2000@napf.org or visit the Foundation's website and type in your question at http://www.wagingpeace.org/resources/answers.html

---

Congress Seeks Progess on Hackers

March 2, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Congress-Hackers.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A congressional subcommittee asked 15 federal agencies Friday to report how they've been testing and securing their computer systems from outside attack.

Under a federal law passed last year, agencies have to do their own security testing and hire an outside auditor to do ``penetration testing,'' in which hackers are paid to try to break into a network. Its passage came amid a flurry of reports that federal computers were open to devastating attacks.

Rep. James Greenwood, R-Pa., chairman of the House Commerce subcommittee on investigations, signed the letter Friday that asks for proof that 15 agencies are complying with that law.

``In the past, most efforts to gauge computer security at federal agencies have been paperwork exercises,'' said Peter Sheffield, spokesman for the House Energy and Commerce committee. ``These penetration tests will go a long way toward giving us a true picture of the status of government efforts to ensure national security, and bolster protections for our critical infrastructures.''

The letter went to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Health Care Financing Administration, U.S. trade representative, Environmental Protection Agency, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Food and Drug Administration, Federal Communications Commission, Federal Trade Commission, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, National Institutes of Health, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Consumer Product Safety Commission and the departments of Health and Human Services, Energy and Commerce.

In August, a congressional report found that the EPA's computers were ``highly vulnerable to tampering'' by hackers, and that the agency's previous precautions were ``riddled with security weaknesses.''

The Department of Veterans Affairs disclosed in September that its computers were open to attack after outside experts had no problem taking over the department's network.

Also last year, a House committee gave out grades for computer security. Most federal departments got dismal results, with many -- including HHS and the Justice Department -- getting an ``F.''

Sheffield said congressional investigators are testing the FDA's computers and have asked the General Accounting Office to try to hack into the Commerce department.

--------

Peter Eisler of USA Today Wins Stokes Award 107

March 2
U.S. Newswire
National Press Foundation,
Miriam Vermeiren

WASHINGTON, -- Peter Eisler, of USA Today, has won the Thomas L. Stokes Award for best writing in a daily newspaper during 2000 on the subject of energy, it was announced today.

He will receive a $1,000 cash prize from the National Press Foundation, sponsor of the annual competition, for a three-day series in September, 2000 titled "Poisoned Workers & Poisoned Places."

The product of a year's work, he revealed that the federal government secretly contracted with hundreds of private companies to process vast amounts of radioactive and toxic material for the U.S. nuclear weapons program in the 1940s and '50s.

Using more than 100,000 pages of declassified federal records, Eisler documented the work done by more than 150 contractors.

The judges of the competition among 22 submissions were unanimously impressed by the depth and breadth of the series, which not only examined industrial dangers but also pictured the effect on people.

The series resulted in ground-breaking legislation to compensate nuclear weapons workers for illnesses related to radiation and chemical exposure.

The Thomas L. Stokes award is given annually by the National Press Foundation in memory of Thomas L. Stokes, the Washington columnist for United Features who was noted for his writing on energy and conservation of national resources.

The judges also cited Paul J. Nyden, of The Charleston Gazette, for 26 articles exposing highly questionable coal synfuel projects in which coal was changed in such a way as to qualify for what will be $1 billion in federal tax credits annually.

-------- ohio

PIKETON PLANT GETS A REPRIEVE

Friday, March 2, 2001
The Columbus Dispatch
By Darrel Rowland

An influx of $125.7 million from the Bush administration preserves about 1,200 jobs at southern Ohio's uranium-enrichment plant but doesn't remove the Piketon facility from an economic Death Row.

"This doesn't commute our sentence. This only postpones our execution date,'' said Greg Simonton, executive director of the Southern Ohio Diversification Initiative, an economic-development group.

U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham traveled to Columbus yesterday to deliver "an important down payment for the plant's future.''

If the money had not been earmarked, the 1,700-employee Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant would have faced closure at mid-year. Even with the cash, about 525 workers stand to lose their jobs this year, said Dan Minter, president of Local 5-689 of the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International Union.

And the federal money assures the plant's future only through September 2002, the end of the next federal budget year. The plant's fate will be determined by two task forces set up by President Bush: One, headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, is developing a national energy policy; the other, headed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, is studying defense policy.

"We are not today making a judgment on what will be the ultimate conclusion of the plant,'' Abraham said. "It would be premature to make any kind of decision on that until we complete a thorough analysis.''

That ambiguity troubled Simonton.

"We'll see what happens in 18 months,'' he said. "We've got to plan for the worst.''

Rep. Ted Strickland, whose district includes Piketon, also was troubled about the long-range prospects for the plant.

"The announcement today does leave a lot of unanswered questions and will not alleviate the anxiety of the workers at the Piketon site,'' he said.

Strickland cited a letter from Bush to Gov. Bob Taft during the presidential campaign in October that said a Bush energy secretary would find a way to keep the Piketon plant open through research-and-development opportunities. The congressman said Bush seems to be backing off his earlier statements.

"I do not think this announcement today is a fulfillment of then-Gov. Bush's commitment to the people of southern Ohio,'' Strickland said. "I don't think our people are going to be pacified with crumbs when they were promised a whole loaf.''

But Minter expressed optimism that the Bush administration's review of U.S. energy needs would clearly demonstrate the value of the Piketon plant, which prepares uranium for use in commercial nuclear-power plants.

Nuclear power provides about 23 percent of the nation's electricity, but once the Piketon plant closes the only American source of uranium for nuclear reactors will be Piketon's sister plant in Paducah, Ky. -- which has yet to meet quality standards for enriched uranium, the union president said.

Otherwise, the only fuel sources for U.S. nuclear reactors would be Europe and Russia.

Minter's union had planned to picket Bush's visit to a Columbus elementary school last week, but called off the protest after getting assurances from the Bush and Taft administrations that a holdup on the Piketon funding was being addressed.

Abraham -- a former senator from Michigan who became the first member of Bush's cabinet to visit Ohio -- said the Piketon plant "has been on our front burner since day one.'' He noted that the future of the Ohio facility was brought up Jan. 2 by Bush in his first meeting with Abraham after nominating him as energy secretary.

The plant was built in 1952 to supply enriched uranium for America's atomic weapons. In 1993, it was put under management of the United States Enrichment Corp., a federal agency that was privatized in July 1998 and rechristened as USEC. The privatized operation has run into serious economic difficulties during the past two years, leading to its announcement in June 2000 that it would close the Piketon plant and rely solely on the Paducah facility.

In the final months of the Clinton administration, a plan was developed to pour $630 million into the plant over five years from a fund left over from the USEC privatization. However, questions were raised about the legality of tapping that fund, an alternative that Abraham said remains under review.

The $125.7 million would pay for winterization of the plant, along with retraining of workers and possibly severance pay, Abraham said.

The new money is in addition to $180 million budgeted to decontaminate and dismantle parts of the aging plant.

The Clinton administration plan also would have paid for a pilot plan to develop new technology to enrich uranium -- which many agree is the only hope for the future of the Piketon plant.

Abraham announced that Ohio would receive, under President Bush's budget, an additional $1.1 million to help low-income residents insulate their homes. The state now gets $8.1 million for the program.

drowland@dispatch.com

Caption: Fred Squillante/Dispatch U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, left, said the Bush administration will study the Piketon plant before deciding its future. Accompanying Abraham yesterday was Gov. Bob Taft.

---

Ohio uranium plant gets federal funding
Government to release $125.7 million to save jobs at Piketon facility

Friday, March 2, 2001
Akron Beacon Journal.
ohio.com
Associated Press
http://www.ohio.com/bj/business/docs/013705.htm

COLUMBUS: The federal government will release $125.7 million to help save jobs at a uranium enrichment plant where production is to end in June, U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced yesterday.

A union leader said the money will save about 800 jobs at the plant, which employs 1,730 people.

The money, to be released over two years, would pay for winterization needed to put the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in a standby condition. It also includes severance pay and money to train workers.

``This money and the programs it will fund are an important down payment for the plant's future,'' Abraham said.

The plant in Piketon, one of two uranium enrichment plants in the nation, now is operated by the U.S. Enrichment Corp. The financially ailing company wants to consolidate production of power plant-ready uranium at its plant in Paducah, Ky.

After USEC announced it would end production at Piketon, the government proposed putting the plant on ``cold standby'' pending the development of new technology to enrich uranium.

The first installment of the $630 million needed to convert the plant was held up after the General Accounting Office questioned the legality of the way the Clinton administration proposed to finance the changes.

The Energy Department said it will use $59 million from its current budget and will take the rest of the $125 million from the department's fiscal 2002 budget. None of the money comes from privatization funds that the Clinton administration had wanted to use to help the plant.

The money is in addition to $180 million already budgeted to decontaminate and decommission parts of the plant.

-------- MILITARY

Putin Heads Home, Having Left Modest Imprint on Asia

March 2, 2001
New York Times
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/02/world/02CND-PUTIN.html?pagewanted=all

HANOI, March 2 - After paying his respects to the embalmed body of Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam's revolutionary hero, Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin left for home today showing some satisfaction that he had re-established Russia as a player in Asia.

With his visits to South Korea and to this citadel of solidarity with Russia's Soviet past, Mr. Putin settled important economic issues of Soviet-era debt, advanced Russian energy and transport projects that could reap significant benefits for Moscow over the next decade, and showed that he is capable of playing a constructive, perhaps crucial, role in defusing the region's most urgent security threat: North Korea's ballistic missile program.

Mr. Putin's high-profile foray to Asia, where two-thirds of Russia's territory lies, also demonstrated just how far Russia is lagging behind other major powers, principally the United States, Japan and China, in playing a meaningful role in security and trade in the region.

While the United States maintains 37,000 troops in South Korea and conducts more than $55 billion in annual trade with Seoul, Russia is just getting started, hitting the $2.5 billion mark last year.

Here in Vietnam, where Moscow's profile once dominated, economic relations with Hanoi have been all but frozen by the impasse over Soviet-era debt while Hanoi's trade with the United States has nearly reached $1 billion and could expand significantly if Congress approves a new trade pact completed during President Bill Clinton's second term.

A sign of Moscow's shackles to Vietnam is the résumé of the Russian ambassador, Viktor Ivanov, who is not a veteran diplomat, but a former Ministry of Finance official who has spent the last three-and-a-half years haggling to get some repayment of the $11 billion in credits Moscow advanced to Hanoi for weapons and supplies during the Vietnam War, according to his colleagues in the diplomatic corps.

He is now free to go home after having reached an agreement, signed this week, to get about ten cents on the dollar for the debt, and even much of that will be repaid with rice and coffee shipments.

What this means for Mr. Putin is that he is almost the last to arrive to participate in the Asian miracle, and he comes with almost no capital to invest and no visible means to finance Russian exports. His visit here followed those of the Chinese president, Jiang Zemin, and Mr. Clinton, during his presidency, a reflection of how Hanoi wants to balance its relations with the great powers, but also, perhaps, of how it sees its immediate trade and security interests, Western diplomats say.

Sill, the 48-year-old Russian leader is not one to whine about the poor hand he was dealt by his predecessors in conducting Moscow's international affairs.

Instead, he has simply gotten down to business like a traveling salesman, looking for opportunities -- in India, China, Iran, Cuba and elsewhere -- to clear Soviet accounts as best he can and move on to offer what he would like to sell so that Russia can revitalize its dilapidated industries, especially those he deems still competitive in the energy and military sectors.

And he has scored some notable successes.

One senior Western diplomat here said today that he was not at all concerned by the announcement that Russia was willing to resume arms sales to Vietnam. First of all, he said, Vietnam's once vaunted armed forces have become a "marshmallow" of neglect and deterioration.

"I am concerned that the weakness of the Vietnamese military could stimulate mischief on the part of other countries in the region," he said, a not too subtle reference to China, which invaded Vietnam in 1979 (after Vietnam invaded Cambodia with Soviet backing).

"The military needs to be modernized and the Vietnamese like Russian weapons," the diplomat said, adding, however, that it would be impossible for Vietnam to buy any weapons until it has an economy capable of supporting arms purchases. Clearing away the Soviet debt issue was an important milestone for Russia in making possible its return to Vietnam, however modest, he said.

As if to underscore that point, Vietnam's leaders today organized a rally of thousands of former Vietnamese students trained in the Soviet Union, some of them now senior members of the Communist Party here, to bid farewell to Mr. Putin with cheers of "long live friendship" in the hall still known as the Vietnam-Soviet Friendship Palace.

In his remarks, Mr. Putin touched on the impact of the Soviet collapse, which stranded thousands of Vietnamese students in Moscow and other educational centers and cut them off from funding. "I am glad that our relations, which have lasted already for 50 years, were not the object of serious changes" as a result of the calamities of the last decade, he said. And he told them that Moscow's aim in the future would be "not to lose or betray our cooperation." Whether Mr. Putin succeeds in this goal will depend in largest measure on what Russia, and Russians, are willing to invest with this former Soviet client state that has ambitions to become one of Asia's tiger economies over the next 20 years.

"I think it was a good visit for Russia," the Western diplomat said, adding, "Russia needs some status and credibility because it has been regarded as a has-been and a ne'er-do-well and, now, Putin is putting Russia back on the map here."

---

Powell Goes on the Road and Scores Some Points

March 2, 2001
New York Times
By JANE PERLEZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/02/world/02DIPL.html?pagewanted=all

WASHINGTON, March 1 - When Secretary of State Colin L. Powell met with foreign leaders on his just-completed first trip abroad, his style of diplomacy was intensely personal.

With the Russian foreign minister, Igor S. Ivanov, it was just the secretary of state, an interpreter and a notetaker. In Riyadh, Damascus and Amman he conducted much of his business in conversations with kings, princes and ministers in the cocoon of a car. And as he sprinted from country to country - seven in four days - palace to palace, and even on the journey in an armored van to the compound of Yasir Arafat, the general renewed old acquaintances from his days on the first Bush team.

For those he met, this approach left an impression of a secretary of state imbued with authority and confidence. It signaled that after eight years in the wilderness during the Clinton administration the State Department was back on the map.

But a first trip is always the easy part, hardly ever the test of diplomatic mettle, more reconnaissance than engagement.

General Powell seemed reassured that he was able to rally Arab leaders around a new policy on Saddam Hussein that would tighten the sanctions on military equipment and money, and relax them on civilian goods. From Jordan to Kuwait, Egypt to Saudi Arabia, the governments seemed relieved that General Powell did not advocate toppling Mr. Hussein, but rather containing him more effectively.

The secretary of state acknowledged during the trip that this policy had not been approved by President Bush, let alone others in the Bush hierarchy, like Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney, who would prefer to take a more hardline approach against Saddam Hussein. There would be people, the secretary of state said, who would argue his retooled sanctions policy was giving up too much. While General Powell did not specifically say so, others are likely to argue for arming Iraqi opposition groups. At his confirmation hearings Tuesday, the new deputy defense secretary, Paul D. Wolfowitz, talked about a "change of regime" in Baghdad, a phrase that General Powell studiously avoided on his travels. "If there is a real option to do that, I would certainly think it's still worthwhile," Mr. Wolfowitz told the Senate Armed Services Committee in talking about the idea of an armed Iraqi opposition group attacking the Iraqi leader.

But by traveling early and speaking out, General Powell established a position against just this policy, putting the State Department squarely in favor of sanctions reform, not overthrow.

On Iraqi policy and other matters, the secretary of state may find, however, that no matter how much he pushes the State Department as a first among equals with the other power centers - the Pentagon, the National Security Council and the Vice President's office - events beyond his control can wear down his efforts. It does not take much heavy lifting to impress on the Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, for example, that he needs to lessen the violence in the Palestinian territories.

How little influence the State Department really has on that issue was illustrated during the secretary's visit to Mr. Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah. A demonstration of about 3,000 people - that Mr. Arafat had pledged to American security officials would be restrained - had reached the perimeters of Mr. Arafat's building as General Powell was whisked away in a heavily armored van. Some of the protesters were bearing flattering pictures of Saddam Hussein.

As General Powell made the rounds in the Middle East, he heard complaints from Arab leaders - as well as from Israel - about being kept in the dark about Washington's decision to bomb Iraq outside the no- flight zone. The secretary of state explained that the Bush administration would try to be more sensitive and better "co-ordinate" so that allies did not learn about such bombings on CNN.

But the allies were not informed of the bombings, American officials say, because the people in the State Department who usually make such calls were not informed by the Pentagon.

The secretary of state seemed particularly pleased with his meeting with Bashar al-Assad, the young Syrian president who promised to insure that the revenue from a Syrian pipeline that carries Iraqi oil to the Mediterranean be put under United Nations supervision and not directly benefit Mr. Hussein.

But specialists on Iraqi sanctions said that Syria was only likely to fulfill this promise if other countries benefiting from Iraqi oil - namely Jordan and Turkey - did the same thing. Neither is eager to do so.

Wherever he went, the secretary of state tried to buck up American diplomats, preparing them for skirmishes within the administration, and for policy projection abroad. He took a small group of aides from Washington with him, and relied more heavily on American diplomats in the region. In meetings with leaders he scrubbed the habit of some previous secretaries of state, that of using talking points written out on cards. In fact, American officials said, the State Department bureaucracy was not asked to prepare them.

And at several gatherings of embassy staff, he greeted everyone as "the troops" and made sure that each staff member had a photograph taken with him. It was the first time, said a 17-year veteran of the foreign service, that he had shaken hands with his boss, the secretary of state.

---

Senator urges aid for Saddam's foes

March 2, 2001
Washington Times
By Ben Barber and Andrew Borowiec
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-200132213344.htm

A key Senate Republican said yesterday that if the Bush administration wants to ease some sanctions on Iraq it should also increase military pressure on Saddam Hussein by arming opposition groups.

Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas urged the White House to "begin to train and, if necessary, arm" Iraqi opposition groups.

"We seek an expanded and more robust policy," said Mr. Brownback, chairman of the Foreign Relations subcommittee on the Near East and South Asia.

At a hearing called to discuss proposals made this week by Secretary of State Colin Powell to modify sanctions on Iraq, Mr. Brownback suggested expanding the use of U.S. air power to turn no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq into "no-drive zones."

That would effectively use U.S. and British warplanes to block Saddam's army from much of his country.

Mr. Powell proposed, during a trip to five Arab capitals and Israel that ended Monday, easing sanctions on Iraqi imports of consumer goods to win Arab backing for tighter sanctions on oil exports and weapons imports.

Mr. Brownback's call for arming the Iraqi opposition and increasing military pressure on Iraq is a sign of worries on Capitol Hill that Mr. Powell's plan could be read as a weakening of U.S. resolve to confront Iraq.

The call for increased military confrontation on Capitol Hill -aimed at not just containing Saddam but on replacing him - comes as Iraq is intensifying contact with Arab capitals.

Diplomats describe a major offensive by Iraq to exploit the weakening international resolve to maintain sanctions.

The diplomatic overtures are accompanied by a barrage of increasingly vitriolic attacks on the United States and Great Britain.

One Arab diplomatic report described the tenor of Iraqi statements as "marked by triumph at the apparent deadlock and Washington's lack of options."

Iraq has always claimed victory over the United States, even after it was driven from Kuwait and had large portions of its army destroyed in the Gulf war.

Mr. Brownback said, "Saddam won a good portion of the propaganda war" and managed to persuade many Arabs that U.N. sanctions are causing the Iraqi people to suffer. But Iraq has refused to buckle under and end its programs to acquire weapons of mass destruction.

"After 10 years, sanctions have not achieved their intended goal," he said.

A panel of analysts warned, however, that if the Iraqi opposition is armed and inserted into areas of Iraq not under Saddam's control, he could strike out at them and draw U.S. troops into a war.

U.S. backing for an ill-prepared opposition campaign could turn into "another Bay of Pigs," said analyst Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Mr. Powell's "smart sanctions" aim at stopping unmonitored oil exports, whose revenue bypasses the U.N. oil-for-food program, and toughen efforts to stop weapons imports.

Meanwhile, several Arab governments have voiced disappointment at Mr. Powell's recent tour of the area, summing up his trip as an effort to muster "Arab support for tightening the screws on the leadership in Baghdad."

Western diplomats in the area say that the continuing - if not growing - attitude of defiance by Saddam is helping him to rejoin the mainstream of Arab politics.

Saddam's stature received an added boost in January when several European countries increased pressure on Washington to revise its sanctions policy.

France was in the forefront of the anti-embargo movement, describing it as "cruel, inefficient and unjust." The continuing ostracism of Iraq "no longer makes sense," a senior French official said at the time.

-------- burma/myanmar

JAPANESE AID

March 2, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/02/world/02BRIE.html?pagewanted=all

MYANMAR: Japan is considering resuming full-fledged aid to Myanmar, halted in 1988 after the military crushed a pro-democracy uprising, the Kyodo news agency cited officials as saying. Tokyo is weighing the move because of what it sees as a softening of the government's stance, the agency said, citing a meeting in October, the first since 1995, with the democracy activist Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. (Reuters)

-------- drug war

U.S. Finds That Coca Cultivation Is Shifting Sharply to Colombia

March 2, 2001
New York Times
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/02/world/02DRUG.html

WASHINGTON, March 1 - Six years of intense American-backed antinarcotics efforts in South America have redrawn drug-trafficking patterns, but have failed to stem a yearly increase in the amount of coca being grown, the State Department reported today.

There were dramatic reductions in coca grown in Peru and Bolivia last year, but the area under cultivation in Colombia surged 11 percent, to almost 336,000 acres, the department said in its annual review of anti narcotics efforts around the world.

Still, the United States certified that Colombia's government, which Washington is providing with $1.3 billion over two years in mostly military aid as it struggles against two guerrilla insurgencies, was cooperating in efforts to fight trafficking.

In its review of 24 nations that are either major producers or points of transit, the department again denied certification to only two countries - Afghanistan and Burma.

The cultivation of opium poppies in Afghanistan rose 25 percent last year, and lands controlled by the Islamic government there were responsible for 72 percent of the world's supply of opium, the raw material for heroin, the report said.

Congress requires that the administration certify each year whether key nations are cooperating in efforts to stop the flow of illegal drugs. Nations that are not certified are ineligible for most American aid.

The certification process itself has come under fire.

The annual report has become a major irritant for American allies, who insist that drug demand in the United States should be part of any evaluation. The department estimated that American demand created a market of $63 billion a year.

The State Department's top counternarcotics official, Rand Beers, said today that the United States was "prepared to look at alternatives" to certification. The president of Mexico, Vicente Fox, calls the process a sham.

This year the report again granted Mexico certification, even as it said the corruption of law-enforcement officials by drug cartels remained a serious problem.

In the Andes, though cultivation has grown, the overall increase was negligible, less than 2 percent, the department reported.

The continued expansion of coca growing nonetheless highlighted how traffickers have fled determined eradication programs in Peru and Bolivia and found haven in Colombia, fueling its civil conflict.

"With the drug trade now an organic part of the Colombian civil conflict," the report said, "the question facing the antidrug coalition will be how to reduce the supply of illegal drugs without exacerbating local conflicts that threaten regional stability."

Stephen E. Flynn, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, said that with the displacement effect, "What we have is more of a mess in Colombia than what we started with."

Senator Christopher J. Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, has introduced legislation to suspend the drug-certification procedure for two years, unless President Bush chooses to reinstate it.

Mr. Dodd said the suspension, which is also being supported by a Republican senator, John McCain of Arizona, will "create an atmosphere of good will within which President Bush can discuss with other heads of state - from Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia - ways to improve international cooperation among producing, transit and consuming nations."

---

Mandatory Drug Testing in Texas Is Overturned

March 2, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/02/national/02NATI.html

LUBBOCK, Tex., March 1 (AP) - A mandatory drug testing policy violates the rights of a seventh-grade boy who challenged the policy last year, a federal judge ruled today.

The judge, Sam R. Cummings of Federal District Court, said that he understood the motives of the Lockney Independent School District but that its mandatory, "suspicionless drug testing" violated the Fourth Amendment.

The boy, Brady Tannahill, was the only holdout when the district implemented its drug testing policy in February 2000. Brady, then 12, was suspended from extracurricular activities for 21 days and given substance abuse counseling.

Graham Boyd, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union who represents Brady, said the judge's ruling should send a message that "a school cannot treat its student as if they are guilty until proven innocent."

Donald Henslee, a lawyer for the school district, said he would recommend an appeal.

---

TRASHY TABLOIDS

March 2, 2001

Marilyn Manson is getting some bad press in Rome. Press reports released say a 16-year-old girl claims that he sexually molested her onstage. The girl says he chose her to go up on stage during a concert and fondled her all over and mimed a sex act too realistically. About 100 fans were arrested for drugs by local police also that night.

---

Drug war partners 'certified' by U.S.

March 2, 2001
Washington Times
By Tom Carter
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-200132213533.htm

The White House delivered its annual report card to Congress on drug producing and trafficking nations yesterday, certifying that most nations, including Colombia and Mexico, are "fully cooperating" partners with the United States in the war on drugs.

Of the 24 nations under review, only Afghanistan and Burma were "decertified," which makes them ineligible for some development aid and ineligible for support in multilateral lending institutions such as the World Bank.

Haiti and Cambodia were decertified but given a waiver for national security reasons, which means that imposing sanctions would cause more harm than good. Despite decertification, countries are still eligible for humanitarian and anti-drug aid.

The only changes between this year and last were that Paraguay and Nigeria were certified this year. Last year, they were decertified with the national security waiver.

Rand Beers, the State Department's assistant secretary of state for narcotics and law enforcement, announced the list yesterday during a Senate hearing in which he defended the certification process against attacks by some Latin American nations.

"Throughout its 15-year existence, the certification process has proved to be an effective, if blunt, policy instrument for enhancing counternarcotics cooperation," said Mr. Beers.

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., Delaware Democrat, said he was willing to consider modifying the regime, including suspending certification for two years.

But he credited the threat of decertification with bringing Mexico and Colombia in line.

"[Before certification,] we got zero cooperation. Colombia and Mexico wouldn't even talk to us. I got a lot of lectures about how this was a gringo problem," said Mr. Biden. "Now we have serious people, [President Vicente] Fox in Mexico and [President Andres] Pastrana in Colombia, putting their lives on the line. Now we have serious cooperation."

But Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, Connecticut Democrat, who opposes the certification process, said he would work with Republican Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, Charles E. Grassley of Iowa and Mike DeWine of Ohio to come up with an alternative.

His plan would suspend certification for two years to give the White House a chance to craft an alternative.

Mr. Beers said that in addition to Mexico, Colombia, Nigeria and Paraguay, the Bahamas, Bolivia, Brazil, China, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, India, Jamaica, Laos, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, Thailand, Venezuela and Vietnam were certified as cooperating.

The State Department's report on drugs, released annually to coincide with the certification list, said U.S. and Mexican authorities have "unprecedented opportunities" to work together in the war on drugs. But the report noted that success depends on Mexico's ability to combat corruption in the police, the armed forces and the government.

"Corruption of the law enforcement sector by drug trafficking organizations remains a serious institutional problem," it said.

On Colombia, the world's largest producer of cocaine, the report said a U.S.-backed aerial eradication program was successful last year, treating some 18,800 acres of coca and 3,600 acres of opium poppy.

Despite the cooperation and eradication program, the report said that cocaine production was up 11 percent, as opposed to 20 percent the year before.

Many Latin American nations consider the U.S. certification process to be hypocritical, coming from the world's largest consumer of illegal drugs.

"Certification is more than an affront to Mexico and to other countries. It is a sham that should be denounced and canceled," Mexico's Mr. Fox said last year.

-------- iraq

Making the World Safe for Intervention

Friday, March 2, 2001
Slate
By Maureen Cosgrove, Jeremy Derfner and Amanda Fazzone
http://slate.msn.com/OtherMags/01-02-26/OtherMags.asp?Show=2/28/2001

A U.S. News piece on the Feb. 16 airstrike against Iraq says it might take a few weeks to figure out why half of the nearly 24 new Joint Standoff Weapons missed their mark. Unlike laser-guided bombs, these new missiles can home in on their target from up to 40 miles away and don't require a pilot to fly close to the target. -A.F.

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/010305/bombs.htm

-------- puerto rico

Navy Suspends Bombing of Vieques for the Month

March 2, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/02/national/02NATI.html

WASHINGTON, March 1 (AP) - The Navy said today that it had canceled plans to use a disputed bombing range on the island of Vieques this month.

The decision was made after discussions between the office of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the government of Puerto Rico on a permanent solution to the dispute, said Capt. Mike Brady, a spokesman at Atlantic Fleet headquarters in Norfolk, Va.

It is not a permanent halt to training, although that is what Gov. Sila M. Calderón of Puerto Rico wants.

Governor Calderón met with Mr. Rumsfeld in Washington on Tuesday and asked him to delay Navy exercises on Vieques until he reviewed a study suggesting that noise from the bombing had caused heart disease among residents.0

-------- space

NASA Seeks To Contact Pioneer 10

March 2, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Pioneer-Search.html?searchpv=aponline

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- NASA has not heard from its Pioneer 10 spacecraft since August and may have lost contact forever with the robotic probe.

Nearly three decades after its March 2, 1972, launch, its eight-watt transmitter could be too weak for even the largest radio antenna on Earth to detect.

Still, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is attempting to reach out across 7 billion miles of space to contact the probe.

``We are certainly challenging the network in trying to literally pick a bit of signal out of the noise,'' said Robert Ryan, who has managed ground-based communications with the probe for NASA since its launch. ``It's a combination of nostalgia and an engineering exercise to see how well we can do it.''

Pioneer 10 was the first spacecraft to pass through the thick belt of asteroids that orbit the sun, and in 1973 it was the first to obtain close-up images of Jupiter. In 1983, it became the first man-made object to leave the solar system when it passed the orbit of distant Pluto.

Though its mission formally ended in 1997, the probe had remained in fairly regular contact with Earth until Aug. 19. A transmitter failure, lack of power from its plutonium energy source or a simple pointing error could explain the probe's silence.

NASA will listen for a signal through April, then will begin to transmit signals to try to rouse the spacecraft. It would take about 21 hours and 20 minutes for a signal to make the round trip.

If the efforts fail, ``we'll have to have a wake, I guess,'' said Larry Lasher, Pioneer project manager. ``I hope it doesn't come to that, but all good things come to an end.''

Protected by the relatively benign environment of space, Pioneer 10 may well outlast Earth, albeit in silence. The probe is heading toward the red star Aldebaran in the constellation Taurus, a destination it should reach more than 2 million years from now.

The spacecraft carries a gold anodized plaque engraved with message of goodwill and a map showing the Earth's location within the solar system.

---

STAR WARRIORS (SPACE PATROL)

Fri, 2 Mar 2001
The Sunflower Newsletter
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sunflower-napf

The following quotes from current and former ranking US officials gives voice to US plans to "control and dominate" outer space as outlined in the US Space Command's Joint Vision for 2020.

"Our position depends upon space, space sensors, space communications, space intelligence and, also, guiding our weapons accurately from space. All of this is a marvelous achievement, but it creates for us a potential vulnerability-and that is if we are somehow or other cut off, or our ability to utilize space is reduced, we are going to be engaged around the world in ways that the US public will not particularly tolerate, in that we are likely to come home with large numbers of bodies in bags. The consequence is that the public will be turned off. So our international role might come crashing down. And the moral of the story is that we have to protect the usage of space." -James Schlesinger Former CIA Chief and Secretary of Defense

"Having shown the world the utility of space systems, it would be pretty naïve to think that our adversaries are just going to be sitting around idly and not developing their own space-based information capabilities and the tools and techniques to counter the current US space advantage." -The Rumsfeld Commission

"The importance of space control and space superiority will continue to grow as our economy becomes more reliant on space. As space becomes more integral-and critical-to military land, sea and air operations, the US must devote more attention to the sensitive issues of space control and superiority." -General Ralph E. Eberhart Commander in Chief, US Space Command

"Whoever controls space will control the destiny of the Earth. And when you look at the options out there, I would ask you, who do you want it to be? Iran? Russia? Iraq? China?" -Senator Robert Smith Republican, New Hampshire

---

NASA pulls plug on shuttle successors

03/02/2001
USA Today
By Traci Watson
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-03-02-nasa.htm

WASHINGTON - NASA is pulling the plug on the only planned successors to the space shuttle after spending nearly a billion dollars developing them.

The agency announced Thursday that it will stop funding the X-33 and the X-34, two futuristic test vehicles NASA has been developing since the late 1990s.

"I hate to see us go forward and not complete the program," said Art Stephenson, director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. "But we have to be fiscally responsible."

That means NASA's four space shuttles, which were developed in the 1970s, before IBM put out its PC, will have to continue hauling satellites and parts for the International Space Station for at least 10 years more, by NASA's estimate. Other experts calculate that the shuttle will need to stay in use until 2015 or 2020.

By then, the shuttle will be the space equivalent of a '57 Chevy rattling along today's interstates.

"In April, we celebrate 20 years of shuttle flight," says Pat Dasch, executive director of the National Space Society, which advocates space exploration. "We're losing our grip on space leadership."

Even so, Dasch and others, including Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., the head of the House space subcommittee, said NASA had made the right choice, given the escalating costs and vanishing hopes attached to the X-33 and X-34.

The goal was to develop a spaceship more reliable and less expensive than the shuttles, which tote cargo at a cost of $10,000 per pound. The shuttle discards its rocket boosters and fuel tank into the ocean as it takes off. The X-33, by contrast, was to be a "single-stage-to-orbit" craft, meaning that it wouldn't cast off pieces as it vaulted into space. The X-34 is a rocketplane that hitches a ride on a jet. Both craft would have landed on runways, like airplanes.

The X-33 has been plagued by technical problems and cost overruns. The craft, which was being developed by Lockheed Martin, was designed to carry fuel tanks made of a special lightweight material, but those failed during tests. To finish the project, Lockheed asked NASA for more money. The agency decided against it after comparing the X-33 with other research projects.

Finishing the X-34 would also take a lot more cash, according to a NASA review and the project contractor, Orbital Sciences Corporation. Thursday, the agency announced that the X-34, too, was judged unworthy of more funding compared with other research.

NASA will spend the money instead on research and development of technology that may one day lead to a launch vehicle more advanced than the shuttle.

The news comes at a time when NASA has fully booked the shuttles' schedule this year with flights to ferry gear to the space station, service the Hubble Space Telescope and other tasks.

Contributing: Dan Vergano

-------- space

WAR IN SPACE:
NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS IN OUTER SPACE, OUTER SPACE CHERNOBYLS COMING?

Karl Grossman
NEWS FROM WITHIN, Vol. XVII no. 2 March 2001
Check http://www.alternativenews.org/ for further info

On November 1, 2000, the General Assembly of the United Nations voted on reaffirming the Outer Space Treaty, the fundamental international law setting aside space for "peaceful purposes." The resolution recognized "the common interest of all mankind in the exploration and use of outer space for peaceful purposes reaffirming the will of all states that the exploration and use of outer space shall be for peaceful purposes and shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interest of all countries." It also recognized "that prevention of an arms race in outer space would avert a grave danger for international peace and security." Almost every nation in the UN - some 163 - voted for the resolution, entitled "Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space." Three nations did not. The United States, Israel and Micronesia abstained.

The year before, on the same resolution, the vote was 162 with two abstentions -- the US and Israel. (In picking up the vote of Micronesia, a collection of islands in the Pacific, the US got support from a country 100% dependent on US aid.) The reason the US refused to reaffirm the Outer Space Treaty is clear: the United States is developing a program for space warfare -- and it's not just "missile defense."

There are many publicly available US military documents spelling out the plans, including "Vision for 2020" of the US Space Command. (The US Space Command, set up by the Pentagon in 1985, "coordinates the use of Army, Naval and Air Force space forces.") The multi-colored cover of "Vision for 2020" depicts a laser weapon in space zapping a target on Earth below. The report opens with words that crawl down the page in the style of the Star Wars movies: "US Space Command --dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect US interests and investment. Integrating Space Forces into warfighting capabilities across the full spectrum of conflict."

Just as "nations built navies to protect and enhance their commercial interests" by ruling the seas in previous centuries, the pamphlet continues, the US must "control space" and from it "dominate" the Earth below. A key reason: "The globalization of the world economy will continue, with a widening between 'haves' and 'have-nots'" --thus the need for the US, the engine of the global economy, to keep everyone in check.

"Now is the time," says the US Space Command's brochure "Long Range Plan," to "begin developing space capabilities, innovative concepts of operations for warfighting, and organizations that can meet the challenges of the 2lst Century...Space power in the 2lst Century looks similar to previous military revolutions, such as aircraft-carrier warfare and Blitzkrieg."

"The United States won't always be able to forward base its forces...Widespread communications will highlight disparities in resources and quality of life-contributing to unrest in developing countries...The global economy will continue to become more interdependent. Economic alliances, as well as the growth and influence of multi-national corporations, will blur security agreements...The gap between 'have' and 'have-not' nations will widen-creating regional unrest," says the "Long Range Plan." "One of the long acknowledged and commonly understood advantages of space-based platforms is no restriction or country clearances to overfly a nation from space. We expect this advantage to endure...Achieving space superiority during conflicts will be critical to the US success on the battlefield."

The "Long Range Plan" then continues on for more than 100 pages detailing US plans for "Control of Space," "Full Spectrum Dominance," "Full Force Integration," and "Global Engagement."

A US Air Force Space Command publication, "Guardians of the High Frontier," declares: "Space is the ultimate 'high ground,'" and says the Air Force Space Command is committed to "the control and exploitation of space." Proudly displayed in "Guardians of the High Frontier" is a Space Command uniform patch and motto: "Master of Space."

Beyond military documents, there is the recently issued report of the so-called "Space Commission" chaired by now-US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. It is the blueprint for the space military program of the new Bush administration. "In the coming period," states the report, "the US will conduct operations to, from, in and through space in support of its national interests both on the earth and in space." The report of the Rumsfeld "Space Commission," or in its formal name: The Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Management and Organization, urges the US president to "have the option to deploy weapons in space." It stresses the desirability "to project power through and from space in response to events anywhere in the world."

The report cites a need for a "missile defense," indeed it warns several times of a "Space Pearl Harbor." But it, and the military reports, reflects a far wider US space military program: "national missile defense" to protect the US "homeland," "Theatre Missile Defense" (TMD) to be utilized in and in proximity to areas of conflict, and space-based weaponry. Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Florida-based Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, describes the "missile defense" component as "the foot in the door." Who can be against defense?" So missile defense has been the spin "to get a deployment OK," says Gagnon, "then to be followed up by the real Reagan Star Wars program that includes space-based weapons."

As retired US Navy Rear Admiral Eugene J. Carroll, Jr., Vice President of the Center for Defense Information in Washington, D.C., says: "You look at the Rumsfeld report and his [Rumsfeld's] statements and the other [military] reports and you have to realize that they are thinking in terms of militarizing space, of space warfare."

And it's not just rhetoric. The US Defense Department gave the go-ahead in December for development of the Space-Based Laser, a joint project of TRW, Boeing and Lockheed Martin. The US Army's Redstone Arsenal describes it as having a "lifecycle budget" of $20 to $30 billion. A second space-based laser project underway and in testing is the "Alpha High-Energy Laser." Built by TRW, it conducted its twenty-second successful test firing last year. Unless there is a stop put to it, "We are going into space with lasers," warns Admiral Carroll. "Space is seen as a new place to wage war," says Carroll. "Already, we are underwater, over-water, on-the-land, in-the-air-and now we want to go to another dimension: space."

Moreover, nuclear power may be an important element in the US space military plans. According to "New World Vistas: Air And Space Power For The 2lst Century," a US Air Force board report: "In the next two decades, new technologies will allow the fielding of space-based weapons of devastating effectiveness to be used to deliver energy and mass as force projection in tactical and strategic conflict. These advances will enable lasers with reasonable mass and cost to effect very many kills." But "power limitations impose restrictions" on such-based weapons systems making them "relatively unfeasible...A natural technology to enable high power is nuclear power in space...Setting the emotional issue of nuclear power aside, this technology offers a viable alternative for large amounts of power in space." Thus the stage would be set for orbiting Chernobyls in the sky-nuclear-powered battle platforms over our heads.

US military leaders are as blunt as the US documents about what the country is up to. "Some people don't want to hear this, and it sure isn't in vogue, but -- absolutely -- we're going to fight in space," said General Joseph W. Ashy, former Commander-in-Chief of the US Space Command. "That's why the US has development programs in directed energy and hit-to-kill mechanisms. We will engage terrestrial targets someday -- ships, airplanes, land targets - from space. We will engage targets in space, from space."

Israel's reasons for not voting to reaffirm the Outer Space Treaty - which Israel has ratified -- involve its long security relationship with the US. As a protector of Israel militarily for decades, the US sees Israel as owing it -- and thus, in part, Israel's vote in support of the US position at the UN. Also, the US has sought to have Israeli companies benefit from Star Wars technology. One joint US-Israeli program has been the Arrow project, the development of a missile with the ability to intercept incoming Scuds and similar missiles. The first pair of Arrow batteries are slated to be deployed in Israel this year. Says Lt. Gen. Lester Lyles, Director of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, regarding the US-Israeli Arrow Program: "Once the Foreign Military Sales case is concluded for Israel to purchase a JTIDS 2H terminal...Israel will have the full capability for Arrow to "interoperate" with US TAMD systems. We are continuing our efforts that use both the Israeli Test Bed (ITB) and the Israeli Systems Architecture and Integration (ISA&I) analysis capabilities to assist with the deployment of the Arrow Weapon System. In addition, we are working with Israel in the ITB and ISA&I to refine procedures for combined operations between USEUCOM and the Israeli Air Force, and to examine future missile defense architectures that consider evolving regional threats. Recent contingency operations with Israel have benefited greatly from the work conducted bilaterally in the ITB and ISA&I.

"We continue to reap benefits from our cooperative missile defense programs with Israel. In one specific case, the Arrow seeker technology flown by Israel is the same seeker planned to be flown aboard THAAD. Similarly, the lethality mechanism used in Arrow will greatly assist us as we develop the Navy Area system that also employs a fragmentation warhead. Additionally, the experience gained with the cooperative Arrow flight tests will provide many benefits as we begin a very robust flight test program for our TAMD systems this year."

In January, however, Boeing froze discussions with Israel Aircraft Industries on co-production of Arrow missiles that would be sold to other countries "until technology transfer issues are resolved." Boeing reportedly wants to wait and see how open the Bush administration will be toward transfer of technology to other countries.

Israel clearly has a great interest in the "missile defense" and "theatre defense" components of the US Star Wars program. Gagnon, however, is concerned that "the deployment of theatre missile defense in the Middle East will likely force Arab nations to counter Israel by seeking new systems which will lead to a widening of the arms race. Sad to say, I think the overall plan of the US is to do just that, considering that weapons are the #1 industrial export of the US. The more instability in the region the more money to be made by the weapons industry.

In his first visit to US President Bush at the White House on March 20, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Bush "found a `convergence of interest' in missile defense," reported the New York Times. Further, "The United States was 'very much interested' in furthering the capacity of Israel's theatre missile defense, the official said."

However, the American space military program is far more than that - and Israel, as demonstrated by its support of the US space military program at the UN, is tying itself into something far from defensive. It is an offensive program that stands to destroy a highly successful initiative that has kept space war-free for 35 years: the Outer Space Treaty.

The US was deeply involved in initiating the Outer Space Treaty, according to Craig Eisendrath, a former US State Department Foreign Service officer instrumental in its creation. The Soviet Union had launched its Sputnik satellite in 1957 and "we sought to de-weaponize space before it got weaponized," he explains. A model the State Department used for its draft of the Outer Space Treaty, says Eisendrath, was the Antarctic Treaty which bars military deployments on that continent. The Soviet Union and the United Kingdom joined the US in presenting the treaty which was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1966. It entered into force in October 1967.

The Outer Space Treaty has now been ratified by 96 nations and signed by 27 others. The intent of the treaty is "to keep war out of space," said Eisendrath, co-author of the forthcoming book, The Phantom Defense: America's Pursuit of the Star Wars Illusion. Eisendrath views as "a violation" of the Outer Space Treaty the deployment in space of weapons such as the lasers that the US military has been and is pursuing. The final wording of the treaty provides for a ban on "nuclear weapons or other kinds of weapons of mass destruction." Endeavoring to clear up any confusion and specifically prohibit all weapons in space in recent years have been both Canada and China. But the US has successfully fought back those efforts. Russia also -- indeed most of the nations of the world -- support the effort to prohibit all weapons in space. Russian President Vladimir Putin, in his first speech at the UN, last September for the "Millenium Summit," focused on the "militarization of space."

The US is making a tragic miscalculation if it thinks it can "control space" and from it "dominate" the world below. For if the US moves ahead with this scheme, other nations will respond in kind -- China and Russia right off -- and there will be an arms race and inevitably war in space. Kofi Annan, in opening the Third United Nations Conference on Exploration and Peaceful Uses of Outer Space in 1999, declared: "Above all, we must guard against the misuse of outer space. We recognized early on that a legal regime was needed to prevent it from being another arena of military confrontation. The international community has acted jointly, through the United Nations, to ensure that outer space will be developed peacefully.But there is much more to be done. We must not allow this century, so plagued with war and suffering, to pass on its legacy, when the technology at our disposal will be even more awesome. We cannot view the expanse of space as another battleground for our earthly conflicts."

Says Gagnon: "If the US is allowed to move the arms race into space, there will be no return. We have this one chance, this one moment in history, to stop the weaponization of space from happening." We have a narrow window to keep space for peace, to strengthen the Outer Space Treaty and ban all weapons in space. Israel should join with peoples from around the world and stop this move by the United States to turn the heavens into a war zone.

-------- u.n

U.N. WARNING

March 2, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/02/world/02BRIE.html?pagewanted=all

YUGOSLAVIA: The United Nations refugee agency warned that rapid narrowing of the buffer zone between Serbian forces and NATO-led peacekeepers in Kosovo could further destabilize the area. NATO is discussing the plan with Yugoslav officials in order to contain Albanian rebels in the zone. But Ruud Lubbers, head of the refugee agency, warned of further displacement of Albanians and possible attacks on the Serbian minority in Kosovo. Carlotta Gall (NYT)

NEW REFUGEE AIDE The acting commissioner of the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service, Mary Ann Wyrsch, has been appointed deputy United Nations high commissioner for refugees. Ms. Wyrsch has spent a career in administrative and budget jobs in the Office of Economic Opportunity, the Labor Department and the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Barbara Crossette (NYT)

Compiled by Terence Neilan

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

HACKER STEALS U.S. SATELLITE CODES:

Fri, 02 Mar 2001
Morrock News
http://morrock.com

A computer hacker, so far unidentified, has reportedly managed to download top-secret codes used to manage satellites and rockets in flight. The theft occurred on Christmas Eve last year, and since then stolen codes have been found on an Internet Web server in Sweden, though the server's owners apparently aren't involved. Experts say the codes could be used to disrupt some space programs.

---

lifting the ban on gays in the military.

Friday, March 2, 2001,
Slate
By Maureen Cosgrove, Jeremy Derfner and Amanda Fazzone
http://slate.msn.com/OtherMags/01-02-26/OtherMags.asp?Show=2/28/2001

Homosexuals in uniform by and large don't want to come out, because they fear being ostracized by their fellow soldiers. Until the gay community in larger society commits itself to full equality the way blacks did in the '50s and '60s, the article says, "it seems a little unfair (and hypocritical) to force the military to take steps we won't make civilian employers take." ... An article describes the CIA's role in helping to topple the Milosevic regime in Serbia. Instead of the traditional Bondian high-tech high jinks, the agency helped finance a Western style political campaign. The CIA helped the student opposition group, Otpor, with tracking polls, Get Out the Vote efforts, and snappy slogans for T-shirts and bumper stickers. All this proved that in a globalized society, covert action simply doesn't work (if it ever did). -J.D.

---

General Suspicion

Fri, 02 Mar 2001
Slate Magazine
by Scott Shuger

Working some inside sources, the WP fronts word that the Pentagon's investigation into possible safety mismanagement of its experimental Osprey vertical lift aircraft has shifted from the operational level up into the Pentagon itself. The paper says the DOD inspector general has now seized data from the computers of two Marine generals overseeing the program. The paper also reports it has notes from two different meetings showing two different generals' interest in figuring out a way to make the plane's performance look better than its maintenance records suggest.

The NYT goes inside to report that yesterday the Pentagon unveiled "the rubber bullet of the 21st century"--a crowd dispersal device that uses an electromagnetic pulse to create a burning sensation on the skin at a distance of up to 700 yards but supposedly without causing any actual burns. The story quotes a couple of think-tank doubters, but strangely misses a big reporting opportunity. It describes a Pentagon briefer, "encouraging reporters" to "stick a finger under the invisible ray and feel the heat" from a demonstration model of the weapon. And yet as far as the story indicates, the Times guy didn't take him up on it (there is a passing reference to a "balky reporter"), settling instead for the official Pentagon description of the weapon's effects. Chicken Times policy or merely chicken Times reporter?

---

Navy Probes Hacker Theft of Codes

March 2, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Navy-Hacker.html?searchpv=aponline
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-03-02-hacker.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Naval officials are investigating how hackers broke into a computer at a Navy research facility in Washington and stole the source codes to a missile guidance program, officials said Friday.

The Navy has been working with the FBI and police forces in Germany and other unnamed countries since Dec. 24, when officials believe the break-in occurred. An FBI spokesman downplayed the theft, saying the software stolen was unclassified.

``We are trying to see who's responsible,'' said Paul O'Donnell of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. ``This has led us to several foreign countries.''

O'Donnell said the target was an unclassified computer.

FBI spokesman Chris Murray confirmed that the guidance system source codes -- the building blocks of a program -- had been stolen. Murray said that the target computer was at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington.

Representatives of Exigent Software Technology, based in Melbourne, Fla., said Friday that they built the stolen program, called ``OS/COMET.'' The Air Force has installed OS/COMET, which can also be used to guide satellites and spacecraft, to a Global Positioning Satellite system in Colorado Springs, Colo., according to Exigent.

O'Donnell confirmed that Exigent is also a subcontractor for the Navy.

Murray said the software was secret when it was first used in the 1980s, but is now sold commercially. He said the intruder only got about two-thirds of the source codes.

``It is not the intelligence disaster along the lines of Robert Hanssen,'' Murray said, referring to the FBI counterintelligence agent charged with spying for Russia.

In a statement, Exigent confirmed that only a portion of the program was taken, and that it was an older version of the software.

A spokesman for the German federal office for criminal affairs told The Associated Press that an investigation is underway there, and is in the hands of the state prosecutor's office in Kaiserslautern. The city is the home of several U.S. military installations, including Ramstein Air Force Base.

The Swedish newspaper Expressen, which first reported news of the break-in, said that the perpetrator is believed to have used a computer at Kaiserslautern University in Germany, as well as an account with Carbonide, a Swedish Internet service provider.

Carbonide chief executive Erik Wickbom told the AP that the company, based in Stockholm, has cooperated with authorities.

Also Friday, a congressional panel requested that 15 federal departments and agencies report how they are testing and protecting their computers from hacking attacks. The Defense Department was not included in the list.

---

Osprey Inquiry Focuses on Senior Marines

March 2, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/02/national/02OSPR.html

WASHINGTON, March 1 - The inspector general of the Defense Department has expanded his investigation into accusations of falsified maintenance records for the V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft into the upper ranks of the Marine Corps, Pentagon officials said tonight.

As part of an inquiry that began in January, the inspector general has confiscated computer hard drives belonging to Lt. Gen. Fred McCorkle, the head of Marine Corps aviation, and his chief deputy, Brig. Gen. James F. Amos, the officials said.

The move by the inspector general, first reported by The Washington Post, seems aimed in part at piecing together a chain of e-mail messages between high-ranking Marine Corps officers in which the Osprey's many maintenance problems are candidly discussed. Two Ospreys crashed last year, killing 23 marines.

Some messages suggest that senior officers believed that the Osprey's poor maintenance record was giving the program a black eye and would make it hard to get more of the aircraft, the officials said.

The Marine Corps opened an investigation into the Osprey program last year after receiving an anonymous letter from someone identifying himself as an Osprey mechanic asserting that workers had been pressured to lie about the aircraft's problems. The Marines have transferred the commander of the Osprey squadron, Lt. Col. Odin F. Leberman.

The inspector general took over the investigation in January.

---

Pentagon Unveils Plans for a New Crowd-Dispersal Weapon

March 2, 2001
New York Times
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/02/national/02MARI.html

WASHINGTON, March 1 - The Pentagon today unveiled what some military officials hope will become the rubber bullet of the 21st century: a weapon that uses electromagnetic waves to disperse crowds without killing, maiming or, military officials say, even injuring anyone slightly.

Known in Pentagon patois as an "active denial system," the weapon is the fruit of 10 years of research and is intended to help American soldiers in the quasi-military roles they have increasingly been asked to play as peacekeepers or police in places like Kosovo and Ethiopia.

As envisioned by its Pentagon designers, the weapon would fire bursts of electromagnetic energy capable of causing burning sensations on the skin of people standing as far as 700 yards away - without actually burning them, officials said.

"It's not designed to burn," Col. George P. Fenton of the Marine Corps, director of the Department of Defense's Joint Nonlethal Weapons Program in Quantico, Va., said at a news conference today. "It's a heat-induced sensation."

Asked if the weapon was simply a militarized form of a microwave oven, Colonel Fenton said no. He said the new system fires waves that are shorter and at higher frequencies than microwaves. That means, he said, that while the waves could penetrate clothing, they would barely enter the skin, reaching a depth of only one sixty-fourth of an inch.

"It's safe, absolutely safe," Colonel Fenton said. "You walk out of the beam and the pain goes away. There are no lasting effects."

The weapon, which to date has cost taxpayers $40 million, already has its skeptics. William M. Arkin, the senior military adviser to Human Rights Watch, described it as a "high-powered microwave antipersonnel weapon" that should be more carefully studied before it is used on crowds containing elderly people, children or pregnant women.

Mr. Arkin said past efforts by the Pentagon to develop "nonlethal weapons" had sometimes proved disastrous. For instance, he said, lasers were widely considered the peacekeeping tool of the future until it was determined that they could blind people.

"If this is a more humane and effective military tool than existing nonlethal weapons, great," Mr. Arkin said. "But they are going to have to prove some things to us first."

Pentagon officials said scientists had been testing the weapon on animals and humans for more than three years without finding any evidence that it caused internal injuries, burns, cancer or eye damage.

In more than 6,500 tests on 72 people, only one exposure went awry, the Pentagon officials said, when one person received a "nickle-size" burn on his back after a tester programmed the weapon incorrectly.

"It gave us information that helped us understand how it works," said Dr. Michael Murphy, one of the Pentagon scientists working on the weapon.

To show how the system would work, Colonel Fenton brought a miniature version of an electromagnetic "gun" to the news conference, encouraging reporters and other Pentagon officials to stick a finger under the invisible ray and feel the heat.

"I feel like a barker at a carnival," said Colonel Fenton, who put his own fingers under the ray repeatedly for television cameras, as he cajoled a balky reporter to try the weapon.

Just one second under the tiny ray created a burning sensation equal to 120 degrees, Pentagon officials said. The officials said that the weapon could be adjusted to heat the skin to temperatures of 130 degrees or higher.

The weapon is still in development and probably will not be ready for deployment by troops for at least five years, Colonel Fenton said.

In its current experimental form, the weapon looks like the average backyard satellite dish. The Pentagon envisions a version being mounted on the back of a Humvee, but officials said hand-held or aircraft-mounted versions are under consideration as well.

American troops now typically use tear gas, rubber bullets or beanbags fired from shotguns to disperse crowds. The electromagnetic weapon would be superior to those techniques, Colonel Fenton said, because it would have much longer range.

He said the weapon would have helped protect soldiers in Ethiopia, where angry crowds frequently clashed with American troops during a United Nations mission there in 1993.

Michael E. O'Hanlon, a military expert at the Brookings Institution, disagreed.

"Everything I know about this weapon suggests this would not have made one iota of difference there," he said. "This may be worthwhile, but we shouldn't delude ourselves into thinking it is the answer."

-------

Pentagon's latest weapon: a pain beam

March 2, 2001
radman <resist@best.com>

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon on Thursday unveiled a new "non-lethal" weapon designed to drive off an adversary with an energy beam that inflicts pain without causing lasting harm.

The weapon could be used for riot control and peacekeeping missions when deadly force is not necessary, officials said.

The weapon, called "active denial technology," was developed by Air Force research laboratories in New Mexico and Texas as part of a multi-service program run by the Marine Corps.

Will the Pentagon's new "non-lethal" stun weapon be safe?

"This revolutionary force-protection technology gives U.S. service members an alternative to using deadly force," said Marine Corps Col. George P. Fenton, director of the program at Quantico, Virginia. The weapon is designed to stop people by firing millimeter-wave electromagnetic energy in a beam that quickly heats up the surface of the victim's skin. Within seconds the person feels pain that officials said is similar to touching a hot light bulb.

Like being burned

"It's the kind of pain you would feel if you were being burned," said Rich Garcia, a spokesman for the Air Force Research Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico. "It's just not intense enough to cause any damage."

The Pentagon has made a strong push to develop "non-lethal" weapons in the aftermath of a humanitarian mission in Somalia in 1992-93 that put soldiers in the line of fire in urban areas where civilians were present.

A prototype of the weapon will be tested on goats and humans at Kirtland in the next few months, Garcia said.

"When it penetrates in, it activates the pain sensors, and you feel a lot of pain," Garcia said. "But there's no damage. It truly is a non-lethal device."

The Marine Corps said $40 million was spent developing the weapon during the past decade.

The Marine Corps plans to mount the microwave weapon on top of Humvees, the Jeep-like vehicles used by both the Marines and the Army. Later it might be used on aircraft and ships, officials said.

The weapon could be fielded by 2009, officials said.

Concerns remain

William Arkin, senior military adviser to Human Rights Watch, questioned whether a pain weapon would be safe to use against civilians in combat situations.

"What about children in the crowd? What about pregnant women and the elderly?" he said.

"We have developed a nonlethal weapon which causes pain. What happens when someone continues to walk toward the source of the high-power microwave? What happens when panic ensues in a crowd as a result of high-power microwave? What happens when it's focused on someone's eye?" Arkin said.

New Tools Emerge For Info War Battle Aviation Week & Space Technology, Pg. 58 February 26, 2001 By Robert Wall and David A. Fulghum, Kelly AFB, Tex.

In a bid to aid efforts to make information warfare more operationally relevant, researchers are devising new ways to conduct various forms of cyber, electronic and psychological warfare.

But developing the technology to make information warfare effective is only part of the solution. Getting the proper people to conduct these missions, particularly in the emerging cyberwarfare arena, is proving as much of a challenge as the technology is.

Several organizations have sprung up to help address various aspects of the information warfare challenge. Among them is the Air Force's Information Warfare Battlelab which, since its inception in 1997, has examined more than 270 concepts. It now has 37 projects under investigation.

While many of the projects are unclassified, some of the most promising involve closely guarded secrets. Two of the latter are ''Coordinated Noise'' and ''Aimpoint.''

Both are information warfare tools using directed energy technology and are supposed to provide an ability to strike a target with extreme precision. While Coordinated Noise is seen as relying on microwave energy, the Aimpoint project could use either high-power microwaves or laser technology. The projects are sponsored by an array of organizations, including the U.S. Air Forces Europe, Special Operations Command, the Air Force Research Laboratory and Air Combat Command.

The battlelab initiatives span many technologies, which are reflective of the disparate fields that fall under the umbrella term of information operations. Almost half of the battlelab efforts fall into a category called information-in-warfare, an area encompassing intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, navigation, weather and other activities. About 30% of the projects are in the general category of electronic warfare, with about 8% of initiatives associated with psychological operations.

EACH OF THE INITIATIVES is supposed to lead to a demonstration within 18 months. Most of them, about 70%, are proposed by industry, although a considerable number emanate from the Air Force.

The psychological warfare area has yielded one of battlelab's latest successes, a new leaflet bomb. The Air Force has been using the 200-lb. M129 leaflet bomb. But those canisters are aging and the inventory is being rapidly depleted. However, the battlelab realized that older cluster munitions were being phased-out of operational use, freeing up thousands of SUU-30 dispensers that could be modified to deliver leaflets.

Using the SUU-30 had several advantages, said Lt. Col. Dan Radcliff, deputy at the battlelab. For one, the weapon can actually carry about 1,000 leaflets, which is more than can be packed into the M129. Furthermore, because the weapon has already undergone stores separation testing, what the Air Force calls Seek Eagle, it can be fielded quickly.

The new device, designated the LBU-30, for leaflet bomb unit, recently completed flight testing at Eglin AFB, Fla. The weapon was successfully dropped from an F-16 flying at 20,000 ft. Several customers have already signed up for the system, said Col. Mark J. Nichols, the battlelab's director.

ANOTHER PROJECT UNDERTAKEN at the lab was the Raytheon-built Microglider, a 22-in. long, 8-lb. vehicle that can carry a 4-lb. imaging payload for battle damage assessment. The system would be dispensed from a tactical fighter and fly 9-10 min. with a 10:1 glide ratio. The aircraft would fly to its target at about 100-kt. speed, guided by GPS coordinates, said Lt. Jeremy Haas, of the battlelab.

In an operational configuration, the battle damage video would be relayed to an RC-135 Rivet Joint or transmitted through another unmanned aircraft, like Predator, or through satellites to an operations center.

On the navigation warfare front, the battlelab successfully demonstrated a small GPS jammer. It was built to deny an adversary access to GPS signals. The Air Force has retained the gear, which it is keeping ready for potential operational use or to employ in exercises.

Another tool the Air Force has developed to aid its information attack capability is called Sensor Harvest, which is built and managed by the Air Force Information Warfare Center's IW Target Analysis Program. The system essentially provides a repository of data on potential adversary countries to determine how best to launch information warfare attacks. It can be used to create ''target nomination files'' that war planners can draw on.

Constructing and maintaining a country file is time and personnel intensive, however, which is the main reason Sensor Harvest only supports about 10 active countries at one time. On average, it takes about eight people seven months to build a country file, using 500-1,000 data points from classified and unclassified sources. Another 2-3 people are needed to maintain a country. The tool also can be used against transnational threats, said one Air Force official, although that field is still deemed relatively new.

On the defensive IW front, Defense Dept. officials are trying to ensure they don't create possible vulnerabilities in systems they introduce. That's why the Joint Information Operation Center (JIOC), also located here, has set up a field demonstration team to do vulnerability analyses of the Pentagon's Advanced Concept Technology Demonstrations. These demos are devised to use existing hardware to field new capabilities quickly.

Furthermore, the group is used to support exercises and emulate different IW threats in the field, said Navy Lt. Jeff Garcia, who oversees the team. This includes jamming which could be provided by a potential enemy. One feature of the unit is that is uses exclusively off-the-shelf gear any adversary can obtain. For instance, the hobby shop-like operation has been able to mount effective direction-finding and signals intercept gear in a sport utility and a recreational vehicle to clandestinely collect information on exercising forces.

On another front, USAF and other information warfare planners are attempting to address a serious personnel shortfall problem. Shortages of uniformed cyberwarfare experts has caused the Defense Dept. to rely, to some extent, more on contractors. As a result ''our contractor costs have gone up,'' said another JIOC official.

One strategy being pursued is that of wooing more civilian software developers, said Army Col. David C. Kirk, deputy commander of the Joint Information Operations Center. The organization has had some success enticing software engineers looking for a more steady lifestyle than the highly competitive pace of Silicon Valley. But that in itself isn't enough to fill the military's demands, Kirk acknowledged.

Another effort is to make sure all computer talent in the military is properly exploited. ''We found Washington Air National Guard Microsoft software employees working on diesel generators,'' said Maj. Gen. Bruce Wright, commander of the Air Intelligence Agency. They now have been reassigned and are instead supporting the Air Force's computer aggressor squadron. Similar initiatives are underway with the Texas, Vermont and Kentucky Air National Guards, Wright said.

THE PERSONNEL CRUNCH is being felt not only in the cyberwarfare realm. ''We are literally short of people much worse than we are of money right now,'' added Col. James C. Massaro, commander of the 67th Information Operations Wing. One area where the wing always is struggling to fill slots is in linguists, who fill critical listening positions on, for instance, the RC-135 Rivet Joint signals intercept aircraft. There are some areas where there are only two or three speakers of a language in the Air Force, which means they have to be deployed often and are difficult to keep in the service, Massaro noted.

---

Pentagon's latest weapon: a pain beam
Greeneville probe

March 2, 2001
Washington Times
Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inring-200132205615.htm

The Navy Court of Inquiry, set to convene Monday at Pearl Harbor, will look at issues other than the conduct of four officers on board the submarine USS Greeneville.

Adm. Thomas Fargo, Pacific Fleet commander, has given the three-admiral court a wide berth to examine all issues in determining why the Greeneville surfaced underneath the Ehime Maru, sinking the Japanese fishing boat and killing nine students, instructors and crew.

Adm. Fargo, in a letter to Vice Adm. John B. Nathman, who heads the court, directed him to look into the policy of allowing civilians on board during the type of emergency surfacing drill the Greeneville was conducting when the accident happened.

"Provide your candid assessment and conclusions regarding the execution of this program on 9 Feb. 2001, as well as any recommendations the court may have for improving the policies and practices related to the [visitors] program," Adm. Fargo wrote.

There were 16 VIPs aboard the Greeneville. Three were at workstations during the surfacing or "blow."

A confidential Navy report, first disclosed in The Washington Times last week, found no accident link from civilians participating under close supervision. But Rear Adm. Charles Griffiths Jr. concluded that the VIPs "did interfere" by disrupting communications between a fire-control technician tracking the Ehime Maru and Cmdr. Scott Waddle, the captain.

Adm. Fargo also told Adm. Nathman to examine the practice of allowing subs to practice blows relatively close to shore. The accident happened nine miles off the Hawaiian coast where ship traffic is light to moderate.

"You are directed to examine the propriety of the assigned location for the USS Greeneville's operations on Feb. 9, 2001," Adm. Fargo said.

The four-star admiral named three officers as "parties" to the inquiry - Cmdr. Waddle, his executive officer and the officer of the deck. In addition, he told the court to examine whether the senior officer on board, Capt. Robert Brandhuber, should have intervened to rectify crew errors.

The Navy's internal report documents what the investigator believes are a number of crew errors, including a too-brief periscope search.

Cmdr. Waddle's supporters say he followed all normal procedures before ordering the blow.

Wrote Adm. Fargo, "I have not given you a specific date to submit your report because I want you to take whatever time is required to address all relevant issues completely."

Lonely at the top

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the process of getting top people appointed to slots in the office of the secretary of defense is taking a long time. "It's lonely," he told us, as attested to by the numerous open parking spaces outside the river entrance to the Pentagon, where most of the top defense officials get to park.

Mr. Rumsfeld was especially anxious to get his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, in place. "As soon as you are confirmed, I want you reporting for duty immediately," Mr. Rumsfeld told Mr. Wolfowitz during a reception Tuesday night at the Willard Hotel sponsored by the Stanford-based Hoover Institution.

The Senate late Wednesday unanimously confirmed Mr. Wolfowitz, who now gets to move from his temporary office on the third floor of the E-Ring to his new office in the deputy secretary's office, a short walk down the hall from Mr. Rumsfeld's office.

At a surprise appearance in the Pentagon briefing room yesterday, Mr. Rumsfeld said up to 10 persons are awaiting official appointment and only two have been confirmed, himself and Mr. Wolfowitz. "The people part of this process is a difficult one, and I've been spending an enormous amount of time on it," he said.

Intelligence dodge

Vice Adm. Thomas Wilson, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, wrote to all DIA personnel this week to explain the protest resignation of a DIA analyst in October. The analyst, Kie Fallis, quit the day after the USS Cole was attacked by suicide bombers in Aden, Yemen. Mr. Fallis charged that a report he had written on the threat of a terrorist attack in Yemen was suppressed by senior DIA officials.

Mr. Fallis' resignation letter stated that he had "significant analytic differences" with DIA superiors over a terrorist threat assessment produced in June.

U.S. intelligence officials said there were warnings, but they arrived too late. The National Security Agency issued a report shortly after the Cole was bombed warning of attacks in the region -too late to be useful.

Adm. Wilson said he asked the Pentagon inspector general (IG) to investigate Mr. Fallis' charges. In an awkwardly worded statement, the three-star admiral said on Wednesday the IG "found no evidence to support the public perception that information warning of an attack on Cole was suppressed, ignored or even available in DIA." What about the private perception?

The admiral's statement drew smirks from several intelligence officials. It relied on a dodge often used by intelligence analysts to dismiss unwelcome information. Saying there is "no evidence" -like that presented to a court of law - is often used to mask the fact there is lots of intelligence to the contrary that spooks would rather not talk about in public.

Ships ahoy

The Navy this week brought its case for more ships to Capitol Hill.

At an event in the Capitol hosted by the American Shipbuilding Association, two admirals warned about the incredibly shrinking Navy fleet. There are predictions the 300-ship Navy will become a 180-ship Navy by 2023 unless Congress substantially increases the Pentagon's $7 billion annual shipbuilding budget.

"We can't always assume we're going to have maritime power" without more spending, said Vice Adm. Dennis McGinn, deputy chief of naval operations for warfare requirements and programs. "At the present rate of investment the number will grow smaller."

A third of the fleet is at sea at any given time, putting wear and tear on ships and sailors. Rear Adm. Joseph Sestak, director of the Navy's Quadrennial Defense Review, said the sea service needs 360 ships to cover global requirements.

"We are already proportioning strategic risk," Adm. Sestak said.

One Navy pitch is the importance of "command of the seas" in the new global economy. Ninety-nine percent of all international trade moves by ship. Just one blocked major port could hurt the world's economy.

"We won't meet the necessary build rate if the funding is not there," Adm. McGinn said.

Gen. James Jones, Marine Corps commandant, said he is not too worried about an ongoing top-to-bottom review of military strategy and force structure.

"I don't see that the missions we're going to be asked to do are going to change that much," the commandant said.

Adm. McGinn, a balding former carrier pilot, filled in for Adm. Vern Clark, the chief of naval operations who is also hair-challenged.

"I'm not Vern Clark," Adm. McGinn told the audience. "We go to the same barber."

Intercepts

• Conservatives in Congress and the Bush administration are concerned that Rear Adm. Lowell "Jake" Jacoby, the current Joint Staff intelligence chief, or J-2, will be appointed director of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency - the Pentagon's photographic spying agency. Military sources say the two-star admiral is part of the China-is-not-a-threat school of intelligence analysis.

"He's very soft on China," said our military informant who noted that Adm. Jacoby killed the Office of Naval Intelligence's program to produce unclassified reports on the Chinese military and navy when he headed the office.

Adm. Jacoby's supporters disagree. They point to the December speech by Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warning that China could emerge as the Soviet bear of the 21st century as a sign of the J-2's views on China.

• Republican sources say retired Army Brig. Gen. Tom White, a Texas businessman, is now the front-runner to be the next secretary of the Army.

---

Osprey data reportedly seized

03/02/2001
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-03-02-osprey.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Pentagon's inspector general has seized data from computers of two Marine generals as part of an investigation into an alleged cover-up of problems with the V-22 Osprey aircraft, The Washington Post reported Friday.

The Osprey is a tilt-rotor aircraft that takes off like a helicopter, but flies like a plane.

The Marine's top spokesman, Brig. Gen. John Sattler, said Friday he could not discuss the specifics of the inspector general's inquiry. He stressed that the Marines had said from the start of the investigation that they expected the probe to search "far and wide," including senior officers.

"They have open access to anyone and everything," Sattler said.

The investigation, which began in January, was initiated after allegations that a lieutenant colonel, who was commander of the Marine's only Osprey squadron, falsified maintenance records. Investigators are looking into whether he was pressured by superiors to hide the shortcomings of the Osprey.

Inspector General Robert Lieberman recently took data from the computer hard drives of Lt. Gen. Fred McCorkle, the head of Marine aviation, and McCorkle's assistant, Brig. Gen. James F. Amos, the Post said, quoting several Marines and a Pentagon official, who were not identified.

"It's all about the e-mail trail, as part of the search to figure out what's there," the newspaper quoted a Marine officer it said was familiar with the Osprey program.

In a late October meeting with the Osprey squadron, one Marine general urged subordinates to "figure out how to manage and minimize the impact" of a record-keeping system that had shown the aircraft were often grounded or available only for limited flights, according to notes on the meeting obtained by the Post.

The Marine Corps has defended the tilt-rotor aircraft against critics who charge that it is too expensive and is unreliable. The Corps wants to buy 360 Ospreys, the Air Force plans to buy 50 and the Navy plans to buy 48, for a total program cost of $40 billion.

The Osprey has been involved in three crashes since 1992, that killed 26 Marines and four civilians.

-------- OTHER

-------- environment

Economist

Friday, March 2, 2001, at 9:30 a.m. PT
Slate
By Maureen Cosgrove, Jeremy Derfner and Amanda Fazzone
http://slate.msn.com/OtherMags/01-02-26/OtherMags.asp?Show=2/28/2001

A piece rejoices that the mad cow panic in Europe might finally shake up the common agricultural policy (CAP), which saddles the European Union with expensive farm subsidies. Falling beef prices in the short term and the threat of protracted struggles with mad cow disease in the long term could force the EU, which now pays 46 percent of its budget to farmers, to radically alter its agricultural policy. ...

A piece profiles Rolltronics, a California tech company that aims to manufacture computers on thin (a few millimeters) plastic films, which users could roll up like newspaper. ...

An article describes an Oxford professor's quest to discover how minks being farmed for their fur view their captivity. Employing microeconomic analysis, she found that minks most value water for swimming and drinking (more than, say, tunnels for digging and soft cages for sleeping), so scrupulous mink farmers can salve their consciences by providing mink mini-pools. -J.D.

---

Birds to be Charged with Flying Under the Influence

Saturday, March 3, 2001
BIZARRE NEWS

REDDING, California - Flocks of drunken birds have ruffled many motorists' feathers along Interstate 5 in California. The birds had apparently been eating the parneyi cotoneaster berry, a fermenting fruit that gives birds an alcohol buzz. While "flying under the influence," our feathered friends frequently collide with car windshields and crash into the pavement, leaving a trail of bird carcasses all over the highway. California Highway Patrol spokesman Monty Hite chided, "They're not buying into the 'designated flier' program, either, and the T-shirts don't fit them.

--

Scientist Looks to Beat the Carp Out of Wisconsin's Lakes

MADISON, Wisconsin - A scientist at the University of Wisconsin is finding a way to "beat the carp" out of the disposable diaper industry. Srinivasan Damodaran has patented a process that turns ground-up fish into an absorbent, biodegradable gel that can be used in diapers. A regular disposable diaper reportedly contain a crystal or powder that absorbs 100 times its own weight in water whereas Damodaran claims his product absorbs 400 times its weight. In addition, the fish-based gel deteriorates in landfills within 28 days, while most diaper gels made from petroleum usually break down much more slowly. Wisconsin officials say they are hoping the product is successful because their waterways are overpopulated with carp.

---

Drilling in the Cathedral

March 2, 2001
New York Times
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/02/opinion/02FRIE.html

Listening to President Bush's speech about his budget the other night, you could hear the theme song for his administration: "Don't Start Thinkin' About Tomorrow."

The short translation of the Bush speech is: Hey, it's not the government's money, it's your money. It's not your children's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, it's your refuge, and you can drill for oil there if you want. It's not your national debt, it's your grandchildren's national debt.

Geez, and they said the Clintonites were self-absorbed - me-me, I-I, now-now, yuppies. What about this crowd?

I'll let the experts point out the irresponsibility built into the Bush budget. As my colleague Paul Krugman, a real economist, has deftly explained, there is no way Mr. Bush's budget numbers can work without making wildly optimistic surplus projections, or stealing from future generations, or taking risks no serious person would take with his family's budget.

Having just visited Alaska, though, I'm troubled by what such thinking can do to the environment. What happened to the word "conservation"? Has it gone the way of "liberal"? Are we no longer allowed to call for conservation without engendering catcalls? America has 5 percent of the world's population, but consumes nearly 25 percent of world oil supplies. Yes, some speechwriter did slip one reference to conservation into Mr. Bush's speech, but only after he first emphasized his favored approach to our energy deficit - more "production."

I could understand, if we were down to our last barrels of oil and our very lifestyle were threatened, that we might risk believing the oil companies that they can drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, in northern Alaska, without damage. But we are so far away from that. We have not even begun to explore how just a little conservation, or a small, painless increase in energy efficiency, could relieve us from even thinking about risking one of the earth's most pristine environments.

Check out the Web site of the Natural Resources Defense Council (www.NRDC.org). It notes that the most credible estimates indicate that the Arctic Refuge contains about 3.2 billion barrels of economically recoverable crude oil - less than America consumes in six months. Risking the Arctic Refuge to extract that pittance of oil is nuts, when it could be painlessly extracted through better conservation and efficiency. As the Defense Council points out, by simply increasing average fuel efficiency on new cars, S.U.V.'s and light trucks from 24 to 39 miles per gallon over the next decade, we would save 51 billion barrels of oil - more than 15 times the likely yield from the Arctic. At the same time, if we just required replacement tires for cars and light trucks to be as fuel- efficient as the original tires on new vehicles (which have lower rolling resistance), we would save 5.4 billion barrels of oil over the next 50 years, far more than in the Arctic Refuge.

The Arctic Refuge is a unique environmental cathedral - a 19-million- acre expanse where mountains meet ocean, where grizzly bears meet polar bears, where 130,000 caribou migrate each spring to give birth on the coastal plain, where an entire ecosystem is preserved and where Mother Nature is totally in charge. This is not Yellowstone Park, with campsites and R.V.'s. The original idea behind the refuge's creation was to save an area of pure wilderness, in which there would be no maps, virtually no roads and no development. When the Bush team says it can drill in such wilderness without harming it, it's like saying you can do online trading in church on your Palm Pilot without disturbing anyone. It violates the very ethic of the place.

"Wilderness as a concept is immutable," explains Richard Fineberg, an Anchorage-based environmental consultant. "It is like perfection - there are no degrees to it. Oil development in a wilderness, no matter how sensitive, changes the very nature of it. It means it's no longer wilderness. If the drill worshipers prevail in the Arctic Refuge, then there will be no place on this continent where a unique environment will be safe from greed and short-term interests."

What will you tell your grandchildren when they ask: How could you destroy a unique wilderness area to buy six months' supply of gasoline? Why didn't you just improve gas mileage a little each year? Why didn't you lift just a tiny finger for conservation? Weren't you thinking about tomorrow at all?

---

Upbeat Plan for a Dam in Belize Turns asty

March 2, 2001
New York Times
By DAVID GONZALEZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/02/world/02BELI.html?pagewanted=all

SAN IGNACIO, Belize - When a Canadian power company proposed a dam along a branch of the nearby Macal River, officials here welcomed the investment. They hoped the project would wean Belize from electricity bought from Mexico, and provide a new water source for an existing dam and power plant that struggle during the dry season.

But the plan has unleashed a barrage of criticism from environmentalists, who have also decided to look beyond Belize's borders for support, taking their cues from the flows of global capital.

If local developers and government officials are wooing foreign investors with environmentally sensitive projects, they say, then environmental activists must respond by bringing in help from abroad.

The environmental groups fear the project would flood a sensitive jungle habitat whose thick riverbank vegetation offers a bountiful green feast for tapirs - Belize's noodle-nosed national animal - which share the remote area with jaguars and scarlet macaws.

They have also questioned the dam as unnecessary and uneconomical, and say it will enrich only a small clique while not cutting electricity rates for residents.

But their campaign was kicked up a notch when they brought in the Natural Resources Defense Council, an international group that has placed the Macal River on a list of 12 "biogems" - environmentally important areas threatened by development.

The support of international groups has emboldened local conservationists, who have bucked the nation's typically quiescent political culture and demanded greater openness in the public debate.

"In this globalized world, we are saying that governments and companies have to be accountable for the actions no matter where in the world they take place," said Jacob Scherr, director of international programs at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "Globalization is a reality; you are seeing it in Belize. So we are using the tools of globalization to give concerned citizens a voice here and around the world."

In turn, the council and other international groups have been vilified in the local press, called lawbreakers and terrorists (though no evidence is offered). A few leading citizens have called the environmental groups enemies of the nation that are trying to impose racist schemes to keep Belize undeveloped.

More restrained voices have said the environmental groups are denying this country the kinds of modern conveniences that others take for granted.

"We don't think it is fair for these environmental groups to be beating up Belize over this little dam when their own countries have so many of them," said Prime Minister Said Musa. "Now they are trying to tell us we can't have one."

The Chalillo Dam has been proposed since the early 1990's. An initial feasibility study warned against it because of a potentially harmful environmental impact. More recent studies supported the project, though local environmental officials said those studies were inadequate.

Supporters of the project say it is necessary to resolve capacity problems with the country's current dam and generator at Mollejón. The new dam at Chalillo, they said, would give them enough water to power the Mollejón generators through several months of the dry season.

In addition to the dam and generator at Mollejón, which was recently bought by Fortis Inc., the Canadian company that proposes building the new dam, Belize depends on pollution-prone diesel-powered generators for about a third of its power. Another third is supplied by a Mexican power grid.

"We need to find ways to remove our dependence on oil or Mexico," said John Briceño, the deputy prime minister and minister of natural resources. "Yes, we get Mexican electricity sold to us at a subsidized rate, but even that is tied to the price of oil. And our agreement with Mexico ends in 2008, and what guarantees do we have that Mexico will give us the same agreement?"

But environmentalists say that in the near term, the cost of building a new dam would outweigh any possible savings in power generation. They add that Mexican power is still cheaper during off-peak hours, regardless of whether a new dam were built. They also accuse the government of overlooking alternative energy sources, like generators powered by burning waste.

One diplomat in Belize expressed doubt that the dam would bring down electric rates and said he suspected the project would enrich a few local business executives.

"You need to ask who will benefit from this," the diplomat said. "Dams are a past way of doing things. The United States is rethinking its dam system in the Northwest, where it has ravaged the salmon population. In China they found dams to be an environmental nightmare, but a few people involved became incredibly wealthy."

Environmentalists do not see it as a fair trade. The area where the dam is proposed is part of a biological corridor that Central American nations are trying to preserve against broader encroachment.

"This is the center of biodiversity, not only for Belize," said Sharon Matola, the director of the Belize Zoo and one of the dam's most outspoken opponents. "This is the cradle for biodiversity for Central America. Look at the scarlet macaw; they breed in that river valley. This is the only place in Central America where they live unmolested."

Environmentalists are also warning of an impending disaster from an infestation of bark beetles, which has reduced the pine forests and hillsides near the river to thousands of acres of leafless, dead trees. Within a couple of years, they fear, those dead trees could be consumed by forest fires, leading to erosion that would silt up the river and the dam.

But H. Stanley Marshall, the president and chief executive of Fortis, which also holds a majority stake in Belize Electricity Ltd., said the critics were "talking without the facts."

"Our position has been and continues to be that we will develop it if it is economically feasible and environmentally acceptable," he said. "We are going through an environmental assessment process to determine if there is significant impact on wildlife. Until it is completed, we are not in a position to comment, and neither are they."

Lynn Young, the president of Belize Electricity, faulted the environmental groups for refusing to budge.

"The trouble is, whatever we do as an electric company will impact the environment," he said. "We thought getting away from diesel was the right thing to do. Whatever we do, you have to face the fact that it is not a question of not affecting the environment, but how well we can manage our activities."

While the public response to the dam plan has been muted, the standoff between environmentalists and developers and government officials has become so heated that some local opponents of the dam say they have become targets for retaliation.

Kimo Jolly, a teacher and environmentalist, said he had been dismissed from his teaching job recently after holding a seminar that touched on the dam as well as the proposed sale of Belize's water authority to overseas investors.

For much of the last year Ms. Matola has been fighting the government's proposal to put a regional waste landfill near her zoo and its environmental education center, both of which she said would be devastated.

"They're angry at me," Ms. Matola said. "Somebody in government said to me, `Look, Sharon, you have to understand that this is a very complex issue and complex financial arrangements have already been made.' Yes, I might lose, but at least I can look in the mirror and say I tried to do everything I could to do the right thing."

---

Mrs. Whitman Stands Firm

March 2, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/02/opinion/02FRI3.html

Christie Whitman has begun her tenure as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency in fine fashion by upholding a set of vitally important clean air rules imposed by her predecessor, Carol Browner. The rules are aimed at eventually reducing pollution from diesel-powered trucks and buses by more than 90 percent. Environmentalists have described the rules as the biggest step toward healthier air since the removal of lead from gasoline in the 1970's. Buses and heavy-duty trucks account for just 6 percent of all miles driven in the United States, but they cause much of the smog and at least half the soot in cities like New York, where the health benefits will be greatest.

Mrs. Whitman had supported the new rules as governor of New Jersey. But since assuming her new duties, she has been lobbied heavily by a coalition of industries, mainly oil producers and refiners, to weaken the rules. The rules will force producers to virtually eliminate sulfur from fuel, which in turn may require costly retooling of refineries. The White House had also asked Mrs. Whitman to reassess the rules as part of a broader review of a host of regulations announced by President Clinton in his final days in office.

Mrs. Whitman listened to all sides and then told President Bush that the rules' benefits were well worth their costs to industry, and that Ms. Browner had given industry a generous time frame, six years, in which to comply. Mrs. Whitman also knew that without rules like these it would be almost impossible to meet the new health standards for cleaner air upheld by the Supreme Court on Monday.

The new E.P.A. boss will face other tough clean air decisions down the road. There is a pressing need for more stringent controls on mercury emissions and on older, coal-fired power plants that contribute heavily to smog, especially in the eastern United States. But this early decision is an encouraging sign of her resolve.

---

Precautions Against Foot-and-Mouth Disease Continue

March 2, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Britain-Livestock-Disease.html

LONDON (AP) -- Ireland called off its biggest St. Patrick's Day parade and Scotland quarantined Dolly, the cloned sheep, as foot-and-mouth disease spread across the British Isles.

But the British government said Friday that a week of restrictions on the movement of livestock was paying off, and it planned to allow some healthy animals to be slaughtered for meat.

Prime Minister Tony Blair said all cases of the livestock virus in the United Kingdom, 36 so far, could be traced to a single farm.

``At the moment, each of the cases identified, even in Northern Ireland and Scotland, are all traceable back to the one farm, the origin of it, in Northumberland,'' he said.

Agriculture officials confirmed six new cases Thursday, including the first in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

The disease sickens only cloven-hoofed creatures but can be spread by anything that moves.

Organizers of St. Patrick's Day festivities in Dublin heeded a government plea and called off the country's biggest annual event -- a parade through the capital's streets that was expected to draw 500,000 spectators from across the country.

The cancellation came late Thursday after an emergency meeting of the festival committee, amid fears the virus could be spread by foot traffic.

The farming-intensive Irish Republic, desperate to avoid the disease, also called off all weekend sporting events. Britain's biggest dog show, Crufts, was also canceled.

Foot-and-mouth disease has not yet been found in the Irish Republic. But a case confirmed Thursday at a farm just inside the border of Northern Ireland prompted fears that it could spread south.

Irish police on Friday sealed off a farm in County Louth, about 20 miles south of the border, out of concern that sheep there had been in contact with animals at the tainted farm in the North. The Kildare Chilling Co. meat processing plant was also shut down for similar reasons.

``For the past 10 days, we have been addressing a crisis which carries with it a once-in-a-generation threat,'' Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern told the country's parliament.

With the virus already confirmed at two locations in Scotland, the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh quarantined Dolly the sheep, the first cloned mammal, and closed its doors to visitors.

In parts of Britain, consumers were beginning to see meat shortages in supermarkets after a weeklong ban on the movement of livestock. Blair said the restrictions ``had made a dramatic difference to 1967,'' when nearly half a million animals were destroyed after an outbreak of foot-and-mouth.

Thousands of British-exported animals have been destroyed in France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, although no cases have yet been found. China banned imports of some British livestock Friday.

On Thursday, Portugal announced anyone arriving from the United Kingdom would have to dip their shoes in disinfectant. In French ports, authorities sprayed the tires of arriving trucks with disinfectant. In Cyprus, passengers from Britain had to walk over a disinfectant-treated carpet.

In New Zealand, a woman who returned home from Britain without disclosing that she had visited a Scottish farm was facing possible criminal charges Friday.

The woman, Jenny Wood, is being questioned over an alleged false declaration on a quarantine questionnaire that asks, among other things, whether people entering New Zealand have visited a farm in the last 30 days.

---

FOOT-AND-MOUTH MEASURES

March 2, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/02/world/02BRIE.html?pagewanted=all

BRITAIN: Foot-and-mouth disease spread to farms in Scotland as the Continent began taking further precautions against it. In France, the rail shuttle that carries cars and trucks through the Channel Tunnel said it would begin requiring all vehicles leaving Britain to roll through disinfectant first. In Britain, where hunting and many sports events have been canceled, the Kennel Club said it was postponing this year's Crufts dog show, which had been set for Birmingham in March. Sarah Lyall (NYT)

---

FEAR OF MEAT DISEASES IMPACTS BRITS' LIVES:

Fri, 02 Mar 2001
Morrock News,
Fast, free and independent http://morrock.com

Tourists from the rest of Europe are canceling vacations in England, and many Britons themselves have abandoned walks in the countryside. Fishing, fox-hunting and horse racing are banned. Organizers are discussing cancelation of St. Patrick's Day events in Dublin. On Thursday, Britain's biggest dog show was called off. German officials are seizing sandwiches brought into the country by airline travelers from Britain; France says it will disinfect cars arriving from Britain via the English Channel tunnel. All this in response to a nationwide outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, which threatens the livestock industry even though it rarely affects humans and isn't always fatal to animals. The disease can be spread on clothing, shoes and food, and even by the wind. The severe reaction is partly a recognition that Britain moved too slowly during the earlier spread of the far more vicious mad-cow disease.

---

Regulations without end

March 2, 2001
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-house-200132182522.htm

Only in Washington could the idea that cost is irrelevant be taken seriously. This week, however, the U.S. Supreme court unanimously decreed that with respect to a key emissions regulation, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) didn't have to consider the costs of its implementation.

The high court said the law requires only consideration of "public health." Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that the language of the original 1970 Clean Air Act "unambiguously bars cost considerations from (being used as a part of) the (regulatory) process and thus ends the matter for us as well as the EPA." Thus the fault here lies with Congress not the high court, which declined an invitation to judicial activism to rewrite the statute.

Still, it's worth noting that EPA does not have a free hand when it comes to issuing regulations. Lost in the cheers over the ruling from environmentalists and hoots from industry and sound-science groups is language that Mr. Scalia mentions in his majority opinion and that Justice Stephen Breyer cites in his concurring opinion. The pertinent section of the clean air statute, Mr. Scalia says, "we interpret as requiring the EPA to set air quality standards at the level that is 'requisite' - that is, not lower or higher than is necessary - to protect the public health with an adequate margin of safety." That raises a question, and perhaps grounds for legal challenge, as to which Clean Air Act regulations are actually requisite for the protection of public health.

Justice Breyer elaborates on the issue. The court's interpretation of the clean air statute does not require the agency to eliminate every risk, no matter how slight, at any cost, however large it may be, he says. It does not require that the world be free of all risk-taking, which Justice Breyer says is an impossible and even "undesirable" goal. It is certainly within the discretion of the agency administrator to avoid issuing regulations "ruinous" to industry.

Given that the high court has remanded the case to the appeals court, it will be interesting to see if anyone challenges the agency's regulations on the basis that they aren't requisite for public health. Just because the agency has discretion to avoid issuing rules unjustifiable on health grounds, doesn't mean it won't.

In the late 1990s, EPA unilaterally altered existing standards defining "unhealthful" air downward. Overnight, areas that had been considered to have excellent or perfectly healthful air quality were designated "non-attainment" areas - and subject to new, increasingly stringent anti-pollution measures that included restrictions on the use of outdoor barbecues and power equipment, such as lawn mowers. It did so notwithstanding the fact that air quality today nationwide is better than at any time since the 1970s. And all of this was done on the basis of a theoretical benefit to a relative handful of severe asthmatics, the elderly, and others with cardiopulmonary and respiratory distress. It also did so notwithstanding the unfortunate reality that the elderly and those afflicted with severe pulmonary and respiratory disease are not likely to breathe any easier on 90-100 degree July days, no matter what EPA says or does.

Many members of Congress may have hoped the courts would strike down what they themselves made possible in passing the clean air statute. This court ruling doesn't completely close the door to that possibility. Still, it would be better if Congress hadn't made the court fight necessary in the first place.

---

Green after all

March 2, 2001
Washington Times
John McCaslin
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inbeltway.htm

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman has issued one of her first memos to EPA staff, seeking to allay fears about President Bush's commitment to the environment.

Prior to departing for Trieste, Italy, for the Group of Eight Environmental Ministerial Meeting, Mrs. Whitman shared her thoughts on Mr. Bush's budget request, which calls for $7.3 billion in EPA funding - an increase of $56 million over last year's budget request, yet still below last year's budget.

"Although the request is below last year's enacted budget, that largely reflects the elimination of unrequested earmarks added in last year by Congress," Mrs. Whitman explains.

She says EPA's core operating programs are funded "at the second-highest level in history -$3.7 billion."

To emphasize the administration's pledge to the environment, Mrs. Whitman this week decided to leave in place a March 19, 2001, effective date for the new rule on diesel fuel, to help reduce emissions from large trucks and buses.

As for rumors of EPA layoffs, she says Mr. Bush's new budget "caps" the agency at its current work-force level "and will result in a reduction in our ceiling. But I want to assure you that there will not be any layoffs in EPA staff as a result of this budget."

John McCaslin, a nationally syndicated columnist, can be reached at 202/636-3284 or by e-mail: mccasl@twtmail.com.

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How can a real gent tell the lady no?

March 2, 2001
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/national/pruden.htm

George W. can't even get a square meal without bumping a nose or two out of joint.

"Why," asks a troubled reader, a denizen of Washington's Green Book (and one of several who called similarly troubled), "would George W. take his wife to dinner at Katharine Graham's, of all places, for their very first night out in Washington society? She surrounded him with all the tired, old out-of-work liberal Democratic hacks who think he's a jerk. You notice that she didn't invite any of his friends. Doesn't he know what those people really think of him?"

Well, yes, he probably does, but all the little Bushes are taught good manners and good breeding stays with a man. How can a gent tell a lady no? Besides, Mrs. Graham is famous for cooking up the best collards, ham hocks and cornbread on R Street. She often greets her guests with the evidence on her apron. So we shouldn't begrudge the man a break from government-issue cuisine. Besides, women are curious about such things, and Laura might not get another chance to see the inside of the Graham mansion.

Another reader sends along a license-plate holder, no doubt meant to cover up the sophomoric propaganda on the District of Columbia tags, emblazoned with the legend: "Bush Administrations: Our Daley Bread Since 1989." (Sounds fuzzy to me, too.) He appends a plaintive note: "Use it before W. goes 'kinder, gentler' on us."

Some of George W.'s real friends, the ones who stuck with him through the Florida recounts when others were practicing to be gracious losers, notice these little things, and it makes them nervous. Some of them notice bigger things, too.

Colin Powell, a good man new to the diplomatic deceptions of the Middle East, where deceit, double-dealing and duplicity were invented, returns from his first trip as secretary of state to announce that the tough talk about Saddam Hussein was just tough talk. His boss bombed Iraq, sending Saddam an unmistakable message, and just before he left for Cairo and points east the general had an unequivocal message for Baghdad about how it would be absolutely, positively necessary to resume the inspections for evidence of nuclear arms-making before there could be any talk of lifting the sanctions: "Let the inspectors in . . . " he said. "Until [Saddam] does that, I think we have to be firm. We have to be vigilant and I will be carrying this message to my friends in the region."

Well, maybe not that firm, or that vigilant. Once he heard the Arab bluster, which is enough to rattle any sane man, the secretary of state agreed that maybe the sanctions could be eased a little. But yesterday the Arabs were telling him to stick it in his ear, and Saddam says he won't allow the inspectors back under any circumstances.

Christie Whitman, the new administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, sends George W. a rewrite of what he thinks about global-warming hype. "He has been very clear that the science is good on global warming," Mrs. Whitman told interviewer Robert Novak on CNN. Mr. Novak told her, nicely, that she was wrong and reminded her that George W. spent a good part of last year mocking Al Gore's faith in shaky science. Does George W. know what he thinks, or does Christie Whitman know what he thinks?

Some of George W.'s friends think they see a pattern. John Ashcroft goes to Capitol Hill to tell the Congressional Black Caucus that they know better than he does what he ought to think of racial profiling. Mr. Ashcroft, sounding as if he had found a memorandum of talking points left behind by Janet Reno, says he had talked to his boss about racial profiling and if Congress doesn't do what the Congressional Black Caucus tells it to do, why, he'll do it himself.

"This is as big a problem as you can get," he says, sounding like a thoroughly housebroken attorney general. Some of us, black and white, thought the nation's security or finding a cure for cancer or AIDS could be a bigger problem than dismantling an abusive roadblock on the highway.

You can't blame conservatives for noticing little things. They've learned that Republicans tend to leap under beds and jump into closets at the first rumble of distant Democratic thunder, and it's true that the graveyards of Washington are full of preppies who imagined they could hustle The Washington Post. And it's true that George W. is a Yalie, where arugula and little fish sticks are regarded as red-blooded fare.

But he's a graduate as well of public schools in Midland, Texas, where ham, ram, lamb, bull, beef and bear are routine grub. George W.'s nervous friends should chill out. Let him enjoy a plate or two of Katharine Graham's collards, adjusted to Georgetown taste. He's only been the president for a month. We shouldn't get our feelings hurt. Not yet.

Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Times.

---

Bush budget boosts EPA grants to states, tribes

March 2, 2001
Planet Ark
by Patrick Connole
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9955&newsDate=2-Mar-2001

WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush's budget for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released on Wednesday would give a record of more than $1 billion to states and tribes to administer environmental programs and would clean up abandoned industrial sites plagued by legal battles.

The White House asked Congress to give the EPA $7.3 billion for the 2002 fiscal year. That's $499 million less than Congress approved for 2001, but $56 million more than the Clinton administration had requested for 2001.

The Bush administration said the reduction was "entirely due to the elimination of unrequested earmarks."

The sketchy budget proposal for the EPA did not address power plant emissions regulations, livestock manure run-off rules, the phase-out of pesticides dangerous to children or other controversial EPA programs.

The budget blueprint will be fleshed out in April with specific details for all federal spending programs. After that, Congress will spend months debating and rewriting budgets for all federal agencies for fiscal 2002, which begins Oct. 1.

The EPA proposal would spend more than $1 billion on program grants for state and tribal governments.

EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman praised the grants, saying the plan would both protect the environment and help states.

"It is these grants that help states administer programs delegated to them under federal environmental statutes. As I can attest, states enforce most environmental laws through delegated state programs," she said.

Whitman was the governor of New Jersey before being named EPA administrator by Bush.

BROWNFIELDS A PRIORITY

EPA will also work to let localities craft solutions to their own unique needs, notably in areas like so-called "brownfield" cleanups, old and abandoned industrial sites.

"Legal obstacles to cleanups should be removed, the brownfields tax incentive made permanent and federal assistance made more effective by cutting red tape and reforming existing funding mechanisms," the budget said.

The White House budget document also said it would "redirect resources" to achieve environmental goals. "To reach those goals, EPA will place a greater emphasis on innovative approaches to environmental protection, such as market-based incentives," it said.

Other highlights of the Bush 2002 EPA plan included:

- An increase of $500 million from the 2001 budget for waste-water grants to $1.3 billion.

- $2 billion in funds for the Clean Water State Revolving Loan Fund, with a portion to be used for new sewer overflow control grants.

- An increase in state enforcement grants to let states take more control over their needs and determine the proper mix between compliance assistance and prosecution.

- An effort to improve the role of science in decision-making by having scientific information and analysis help in directing policy and establishing priorities.

-------- genetics

New Worries of Planting Altered Corn

March 2, 2001
New York Times
By ELIZABETH BECKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/02/business/02CORN.html

WASHINGTON, March 1 - The Agriculture Department asked today for an accounting of the amount of seed corn tainted with a genetically engineered variety of corn that caused a nationwide recall of food products last year.

In continuing tests at the request of the department, seed companies are finding fresh traces of StarLink, the genetically modified corn made by Aventis CropScience, in small amounts of seed meant for sale to farmers, government and industry officials said today.

Angela Dansby, spokeswoman for the American Seed Trade Association, said, "Our members have been doing tests for StarLink since last fall and, yes, they have found new traces."

With spring planting approaching, the government and the food industry said they had hoped to prevent farmers from using seed corn contaminated with StarLink, which had been approved for animal feed but had not been approved human consumption because of concerns that it might cause allergic reactions.

The contamination caused a costly disruption in the nation's grain-handling system and forced the recall of more than 300 kinds of corn chips, taco shells and other foods.

After a meeting today of representatives of the seed and food industry and the government agencies overseeing biotechnology for agriculture, Ms. Dansby said the trade association had agreed to canvas its 200 members and find out how many bags of seed were contaminated and the value of that seed.

She said the Agriculture Department wanted the results by Friday.

Kevin Herglotz, the department spokesman, said: "We've urged the seed companies to test and monitor the seed for StarLink. We've urged the farmers to request verification that their seed is not contaminated."

Mr. Herglotz said today's gathering was part of a series of meetings established last year by Dan Glickman, the agriculture secretary, to contain the spread of seed contaminated by StarLink.

Last autumn, the government prodded Aventis into starting a $100 million program to buy as much of the StarLink harvest as possible, and now nearly every major food and agriculture company is testing for Cry9C, the protein produced by StarLink.

In November, Aventis offered to help seed companies test and screen for StarLink contamination, and the companies agreed.

Agricultural officials said today that although it was unclear how the seed became tainted, many suspected cross-pollination. Keeping StarLink segregated - field to factory to consumer - from corn that is meant for human consumption has proved difficult, officials say.

"There's no structure to keep the StarLink corn separate from other corn," said Charles Hurburgh, a professor of agricultural engineering at Iowa State University. "The source of the contamination is likely to be crosspollination, where a field is pollinated by StarLink corn from faraway fields."

Mr. Hurburgh estimated that less than 5 percent of the corn seed - or about one million bags - would have to be taken off the market.

To the relief of officials, that seed had yet to be sold to farmers, much less sold to countries with more stringent regulation of genetically modified agricultural products.

Japan, one of the largest markets for American corn, rejected shipments in January after finding traces of the genetically modified corn. Japan imports about 4 million tons of corn for foods intended for humans and 12 million tons of corn for animal feed.

"I do not expect that this will have any impact on our overseas sales," said Val Giddings, vice president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization. "The companies have enormous incentive to test and know it won't be sent overseas."

-------- imf / world bank

IMF inclined to grant billions to Turkey

March 2, 2001
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-20013220549.htm

ANKARA, Turkey - The International Monetary Fund has agreed in principle to extend billions of dollars in loans to Turkey to help it overcome its latest financial crisis, a newspaper reported yesterday.

IMF officials were in Turkey waiting for the government to appraise the cost of the crisis before determining how much was needed, the newspaper said.

-------- police

Not All Criminal Cases Are Black and White

March 2, 2001
BIZARRE NEWS

BOSTON - They were supposed to be looking for a WHITE man named James M. Parker who was 30 YEARS OLD (they had a sketch) but instead found themselves a 55 YEAR OLD BLACK man named James E. Parker and this, apparently, was close enough. Parker says they wouldn't listen when he tried telling them they had the wrong man.

---

Attorney General Seeks End to Racial Profiling

March 2, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/02/national/02NATI.html

WASHINGTON, March 1 - Attorney General John Ashcroft urged Congress today to take up legislation that would end racial profiling, in which law enforcement officials consider a person's race or ethnicity in making traffic stops and conducting searches or other investigations.

On Tuesday, President Bush issued a memorandum to Mr. Ashcroft directing him to work with Congress on developing ways to collect data from federal law enforcement agencies and to communicate with state and local officials to "assess the extent and nature of such practices."

If Congress does not produce legislation or act in some way within six months, Mr. Ashcroft said, "I'll simply launch a study of my own, because I think this is an issue of such importance and magnitude that we should proceed with it to make sure that we do what is necessary to correct any abuse and to inventory the nature of this problem."

---

Ashcroft demands profiling study

March 2, 2001
Washington Times
By Steve Miller
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-20013223242.htm

Attorney General John Ashcroft said yesterday that he will step in if lawmakers cannot quickly authorize a comprehensive study of racial profiling among law enforcement agencies.

The new attorney general gave Congress an ultimatum: Get some legislation passed within six months that will find a way to collect racial profiling data, or "I'll simply launch a study of my own, because I think this is an issue of such importance and magnitude that we should proceed with it to make sure that we do what's necessary to correct any abuse and to inventory the nature of this problem," he said.

Mr. Ashcroft noted at the outset of his 45-minute news conference that he was following a directive issued by President Bush, who criticized racial profiling in a joint address to Congress on Tuesday night.

"It's wrong, and we will end it in America," said Mr. Bush, who ordered Mr. Ashcroft to review the controversial practice.

Mr. Ashcroft furthered the urgency of the edict yesterday."I believe that the Congress can and will respond constructively. And I will work with them to make sure that they do respond constructively," he said.

Racial profiling is the practice of making a traffic or personal stop of an individual in which race is used as a factor. It is already prohibited under civil rights statutes.

Minority groups and law enforcement agencies agree that the practice still exists, although a remedy has yet to be determined.

Civil rights activists look to instances in several states, including New Jersey and Pennsylvania, as examples of profiling. They have drawn attention to what they call "disproportionate" rates of traffic stops of black drivers.

And their leaders have decried failed efforts to halt the purported practice.

"Instances abound . . . of stops ending in death," noted Hilary Shelton, director of the Washington, D.C., office of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Mr. Ashcroft said that previous bills, such as those introduced last congressional session by Rep. John Conyers Jr., Michigan Democrat, and Sen. Russell D. Feingold, Wisconsin Democrat, were well-intentioned, despite the fact that both measures died before a vote.

Mr. Ashcroft, who was criticized during his nomination hearings for perceived racial insensitivity, hoped that any legislation would allow the Justice Department to analyze traffic-stop statistics, which already are being compiled by local law enforcement agencies.

He said that when he was a senator, he heard of disturbing incidents involving profiling.

"I have long believed that to treat people solely on the basis of their race was a violation of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution," Mr. Ashcroft said yesterday.

His promised order may have more force than an executive order issued by President Clinton in June 1999.

Mr. Clinton told the Justice and Transportation departments at that time to develop a proposal within 120 days to collect data on the race, gender and ethnicity of people they stop.

The effort never achieved the desired effect of ending the practice of profiling.

The attorney general yesterday also released a letter dated Wednesday to Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, Utah Republican and chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

"I urge you in your capacity [as chairman] . . . to consider quickly legislation authorizing the Department of Justice to conduct a study of traffic stops data," the letter said.

Mr. Ashcroft on Wednesday visited with a group of Congressional Black Caucus members and promised them that he would attack profiling. His vow was met with skepticism from some of the lawmakers, many of whom continue to be wary of his perceived insensitivity on issues of race.

Mr. Ashcroft was asked yesterday if that skepticism concerned him or would affect his efforts to confront racial profiling.

Mr. Ashcroft said that such reluctance to embrace the administration's endeavor was "unfortunate" and that it denigrated the work of Mr. Conyers and Mr. Feingold, along with his own commitment on the issue. Mr. Ashcroft responded to skeptics by saying that "my own involvement with this over time, and the president's expressed displeasure with racial profiling over a substantial period of time, I think suggests a far different conclusion."

Mr. Shelton of the NAACP said Mr. Ashcroft's apparent zeal to carry out the president's directive is hopeful and, if it comes to fruition, will be an enormous stride for the new administration.

"We are very pleased with what we've heard so far," Mr. Shelton said. "And we hope we can move forward to get a credible collection of data."

His sentiments were echoed by others. Mr. Feingold, in a statement, said that "we are gaining momentum in the struggle to end racial profiling."

Mr. Conyers, in a similar statement, stressed that "it is gratifying to me that the attorney general has taken a step toward developing a federal policy to study racial profiling."

But, he added, partisanship has thwarted his efforts in the past. "For too many years, the Republican-controlled Congress has blocked my legislation on this matter," Mr. Conyers said.

-------- spying

FBI agents to undergo more polygraphs

03/02/2001
USA Today
By Kevin Johnson
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-03-01-polygraphs.htm

WASHINGTON - Hundreds of FBI agents with access to sensitive intelligence information will face more polygraph tests under an order by FBI Director Louis Freeh and Attorney General John Ashcroft. The move is the first change in U.S. intelligence policy since last week's arrest of FBI agent Robert Hanssen, who is accused of spying for Moscow over the past 15 years. Hanssen's arrest exposed several vulnerabilities within the FBI's counter-intelligence system, including the bureau's longstanding reluctance to give periodic polygraph tests to agents with access to classified information.

Hanssen, a 25-year FBI veteran and counter-intelligence specialist, had not had a polygraph since joining the bureau.

The expanded testing program will be done on an interim basis until a panel led by former FBI and CIA director William Webster finishes an analysis of the FBI's intelligence operation. Webster endorsed the plan for more FBI polygraphs. He added that there is an urgent need to more closely monitor how often agents use secure computer databases.

The additional testing will bring the FBI more in line with the CIA, which routinely gives polygraphs to its agents. Until now, only new FBI agents and those working a few sensitive cases faced periodic tests.

John Sennett, president of the FBI Agents Association, said the group has opposed more polygraphs, fearing "that agents would be unfairly sidelined by inconclusive exams."

Ashcroft, the nation's chief law enforcement officer, said he and Freeh are examining other ways to better audit agents' access to classified information.

Hanssen is accused of providing Moscow with material outlining U.S. counter-intelligence methods. He also helped Moscow identify three Russian agents who were aiding the United States. Two of them were executed in Moscow shortly after being identified.

Ashcroft said more testing is not "a sure way" to catch spies in U.S. government, but said he and Freeh agreed to it "because of the (security) risk involved."

In a meeting with the Senate intelligence committee this week, Ashcroft, Freeh and CIA Director George Tenet discussed ways to keep sensitive information safer. Some senators stressed more polygraphs.

---

downfall of accused FBI double-agent

Friday, March 2, 2001,
Slate
By Maureen Cosgrove, Jeremy Derfner and Amanda Fazzone
http://slate.msn.com/OtherMags/01-02-26/OtherMags.asp?Show=2/28/2001

Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report, March 5 Both covers recount the downfall of accused FBI double-agent Robert Hanssen. Newsweek interviews associates of the counterintelligence expert whom the Russians code-named "B" and "Ramon." ... U.S. News quotesformer insiders who say the bulk of the FBI affidavit in support of Hanssen's arrest came from a single source. Says one, "There's definitely a body attached to all that paper."

http://www.msnbc.com/news/535672.asp

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/010305/spy.htm

---

CIA's role in helping to topple the Milosevic regime in Serbia.

Friday, March 2, 2001,
Slate
By Maureen Cosgrove, Jeremy Derfner and Amanda Fazzone
http://slate.msn.com/OtherMags/01-02-26/OtherMags.asp?Show=2/28/2001

Instead of the traditional Bondian high-tech high jinks, the agency helped finance a Western style political campaign. The CIA helped the student opposition group, Otpor, with tracking polls, Get Out the Vote efforts, and snappy slogans for T-shirts and bumper stickers. All this proved that in a globalized society, covert action simply doesn't work (if it ever did). -J.D.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0103.thompson.html

---

F.B.I. Agent Accused as Spy Had Active Swiss Bank Account

March 2, 2001
New York Times
By JAMES RISEN and PHILIP SHENON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/02/national/02SPY.html?pagewanted=all

WASHINGTON, March 1 - Robert Philip Hanssen, the F.B.I. agent arrested last month on charges of spying for Moscow, carried a current statement for a Swiss bank account in his briefcase on the day of his arrest, prosecutors said in court papers filed today.

The prosecutors, arguing that Mr. Hanssen should not be released on bail, said that the bank account was maintained at Credit Suisse in Zurich and that the statement was found in his briefcase at his home along with a valid passport and other financial documents, suggesting that he was ready to flee on short notice.

The amount of money in the account was not revealed in the court papers, but the documents suggested that it was not much.

"Clearly, Hanssen's Swiss bank account was anything but innocent, regardless of its current balance," the Justice Department said in the papers submitted in Federal District Court in Alexandria, Va., near Mr. Hanssen's home.

The discovery that Mr. Hanssen had an active bank account in Switzerland may help to explain what happened to some of the $600,000 in cash that he is purported to have received from Moscow.

In court papers earlier this week, the Justice Department revealed that it had found statements from two Swiss banks - Credit Suisse and Bank Leu - in searches of Mr. Hanssen's home and office.

But it was unclear until today that the statements were from active bank accounts, or that they were maintained in Switzerland, where bank secrecy laws might shield his identity.

"Of course, possession of a Swiss bank account, by itself, would mean little," the prosecutors said in the documents today. "In this case, however, it was certainly not by itself. It must be viewed in the context of this espionage conspiracy."

Mr. Hanssen, who has suggested through his lawyer that he will plead not guilty to the espionage charges, is accused of providing Moscow with volumes of highly classified information over 15 years.

In their papers, prosecutors stepped up their threat to seek the harshest penalty against Mr. Hanssen - the death penalty - or life imprisonment without parole.

"The defendant's compromises of classified information included substantial material classified at the top secret level," they said. "If the government did not seek the death penalty, the defendant would certainly face a true life sentence."

The question of what Mr. Hanssen, a trained accountant, may have done with the purported proceeds had perplexed his friends and former colleagues at the F.B.I. Mr. Hanssen, the father of six children, lived in a modest home, drove old cars and enjoyed no obvious luxuries.

In response to the Hanssen case, Attorney General John Ashcroft said today that he and Louis J. Freeh, director of the F.B.I., have agreed to use polygraph testing more often in monitoring agents involved in counterintelligence.

Mr. Ashcroft told reporters that the bureau's computers would now be audited to check on any unusual activity. Mr. Hanssen is believed to have evaded detection in part by checking F.B.I. computers to see if he was under suspicion.

Mr. Ashcroft said that he knew that polygraph tests were not completely reliable and estimated that about 15 percent showed a false positive. He also noted that they had failed to uncover betrayal in the past, a reference to Aldrich H. Ames, the C.I.A. spy who passed at least one polygraph test after he began spying for the Soviet Union.

"Nevertheless, I believe that there are applications for polygraphs that are important," Mr. Ashcroft said. "The director and I have agreed that because of the national security involved and the risks involved and the very important consequences of the breaches, that we should elevate the use of polygraphs in certain cases."

Meanwhile, officials said the Bush administration was still considering whether to order the expulsion of any Russian intelligence officers as a protest over the Hanssen case.

Russian intelligence officers stationed in the Russian Embassy in Washington spy in the United States while posing as diplomats. They have diplomatic immunity against prosecution in the United States, but the American government can demand that they leave the country. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has not decided whether to do so, a senior State Department official said. No Russian intelligence officers involved in the case were arrested along with Mr. Hanssen.

After the 1994 arrest of Mr. Ames on charges of spying, the Clinton administration expelled the Washington Rezident, or station chief, of the Russia's foreign intelligence service, the S.V.R.. In response, the Russians expelled the C.I.A.'s Moscow station chief.

The last case in which the State Department ordered the expulsion of a Russian intelligence officer was in December 1999. In that case, Stanislav Grusev, an intelligence officer operating under diplomatic cover, was ordered to leave the country after being arrested outside the State Department with electronic equipment for monitoring a listening device hidden in a conference room.

---

CIA Using 'Data Mining' Technology to Find Nuggets

March 2, 2001
Associated Press
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/technology/tech-cia-dc.html?searchpv=reuters

LANGLEY, Va. (Reuters) - The CIA, faced with a daily avalanche of information, is using new ``data mining'' technology to find useful nuggets within thousands of documents and broadcasts in different languages.

The spy agency must sift through a barrage of information from both classified and unclassified sources in varied formats such as hard text, digital text, imagery, and audio in more than 35 languages.

The Office of Advanced Information Technology (AIT), part of the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology, is focused on finding solutions to the ``volume challenge.''

``We're not growing at a fast rate, but the amount of information that comes into this place is growing by leaps and bounds,'' Larry Fairchild, AIT director, said in an interview this week in a basement demonstration room at Central Intelligence Agency headquarters.

``How do we give folks technologies so that they are able to handle the big increase in information they're going to have to deal with on a day-to-day basis?'' he said.

One computer tool called ``Oasis'' can convert audio signals from television and radio broadcasts into text.

It can distinguish accented English for greater accuracy in the transcription, whether the speaker is male or female, and whether one male or female voice is different from another of the same gender.

At the left of the screen of a transcribed broadcast are labels ``Male 1,'' ``Female 1,'' ``Male 2,'' next to sentences.

If one voice is labeled with a name, the computer from then on will put that name on anything else with that same voice.

So for example if a broadcast by Saudi-exile Osama bin Laden, whom the CIA considers a major threat to Americans, was transcribed and labeled, every time his voice was detected the computer would automatically label it.

MACHINE TRANSLATOR

If the machine translation appears off, the user can with a mouse click hear the actual broadcast. For example, the demonstration showed a transcription that read ``latest danger from hell'' but the audio said ``latest danger from el nino.''

The computer cuts down on the time it would take a person to transcribe a half-hour broadcast to 10 minutes from up to 90 minutes, a CIA employee conducting the demonstration said.

The CIA is planning to have Oasis developed for different languages such as Arabic and Chinese.

It also finds similar meanings of words being searched, for example a broadcast might not mention ``terrorism'' but might say ''car bombing,'' which the computer would tag as ``terrorism'' so that anyone searching for that category would find it.

Currently the CIA's Foreign Broadcast Information Service is using it in one Asian city and intends to have it in other regions such as the Middle East this year.

Another computer tool, ``FLUENT,'' enables a user to conduct computer searches of documents that are in a language the user does not understand.

The user can put English words into the search field, such as ''nuclear weapons,'' and documents in languages such as Russian, Chinese and Arabic pop up.

The system will then translate the document and if it is seen as useful, the analyst can send it to a human translator for more precision.

Languages that FLUENT can translate into English include Chinese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Serbo-Croatian and Ukrainian.

``Data mining'' tools are used to extract key pieces of information from a variety of intelligence traffic such as on the flow of illegal drugs and also to keep track of illicit financial transactions.

Tools were developed to help CIA analysts on Iraq, who were asked to analyze the agency's holdings on Iraqi war crime violations, about 1.2 million documents going back to 1979.

The Text Data Mining tool extracted and indexed all words in the data so for example if an analyst was asked whether Iraq ever used anthrax as a weapon, the analyst could open the tool and find anthrax in the automatically generated index.

That tool also counts the frequency of word use and can handle various spellings of the same Iraqi names or locations.

There is also ``gifting technology'' which gives the flavor of the key information of a document in a short paragraph, Fairchild said.

With the latest spy furor in the nation's capital, would any of the tools help catch a spy?

``Yes, some of the things we're doing can,'' Fairchild said without details. ``We're looking at better technologies to put in that area,'' he added.

Another intelligence official, on condition of anonymity, said: ``If they have this kind of technology to plumb the depths of open sources, you can imagine what kind of technologies they have to track down spies.''

--------

Bush Reorganizes National Security Council

March 2, 2001
SECRECY NEWS
http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nspd/nspd-1.htm

President Bush has placed his imprint on the structure of national security decision making with the issuance of his first National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD-1). The closely held document has not been formally released, but a copy was obtained by Secrecy News.

The new Directive preserves the NSC Principals Committee and the NSC Deputies Committee, which are the top-level interagency forums for deliberation on national security policy. But it abolishes President Clinton's system of Interagency Working Groups.

To replace them, the Directive establishes eleven Policy Coordination Committees (PCCs) on topics including Proliferation, Counterproliferation, and Homeland Defense; Intelligence and Counterintelligence; Counter-Terrorism and National Preparedness; and Records Access and Information Security.

(The word "counter-terrorism" is hyphenated in the Directive, but "counterproliferation" and "counterintelligence" are not.)

As a consequence of the new Directive, much of the Clinton Administration's prodigious security policy apparatus will be swept away, though portions of it will be reconstituted within the new Policy Coordination Committee framework. Thus, the functions of the Security Policy Board will be distributed among the new PCCs.

The new series of National Security Presidential Directives will replace both the presidential decision directives and the presidential review directives of past Administrations.

Although NSPD-1 is unclassified, the Bush Administration has declined to release it. But a copy of the seven page directive, obtained from a public-spirited source, is posted here:

---

The Ultimate Surveillance System?

Friday, March 2, 2001
International Herald Tribune
New York Times Service
Anne Eisenberg
http://www.iht.com/articles/12230.htm

AT&T Tracking Device Mimics Navigation Method Used by Bats

Harry Potter, the star of the children's book series, has a Marauder's Map, with tiny moving symbols that show the location of everyone in his school. It is very handy when he is out late at night solving mysteries and wants to avoid bumping into enemies.

Now scientists have devised a real map that has a lot in common with Harry's magic one. Visitors can see it at AT&T Laboratories in Cambridge, England, perhaps not far from Harry's fictional home, somewhere in England.

There, in a three-story, 10,000-square-foot space, AT&T staff members have developed a constantly updated map that can track people with ultrasound signals as they move through the building. It pinpoints their locations within inches, as long as they are wearing a transmitter the size of a key chain.

This ultrasound technology has a highly practical purpose: to track people moving through a hospital, factory or other building without encumbering them with computer gear. Since the system knows where the person is at all times, any nearby computer can be instructed to display the person's familiar desktop or data. It would be as if the desktop were following the person from machine to machine throughout the building.

The tagging of machines and people, and the coordination of these tags through a computer network, is one form of what is known as ubiquitous, or pervasive, computing. In such a world of networked buildings, communications and computer power would be constantly at hand as people moved around.

A doctor in a hospital would be able to call up important records quickly at a patient's bedside by using the nearest remote display.

For such technology to work, though, the system must be aware of exactly where the people are. It needs to know when someone walks over to a computer, telephone or microphone, not just when the person enters a room.

The system that AT&T Labs has developed is designed to do just that. "We wanted to be able to locate people very accurately," said Pete Steggles, one of the designers of the system, "but to limit the amount of stuff they had to carry - only your ID, really."

The ID Mr. Steggles speaks of is the linchpin of the location system. It is a device about 21/2 inches (6.4 centimeters) long that includes an ultrasound transmitter and a two-way radio. People who want to be part of the system carry these small devices.

The transmitters are also placed outside or on top of objects, like desktop computers, telephones and cameras, throughout the building.

The rest of the wireless system is embedded in the building, mainly in the form of ultrasound receivers tucked in every four feet or so above the tiles of the suspended ceiling. These receivers detect the ultrasound pulses emitted by the transmitters to locate people and equipment.

A detector that is mounted on the far side of the room registers an ultrasound pulse later than a detector just above an object.

"Using this differential timing information," Andy Hopper said, "it is possible to calculate the position of objects to about a cubic inch." Mr. Hopper is the managing director of the laboratory and an engineering professor at the University of Cambridge.

"Bats find their way around using much the same principle," he said, "so we called the system Active Bat."

Real bats send out high-frequency chirps, then navigate based on the location information they get from the reflected sound waves. With the AT&T system, the devices that are carried around (called bats by the researchers) emit the ultrasound chirps, and a high-speed network analyzes the signals it receives.

These devices easily fit into a pocket, but AT&T researchers put them in their pockets only when they want to make sure that the system cannot find them. Andy Ward, who helped develop the system, said, "You can just put them on a desk and walk away from them, too, if you don't want to be found." He said he wore his around his neck so he could be reached easily while moving around the building.

The central controller keeps its electronic eye out for any device that it knows is moving around the building, like the one that Mr. Ward wears. Each device is assigned a unique 48-bit address.

The central controller triggers the device with a radio signal, causing it to generate a click of ultrasound. At the same time, the computer resets the nearby ceiling receivers. Then it starts counting.

"You measure the times of flight of the sound from the bat to the ceiling receiver," Mr. Ward said. "Because we know the speed of sound in the air, we can calculate the distances of the bat to the receiver and by triangulation, find the three-dimensional position of the bat."

Steven Shafer, manager of the ubiquitous-computing research group at Microsoft, has seen the AT&T system several times. He said it was highly promising. "It's the only sensor that seems to rival the camera in terms of giving information about people and the world," he said.

AT&T is not yet making the ultrasound technology commercially available, although Mr. Steggles said many people had asked for it. "That's a few years away, once we've reduced the cost a bit by tinkering with it," he said.

-------- terrorism

Israel Chooses New Defense Minister

March 2, 2001
New York Times
By DEBORAH SONTAG
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/02/world/02CND-ISRAEL.html?pagewanted=all

JERUSALEM, March 2 - Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, an Iraqi-born former general who is considered a hawkish Laborite, was selected today by an internal Labor Party vote to be the next defense minister of Israel.

Mr. Ben-Eliezer is reported to have been Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon's choice among the three candidates that emerged for the post after Ehud Barak, the outgoing prime minister, declined to accept the job. But Mr. Sharon left it to the Labor Party's central committee, which is composed of over 1,600 members, to selects its eight ministers in a vote today in Tel Aviv.

Although he is a party colleague of Shimon Peres, who is to be the new foreign minister, Mr. Ben-Eliezer is considered closer ideologically to Mr. Sharon. The three men - Mr. Ben-Eliezer is the youngest at 65 - will form the decision-making nucleus on the fragile diplomatic and security front. Mr. Sharon aims to present his new government to the Parliament on Wednesday and to take office that day.

He moved toward that goal today by closing in principle on a deal with two right-wing parties whose membership in the coalition makes the Labor Party nervous. Under the deal, Rehavam Zeevi, a extreme rightist, would assume the post of Tourism Minister; Avigdor Lieberman, who leads the larger of two Russian immigrant parties, would become minister of infrastructures.

In a country where security is now the primary concern, Mr. Ben-Eliezer will assume a critical post as defense minister.

For several months, Mr. Ben-Eliezer has stated strongly and unequivocally that the Palestinian Authority should be held accountable for all violence against Israelis, and that every Palestinian attack should be dealt with forcefully by Israel.

After Thursday's bomb explosion aboard a taxi van in northern Israel, for instance, Mr. Ben-Eliezer said, "The rules of the game must be clear to the Palestinians. There has to be a continuous and consistent policy in Israel of striking at the terrorists and their masters, and this policy must hold until the Palestinian leadership understands that the only fighting it can do is across the negotiating table. The Palestinian leadership is responsible for the violence, and it should know that any attack on us will bring a counter-attack."

This expresses the prevailing view in Mr. Sharon's entourage as well, and an emerging view of the Israeli defense establishment. Earlier this week, Shaul Mofaz, the army chief of staff, drew fire from Israeli leftists and from Palestinians for describing the Palestinian Authority as becoming a "terrorist entity."

But his assessment reflects a broader shift in thinking.

"Previously much of the frustration about hard terrorism emanated from the fact that Arafat was not fighting the Islamic fundamentalist groups," said Dore Gold, a senior adviser to Mr. Sharon and former United Nations ambassador. "Now there is the realization that terror is coming from organizations under Arafat's control."

In the past, American officials have expressed doubt over Mr. Arafat's control over political factions. American, United Nations and other foreign diplomats are pressuring the Israelis to release to the Palestinians the taxes that it collects for them, saying that the government is on the verge of fiscal collapse and that such a breakdown would lead to anarchy in the West Bank and Gaza. The Palestinian Authority is the population's biggest employer, and for the last two months, it has only been able to make its payroll because of emergency foreign donations.

But Mr. Sharon's advisers believe that "reports of the financial breakdown of the Palestinian Authority are overstated," Mr. Gold said. "There is a concern that should Israel transfer money without obtaining first a serious reduction of violence if not a cessation, then that money will go to the salaries of those shooting at us."

Mr. Sharon's advisers are working on a plan that would "alleviate the problems of the Palestinian population" while pressuring the government to end attacks on Israel, Mr. Gold said. He said that he could not discuss specifics.

Political analysts believe that Mr. Sharon will face popular pressure to respond forcefully to attacks that occur after he takes office.

"Sharon will not be able to make do with the sort of retaliation that Barak used, which was moderate in Israeli eyes but rather extreme in the view of the international community," Chemi Shalev, a columnist, wrote in the Maariv newspaper. "After all, Sharon was brought in because he was the ultimate sheriff."

In the Gaza Strip today, Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian man who they said was laying a "device" that was believed to be a bomb. Palestinian officials said that the man was a mentally disabled vagrant, Mustafa Rimlawi, whom they doubted capable of such an act. He was wearing sandals and had a candy necklace in his pocket, they said.

In contrast to Mr. Ben-Eliezer, Mr. Peres, who shared a Nobel Prize for peacemaking with Yasir Arafat and the late Yitzhak Rabin, says, "We cannot put out fire with fire."

He has been asked repeatedly how he will fit into a hard-line government. He answers, in essence, that he expects to influence it to move moderately and prudently toward Mr. Sharon's state goal of peace.

"I was invited to be a partner, even if it is as a junior partner," Mr. Peres said in a newspaper interview published today. He said that he would, in effect, have veto power over Mr. Sharon's decisions: the threat of "leaving the government." And he said that he would do so if the Oslo interim peace agreement were "canceled," or if parts of the West Bank or Gaza Strip were "reconquered."

"A red line for me is using our military power without taking the political factor into account," Mr. Peres said. "I have already learned that a conflict between people cannot be settled with guns alone."

Mr. Peres, 77, was the only Labor Party candidate for foreign minister so his selection became official on Thursday. The party had voted to join Mr. Sharon's government earlier this week, but two key dovish figures, Shlomo Ben Ami, the outgoing foreign minister, and Yossi Beilin, the outgoing justice minister, dissented and then declined to join today's contest for ministries. Mr. Barak quit politics entirely after turning down Mr. Sharon's invitation to become defense minister.

The Labor Party selected eight ministers, whom a leftist politician jokingly referred to as "Peres and the seven dwarves" because of the relatively low profile of those besides Mr. Peres.

Mr. Ben-Eliezer, who emigrated from Iraq at the age of 14 and speaks Arabic, described himself today as one of the original seekers of peace. He said that he was among the first Israelis to travel to Tunis in 1994 to meet with Palestinian leaders in exile.

"I led the policy that stated that the battlefield must be the negotiating table," he told Israel Radio. "I am deeply sorry that as of September 28, they have turned things upside down and instead of sitting at the table, they chose a forum that is all blood." On that day, Mr. Sharon visited a holy site in Jerusalem, which enraged Palestinians and was followed by Palestinian protests and Israeli military reprisals that grew into almost daily violence.

Mr. Ben-Eliezer, who is popular within the party's central committee, was chosen by 45 percent of the votes in a three-way race. Ephraim Sneh, the outgoing deputy defense minister who lost to him, will become the transportation minister. Matan Vilnai, another former general who also lost to Mr. Ben-Eliezer, will be the science minister.

Shalom Simhon, a representative of the kibbutz movement, will become the agriculture minister. Dahlia Itzik, the outgoing environment minister will be the trade and industry minister. And Salah Tarif and Raanan Cohen were selected as ministers "without portfolios," that is, cabinet members without ministries.

Mr. Tarif, who is Druse, is to become the first non-Jewish Cabinet minister in Israeli history, political experts said.

After the Labor vote, Reuven Rivlin, a senior Likud official, said, "Now we can show the world that the people of Israel are united, that we agree on how we disagree with the Palestinians."

---

Ambassador Tells of Bomb's Horror

March 2, 2001
New York Times
By ALAN FEUER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/02/world/02TERR.html?pagewanted=all

There was carnage and rubble and smoke and blood, but Prudence Bushnell will always remember the rattling of a teacup.

Ms. Bushnell was the United States ambassador to Kenya when the embassy in Nairobi was demolished by a terrorist bomb. Her memory of the teacup as it chattered in the blast was just one detail of the catastrophe that permeated her 45-minute testimony yesterday at the embassy bombings trial. Now serving as the American ambassador to Guatemala, Ms. Bushnell told how she was meeting with Kenyan officials in an office tower behind the embassy when the bomb went off on Aug. 7, 1998. She escaped down a crowded stairwell as bodies were passed above her head and dazed survivors bled on her hair and down her back.

Ms. Bushnell remained mostly calm while on the stand in Federal District Court in Manhattan. As she spoke, the defendants in the trial - Wadih El-Hage, Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, Mohammed Saddiq Odeh and Mohamed Rashed Daoud al- 'Owhali - sat shackled at a table, watching her with no discernible emotion.

The four men have been accused of joining with Osama bin Laden in a terrorist plot that led to the Nairobi blast, which killed more than 200 people. It was nearly simultaneous with the bombing of the American Embassy in Tanzania, which killed 11 more.

Ms. Bushnell never looked at the accused. But when the prosecution showed her pictures of the embassy, burned and twisted by the force of the bomb, she shook her head and her voice quavered, even broke at times.

"I thought to myself, the building is going to collapse," she said with a war-zone stare. "I was going to tumble down all those floors. I was going to die."

It had started as an ordinary Friday.

At 10 a.m., Ms. Bushnell was meeting with Kenyan trade officials on the top floor of the Cooperative Bank building, which is just behind the embassy. She was discussing a planned trip to Nairobi by William M. Daley, the secretary of commerce at the time.

There was a brief news conference with the local media, then tea was served.

"It was at that point that an enormous explosion came," Ms. Bushnell recalled. She was thrown back from the windows and to the floor. She fought for consciousness. In the roaring aftermath, a teacup bouncing on its saucer was all she heard.

Moments later, she struggled to her feet and climbed across the blown-off door. She made her way into the hallway, found the stairs. Papers were scattered everywhere. The furniture had been tossed around like dice.

It was ghostly silent. She saw somebody's shoes and pools of blood.

"Then," she said, "the enormity of the blast began to hit."

The stairs were crowded, but nobody panicked, she said. As survivors joined the crowd, they were brought along with calls of "Welcome," murmured hymns and prayers.

When the rolls of smoke appeared, someone shouted fire, Ms. Bushnell said. "It was the second time that day I was very confident that I would die."

She still believed that the office tower had been the target of the bomb, and her mind condensed into a thought: get to the embassy. That's where the medics are. That's where help is.

Outside, the street was filled with glass and metal and what seemed to be a throng of thousands. The embassy was a smoking ruin, its windows shattered, everything burned to black.

"I looked up and saw burning vehicles," Ms. Bushnell said. "I saw the charred remains of what was once a human being. I saw the back of the building and utter destruction and I knew that no one was going to take care of me."

Throughout her testimony, Ms. Bushnell looked like a woman who had absorbed a horror that could not be absorbed. When she looked at the government's pictures, she tried to be stoic, but her stoicism did not last.

A federal prosecutor asked her several times, "Is this another photograph of the interior of the embassy after the bombing?"

"Yes," she would say, "another office or what used to be an office." Or: "Yes, it is. And you can see the blue skies between what was once a wall."

After this, it was time for cross- examination. Edward D. Wilford, one of Mr. Odeh's lawyers, began.

"How are you doing?" he gently asked. Ms. Bushnell just shook her head and smiled.

"I'm O.K.," she answered. "It's very difficult to be taken back."

David P. Baugh, a lawyer for Mr. al-'Owhali, played things slightly tougher. He asked the ambassador if she had known that Mr. bin Laden or his operatives had established themselves in Kenya.

"Were you told about this bin Laden thing going on over there?" he asked. A prosecutor rose to object. Judge Leonard B. Sand sustained the objection, and the question was disallowed. Mr. Baugh tried a few more times to determine if Ms. Bushnell had been warned of a potential terrorist attack. Judge Sand sustained each government objection and eventually called lawyers for both sides into his robing room.

The judge and the lawyers conferred for about 10 minutes. "In light of the court's ruling," Mr. Baugh said when they returned, "I have no further questions."

The jury was not informed that Ms. Bushnell complained to officials several times after being posted in Kenya in 1996 that she had been told of a terrorist cell there and that she believed her embassy was not secure. Months before the attack, she went so far as to write an emotional letter to Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright. But nothing was ever done.

The day ended as Ms. Bushnell sat in the gallery among the families of those who died in the Nairobi attack. They watched as the prosecution played a 25-minute videotape of the gory aftermath.

There was carnage and rubble and smoke and blood, but they did not avert their eyes.

---

Berenson retrial begins next week

March 2, 2001
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene-20013220549.htm

LIMA, Peru - The civilian retrial of Lori Berenson, a New York woman facing 20 years in prison for reported "terrorist collaboration" with a Peruvian rebel group, will begin next week and could last four months, Justice Minister Diego Garcia Sayan said yesterday.

"The oral trial will start on Thursday next week, as far as I know, and on that basis, her sentence or absolution will be determined," the minister told a news conference.

Miss Berenson, 31, who says she is innocent, was jailed for life in 1996 by a hooded military judge as a leader of the Cuban-inspired Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA).

--

Bin Laden applauds bombing of U.S. ship

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - The world's most wanted Islamic militant, Osama bin Laden, has applauded the bombing of the USS Cole in Aden, describing the destroyer as a ship of injustice that sailed to its doom.

Bin Laden's remarks were recorded at a family celebration in Afghanistan and broadcast yesterday on Qatar's satellite channel, Al-Jazeera.

Two suicide bombers detonated a small boat full of explosives alongside the USS Cole as it refueled in Aden harbor, Yemen, on Oct. 12, killing 17 U.S. sailors and wounding 39 others.

-------- activists

Price Anderson Act Up for Renewal

Fri, 2 Mar 2001
The Sunflower Newsletter
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sunflower-napf

The Price Anderson Act, passed in the US Congress in 1957, will once again come up for renewal on 1 August 2001. Without this irresponsible Congressional Act, which limits operator liability for a nuclear reactor accident, there would be no nuclear industry. According to official government estimates, in the event of a nuclear accident that could cause up to $314 billion in damages, the Act will pay up to a limit of $7 billion. The Price Anderson Act establishes the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as the sole judge and distributor of payments in the case of a nuclear accident.

The Act also applies a statute of limitations in which victims of an accident can not claim damages after ten years, despite the fact that cancers take more than ten years to develop. The Price Anderson Act demonstrates the nuclear industry's refusal to accept responsibility for actions that could cause harm not only to human health, but also to the environment. Each time the Act comes up for renewal, the nuclear lobby threatens to shut down every power plant unless the Act is renewed. The Price Anderson Act has discouraged development of more environmentally safe sources of renewable energy.

Take Action!

1. Call or write your elected officials and urge them not to renew the Price Anderson Act. Tell your elected officials that it is time for the nuclear industry to take full responsibility for its actions.

2. Sign an online petition calling upon US Senators and Members of Congress not to renew the Price Anderson Act. http://www.PetitionOnline.com/repealpa/petition.html

--

NAPF HAPPENINGS

Nuclear Age Peace Foundation Kicks Off International Membership Campaign
By JP Wilson

From March 1st through September 30th, 2001, Foundation members will participate in our first-ever Membership Campaign, People For Peace. Teams of 4-6 people will embark on sustained efforts to increase the Foundation's membership locally, and members across the country and around the world will be campaigning in their respective communities. These dedicated members will be talking to their friends, co-workers, family and anyone else that would consider becoming a member to add their voice to creating conditions for peace.

Foundation members bring more voices and resources to strengthen the Foundation's efforts towards abolishing nuclear weapons and creating a more peaceful future. This campaign will play a major role in engaging people around the world to become members.

The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has been working to create a peaceful world since 1982. The Foundation is a non-profit educational organization with consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council, and is recognized by the United Nations as a Peace Messenger Organization. The Foundation initiates and supports worldwide efforts to abolish nuclear weapons, to strengthen international law and institutions, to use technology responsibly and sustainably, and to empower youth to create a more peaceful world.

If you would like to become involved in this exciting 6-month effort, please contact JP Wilson at <communications@napf.org>. The fun is just beginning! Find out more by visiting the Foundation's website at http://www.wagingpeace.org

--

Wagingpeace.org
by Jason Sattler

Wagingpeace.org is now offering our award winning content in English, French, Spanish and Japanese (coming soon). Following the lead of the Ash.org web site, we have taken steps to make our site available in as many languages as possible. The translation is not perfect but meets our goal of establishing an international presence that will develop in the coming months and years.

When international users explore our site they will find the height of discourse on global peace issues. Our page presenting International Perspectives on International Ballistic Defense (http://www.wagingpeace.org/resources/index.html) now has 16 important articles from experts around the world. On the same page you will find an animated movie that questions the "Star Wars" mentality and a message board to post your thoughts.

Our Peace Heroes section of the site (http://www.wagingpeace.org/hero/index2.html) recently won an Editor's Choice Award from Awesome Library as being the top in the field of K-12 education. Thousands of people each week visit this area of the site to learn about exemplary lives such as Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi and Eleanor Roosevelt.

In January we completed the implementation of our site's new look, the "front end," as its known. With that out of the way, we are now sharpening up our "back end." We recently implemented a new database system that automates many of the aspects of our online membership campaign. Already 50 plus people a week are joining our site as an online member or signing the electronic version of our Appeal to End the Nuclear Weapons Threat to Humanity. Our new capabilities allow us to stay in contact with our new members and gives us the capacity for hundreds of people to join us everyday from all around the world. In addition, almost any page on our site offers the feature "mail to a friend." By filling out a simple form, a user can refer their friends to a specific page on our site. We believe that when a friend refers you to a site you are much more likely to pay attention to it, so we are making it as easy as possible for our users.

WagingPeace.org strives towards constantly publishing dynamic, current and vital content for all peace-minded people on the web. We seek a personal connection with our users to let them know that real people are working on this issue. To facilitate dialogue, we answer questions that our users pose to us about any nuclear or peace related issue regularly on our site (http://www.wagingpeace.org/resources/answers.html). Further we seek to anticipate our users needs with the latest information and resources available such as current lists of contact information for political leaders and major media (http://www.wagingpeace.org/action/actionresources.html).

Please visit our site soon and let us know how we can serve you better. Comments and suggestions can be emailed to wagingpeace@napf.org.

ACTIONS YOU CAN TAKE

Urge the US to Ratify the Anti-Personnel Landmine Treaty!

1 March 2001 is the anniversary of the entry into force of the Landmines treaty. While 139 nations have so far signed the treaty and 110 have ratified, the US refuses to do so. Write a letter to your elected officials or a US embassy in your country, urging the new administration to sign the treaty to rid the world of anti-personnel landmines.

From 6-10 March, the "Ban Landmines Week," as proclaimed by Mayor Williams of Washington DC, mine survivors, deminers, campaigners and researchers from all 50 States and over 90 countries will gather in Washington DC to take part in a series of meetings. Additionally, they will urge the Bush Administration to take a stand against the use of anti-personnel mines as well as sign and ratify the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty.

29 January-4 April: A Season for Nonviolence

29 January to 4 April is the fourth annual Season for Nonviolence. A Season for Nonviolence was inspired by the 50th memorial anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi (January 30, 1998) and the 30th memorial anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (April 4, 1998). The overall mission of A Season for Nonviolence is to make peace a way of life and to create a society that honors the dignity and worth of every human being.

For more information on A Season for Nonviolence or for action ideas and daily inspiration, please visit http://www.nonviolenceworks.com

29 March-2 April: School of the Americas Resistance in Washington D.C.

On 17 January, the School of Americas (SOA) reopened as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. The "cosmetic" change was included in the Defense Authorization Bill for Fiscal Year 2001. The new military school will ensure that the SOA can continue its mission and operation to train Latin American soldiers in combat, counter-insurgency, and counter-narcotics. Graduates of the SOA have been responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses in Latin America. The Western Hemisphere for Security Cooperation is the "same shame under a new name."

The SOA Watch is holding Spring Days of Resistance in Washington D.C. from 29 March to 2 April to vigil and lobby at the capitol. An optional six day fast will coincide with the days of resistance. For more information or to obtain an organizing packet, please visit http://www.soaw.org

14-16 July: LANL 2001-Action for Abolition

16 July 2001 marks the 56th anniversary of the first atomic bomb explosion in New Mexico called Trinity. To commemorate the event, Peace Action New Mexico is hosting panels and practical workshops on organizing and nuclear issues in Santa Fe, New Mexico from 14-15 July. Following the conference, there will be a rally and peaceful demonstration at the Los Alamos National Laboratory to send a high-profile message to policy makers in Washington D.C. and to allies around the world who, want a safe, nuclear-free world. For more information, please contact Peace Action New Mexico (505) 989-4812 or LANLaction@aol.com

RESOURCES

Visit the new and improved website of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation at Http://www.wagingpeace.org

Order a Nuclear Age Peace Foundation T-shirt! Visit http://napf.org/secure/tshirts.html

Take a journey through the Nuclear Age. Visit the Nuclear Files at Http://www.nuclearfiles.org

View frequently asked questions on nuclear dangers and nuclear disarmament http://www.wagingpeace.org/krieger-morefaq.html

"State of the World 2001", a downloadable report from the World Watch Institute is available in pdf format at: http://secure.worldwatch.org/cgi-bin/wwinst/SOW01P

The Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League (BREDL) has released a three part report, "Plutonium: The Last Five Years," documenting plutonium hazards and inventories and revealing the Department of Energy's mismanagement of its plutonium storage responsibilities. The report is available online at http://www.bredl.org/press/2001/Pu_Report.htm

Using information from the Center for Responsive Politics, Project Abolition has put together a profile of the campaign contributions and lobbying expenses of the Big Four Star Wars contractors, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and TRW. Project Abolition has also compiled a list of these contractors' plants and offices around the country. http://projectabolition.org/cprojects.html

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Stop NAFTA for Central America.

February 28, 2001

Tell President Bush No to NAFTA for Central America.

On Thursday, March 1, Salvadoran President Francisco Flores will travel to Washington, D.C. to meet with President George Bush. Flores' main goal is to ask Bush and the U.S. Congress for a NAFTA style free trade agreement between the United States and the five Central American countries.

The right-wing ARENA government and the Salvadoran financial elite desperately want a NAFTA style agreement as part of their strategy to further implement the neoliberal model. Three major earthquakes and thousands of aftershocks have devastated the country and its health care, educational, and water distribution systems lie in ruins. The response of ARENA is to propose harsh neoliberal economic policies in the form of a Central American wide free trade agreement.

A Central American wide NAFTA will only bring about more poverty and misery for people in the region. A Central American NAFTA will put the five countries under even more economic domination by the U.S. and multinational corporations.

Requested Actions:

It is urgent that calls be made to the White House on Thursday, March 1st to tell President George Bush not to consider a NAFTA for Central America. Please convey the following to Bush:

.. "Just say no" to a Central American NAFTA. Such a free trade agreement will have devastating economic and social effects on Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Hondurans, Nicaraguans, and Costa Ricans.

.. Tell President Bush that what El Salvador needs is a transparent reconstruction. This process must include the active participation of the affected communities and their municipal governments. Reconstructing El Salvador after the earthquake must address the underlying economic and social inequalities in the country

.. The U.S. must provide adequate funding for real reconstruction. These funds must not be reprogrammed and taken from other sources. Tell Bush that he must ask for fresh funding for earthquake reconstruction in El Salvador.

Call the White House Comment line at 202-456-1414. Faxes can be sent to Bush at 202-456-2461. E-mail: president@whitehouse.gov

Join us March 1 in Washington, D.C. to protest President Flores' visit to ask for a NAFTA for Central America.

Location: In front of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1779 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, D.C.

Time: Thursday, March 1 from 4:30 to 6:00pm

COMMITTEE IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE PEOPLE OF EL SALVADOR

National Office: 19 West 21st St. #502, New York, NY 10010 Phone: 212-229-1290 FAX: 212-645-7280 E-mail: cispesnatl@people-link.net www.cispes.org

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Save the forests...
Stop Fee Demo

Fri, 02 Mar 2001
From: Michael Zierhut
mailto:zierhutm@ojai.net

The Forest Service hopes to make permanent the Recreational Fee Demonstration Program (Fee Demo) this year, and may succeed unless activists quickly generate opposition in Congress. Many organizations have already gone on record opposing Fee Demo. To see this list, go to the Free our Forests (FOF) website at http://www.freeourforests.org/opposition.html

Since this initial list of groups opposing Fee Demo was created, a number of organizations including American Lands, Wild Wilderness, and Wildlands CPR formed the Ojai Coalition for Protection of Public Lands to actively oppose Fee Demo and related recreational and commercial development issues. One of the first tasks the Ojai Coalition is to gather an updated list of organizations opposed to Fee Demo. This list of organizations will be used or public education, media campaigns and for lobbying Congress.

To sign on to this letter, please e-mail Michael Zierhut at mailto:zierhutm@ojai.net or call (805) 640-1864. Please include contact information so that the list can be verified if necessary.

The Fee Demo opposition sign-on letter reads as follows:

We, the undersigned, oppose the Recreational Fee Demonstration Program (Fee Demo; PL 104-134 Sec. 315) and ask Congress instead to restore adequate funding to public lands agencies. Additionally, we oppose the private investment and partnerships clause of Fee Demo. We believe that public lands must remain in the public trust and that the private sector should not be involved in the policy-making decisions of public lands agencies.

Our concerns with Fee Demo are as follows:

-> the double taxation that comes from collecting taxes as well as access and/or user fees for public lands use;

-> the discrimination against low income citizens, in violation of the spirit of equal rights;

-> the encouragement of the privatization of public lands management;

-> the promotion of business and marketing plans in public lands agencies, turning them into commercial enterprises rather than stewards;

-> the measurement of the success of the program by compliance and revenues generated, without appropriate public and Congressional debate;

-> the unfairness of providing tax breaks and subsidies to businesses which operate on public lands (grazing, mining, timber), while the public must pay to use those same lands;

-> movement towards requiring public lands agencies to fund themselves through revenues generated rather than through appropriated tax dollars.

For these reasons we request Congress to end Fee Demo in 2002, to prevent any further extensions to the demonstration program, and to restore appropriate recreation funding to the public lands agencies through the regular appropriations process.

Sincerely,

Beyond this letter of opposition, a new ONLINE PETITION AGAINST FEE DEMO has been created for individuals to express their opposition to Fee Demo. In its first week, the petition gathered over 1,000 signatures. I'm sure that there are more people out there opposed who would sign it if they only knew the petition existed. If you can, please help us by signing this petition yourself and passing the information of its existence on to your organization, friends, and family. The petition can be found at http://www.PetitionOnline.com/feedemo/petition.html

For more information contact Michael Zierhut, Free Our Forests, mailto:zierhutm@ojai.net http://www.freeourforests.org

A factsheet on Recreational & Commercial Development on public lands is available at http://www.americanlands.org/forestweb/recreational_development.htm

Thank you. With your help, hopefully we can put an end to Fee Demo this year.

Michael Zierhut Free Our Forests webmaster zierhutm@ojai.net http://www.freeourforests.org

Sign the petition to stop Wal-Mart from destroying Spartanburg: http://www.PetitionOnline.com/Walmart/petition.html

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Greenpeace claims plutonium carrying ships nearing Tasmania

Fri, 2 Mar 2001
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newslink/weekly/newsnat-2mar2001-11.htm

Greenpeace claims two British ships carrying plutonium fuel from Europe to Japan are nearing Tasmania.

The organisation says the ships are carrying 230 kilograms of mixed oxide plutonium fuel and have been spotted 300 nautical miles south-west of Hobart.

They are likely to enter the Tasman Sea on Saturday.

Greenpeace campaigner Stephen Campbell says the ships will encounter a protest flotilla when they approach Lord Howe and Norfolk Islands.

Mr Campbell says it is a poor indictment on the Federal Government that it continues to allow the shipments.

"Well really the Howard Government is the only one in the region which is supporting these shipments," he said.

"The Government of New Zealand and several of the Pacific nations have expressed their objections to the passage of the shipments and all of the Australian opposition parties federally have also expressed their opposition to the shipments, which really leaves the Howard Government very alone on this matter."

---

China Sentences 37 Falun Gong Sect

March 2, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-China-Banned-Sect.html

BEIJING (AP) -- China has sentenced 37 people to prison on charges of promoting the outlawed Falun Gong spiritual movement through gatherings and handbills, the government's Xinhua News Agency reported Friday.

The sentences of up to 10 years were given on Thursday by five courts in and around Beijing, Xinhua said in a brief report.

One alleged follower, Xue Hairong, received a seven-year sentence on charges of downloading articles about Falun Gong from the Internet to reproduce and distribute. The same court gave shorter sentences to four others, Xinhua said.

The rest were sentenced by four courts in the city's suburbs for allegedly organizing illegal gatherings and printing and distributing Falun Gong materials. Court officials refused comment or could not be reached.

Chinese authorities have reacted angrily to international criticism of their 19-month crackdown on the sect, saying other countries have also suppressed ``evil cults.'' Beijing accuses Falun Gong of causing the deaths of 1,660 people by opposing modern medicine.

Falun Gong drew millions of followers in the 1990s with a mix of calisthenics, meditation and an eclectic mix of Buddhism, Taoism and the teachings of founder Li Hongzhi, a former government clerk now living in the United States.

Human rights monitors say at least 112 people have died during the crackdown. Falun Gong puts the figure at 155, and on Friday it claimed four more deaths.

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Ireland to Speak
New Location

Fri, 02 Mar 2001
"Bernard Pollack"
<beatthemachine@yahoo.com>

Patricia Ireland, president of the National Organization for Women (NOW) will join a panel of activists to "Unite the Fight to Beat Back Bush" tomorrow, March 3, at 4 pm, for the final meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Socialist Conference at George Washington University in DC.

Other panelists will be Bob Naiman, FTAA protest organizer; Arturo Griffiths, DC Statehood Green Party; Rev. Graylan Hagler, Plymouth Congregational Church; and Sherry Wolf, International Socialist Organization.

Please join us for the rest of the day's meetings in the GW Government Building, 21 and G Sts. NW. Schedule follows:

11 am -- Why We Need a Socialist Alternative

2 pm -- Workshops Defend Abortion Rights Police, Prisons and the Death Penalty Was is Right to Vote Nader? Palestinian Liberation Globalization and Cross-Border Solidarity

GW is located at the Foggy Bottom Metro stop. Conference registration is $5.

For more information contact 202-257-2497

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Appeal for Trinational Conference Against Deregulation/NAFTA/FTAA

Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 16:24:46 -0800 From:
OWC CAMPAIGN NEWS
<owc@energy-net.org>
c/o S.F. Labor Council,
1188 Franklin St., #203,
San Francisco, CA 94109.

[OWC] Appeal for Trinational Conference Against Deregulation/NAFTA/FTAA

1) Appeal for a Tri-National (Mexico, Canada, United States) Workers' Conference Against Deregulation and Privatizations and for the Repeal of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)

Mexico City, Mexico, May 26-27, 2001

[Note: The Appeal below was issued in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas (Mexico) on November 18, 2000. The initial appeal called for holding the Tri-national conference in Mexico City in late April 2001. After consultation with U.S. and Canadian trade unionists and activists, many of whom will be participating in the demonstrations in Quebec on April 20-21, the organizers of the Tri-national conference decided to postpone this conference to Memorial Day weekend -- i.e. May 26-27, 2001.]

Introduction

We - delegates who have assembled on November 18, 2000, in the city of San Cristobal de las Casas (Chiapas) at the "Fifth Convention in Defense of the Nation, Against Deregulation and Privatizations, and for the Repeal of NAFTA" - hereby issue an "Appeal for a Tri-National (Mexico, Canada, United States) Workers' Conference Against Deregulation and Privatizations and for the Repeal of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)."

We propose that this Tri-National Workers' Conference take place in Mexico City on May 26-27, 2001, as a stepping stone to build the International Workers' Conference Against Deregulation and For Labor Rights For All, which will be held in Germany in February 2002 at the initiative of the International Liaison Committee for a Workers' International (ILC), the Continuations Committee of the Open World Conference (OWC), and a number of German trade unions.

Seven Years of NAFTA

January 1, 2001, marks the seventh anniversary of the signing of NAFTA by the governments of Mexico, the United States, and Canada. The disastrous results of NAFTA are there for all to see:

a) Jobs and wages: Mexico has been embraced by the multinational corporations as a country with cheap labor and cheap natural resources. The minimum wage is barely $4 a day. During the government of Ernesto Zedillo, the average wage of Mexican workers lost 48.3 % of its purchasing power.

In the United States, the results of NAFTA are clear - despite the vain attempts of the Clinton administration to cover up the facts. At least 400,000 - and perhaps as many as 600,000 jobs - have been lost as a direct result of NAFTA. Employers continue to threaten plant closures and production shifts to Mexico in the drive to lower wages of all U.S. workers and hamper union organizing attempts. In Canada, the number of full-time jobs with benefits has been slashed dramatically, as have been union jobs as a whole.

b) Delocalizations: The governments of Mexico and the United States promote delocalizations of businesses, that is, the transfer of the productive facilities of these giant corporations to Mexico or even to regions in the United States (particularly in the Southeast of the United States), where there is more flexibility of the workforce, lower wages and a far lower rate of unionization.

In Mexico, the industrial sector that has grown most rapidly is that of the maquilas (pass-through sweatshops), where 1.5 million workers (mainly women, youth, and even children) are submitted to the most savage exploitation, with precarious jobs and no labor rights. This is a sector where even Mexican federal labor law does not apply and where the so-called unions are in fact direct instruments of the bosses and the government.

Production in Canada is also being moved to lower-wage countries, as in the case of the Bauer Skate Company in Ontario - which was bought by the Nike Corporation, operated in Canada for six months, and then moved to Malaysia, along with 500 factory jobs.

In their drive for maximum profits, global corporations pit working people, our communities, and entire nations against one another in a downward spiral of takebacks, concessions, and direct assaults - what has come to be known appropriately as the "race to the bottom."

c) Export of cheap labor: Another result of NAFTA is the dramatic increase in migration from Mexico to the United States by adults and youth aspiring to a job and better wages. Entire populations from various states of Mexico (Michoacán, Jalisco, Guanajuato, etc.) are left without a male population. An estimated 1.3 million Mexicans attempt to cross the border each year. Some of them succeed, while others are forced back. Many of them die of heat exhaustion in the desert, or they drown in the Rio Bravo. Others still are assassinated by the Migra or they are hunted down as animals by U.S. ranchers. This mass of undocumented workers exerts a constant pressure to lower the salaries of U.S. workers, while the Mexican workers in the United States are treated miserably, having no rights - in particular, no rights to organize collectively.

d) Privatization: NAFTA is the over-arching plan that imposes privatization of public services and enterprises as well as the deregulation of finance and labor legislation. In Mexico, over the past seven years, the national railroad system has been turned over to the multinationals, with the ensuing loss of the collective-bargaining agreement and with the layoffs of thousands of workers. In the case of Mexico City, the Ruta 100 public bus system was dismantled and its union and collective bargaining agreement destroyed. Thousands of bus drivers were left without a job. In the United States, privatization of transportation, public services, and even sectors of education has moved ahead. The deregulation of public utilities (particularly electricity), trucking, and telecommunications in the United States has had extremely negative results for consumers, while severely attacking the unions in those sectors.

To conclude, NAFTA has only benefited the large corporations, primarily the U.S. multinational corporations, imposing still greater flexibility of the work force - all with the full support of the three signatory governments.

The Extension of NAFTA through the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)

A new offensive against the workers and peoples of the entire Western Hemisphere is in the works. The objective of the Clinton administration- fully embraced by new Mexican President Vicente Fox and by Canadian Prime Minister Chretien - has been to create a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) by the year 2003. This objective was dealt a major setback when the U.S. Congress, under the sustained pressure of the U.S. workers and their trade union federation, the AFL-CIO, blocked "fast-track" authority to expand NAFTA.

Both major party candidates to the U.S. presidency, Al Gore and George Bush, pledged to deepen the policies of the Clinton administration in the realm of "free trade." Both candidates pledged to promote FTAA vigorously and to deepen the drive to "remove all barriers" to the free circulation of U.S. capital and goods in the hemisphere. Whichever candidate wins the presidency will continue to promote the interests of Big Business at the expense of the workers and peoples of the region.

Vicente Fox Quesada, the new Mexican president, is offering to turn over to the U.S. multinational corporations control and ownership of the oil and electricity industries, which are the source of much of the country's wealth as well as the material basis of the sovereignty of the nation.

The Free Trade Areas of the Americas is a plan aimed at driving down even further the cost of labor in the Western Hemisphere, including the United States and Canada, through the liquidation of the rights and organizations of the workers. In the case of Mexico, as has been announced already by the new team of President-elect Fox, the priority is to deliver the Mexican national oil enterprise, Pemex, to the multinationals.

On that same plane, the so-called "Plan Colombia" - which, on the surface, is presented as a war against the drug dealers - is in fact part and parcel of the same policies aimed at dismantling the national borders of the countries of this region. What is involved is the pursuit of a war to help the multinationals make further inroads on the continent and to carry out fully the Free Trade Areas of the Americas.

Let there be no doubt: The U.S. government seeks to liquidate workers' rights and to dismantle the national sovereignty of the countries of Latin America and of the entire continent.

Deregulation and "Free Trade" - an International Policy

The policies of deregulation - which target social protection systems and collective rights won through bitter struggle by workers and their organizations over many decades - are international in scope.

But the resistance of working people to this assault has not abated; if anything it has increased. In the United States, workers and their trade union federation were able to put a halt to fast-track. In Mexico, the electrical workers, through their mass mobilizations, have been able to prevent - at least for the time being - the privatization of the electricity industry. In Mexico, as well, public-sector workers engaged in a massive strike for a year-end bonus that has paralyzed the government. In Canada, workers waged a general strike to prevent the initial attempts to privatize health care and social security.

To advance this resistance across borders, the trade union delegates who assembled on June 11, 2000, in Geneva, Switzerland, at the International Workers' Conference in Defense of ILO Conventions, issued a Call for an International Workers' Conference Against Deregulation and For Labor Rights For All. Such a conference is also aimed at advancing the follow-up work of the Open World Conference in Defense of Trade Union Independence and Democratic Rights, which was held in San Francisco in February 2000.

What comes through loud and clear in the Appeal for the International Workers' Conference Against Deregulation and For Labor Rights For All is the need for workers the world over to fight back against the policies aimed at substituting individualized labor relations for the collective relations established through collective bargaining agreements and codified in enforceable labor rights.

All governments today - in the name of "globalization" and promoting the "comparative advantages" of the corporations in the host countries (cheap labor, lack of social security, etc.) - seek to subordinate the Conventions of the International Labor Organization (ILO) to the World Trade Organization. In so doing, they seek to replace these ILO Conventions with mere recommendations that have no enforcement power.

One case in point is the recent revision of ILO Convention 103 in defense of maternity rights. The revision of ILO Convention 103 and its replacement with Convention 183 has led to the removal of the iron-clad prohibition to fire a pregnant woman from her job. Already governments on every continent have seized upon the revision of ILO Convention 103 to modify their own labor legislation in such a way as to undermine and reverse the maternity rights of women at work.

The call for the International Workers' Conference Against Deregulation concludes by pointing out that there is an urgent need to organize on every continent a sustained fightback against all forms of deregulation with the aim of defending collective rights and rejecting the individualization of those rights.

In Mexico, the United States, and Canada, the deregulation offensive is rooted in the "free trade" agenda of the multinational corporations and of the governments in their service. This offensive has a name: It is NAFTA. It is the FTAA, which will only extend the devastation inflicted on the three countries of North America to the rest of the continent.

In light of this dramatic situation, and to prepare the International Workers' Conference Against Deregulation and For Labor Rights For All, we call on working people, students, youth, activists, retirees, to join in Mexico City on May 26-27, 2001, at a Tri-National Workers' Conference to help advance the fightback around the following demands:

o Repeal NAFTA!

o Stop the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)!

o Stop Deregulation!

o Defense of PEMEX and of the national electrical industry in Mexico!

o No to the privatization of the public services and enterprises (health care, education, social security, etc.)!

o Amnesty for all undocumented immigrants in the United States!

o Solidarity and unity of working people across North America and throughout the hemisphere!

o Full Labor Rights for All!

o For the right to self-determination for all the oppressed peoples of the continent!

--

2) Mexico City Conference Registration Information

The Tri-National Conference Against Deregulation & "Free Trade" will be held over the weekend of May 26-27, 2001.

WHERE THE CONFERENCE WILL BE HELD:

The Tri-National Conference will be held in the Auditorium of the SUTIN union in Mexico City. (The SUTIN is the union of workers of the nuclear industry.) The SUTIN Auditorium address is:

Auditorio del SUTIN Av. Río Becerra 139 Col. Nápoles, Mexico, DF, Mexico

CONTACT INFORMATION IN MEXICO:

The organizers of the conference are:

Humberto M Brizuela Tel. 011-525-547-0161

and

Profr. Romeo M. Ramírez, Secretario de Alianzas de la Sección 22 del SNTE, Oaxaca Tel. 011-52-951-670-33 ext. 111 or fax 951-45-966

LODGING:

All conference participants who need lodging will stay at the nearby Hotel Pasadena, which is located on Av. Revolución No. 826, Col. San Juan Mixcoac. The cost of a double room is $40 per day. A single room is $24.

REGISTRATION FEE:

The conference organizers will charge a $10 registration fee per person to cover the conference expenses.

3) CONFERENCE REGISTRATION FORM

[ ] I will be attending the Tri-National Workers Conference in Mexico City on May 26-27, 2001.

[ ] I am interested in attending the Tri-National Workers Conference in Mexico City on May 26-27, 2001. Please send me more background information.

[ ] I plan to stay at the Hotel Pasadena. Please reserve a [ ] single room, [ ] double room in my name.

NAME

ADDRESS

CITY

STATE

ZIP

UNION/ORGANIZATION

EMAIL

TELEPHONE

(Please return this form to <owc@energy-net.org>)

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Canada mounts biggest-ever security operation for Summit of the Americas

2 March 2001
World Socialist Web Site
By Keith Jones
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/mar2001/queb-m02_prn.shtml

The Summit of the Americas, which will be held in Quebec City April 20-22, has become the object of the largest security operation in Canadian history. While much of this operation is cloaked in secrecy, flagrant violations of basic civil liberties have already come to light. Moreover, by transforming Quebec City into an armed camp, the authorities hope to marginalize and stigmatize opposition to the summit and to the big business agenda pursued by its 34 participating governments.

Publicly, government officials are admitting that 5,000 police drawn from four different police forces-the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the Quebec Provincial Police and the municipal police forces of Quebec City and neighboring Ste.-Foy-will be mobilized for the summit. The police will be charged with keeping protesters quarantined far from the summit site and ruthlessly suppressing any transgression of the law by the summit's opponents. To this end, all five of the RCMP's riot control detachments are being deployed to Quebec City and the Quebec provincial government has ordered that 500 inmates be temporarily transferred from a local prison, so it can serve as a detention centre for persons arrested during anti-summit protests.

The authorities are taking extraordinary steps to ensure that the most lowly summit participants, let alone US President George W. Bush and the 33 other state presidents and prime ministers who are slated to attend, do not encounter or even come within earshot of any anti-summit protests. The downtown core of Quebec City-an area of several dozen blocks that contains the summit meeting site and the hotels where the participants are to be housed, as well as numerous shops, office, and residences-is to be fortified and transformed into an exclusion zone.

A 4.5 kilometre-long and 3-metre high metal fence anchored in concrete will be built around this entire area and during the summit only those with police passes will be permitted entry. Three types of passes are being issued: one for those attending the summit, another for those who live within the exclusion zone and a third for those who work in the zone. Depending on whether the Quebec government decides to give civil servants who work at the provincial legislature and the various ministries that are likewise situated in the no-go zone a holiday for the duration of the summit, up to 25,000 workers and residents will be compelled to obtain police passes and have their movements monitored during the summit.

The police are conducting security checks on those requesting passes for the exclusion zone. Bibiane Bernier, manager of a souvenir store at a hotel where some summit-related activities are to take place, told the Canadian Press that the RCMP have been carrying out detailed security checks on the store's employees. "They called one of our employees who'd moved five times in recent years, and asked, 'What were you doing? Why did you move?'"

These measures have been defended by Quebec's Security Minister in stark terms. "As the proverb goes," Serge Menard told reporters, "if you want peace, prepare for war."

Civil liberties groups have pointed out that the exclusion-zone represents an unprecedented constraint on people's right to use city streets and other public places. Canadian Civil Liberties Association general counsel Alan Borovoy added, "The further the protesters are, the less viable their protest will be."

The RCMP have visited organizations involved in anti-summit activities, including church groups, to question them about their plans and to encourage them to inform on any group or individual they suspect might disobey the police's strict rules as to where protests will be permitted and how protestors must act. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service has also been paying unannounced visits to anti-summit activists.

These pressure tactics have already had one desired outcome. Eager to demonstrate to the establishment their respectability, the trade unions have announced that their protest demonstration will be staged well away from the perimeter of the exclusion-zone.

In the run-up to the summit, the local police and government are seeking to instill a climate of fear and intimidation. On at least two occasions, police have detained persons handing out anti-summit materials in the Quebec City are. In the first case, police said that if more than two people distributed materials together they would be considered an unlawful assembly. This week, the suburb of Ste.-Foy followed the lead of Quebec City and passed a municipal bylaw that makes it illegal for anyone in a crowd to wear a mask, scarf or otherwise cover any part of their face, and this in a city where sub-freezing temperatures are a common occurrence in late April. Not only does the Ste.-Foy bylaw give the police the power to immediately arrest anyone even partially covering his or her face, it overturns the presumption of innocence and says that those who obscure any part of their face must prove that they did so for a valid reason.

Such draconian measures point to the authorities' hostility to basic civil liberties and eagerness to give the state powers that can be invoked so as to justify clearing the streets of those opposed to government policy.

With the full support of Canada's Liberal government, the United States intends to use next month's summit to reinforce its longstanding economic and geopolitical domination of Latin America by pushing for the creation of a hemispheric free trade zone.

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